The effects of racism, social exclusion, and discrimination on achieving universal safe water and sanitation in high-income countries

Joe Brown, PhD 

Charisma S Acey, PhD

Carmen Anthonj, PhD

Dani J Barrington, PhD

Cara D Beal, PhD

Drew Capone, PhD

Oliver Cumming, MSc

Kristi Pullen Fedinick, PhD

Jacqueline MacDonald Gibson, PhD

Brittany Hicks, BS

Michal Kozubik, PhD

Nikoleta Lakatosova, MA

Karl G Linden, PhD

Nancy G Love, PhD

Kaitlin J Mattos, PhD

Heather M Murphy, PhD

Inga T Winkler, PhD

The Lancet | Open Access | Published: April, 2023 | DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00006-2

Summary

Drinking water and sanitation services in high-income countries typically bring widespread health and other benefits to their populations. Yet gaps in this essential public health infrastructure persist, driven by structural inequalities, racism, poverty, housing instability, migration, climate change, insufficient continued investment, and poor planning. Although the burden of disease attributable to these gaps is mostly uncharacterised in high-income settings, case studies from marginalised communities and data from targeted studies of microbial and chemical contaminants underscore the need for continued investment to realise the human rights to water and sanitation. Delivering on these rights requires: applying a systems approach to the problems; accessible, disaggregated data; new approaches to service provision that centre communities and groups without consistent access; and actionable policies that recognise safe water and sanitation provision as an obligation of government, regardless of factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, ability to pay, citizenship status, disability, land tenure, or property rights.

Racism of the European Union on Display: Not All Refugees Matter

The European Union is making 17 billion euros available to help with the refugee crisis from the Ukrainian war. Meanwhile, millions of refugees from other wars remain stranded in precarious camps.

Left Voice | March 30, 2022

Beata Zawrzel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The war in Ukraine has exposed the European Union’s imperialist hypocrisy in many ways, particularly when it comes to its treatment of people fleeing conflicts. From the beginning, there have been many reports of refugees from Africa and Asia being deprioritized over white refugees and experiencing racism and violence at European borders.  

As the weeks go by, the refugee crisis is intensifying. Four million people have already left Ukraine, with forecasts suggesting that the number could reach 10 million.

Faced with this situation, the European Commission is making up to 17 billion euros ($19 billion) available to help member states receive refugees. The Commission has also developed a plan to evenly distribute refugees among EU countries to relieve the situation in Ukraine’s bordering countries. At over 2 million, Poland has received the most refugees since the beginning of the conflict. The plan also includes the development of a single, centralized platform for registering people crossing borders.

The Danger of Fossil Fascism

Understanding the growing combination of racism, climate science denial, and fossil fuel promotion

Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective
WHITE SKIN, BLACK FUEL
On the Danger of Fossil Fascism
Verso Books, 2021

reviewed by Martin Empson

Climate and Capitalism | March 26, 2022

As regular readers of my blog will be aware, I think that Andreas Malm, even where I disagree with key points of his argument, is one of the most stimulating Marxist authors on environmental politics. So it was with eager anticipation that I looked forward to this new publication “one the dangers of fossil fascism” that Malm has co-authored with the network the Zetkin Collective, a group of scholars and activists “working on the political ecology of the far right.”

The book does multiple things. It opens with a study of the far-right and fascist movements and looks at their “anti-climate politics” and asks “what would it mean to live in a world both hotter and further to the right” than it is today. It argues that the far-right’s fixation with anti-climate views is closely tied to its anti-immigration perspective and the way that developing capitalism associated technology (and particularly fossil fuel technologies) with white supremacy. The authors argue in the introduction:

Ukraine Crisis Media Coverage: We’re Europeans, Christians, Whites!

M. K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline | March 01, 2022

Ukrainian ‘refugees’ wait at a train station in Zahony, Hungary, a border town with Ukraine, February 26, 2022 (Photo: AP) 

Racist Ukraine coverage in mainstream Western media. Notice the racist overtones. 

1. BBC

“It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed” 

– Ukraine’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze

2. CBS News

“This isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan…This is a relatively civilised, relatively European city” 

– CBS foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata

3. Al-Jazeera [not exactly Western, but West-aligned]

“What’s compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East…or North Africa. They look like any European family that you’d live next door to.”

– Peter Dobbie, Al Jazeera news presenter.

It’s Different, They’re White: Media Ignore Conflicts Around the World to Focus on Ukraine

Alan Macleod

MintPress News | March 02, 2022

KIEV, UKRAINE — We are living in dangerous times. All around the world, intense military actions are taking place. Last week alone, Russia launched a huge military invasion of Ukraine; Saudi Arabia carried out dozens of strikes on Yemen; Israel launched a wave of deadly missile attacks against Syria; and the United States restarted its bombing campaign in Somalia.

These four deadly incidents happened concurrently. Yet judging by media coverage, it is highly unlikely that many will even be aware of the final three. A MintPress News study of five leading Western media outlets found that overwhelming attention was paid to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while the others were barely mentioned, if at all.

South African Communist Party condemns racism and discrimination against Africans in Ukraine

In Defense of Communism | March 02, 2022

In a statement, the South African Communist Party (SACP) condemns the disrespectful attitudes unleashed recently against African people by state actors and others in Ukraine. 

The statement also slams NATO aggressive expansion eastwards and calls all parties involved to work towards a peaceful resolution in the situation.  

More specifically, the statement of the SACP reads: 

“The South African Communist Party (SACP) strongly condemns the racism and racial prejudice and disrespectful attitudes unleashed against Africans by state actors and others in Ukraine and its borders with some countries. The reality of racism and racial discrimination meted against Africans in favour of whites being prioritised in the evacuation from the situation in Ukraine involves Africans being maltreated, viewed with distain, approached as if they are criminals and rightless, pushed back, among others, is sickening, to say the least. This should be considered as the tip of the iceberg after pretentions broke loose, exposing the Nazi and white supremacist tendencies that prevail in Ukraine and the countries bordering it in which Africans experienced the contemptuous, racist discrimination and maltreatment. The SACP expresses its solidarity with the affected African people and their families and calls on the African Union and African governments to take active steps within the framework of international law to secure the safety of the African people and ensure that they arrive home alive. The United Nations must not be silent about the racist conduct but must investigate and deal with it in pursuit of its “Fight Racism” programme towards eliminating racism and its material basis.

Racism is magnifying the deadly impact of rising city heat

Alexandra Witze

Nature | July 14, 2021

New York City residents endured near-record high temperatures in late June during a heatwave that caused power outages. Credit: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg/Getty

Luis Rodriguez holed up in his kids’ bedroom last month as a brutal heatwave baked his Los Angeles neighbourhood and the rest of the southwestern United States. The space was their only room with an air-conditioning unit, and the safest place in the house when temperatures outside soared above 40 °C.

All day, Rodriguez tapped on his computer, working remotely as a volunteer manager for TreePeople, a non-profit environmental organization in Beverly Hills, California, that plants and cares for trees across Los Angeles. His two young sons crammed into the bedroom with him to avoid the dangerous heat. Only as evening fell would they emerge, after temperatures in the house had climbed so high that it was cooler outside. The boys played in the shade of the fig tree Rodriguez planted in front of his house — as much for its large, shade-producing leaves as for its delicate fruit.

Take The Knee and Stand Up to Racism; solidarity with English footballers

Peoples Dispatch | July 15, 2021

Progressive and anti-racist sections across the world have condemned the racist abuse against three English football players with immigrant backgrounds, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, by sections of English football fans following England’s defeat in the UEFA Euro Cup final. On Sunday, July 11, in the finals against Italy, the three English players missed penalty kicks in the shootout which led to Italy’s win. Following that defeat, sections of English football fans started racially abusing these footballers on social media. 

Some English fans started their notorious ‘hooliganism’ before the beginning of the final match on Sunday at Wembley Stadium in London by vandalizing the premises of the stadium, booing the Italian fans and getting into altercations with the police. The match started with the Take The Knee gesture by all players of England and Italy protesting racism. Even this symbolic anti-racism gesture by the players was criticized by some MPs from the Conservative Party and several other right-wing figures in the UK.

Do Not Belittle Protesters in the U.S. by calling their Struggle a “Color Revolution”

by Andre Vltchek

For almost a decade, I have been covering “Color Revolutions” in virtually all parts of the world. While making a film for TeleSur, I was facing Egyptian tanks, risking my life under sniper fire, getting roughed-up in the middle of clashes of the supporters of al-Sisi and Morsi.

Together with Syrian commanders, I was also facing the terrorists in Idlib; challenged the Ukrainian fascists; encountering Bolivian indigenous elders high in the Altiplano after the revolution of Evo Morales and MAS was crashed by the U.S.-sponsored coup in 2019. I regularly worked in Venezuela, Lebanon, and Iraq. And, of course, again and again, I have been returning to Hong Kong, reporting on systematic Western attempts to radicalize SAR’s youth and to harm China.

I mention all this just in order to establish that I am very well aware of how those “Color Revolutions” are triggered and implemented.

Racism and police violence are not the fault of the system. They are the system!

Cuba participates in UN Human Rights Council meeting on racism, proposed by African nations in the context of massive protests in the United States

Granma | June 18, 2020

Protester confronts a member of the National Guard on a Minnesota street. Photo: AP

 

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla condemned “all manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia,” in a June 17 tweet.

Reporting that Cuba would join debates of the 43rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), he called for a fight against discrimination based on skin color or ethnic origin, and noted “In the U.S. 22.2% of COVID-19 fatalities are African Americans, although they are 12.7% of the population.”

The pandemic has exacerbated social inequalities and shown the shortcomings of a system in which the poor and minorities are left unprotected, the Foreign Minister stated.