The Flint Water Crisis

The history of Flint's declining economic fortunes and the state of the Flint River are part of the Flint water crisis, but they do not offer a complete explanation. While state and local officials were culpable in the Flint water crisis, the federal government had not bathed itself in glory. The shorthand version of the crisis begins with the observation that Flint had a long history of racial segregation, growing poorer and falling into physical decay because of deindustrialization and white flight. In response to the water crisis in 2014, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission issued a report in 2017, reinforcing what it believed to be systemic racism in events leading to and following the crisis. To understand the importance of the Flint water crisis, however, is not only to view it as a harbinger of the future but also as a product of the past.