Racism and Environmental Injustice Theme Analysis

What the Eyes Don’t See chronicles the water crisis that seized Flint, Michigan from 2014–2019 after the city switched its water source from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. When the switch occurred, officials neglected to add anti-corrosive chemicals to the water, and 100,000 citizens of Flint to were exposed to high levels of lead as a result. Local and federal public health institutions, however, denied that the water supply was to blame for the health issues that Flint residents began to experience. In the memoir, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha explores how Flint’s long history of anti-Black racism makes what happened in Flint a matter of environmental justice (a movement concerned with how environmental and public health issues disproportionately affect poor people and racial minorities). By comparing state and federal officials’ neglect of the crisis to an act of “genocide” against Flint’s predominantly Black residents, the book suggests that environmental injustice is rooted in racism. Therefore, to secure environmental justice for all, the U.S. must take steps to provide funding, education, and other resources that will begin to repair the country’s history of racism against its Black citizens. 

The book gives an account of Flint’s long history of racism and corporate greed, illustrating why Flint is a prime example of environmental injustice at work. In the first half of the 20th century, Flint was the epicenter of the automotive industry, home to companies like General Motors and Chevrolet. Between 1915 and 1960—at the height of Flint’s prosperity—more than six million Black Americans fled the violence of the Jim Crow (racially segregated) South and landed in Flint, where they hoped to secure well-paying jobs and bright futures. But these Black workers were slotted into the lowest-paying, lowest-skilled positions. Between the racist hiring practices at the big auto plants and discriminatory housing policies in the Flint area, Black Americans were essentially shut out of the same opportunities their white coworkers and neighbors were able to enjoy. After World War II, the Supreme Court began to desegregate schools and housing. As Black families found themselves free at last to move into whichever neighborhoods they chose to, the phenomenon of “white flight”—white families moving out as Black families moved in, fearing that the presence of Black neighbors would drive housing prices down—took over Flint. As the home bases of the automotive industry shifted away from Flint, some city entities backed a 1869 referendum to tie Flint to a regional government. But the residents in Flint’s new, overwhelmingly white suburbs voted against the referendum. Flint was left “isolated and abandoned.”

Because Flint’s history left its Black residents vulnerable and unprotected by the end of the 20th century, the book suggests that Flint was uniquely vulnerable to environmental racism and the water crisis that ensued in 2014. Flint was already vulnerable to environmental injustice at this time, having fewer resources than the affluent suburbs surrounding it and a population that had been disadvantaged by decades of racial discrimination. Flint residents also didn’t have anyone looking out for their well-being or investing in changes to renew the city’s prosperity: by 2014, the mayor of Flint had been essentially replaced by a state-appointed emergency manager, whose sole directive was to cut costs in the city’s budget. “Racial minorities and low-income communities,” the book states, “face a disproportionate share of environmental and public health burdens.” In other words, poor and predominately non-white areas are subject to neglect, poor funding, and racist housing and employment policies that make them more vulnerable to environmental injustice. This was certainly the case for Flint, and their already-crumbling infrastructure was decimated even further by the 2014 water supply switch. But in spite of residents’ complaints after the switch, no one paid attention to them or investigated the quality of the water. In fact, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality actively tried to cover up the results of routine tests showing that the water had dangerous levels of lead in it. Once the water crisis was underway, the “disproportionate” disadvantages that Flint’s citizens had long faced made their local and state government less willing to help them rather than more so. Indeed, every level of government turned a blind eye to Flint’s problems. With this, the book suggests that Flint residents suffered specifically because they were largely poor and non-white. Their vulnerability made those in charge of overseeing the city’s well-being see it as a lost cause.

To ensure that tragedies like the Flint water crisis don’t happen again, the book suggests that the U.S. needs to enact policies that will help repair the damages done by years of racial discrimination, neglect, and environmental injustice. The Flint water crisis was proof of how environmental injustice goes all the way to the top. In other words, populations that have been discriminated against and neglected by their governments cannot rebuild without significant help and attention to the root of their problems. Toward the end of the book, author Mona Hanna-Attisha outlines some of the demands she and her colleagues made on behalf of Flint. She advocated for public health initiatives, enhanced school lunches, expanded access to pediatric behavioral services, and more—programs that would be costly but would help to start leveling the playing field for a new generation of Flint children. In a city that was abandoned by industry and forgotten by its government, the only solution was structural change that would begin to remedy the city’s decades-long lack of attention, advocacy, and reform.