http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/26/t...-michigan/
Quote:They are Mostly Black
The racial composition of Flint is 56.6% African American. I have no doubt that if it had been white residents voicing their concerns about the quality of the water, the response from the state government would have been swift and aggressive; but the slow response represents an expression of a kind of institutional empathy gap. This ‘gap’ refers to a cognitive bias wherein a person underestimates the visceral nature of pain experienced by another—it is particularly applicable when the person in pain is black. Therefore, since those in power were responding to mostly black folks, I find it unsurprising that they were less responsive to the complaints filed.
Environmental racism was a concept developed in the 1980s. It refers to the “disproportionate exposure of blacks to polluted air, water and soil.†Poverty and redlining are the primary reason why black and brown people disproportionately live in industrialized areas that expose them to higher amounts of pollutants. Add, now, irresponsive public officials that give rise to an institutional empathy gap to the list of things that contribute to environmental racism
