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Few would argue that the Flint water crisis would have happened, let alone gone on so long if it occurred in whiter, more well-heeled suburbs like Birmingham or Grosse Pointe.
Nancy Kaffer of the Detroit Free Press addresses the issue head on:
Imagine what would happen if Michigan's self-proclaimed nerd governor, a white Republican businessman from Ann Arbor, held the Michigan Civil Rights Commission's report on Flint in his hands and said yes — yes, systemic and institutional racism created Flint, and the Flint water crisis. Yes, implicit bias played a role in how, and when, we responded. Yes, we have to learn, as a state, to do better.
That's how we could avoid another crisis.
The commission's 138-report answers a question that's often asked in the wake of the Flint water crisis — could the water supply of a wealthier, whiter city, places like West Bloomfield or Birmingham, have been poisoned with lead? Could government have carried on, oblivious, for years as residents complained about water that looked and smelled terrible, that tasted bad, as test results began to show the city's water supply had become dangerously compromised?
The answer, obviously, is no. But it's equally important to understand, the commissioners wrote, not just the implicit bias that allowed the Flint water crisis to endure, but how systemic and institutional racism created the conditions that allowed the crisis to happen.
The commission was careful to use the word racism only where it applies, and to clearly explain the difference between a deliberate act of racism, and the consequences of a racialized system built to reliably produce racially disparate outcomes.
