Thread by @kazweida

This #SundayMorning I have a riddle for you.

What do Flint's water crisis & Puerto Rico's electricity have in common?

Sadly, this one isn't hard to figure out.
During a crisis, America is always willing to put communities of color last.

It's called RACISM.

(THREAD)

(2) Let's start with Flint. A report from a civil rights commission last February stated: "historical, structural & systemic racism combined with implicit bias" created decades of neglect leading to Flint's water crisis.

Flint is 57% black and 4% Latino.

cnn.com/2017/02/18/pol…

(3) After Hurricane Maria, Trump pushed the idea that Puerto Ricans were lazy, echoing sentiments from 1898 when we decided they couldn't "govern themselves."

We only became interested in Puerto Ricans as citizens during World War II for recruitment.

vox.com/the-big-idea/2…

(4) Thes two very high-profile examples represent a long pattern of discrimination. Environmental racism rears its ugly head throughout US history.

In 1987, 40% of our hazardous waste was deposited in communities where the majority were people of color.

edblogs.columbia.edu/scppx3335-001-…

(5) A 2013 study confirmed that our response to natural disasters disproportionally affects minorities, who suffer the most from loss of public services.

The study also suggests emotional effects of property loss are more significant for minorities.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

(6) If you've ever lived in poverty, not knowing where your next meal is coming from or struggled with the guilt of not being able to care for your children, you'll have some glimmer of the emotional distress the people of Puerto Rico & Flint have endured.

And they're not alone.

(7) We can see the hallmarks of this systematic bias in national health crises, specifically the crack epidemic.

Today, racism is continuing to play a role in how we're directing resources to communities effected by the opioid epidemic.

nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…

(8) It's not just President Trump that doesn't care about brown people. Our government has a long, sordid history of considering communities of color second-class citizens.

It's in the way police prey on people of color in their own communities.

nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/…

(9) It's in the way our criminal justice system punishes crime and disproportionally sentences people of color to jail and then profits off their imprisonment.

slate.com/articles/news_…

(10) And it's in the subtle aggressions of our society, like the ways in which gentrification harms communities of color.

The Starbucks altercation in Philadelphia is a prime example of that ongoing tension and racial bias.

la.curbed.com/2017/7/28/1605…

(END) Next time you're looking for a reason why we're not paying attention to a crisis in America, ask yourself what the population in that community looks like.

If it's a community of color, you don't need to ask why.
You know why.

#SundayMorning
fortune.com/2016/02/04/env…

Thanks to @RickyJustTweets for today's thread topic on Flint, Puerto Rico, and the ongoing systemic racial bias in both our response to natural disasters and environmental concerns.

Come back next #SundayMorning and we'll do this again.