What The Eyes Don’t See, Discussion Questions

According to Mona Hanna-Attisha in What the Eyes Don’t See, in what ways does the US government fail to protect its most vulnerable people?

There are several ways in which the government fails to protect its most vulnerable people in What the Eyes Don’t See. Hanna-Attisha attributes the negligence to ignorance, disregard, greed, or arrogance.

Hanna-Attisha says it is unlikely that the government in Michigan—or the government in Washington, DC before it—switched the water source intentionally wanting to hurt people. Rather, they were doing it to save money. At that point, she argues, it was ignorance and also negligence. They didn’t test the water well enough.

Hanna-Attisha suggests it is also likely that the government chose to try to save money in this way in a community like Flint because they knew they could get away with it. Had they done this in an affluent, predominately white community, she argues, those residents would have, at least, protested and probably lawyered up. As Hanna-Attisha illustrates throughout the book, a community like Flint is vulnerable because the people there are often less educated and, therefore, less aware of their options and their rights.

Vulnerable communities are less likely to have representation in office or representatives that care about them. Flint has a powerless mayor because an emergency manager has been appointed to make decisions for the city. But, even if they did have an elected official, Hanna-Attisha points out, it is unlikely that they are donating a lot of money to campaigns, like large corporations like GM or people in more affluent communities might. Therefore, there is less incentive for the government to work for them. This is where greed comes in. In What the Eyes Don’t See, elected officials and government agencies try to make themselves look good by saving money at the expense of people whom they think no one will notice. In this way, Hanna-Attisha explains, it is easier for the government to fail them.

How are some people in What the Eyes Don’t See able to ignore a crisis while others are moved to act?

Hanna-Attisha feels motivated to act for several reasons. First, she is a pediatrician, so she feels a strong sense of duty to protect her vulnerable patients. Moreover, she was raised in a family that had a strong sense of community, passed down for generations. She believes that she has power and knowledge that not everyone has and that, since much has been given to her, she should use it to help those less fortunate.

Other people in this book have other motivations. There are certainly people who have the ability to make a difference, such as Eden Wells. Wells is a doctor and the state’s medical director. As such, she has great power. Yet she purposely tries to discredit Hanna-Attisha’s research. Hanna-Attisha suggests that people like Wells or the governor ignore these facts because they realize that the Flint residents didn’t vote them into office. And yet, Hanna-Attisha points out, government officials are obligated to represent everyone, not just those who voted for them. At best, perhaps these people ignored the facts out of fear. At worst, Hanna-Attisha says, it was callousness.

What is the relation of the Flint water crisis in What the Eyes Don’t See to race, poverty, and labor?

Hanna-Attisha argues that the Flint water crisis would likely never have happened in an affluent, mostly white community. Instead, she says, it happened because the government needed to save money and they could do so at the expense of poor, mostly Black people, who are often disenfranchised. In the case of Flint, the residents literally didn’t have an elected official who could do anything. Their mayor had no power because of the nonelected emergency manager.      

Emergency managers were only put in place in poor communities, Hanna-Attisha explains. Other communities had higher tax bases and, thus, didn’t need their finances “managed.” But Hanna-Attisha says the government disenfranchises poor and Black communities in other ways, such as through gerrymandered congressional districts so that Black people aren’t a majority in any district. She points to the 2020 election and its aftermath, in which Michigan was heavily involved, as an example of how, often, elected officials will work to make it more difficult for poor people to vote. If a lawyer wants to vote on election day, Hanna-Attisha argues, he can go to work late or leave early to do so. A factory worker can’t do that. Therefore, Hanna-Attisha says, early and absentee voting is very important, and it is what some governments want to take away from people.

If a government official doesn’t have to worry about people voting him out of office, he is less motivated to serve those people, Hanna-Attisha argues. That’s what happened in Flint. Governor Snyder took care of Flint easily by sending the emergency manager. If it hadn’t been for Hanna-Attisha and some other outsiders, they’d never have been found out.

In what ways does the crisis in Flint connect to Iraq?

While the crisis in Flint doesn’t directly connect to Iraq, Hanna-Attisha was the right person to handle it because her family is from Iraq. Hanna-Attisha’s family were all activists in Iraq, to a degree that they incited the ire of the Iraqi government. From the time that Hanna-Attisha was a young child, she was aware of the genocide in Iraq. Her parents even showed her pictures of murdered children. This taught her how important it was to speak out.

Hanna-Attisha trusts the government in the United States because it isn’t the government in Iraq. She especially trusts the scientists who work for agencies like the EPA and the MDEQ. She eventually learns that her trust is misplaced. Even in the United States, Hanna-Attisha says, scientists can fudge data, and the government can encourage them to cover it up—or censure those who tell the truth, such as Miguel Del Toral or Marc Edwards. Hanna-Attisha has faith in America, but she eventually learns that there are two Americas—the one she grew up in and a different one for people who aren’t affluent, educated white (or in Hanna-Attisha’s case, Iraqi) people.

In What the Eyes Don’t See, who are portrayed as the villains and who are portrayed as the heroes of the Flint crisis?

It all started with LeeAnne Walters and Miguel Del Toral. Walters is the Flint mother who noticed that her children were getting a rash from bathing in Flint water. When city officials came to test, they blamed her. They said that she should be “flushing” the water. When her sample still came back high, they blamed her pipes. But this was no ordinary mom. Knowing it wasn’t her brand-new PVC pipes, Walters started to research. She figured out what corrosion control was and that the city hadn’t used it. Then, she contacted Miguel Del Toral. Del Toral wrote a memo, and when MDEQ and the EPA—his employer—ignored it, he leaked it to Walters, who leaked it to the press. Miguel Del Toral risked his own job, not to mention ridicule, to alert people to the crisis.

There were other heroes portrayed throughout the book, of course, including Hanna-Attisha, Batanzo, Curt Guyette, Kirk Smith, and Jenny LaChance. However, they were all doing some variation of what would be considered their jobs. And, although they faced some adversity, they all felt certain they were doing the right thing for the right reasons and were eventually hailed as heroes. But Del Toral, who risked his job, and Walters, who had no special training but became an environmental warrior, are portrayed as the greatest heroes in this story.

The villains, according to Hanna-Attisha, were the ones who were supposed to serve the people but didn’t. This starts at the top with Governor Rick Snyder and his staff, including Eden Wells. Wells was the state’s chief medical officer, someone specifically in charge of Flint residents’ health. Instead of helping Flint people be healthier, Hanna-Attisha says, Wells purposely covered up and tried to discredit Hanna-Attisha’s research. Brad Wurfel, of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, who called Hanna-Attisha’s research “unfortunate,” was another one Hanna-Attisha blames for needlessly delaying a solution to the water problem. Hanna-Attisha states, “I knew already which side of history Wurfel and his MDEQ bosses would be on.”