Arthur Woodson lives in Flint. He said he has felt that way since the city switched to the Flint River back in 2014.
"It's not racism hardly anymore. It's haves and have nots. We're a poorer community, an impoverished community and they didn't really care about anyone here," Woodson said.
Woodson said he doesn't believe what happened in Flint would have happened elsewhere.
http://www.wnem.com/story/34534014/commission-systemic-racism-at-root-of...
The Flint drinking water crisis has its root causes in historical and systemic racism, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission said Friday in a hard-hitting report that calls the public health catastrophe " a complete failure of government" and recommends a rewrite of the state's emergency manager law and bias training for state officials.
The report, unanimously adopted at a meeting of the commission at the Northbank Center in downtown Flint, also calls for the creation of a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" — a model that was used in South Africa after apartheid — as a way of rebuilding government trust and credibility by listening to and addressing specific concerns raised by Flint residents.
The bold is mine.
That trust issue will take a whole lotta work. Not talk. Work. As in waterline replacement to the homes affected by the lead poisoning. So far only about 700 lines have been replaced.
Flint residents are informed that the water is now safe to use, but after more than a thousand days of hauling bottled water home to drink, cook, wash and bathe in, my trust in the word of my government leaders would be practically nonexistent. Of course, that is just my opinion.