Flint, Michigan - A Water Crisis
Environmental Racism - Or Racial Liberalism?
A Critical Reflection of Ranganathan’s “Thinking with Flint: Racial Liberalism
and the Roots of an American Water Tragedy”
In 2014, Flint, Michigan moved their water supply from the treated water of the Detroit water department to the untreated water of the Flint River, a river full of corrosive chemicals from the surrounding factories, initiating the slow and steady poisoning of the residents of Flint (Ranganathan 18). Two arguments have been presented to explain how a community of 57 percent Black and 42 percent people living below the poverty line came into this situation: one, intentional racist acts, and two, not as intentionally racist, but “correlated” with race (18). Ranganathan argues that neither theory is sufficient to explain the environmental catastrophe of Flint, and that the political ideologies of “liberalism” must be considered in order to fully understand their situation.
“Liberalism” is based on the idea that every person has the right to individual freedom and equality, whereby “market relations, the rule of law, moral restraint, and a minimally interfering state” all work together to manifest this promise (Ranganathan 19). But Ranganathan argues that this “ostensibly liberal market society” (21) may be anything but, and that race itself is foundational to our economic structures. For example, colonists appropriated Black labour, they stole Indigenous lands, and slavery became a foundation and a pillar of American’s wealth (21). In other words, capitalism is more about race than it is about economics.
Ranganathan writes that the word “liberalism” can be confusing: it not about either the left or the right of politics, but instead about the “moral primacy of individual freedoms,” like owning property and safeguarding their person, and especially, regarding the idea that everyone is equal in these fundamental rights (22). However, if the very structures of these capitalistic ideologies are based on racist philosophies, how exactly can everyone truly be “equal?” In fact, Ranganathan argues that equality is not possible, and that racial domination cuts off many marginalized populations from the dream of capitalist prosperity and wealth (19). Ranganathan’s arguments can best be summed up when she writes this: “When particular lives that are nominally “equal” to other lives are treated as if they in fact do not matter, liberalism betrays its illiberal impulses” (19).
In conclusion, Flint, Michigan is easy to view as “environmental racism,” whereby a community of color (and mostly poor residents) was fed chemically-laden water that slowly started to kill off the population. But liberalism and the illogical ideas of “equality for all” revealed their inadequacy, showing that only those that can afford to be equal are allowed access to the benefits of equality.
Works Cited
Ranganathan, Malini. “Thinking with Flint: Racial Liberalism and the Roots of an American Water Tragedy.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, vol. 27, no. 3, Jan. 2016, pp. 17–33. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbl&AN=vdc.100034764477.0x000001&site=eds-live.