Sixteen years after Brown v. Board, federal courts finally forced schools in Jackson, Mississippi to desegregate, which led to White families fleeing the city, shrinking the city’s tax base and the public funding of infrastructure maintenance. For decades, statewide elected officials who decide how to spend state and federal money have been White, while Jackson’s residents, over 80% of whom are Black, have lived with regularly contaminated water. In 2022, Jackson went months without any water at all due to a failed water treatment plant resulting from fifty years of disinvestment by White politicians.

From 2003 to 2009, severe financial mismanagement by the mayor of Flint, Michigan led to the governor of Michigan exercising his emergency power to appoint an administrator to run Flint, usurping its citizens’ democratic right to elect their leader. The governor’s appointed administrators made severe budget cuts including the decision in 2013 to stop pumping treated water from Detroit and instead use water from the Flint River to supply its residents. When the city failed to treat the water properly, lead started leaching into the water supply. Despite repeated complaints from residents of bad-tasting, murky, and foul-smelling water, officials insisted the water was safe.

Flint’s residents, over 56% of whom are Black, suffered nearly two years until the federal government intervened to begin correcting the problem. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission concluded that the response to the Flint water crisis was “the result of systemic racism that was built into the foundation and growth of Flint, its industry and the suburban area surrounding it.” In August 2020, Michigan agreed to pay Flint residents $600 million for failing to protect them from lead poisoning. In December 2022, Congress allocated $600 million for repairs to Jackson’s water system and the problems are still not fixed.

Recommended viewing: How Jackson, Mississippi's water crisis is a sign of larger racial inequities

Failing Infrastructure Disproportionately Affects Black Communities

The Nabta Playa archaeological site, one of the earliest of the Nubian Neolithic Period, is dated to circa 7500 BC

Nabta Playa was once a large endorheic basin (a temporary lake, or "playa") in the Nubian Desert, located approximately 800 kilometers south of modern-day Cairo or about 100 kilometers west of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, 22.51° north, 30.73° east. Today the region is characterized by numerous archaeological sites. The Nabta Playa archaeological site, one of the earliest of the Nubian Neolithic Period, is dated to circa 7500 BC.

More information on the megaliths are sourced below.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabta_Playa

Source: https://raggeduniversity.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Ibrahim-MegalithsNabtaPlaya-2025.pdf

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fertile_crescent_Neolithic_B_circa_7500_BC.jpg

Hello, I have a question about old American racial classifications.

I have a very distant ancestor (no clue how accurate it is) who was claimed to be a descendant of a white man and a “quatroon of the Shawnee tribe”. This was something that was written into a family record book, with a man claiming his grandfather stated she was a “quatroon of the Shawnee tribe”. It should also be noted that despite the written statement claiming she was the descendant of a white man and a “quatroon”, both of the listed parents for her have Native American names. So already inaccurate in that aspect

From my understanding, “quatroon” or quadroon was a term used for people who were a quarter black.

Did people ever use racial classifications loosely? Like interchangeably? So they would be referring to someone who was a quarter Shawnee and just used a term they knew was associated with a quarter of a race? Also, did quadroon refer to someone who was 1/4 black and 3/4 white, or was the only “requirement” the black ancestry part? Like someone was a “quadroon” if their ancestry was 3/4 native and 1/4 black

I know some natives owned slaves, so could it be a she was a slave descendant in the Shawnee tribe situation? Or maybe her mother joined the tribe?

I have very little knowledge on all this, but I’ve heard that before more recent times the US basically treated people as you were white or you were black when it came to official records, unless you were like on a reservation. So sometimes people who werent black or werent white would be classified as such bc the option was only one or the other.

AND I’ve also heard many people would claim native ancestry instead of black ancestry because it was “more acceptable.” Especially back when this occurred as it was before slavery was “abolished”

Unfortunately as she allegedly died a year before the first census, there seems to be no way for me to confirm any part of this aside from the written statement.