There was a front-page, above-the-fold headline (hard copy) in the New York Times last week: “Report on Flint Cites ‘Injustice’: Race Is Said to Play a Role in Inaction.” And it’s true that the Flint Water Advisory Task Force report that is the subject of the article makes that claim. But no evidence is cited in the report for the proposition that race played a role in any of the lamentable actions or inactions involved — none. The closest it comes is a footnote to a Huffington Post (!) article, but that article also contains no such evidence. The reasoning is that something bad happened here, and the people involved were black, and so therefore what happened must have happened because the people involved were black. To deny this is, I suspect, likewise proof of racism.

Today’s editorial in the Times (“Racism at the Heart of Flint’s Crisis”) repeats and sharpens the charge, but naturally also fails to produce any evidence.