Jackson: Water, Water, Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink

Literal Structural Racism

The good news is that water is now flowing through the pipes in Jackson, Mississippi. The bad news is that it’s not safe to drink.

How did we get here? Why can the capital city of one of our 50 states find itself without safe drinking water?¹ The short answer is that heavy rains overran the antiquated water treatment plant in late July mixing untreated sewage into the city’s water supply. To be clear, this is a separate event from the May 2021 water crisis that resulted from a late season ice storm that left Jackson residents without water for a month.

The more complicated answer is what happened in Jackson is a literal example of “structural racism”. In other words, the impact of race relations on the community shows up in an antiquated water treatment system. It’s an example of what sociologists mean when they talk about structural racism — it’s not only the attitudes of individuals but the accretion of policy decisions over decades that result in very unequal outcomes.

As the Washington Post detailed this week, the situation in Jackson has been decades in the making. As the story explains:

White flight beginning in the 1970s drove onetime Jackson residents into neighboring areas. The city’s decline since then has prompted better-off Black residents to escape Jackson’s failing infrastructure, not just water but also roads and schools. The more recent departures further eroded the city’s tax base, lessening its ability to afford repairs or apply for federal money as its infrastructure crumbled.

A city that is disproportionately poor and Black suffers from lack of public resources to address the compelling needs of its population. To make matters worse, the state government and neighboring communities don’t want their tax dollars to support the supposedly “failed” urban areas.²

The results of this disinvestment are predictable. Antiquated public services, underfunded police departments, un-drive-able streets, struggling schools in dire need of repair. And then politicians claim that they don’t want tax dollars to go to these struggling areas where “it won’t make a difference.”

This is not a new issue. Minority neighborhoods have long been the target for developers as the land is relatively cheap and the residents have less political clout to fight back.

The Post had another recent story about two sisters in Richmond, VA who were trying to tell the history of the Jackson Ward.³ It had once been a thriving center of Black middle class activity, with its own Black Main Street. As anyone who knows the opening to The Watchmen, that's reminiscent of what Tulsa's Black business district was called. Where Tulsa's Black Main Street was destroyed by the racial animus of a white riot, Richmond's was the victim of infrastructure development.

A highway bisected the Jackson Ward in the 1940s. It was then determined a prime location for a public housing project. These factors contributed to an increase in crime in the neighborhood, which seemed to justify further disinvestment.

A similar story can be told in urban areas across the county. Poor minority populations were displaced or isolated by “development”. People moved away from those areas, starting a period of decline. And in the absence of a stable funding base, the problems expand exponentially.

This is why it is significant that the Federal Transportation department is committed to using Infrastructure funds to address racial inequity. In an NPR report this summer, Secretary Buttigieg launched a $1 Billion program to address the kinds of imbalances experienced in Jackson and Richmond (and New Orleans, Chicago, etc.).

"This is a forward-looking vision," Buttigieg said. "Our focus isn't about assigning blame. It isn't about getting caught up in guilt. It's about fixing a problem. It's about mending what has been broken, especially when the damage was done with taxpayer dollars."

As one would expect, conservative critics like Ron DeSantis express outrage at what he called “the ‘woke-ification’ of federal policy”. These critics argue that bridges and highways cannot be racist and that it’s silly to claim otherwise.

I think that those critics are not just wrong, but ahistorical in their understanding of how these things come about. Those highways, bridges, and public housing projects were put in those neighborhoods on purpose, precisely because they represented racial ambivalence if not animosity.

As I said above, this is Literal Structural Racism. We used structures to divide and isolate minority populations.

So what the Transportation Department is doing is good policy, even if the funding involved is way too small to meet the need. But it underscores that we must recognize the social costs these structural dynamics create.

I’ve long been advocating for a regional tax base as opposed to one based on city boundaries. Suburban areas that benefitted from White Flight or Class Flight also benefit from the urban center that makes the suburban and exurban ring work.⁴ States should allocate appropriate funds to urban areas as spreading the resource hit across all state residents would be less onerous. Urban developers should be required to offset the social costs on displaced populations in the same way they must for other infrastructure like parking and water. Major companies that benefit from the downtown location should pay more for those areas beyond the central business district. And, of course, the federal government can and should do more.

Once we recognize the structural inequalities created by our infrastructure and taxation decisions, I think we’re morally obligated to respond with sound policy. After all, we did this and we need to make it better.

1. The title is a popular rendition of Samuel Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

2. The former president was fond of talking about failed Democrat-run cities without acknowledging how urban economics impacted those very areas. What would the response be to a water crisis in Palm Beach, home to Mar-a-Lago?

3. Named for General Stonewall Jackson as part of an 1871 gerrymander to keep Black votes from influencing local elections.

4. Not to forget the rural/small town areas — they need infrastructure supports as well and simply leaving them to the whims of the market is folly.