A storm drain on the west side of Flint, Mich. The oil crisis of the
1970s and corporate cost-cutting in the 1980s and beyond led to the
decimation of manufacturing jobs in the city. Its population plummeted
and crime soared along with unemployment. (Carlos Osorio / AP)
By Paul Eagan, Detroit Free Press
Chicago Tribune
February 18, 2017
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 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.
It calls on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to invite experts
to provide training on "implicit bias" to his cabinet, his team
responding to Flint, and to require all state departments, including the
Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Health and
Human Services, to do the same for their staff. Implicit bias is
unconscious bias that can be directed toward historically disadvantaged
groups, influencing decision-making.
And it includes the news media among the many institutions that could have served the residents of Flint better.
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