How we Treat the poor
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Flint Is About How We Treat the Poor
This water crisis could not have occurred in a rich community
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/23/flint-about-how-we-treat-poor
This water crisis could not have occurred in a rich community
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/23/flint-about-how-we-treat-poor
Dear white people:
As you no doubt know, the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, returned to the headlines last week with news that the state attorney general is charging three government officials for their alleged roles in the debacle. It makes this a convenient moment to deal with something that has irked me about the way this disaster is framed.
Namely, the fact that people who look like you often get left out of it.
Consider some of the headlines:
The Racist Roots of Flint’s Water Crisis — Huffington Post
How A Racist System Has Poisoned The Water in Flint — The Root
A Question of Environmental Racism — The New York Times
As has been reported repeatedly, Flint is a majority black city with a 41 percent poverty rate. So critics ask if the water would have been so blithely poisoned, and if it would have taken media so long to notice, had the victims been mostly white.
It’s a sensible question, but whenever I hear it, I engage in a little thought experiment. I try to imagine what happened in Flint happening in Bowie, a city in Maryland where blacks outnumber whites, but the median household income is more than $100,000 a year, and the poverty rate is about 3 percent. I can’t.
Then I try to imagine it happening in Morgantown, West Virginia, where whites outnumber blacks, the median household income is about $32,000 a year, and the poverty rate approaches 40 percent — and I find that I easily can. It helps that Bowie is a few minutes from Washington, D.C., while Morgantown is over an hour from the nearest city of any size.
My point is neither that race carries no weight nor that it had no impact on what happened in Flint. No, my point is only that sometimes, race is more distraction than explanation. Indeed, that’s the story of our lives.
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To be white in America is to have been sold a bill of goods that there exists between you and people of color a gap of morality, behavior, intelligence and fundamental humanity. Forces of money and power have often used that perceived gap to con people like you into acting against their own self-interest.
In the Civil War, white men too poor to own slaves died in grotesque numbers to protect the “right” of a few plutocrats to continue that despicable practice. In the Industrial Revolution, white workers agitating for a living wage were kept in line by the threat that their jobs would be given to “Negroes.” In the Depression, white families mired in poverty were mollified by signs reading “Whites Only.”
You have to wonder what would happen if white people — particularly, those of modest means — ever saw that gap for the fiction it is? What if they ever realized you don’t need common color to reach common ground? What if all of us were less reflexive in using race as our prism, just because it’s handy?
You see, for as much as Flint is a story about how we treat people of color, it is also — I would say more so — a story about how we treat the poor, the way we render them invisible. That was also the story of Hurricane Katrina. Remember news media’s shock at discovering there were Americans too poor to escape a killer storm?
Granted, there is a discussion to be had about how poverty is constructed in this country; the black poverty rate is higher than any other, with the exception of Native Americans, and that’s no coincidence.
But it’s equally true that, once you are poor, the array of slights and indignities to which you are subjected is remarkably consistent across that racial gap.
That fact should induce you — and all of us — to reconsider the de facto primacy we assign this arbitrary marker of identity. After all, 37 percent of the people in Flint are white.
But that’s done nothing to make their water clean.
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And the same goes for members of other species. All life should be treated with respect and allowed to live in a clean, healthy environment. Other than places like sulfur pots in Yellowstone where pollution occurs naturally, there we would be wise to make sure all water is clean.
I think all people should spend a week of their life on a Taco Bell diet in honour of the low wage workers who do the same that work there.
Either you're decent and courteous (or try to be), or you're not. I see it more as a character thing.
Shouldn't these jobs be a stepping stone though and not a career?
I don't see it as being elitist as trying to better yourself and wanting more for ones self. I always thought that's how life was... You try to better yourself.
Acknowledge Race is sometimes used as an excuse and propped up by media to sell Ford trucks. With my very limited knowledge to this lead thing don't have an opinion on this event or how it's being portrayed. Would though guess goes back to $$$$
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.”
“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
Back on topic, i watched a special on Chicago and how the cops don't come to the neighborhoods when called. It's like the whole police force checked out.
That's horrible.
It's disgusting because:
-So many poor falsely believe that fast food is the best they can do nutritionally within their budget.
-because we haven't done a good enough job about educating people about nutrition.
-because fast "food" is toxic.
-because most of this food (Chapotle Grill might be the exception) is helping destroy ecosystems.
-because the packaging is massively wasteful.
-because too many people have never learned or are too lazy too cook (but they could go raw if that's the case).
-because going to fast food take out means more unnecessary driving.
(with or without the side of e coli
Yeah, that outbreak sucked. I read they solved the problem. Eating out is always a risk. I've had food poisoning twice, once from a deli (I got so sick and puked so much I hyperventilated until my arms went numb until I got to the hospital) and once from ice cream that put me unconscious in another hospital. I remember waking up and the guy next to me said, "Man, it's good to see you awake!" I said, "Oh, how long was I out?" He said, "Three days!" So yeah, food poisoning put me under- unconscious for three days!
So the deal is, if you eat fast food you either eat at McD's or Burger King or what ever and ingest crap every time that will slowly kill you or you go to Chapotle or a deli or out for ice cream you might get sick (but not likely- I was just unlucky yet lucky to survive) and all the rest of the time eat healthier food.
So why risk any of that. Make eating out a treat at a good local restaurant and eat healthy at home. That's what we do.
And back to the subject. Just imagine how much likelier to get sick from bad food and water poor people are. There used to be a book that listed all the counties in the U.S. with measurements of pollution in the air and water etc. Great book. Showed how toxic poor regions are. Way bad that it is so out of print and out dated.
Can't those pollution stats be found online now? Current ones? I'd think so.
All I know, is that fast food literally makes have a stomach ache and my daughter complains of having green poop from the shit. Never thought of ice cream being tainted...
I don't eat any cow dairy anymore. That happened over 20 years ago. Years ago I learned how easier it is to digest goat dairy. And there is now a coconut based ice cream that is really good but even that I eat seldom and sparingly.
Fast food, like most of our schools, is a part of an industrial mentality that turns people into a worker bee industry. It keeps the poor down but alive just enough to be cogs in the machine.