Red States vs. Blue Cities: A Study of Jackson, Mississippi’s Water Crisis
After weeks without clean water in Jackson, Mississippi, the city’s progressive Black leadership faces crumbling infrastructure and a legacy of state interference in the fight for water justice.
Nearly a month after Jackson, Mississippi experienced a brutal winter storm that devastated many southern states and their water infrastructures, thousands of residents in the majority-Black capital city remain without drinkable water.
The mission to repair the crumbling infrastructure at the source of Jackson’s water problem has exposed historic racialized tensions between Jackson’s Black, progressive leadership, and the state’s mostly white, conservative politicians. Importantly, this dynamic is far from unique to Mississippi; four other states in the South alone (Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia) have majority-Black capital cities that are led by Black mayors, yet exist in conservative states.
Although a reliable water supply has been restored to many of Jackson’s residents, examining the red-state-blue-city tension at the center of Jackson’s water crisis is essential to understanding how crises steeped in environmental racism will unfold in the near future. To be fair, environmental racism is by no means confined to the American South. But, as the majority of African-Americans still live in the region, there should be special emphasis on examining what environmental racism there means. Jackson, Mississippi is the perfect place to start.
Making “The Most Radical City on the Planet”
Ever since the waves of white flight and demographic shifts of the 20th century precipitated the ascendance of Black citizens to Jackson’s mayoral office in 1997, the city’s leadership has fought tooth-and-nail against well-entrenched systemic racism. Jackson’s current mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, ran on a campaign to make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet.”
However, according to Donna Ladd, the founding editor of the Jackson Free Press, racist stereotypes about Black politicians remain a talking point for many white Mississippians. Some still cling to the idea that “Black leaders just aren’t competent. And the people who elect them deserve what they get.” Never mind that the state has repeatedly refrained from fully funding Jackson city programs and has expanded exemptions to Jackson’s 2014 tax bill designed to fund infrastructure developments.
Rukia Lumumba, the founder of the People’s Advocacy Institute and Mayor Antar Lumumba’s sister, expressed how the state’s earliest responses to the recent water crisis have all but replicated this sentiment. “The state’s response has been significantly inadequate and neglectful,” Ms. Lumumba said. “But they blame it on the progressive, Black leadership.”
Though the positions of state leaders, like that of Governor Tate Reeves, have changed (albeit recently), their earlier responses paralleled this placing of blame on local Black leadership.
When discussing the water crisis and potential funding solutions, Governor Reeves quipped, “I do think it’s really important that the City of Jackson start collecting their water bill payments before they start going and asking everyone else to pony up more money.” Reeves — who waited over a week to deploy the National Guard to distribute supplies after the winter storm; who repeatedly dodged Mayor Lumumba’s calls at the outset of the water crisis; and who vetoed the “Jackson Water Bill” that unanimously passed in the Mississippi Senate and House of Representatives — felt the missing ingredient was personal responsibility. And not his own.
Reeves didn’t hesitate, though, to take this condescending line of reasoning to its historically reinforced conclusion, musing that perhaps the state should take control of Jackson’s municipal water authority “and see what happens going forward.” Reeve’s suggestion here is far from empty. Rather, it alludes to an existing dynamic in Jackson of state encroachment on city jurisdiction. This was most recently demonstrated by the state’s 2016 attempted takeover of Jackson’s airport, wherein the Mississippi legislature tried replacing the airport’s (Black-led) leadership with the state’s own (majority white) ownership apparatus.
Red States, Blue Cities, and a “Shit Storm” of Preemption Orders
The ongoing attempt to wrestle control of this major revenue source for Jackson fits into a larger history of what is known as “preemption”. Preemption, which is essentially the idea that state jurisdiction ultimately supersedes local authority, is not a new phenomenon. While these state laws have historically been concentrated in the South, the practice of states “pre-empting” (i.e. trumping) cities’ laws is a nation-wide phenomenon that has been on the rise in the last decade. Mark Pertschuk, of the initiative “Preemption Watch”, even said in 2016, “We are about to see a shit storm of state and federal preemption orders, of a magnitude greater than anything in history.”
One of the most noteworthy examples of preemption involved North Carolina and the controversial “HB2” law, a.k.a. the “Bathroom Bill”. In 2016, North Carolina’s conservative-dominated legislature overturned the city of Charlotte’s statute that, among other things, empowered transgender people in choosing which bathroom to use. Similar forms of preemption criss-cross the country, from Oklahoma’s law prohibiting cities’ ability to regulate e-cigarettes, to Mississippi’s law disallowing towns to ban sugary drinks, to another shit storm of litigation surrounding “sanctuary cities.” In most of the ensuing legal battles, the states win.
The COVID-19 crisis has further demonstrated the public health implications of state preemption and the widening fault lines between conservative states and liberal cities. In July 2020, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp notoriously sued Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms over her executive orders declaring the mandatory use of masks in Atlanta.
The Proof is in the Pipes
Federal efforts like the WATER Act and President Biden’s recent COVID relief bill offer hope, and, more specifically, funding, for addressing broken water infrastructure systems like Jackson’s. However, countless state preemption efforts, the inevitable lawsuits between states and cities, and the continued influence of racist political structures ultimately demonstrate that mass federal programming is not the sole solution to securing real water justice. The proof once again lies in Jackson, Mississippi.
In a mayoral debate in early March, Mayor Lumumba recounted a meeting before the current water crisis between himself and the Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann about Jackson’s infrastructure problem. “We had a conversation that lasted for about an hour and a half, and he asked everyone to leave the room only to say, ‘Mayor, I need you to give me my airport, and I look at it for about $30 million.’” Lumumba refused.
Viewing solutions to infrastructural problems steeped in racism as solely a matter of federal programming will leave the racist relationship at the crux of the issue unchanged. As long as these state-vs.-city tug-of-wars continue to rage on the battlefield of preemption, states can hold hostage federal funds in exchange for the Black-led cities surrendering on other vital issues. In short, merely adding more fed-funded zeros to Lt. Governor Hosemann’s quid-pro-quo would ultimately prove to be a zero sum game for racial justice down the pipeline.
Liberal urban and conservative ex-urban enclaves are continuing to self-separate in our country with concerning implications for city-dwellers. At the same time, more frequent extreme weather is already placing more pressure on dilapidated infrastructure systems. Those most immediately and most severely impacted by both trends will be people of color in the South.
Federal action will undoubtedly be a necessary part of any viable plan that fixes water systems and addresses the related racist dynamics in our lived environments. But Jackson shows that this influx of funding could, if not closely monitored and directed to local leaders, facilitate conservative state agendas that function to perpetuate environmental racism, not eradicate it.
