We're a big country; hence, septic tanks are common. But even in urban areas, there are cities/neighborhoods where the sewer line has not extended. But that's fine. Some prefer septic as it can be less expensive than sewer.
Certainly there's a point here, but it's not complete. I, for example, living out in the country, have a septic tank, and indeed, it's my responsibility, and it's maintained at my expense. I'm way out of the region served by my small town's sewer and water systems. No municipal or other solution to that is possible, short of zoning to require that land perk before it can be built on (which now exists) and a "sorry, buddy" policy for those whose land was built on before zoning. But this is also not Alabama.
That Alabama county is super-majority Black and has been so for generations. If the residents there feel that the county should provide them with sewer, or fix their septic, they can look to their own elected local government. No need to invent nebulous "environmental racism."
And that's the beauty of the US racism system.
I actually don't know how it's done in Alabama, but in the New England States and New York where I've lived, counties, though they have certain political functions, and though some positions are elected by county, do not have any control over such projects, or any funding by which to do them. Counties are almost exclusively districts of law enforcement, matters of local interest, such as agricultural and forest management, and sometimes of legislative division. If a county is poor and cannot sway the State government, it doesn't matter whom they elect to be the sheriff or head the agricultural extension. If the county organization in Alabama is similar, the funding, and the decision of where to put it, is out of their control.
The program, according to the bright lights here, is evil and wrong but not because the people have a need. They do, for sure. Their yards are puddling with raw sewage and they're getting sick. Nor because they are poor. They are, for sure, which is why they can't afford to pool together and arrange to fix the problems in the neighborhood, which clearly needs to be done en masse, since the sewage in one person's yard is highly likely to come from another's. Those criteria are, according to JT512 at least, good reasons to render aid. They are needy, poor, and unable to provide a private solution to a problem of public health. The mistake is that someone had the gall to guess why they are poor and needy, and to institute a program based on that assumption. The consequent action in this case would, or should, be identical either way, but it blew up when it hit a rhetorical land mine. Sorry, folks, you failed the captcha test. "Get hungry eat a little gravel, no water suck a puddle on the ground."
No, you hadn't, but finally you have. Now, try answering the question I actually asked: What did I write, that, as you claimed, implied that problem doesn't exist?
That's a mischaracterization. jt512's position, as I understand it, is that programs should not be based on race. That doesn't imply that there is no problem, only that the problem should not be addressed via racial discrimination - it should be addressed on the basis of public health, safety, poverty, etc.
Nothing quite like insinuating that your fellow forum members are racists, hmm?
The argument made to allocate the funds to address a sewage problem that affects EVERYONE in the area was that it was racism that caused it. Which is a crap argument - the problem is poverty and poor infrastructure, and it should be addressed as such. Calling it racism is pandering and fails to address the problem in an equitable and fair way.
Use your IQ better. If the only possible reason you can come up with for someone's argument requires you to assign ESP-based mind-reading malicious motivations to them... it's not a very good application of reason.
Nah. This is incorrect. The Law is not set up that way at all.
To poke back for a moment to bruto's post for ease's sake -
It's a lie because it isn't about the wrong people benefiting. It's about the benefit being allocated in the wrong (illegal, unconstitutional) way.
So here's the thing - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of a situation. If you actually think through it, you'll see that the premise is that if an environmental risk affects one race more than another, then the reason for that risk must be racism. It defines racism as being a discrepancy that involves race. It conflates correlation with causation.
100% agree.
Sure, there used to be. There used to be all kinds of stupid things.
That's not true. I don't know what kind of screwed up school you grew up in, but my public schools talked about slavery, and about jim crow laws, and about the treatment of chinese immigrants, and native americans and the trail of tears and the long walk and forced boarding schools and dozens of broken treaties. And somehow, all of my teachers managed to address these historical issues in a way that made it clear that these were bad things, and that we learned from them, and hey - isn't it great that we aren't like that any more? Somehow, teaching about both US and local history was done in a way that didn't impute undeserved guilt to a subset of students on the basis of their skin color.
No, it didn't immediately fix it, and yes it takes time. But you know what doesn't help? Passing the sins of our ancestors onto children of today. FFS, there's a huge amount of lingering sexism in the world and some very disparate impacts of all sorts of active policies today. Do you think that blaming all males and insinuating that males as a whole should be held responsible today for things that were put in place before they were born is going to help any of that?
