What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City (One World Essentials)

by Mona Hanna-Attisha

The Five Guys took their mission seriously, probably more seriously than the governor intended, and in March 2016 released a kickass 112-page report. It fixed blame for the failure of government primarily on MDEQ, but it didn’t spare the governor, the emergency managers, or the MDHHS. The report stated very clearly that the demographics of a community—race—had played a role in creating this environmental crisis. And it stated that race had kept the crisis going long after it should have been stopped. The Five Guys explicitly connected the Flint water crisis to the emergency manager law. And in this way, the report was historic. Never had a government report explicitly stated the role of race in an environmental crisis. And never before had the consequences of the loss of democracy been so keenly demonstrated. Flint may be the most egregious modern-day example of environmental injustice. Later, in February 2017, the Michigan Department of Civil Rights made similar findings in its own investigation. Another father of environmental justice, Robert Bullard, once said some communities have “the wrong complexion for protection.” That is how I see it too.