Mississippi Drowning with Caroline Randall Williams

Mississippi has been withholding federal funds to repair its capital city's water problems. Majority black Jackson, Mississippi, has been at the mercy of the majority white state legislature for decades, which acts as overseer of the city's finances.

Climate change has brought severe weather to the state - flood conditions and freezing weather overwhelms Jackson's ancient infrastructure and causes burst pipes, broken pumps, endless leaks, and contaminated drinking water.

The impact on Jackson's 150,000 residents has been devastating - city-wide water boil notices, complete lack of service, and elevated blood-lead levels in children. And it's happening right now.

If you were to ask Mississippi's legislators what caused these problems, they would tell you it was the people of Jackson who brought it upon themselves. After all, Jackson didn't have a water problem until they elected their first black mayor - their words, not mine.

If you asked the legislators how the people of Jackson could fix their own water crisis, they'd tell you they'd be willing to help if Jackson made some sort of effort to fix it first. Though, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure repairs since the mid-1990s apparently doesn't count.

Maybe if Jackson sold its airport to the state, Governor Tate Reeves would be more willing to help. Oh, yeah, there's a whole thing about the airport.

For this episode, author, professor, and host of HBO+'s Hungry For Answers Caroline Randall Williams joins me to discuss the intersection of race and infrastructure - and we determine once and for all whether you can be racist towards a whole-ass place (spoiler: yes, you can).