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Task A

1.
Sum up Keri Leigh Merritt’s account of the situation in the state of Mississippi in the past and present.
(Comprehension) (12 Punkte)
2.
Analyse the way Merritt makes her point. Focus on communicative strategies and use of language.
(Analysis) (16 Punkte)
3.
Choose one of the following tasks:
3.1
Assess Merritt’s claim that “Jackson’s problems, like those of so many other US towns and cities, are a blight on the political ideals White Americans traditionally claim” (ll. 23 – 24). Refer to the text as well as work done in class on American myths and realities.
(Evaluation: comment) (14 Punkte)
3.2
You have been asked to give the opening speech at the international youth conference Towards a More Inclusive and Sustainable Planet. In your research, you have come across UNESCO’s director general Audrey Azoulay’s claim that water is “a ‘blue gold’ to which more than 2 billion people do not have direct access”1 and decided to use it as a starting point. Write the speech script, referring to work done in class on ecological, political and economic issues of globalisation.
(Evaluation: re-creation of text) (14 Punkte)
[1] Audrey Azoulay, in: Unesco, “UN World Water Development 2021” http://www.unesco.org/reports/wwdr/2021/en (Zugriff: 30.06.2021)

Keri Leigh Merritt
Jackson water crisis shows Nina Simone is still right about Mississippi

1
Summoned to the South by Marian Wright of the NAACP, Senators Robert F. Kennedy and
2
Joseph Clark traveled to the Mississippi Delta in the Spring of 1967 to assess the effectiveness
3
of the federal War on Poverty programs. Wright had testified before Congress that the people
4
of her state were starving and in agony. Although forewarned, the White senators were stunned
5
to witness the extremities of Mississippi’s soul-crushing poverty, right in the middle of one
6
of the wealthiest nations on earth.
7
After repeated attempts to engage one young, seemingly non-verbal African American boy
8
– his stomach swollen from malnourishment – picking through dried rice and beans on the
9
dirt floor of a shack, Bobby Kennedy, the father of 11 children, quickly turned and walked
10
outside. He did not want the photographers who accompanied him to catch the tears welling
11
up in his eyes.
12
The depth of Mississippi’s poverty was almost too much for Kennedy to bear. Speaking
13
mournfully about “children with distended stomachs,” Kennedy urged the federal government
14
to do something to alleviate the state’s widespread “suffering”. Deeming “housing inadequate”
15
and commenting on the “insufficient clothing” of the state’s impoverished children, he
16
rightfully concluded that Mississippi was a “terrible reflection on our society”.
17
Now, 54 years later, it is necessary to ask the federal government to intervene in the state
18
again. Many of the primarily Black residents of Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, spent weeks
19
without running water after a cold spell burst a huge number of the city’s pipes. According
20
to Mississippi Today, over 40,000 people, the equivalent of a sold-out game at Wrigley Field,
21
were not able to drink, bathe or wash clothes, dishes, hands or even flush toilets – all during
22
a pandemic. […]
23
Jackson’s problems, like those of so many other US towns and cities, are a blight on the
24
political ideals White Americans traditionally claim.
25
Jackson, Mississippi, is a microcosm of our nation’s massive failures to make amends for
26
centuries of colonialism, slavery and racism. […]
27
Our problem, our shame, is that American poverty springs not from lack of funds, but instead
28
from White supremacy. Due to the ravages of history – from slavery and the failures of
29
Reconstruction to more modern tactics of redlining, White flight and the crisis of mass incarceration –
30
poverty in America is almost always dependent on racism, even when the
31
impoverished are White. From pitting laborers of different races against each other to stoking
32
racist and xenophobic fears through a sensationalistic and profit-driven media, America’s
33
White elite have always used the specter of racism to prevent the formation of a broad coalition
34
of people with similar class interests, regardless of race.
35
And poor and working-class Whites historically have been all-too-willing to join in this
36
Faustian bargain.
37
We are one of the richest nations in the world, but among those nations, we are one of the
38
most unequal. Nearly all other developed nations offer a better standard of living to their
39
citizens, regardless of income or wealth.
40
Currently, White Republicans control Mississippi’s state legislature. As Mississippi Free Press
41
reported, Governor Tate Reeves and other White lawmakers are essentially holding the
42
Black-led, Black-populated city hostage, refusing to fund repairs. While the citizens of his
43
state are literally going on a month without the very basics of survival, Reeves instead focused
44
his attention to passing the nation’s first anti-transgender law of 2021.
45
The few repairs that have been made have mostly been in affluent, largely White north
46
Jackson, clearly delineating not just the privileges, but the power of Whiteness. […]
47
Although reparate is no longer a common word, it is the key to successfully addressing
48
reparations. To reparate means to restore something to a state of good repair; it means
49
returning something to working order. Reparative justice means to right the wrongs of the
50
past – not only by acknowledging the harms of certain groups of people both in the past and
51
the present, but also addressing those harms and working to ameliorate them.
52
As Nina Simone so brilliantly wrote about reparative justice in her iconic song “Mississippi
53
Goddam”, time is always of the essence:
54
But that’s just the trouble
55
“do it slow“
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Desegregation
57
“do it slow“
58
Mass participation
59
“do it slow“
60
Reunification
61
“do it slow“
62
Do things gradually
63
“do it slow“
64
But bring more tragedy.
65
While many White Mississippians in power like Tate Reeves and other GOP leaders – wittingly
66
or not – extend the legacies of racism and the slaveholders’ Confederacy and fail to act as
67
White supremacy keeps state’s people ensnared in extreme poverty, the time for federal
68
intervention is now. If the leaders of the state will not repair and restore Jackson’s water
69
system, then the leaders of the country must step in to help right the wrongs of the past.
70
From immediately sending FEMA in to deal with Jackson’s short-term problems to passing
71
a Federal Jobs Guarantee that focuses, first and foremost, on reparative justice, the Biden
72
administration and the Democratic Congress – if they truly espouse the values they
73
campaigned upon – should act swiftly and thoroughly.
74
In 1968, less than a year after Senator Kennedy’s Mississippi trip, Martin Luther King, Jr.
75
wrote that “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques
76
and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.”
77
It is nothing short of a moral and ethical tragedy – an indictment of the entire country – that
78
our citizens are being deprived of clean running water in one of the richest nations on earth.
79
It is well past time for immediate federal action. We must have the will.
80
Mississippi Goddam.
Aus: Keri Leigh Merritt, “Jackson water crisis shows Nina Simone is still right about Mississippi”, in: CNN, 14 March 2021 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/14/opinions/jackson-mississippi-water-crisis-racism-and-poverty-merritt/index.html (Zugriff: 17.06.2021)

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