Donald Trump’s infamous wall is expected to cost $21.6 billion and take three and a half years to build. This preposterous plan has garnered fanatical support from a good amount of conservatives.

The lead poisoning in Flint, Mich. has been treated as an insurmountable problem and is shoved to the side by the mass media for years after the story broke.

While a $100 million grant was awarded to Flint by President Barack Obama through the Environmental Protection Agency, the question still stands: why was America willing to spend such an outrageous amount of money on a racist ego monument rather than helping people? Why did it take so long for Flint to receive aid? The situation is a testament to the racist attitudes that have spread across America.

Flint, a majority black city, hasn’t had clean water since April 2014 when the local government switched their water source to the local Flint River, which had served as a dumping ground for industrial waste. Racism is the reason for the suffering Flint’s citizens have had to endure.

“If Flint were rich and mostly white, would Michigan’s state government have responded more quickly and aggressively to complaints about its lead-polluted water?” John Eligon of the New York Times pondered.

Additionally, Flint residents are still being forced to pay for contaminated water, according to the Washington Post.

“There’s a philosophy of government that has been writing these places off — places like Flint get written off,” Flint’s Rep. Dan Kildee told The Huffington Post. The lack of attention and help Flint has received is a failure of human decency.

And now that Flint is receiving money from federal agencies, the clean up won’t happen instantly, and the fallout will still plague the community for years to come.

On the flip side of the issue, there are undocumented immigrants.

Undocumented immigrants are not a threat that needs to be culled. Undocumented immigrants are a valuable part of the American workforce and society. Forbes reported that undocumented immigrants pay about $11.64 billion  in taxes each year, while Trump has avoided paying income tax for 18 years. If anyone is a threat, it’s Trump.

“If the administration would like to stop illegal immigration the best way is to help Mexico create more high-paying jobs (say with a trade deal like NAFTA) so they don’t come to America,” Adam hartung of Forbes wrote.

“Illegal immigrants are not ‘stealing’ more jobs every year,” Hartung added.  “Since 2006, the number of illegal immigrants working in the U.S. has stabilized at about 8 million. All the new job growth over the last decade has gone to legitimate American workers or legal immigrants working with proper papers.”

Many undocumented immigrants entering the United States through the Mexican border are fleeing human rights abuses from turbulent nations such as Guatemala and Honduras where organized crime still has a strong hold on the government, though the overall rate of undocumented immigrants in America is declining.

But rather than trying to fix the problem and help black Americans and immigrants fleeing deplorable conditions, the government and the people who voted for Trump, have decided that building a racist ego monument for the tyrannical “president” is more a more worthwhile expenditure, despite the fact that it will drain resources, put economic strain on the public, and leave immigrants searching for better living conditions in limbo.

The people of Flint deserve to have clean water and a speedy but thorough clean up. The local and state governments must be held accountable for their ineffectiveness. And the federal government cannot be allowed to go forward with plans to build the racism wall unopposed.

Human decency and compassion must outshine and overpower fear and hate. That is the only way that America, as a nation, can ever prosper.