For a month now, the residents of Jackson, Mississippi have found themselves in the midst of a water crisis where many of the families have had to struggle to get by without water. With what water is available, much of it has been found to be unsafe to drink after testing by the city. Thus, these families have resorted to rationing water bottles or, even using snow, which meant that maintaining hygiene, cooking and staying hydrated have been difficult tasks. The lack of water is a result of large winter storms that had primarily ruptured the city’s pipes, which have still not been fixed. Many residents of Jacksonville’s 80% African American population have expressed suspicions of inherit discrimination behind the city's crisis that is causing thousands to suffer. To many, this issue can be traced back to the deeply rooted racism within the city’s underfunded infrastructure that is sustaining this water crisis.
Mississippi has a long history of discrimination within the state government. In a CNN article it mentions that the impoverished and unsupported conditions found in Mississippi are caused by the same phenomena seen in other American cities, like Flint, Michigan, where crises similar to this one have occurred. The article states that “American poverty springs not from lack of funds, but instead from White supremacy” (CNN). In fact, Mississippi’s lack of funding especially in historically minority communities can be attributed to governmental processes like redlining, gerrymandering and mass incarcerations which helped perpetuate racial inequality and poverty while maintaining white supremacy by state officials. As the article puts it, “America's White elite have always used the specter of racism to prevent the formation of a broad coalition of people with similar class interests, regardless of race” (CNN). This is why cities like Jackson, where a strong majority of African Americans live there are the hardest hit by this crisis.
Unfortunately, this situation does not seem to be resolved anytime soon as, currently, white Republicans essentially control most of Mississippi’s state legislature. The Mississippi Free Press has accused the state's government of essentially refusing to fund any of the necessary repairs within Jackson. They have pointed out that how, in the time that thousands of African American families struggled for survival, Mississippi legislation focused their time on passing “the nation’s first anti-transgender law of 2021” (Mississippi’s Free Press). Furthermore, the Press demonstrated how the few repairs that have been done were only on affluent white communities while most black communities like Jacksonville were ignored. Essentially, the white Mississippi legislature is keeping African Americans trapped in a cycle of perpetuating poverty.
With 12% of Mississippi’s white population living in poverty while 30-31% of Mississippi’s African American population and 32% of it's Native American population live in poverty, it is no surprise that thousands of activists continue to denounce the deeply rooted institutionalized racism that dominates Mississippi's political governing system. This current water crisis only further demonstrates how Mississippi needs to pursue reparative justice by acknowledging and ameliorating the inherent discrimination against Mississippi’s minority communities.
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