No. 1 for the wrong reasons
We’re No. 1, but this is hardly reason for celebration.
A new survey by 24/7 Wall St. has Wisconsin in first place for the worst in the nation when it comes to racial inequality.
This won’t come as news to people of color living that reality, or anyone who works on the issues that feed the problem. If it is shocking to you, it’s probably time to start paying attention to the voices and experiences of those affected by our unequal systems. If you’re tempted to write off this survey and others like it, or even to justify those inequalities based on racial stereotypes and biases, you’re not just harming entire swaths of the population, but the health and well-being of our state as a whole.
Here’s the long and short of what was found: In Wisconsin, the median household income for African Americans is just $29,223, compared with $59,056 for white people. The unemployment rate is a staggering 10.6% for African Americans (3.8% for whites), and the homeownership rate is just 26.2% compared with 71.6%. Perhaps the most brutal number of all, the incarceration rate for African Americans in our state is 2,542 for every 100,000. It’s just 221 out of 100,000 for whites.
Numbers alone don’t tell the story, though they’re a good place to start. These are all interconnected issues. Biased sentencing laws based on racist ideas have helped enforce what author Michelle Alexander calls “The New Jim Crow” (in her book of the same name, well worth reading). After actual Jim Crowera laws were abolished by the Civil Rights Act, white supremacists found other ways of ensuring an unequal playing field by beefing up racial profiling in policing, and far harsher sentencing rules (like mandatory minimums and the war on drugs’ weighting of penalties for crack cocaine over those for powdered cocaine) that overwhelmingly targeted people of color.
It’s difficult to find employment or stable housing once you’ve served time or, God forbid, have a felony on your record. Higher levels of poverty lead to less access to quality education, thanks to the tie between property taxes and school funding. Add in the expectations gap (what some might call the “achievement gap”) too often present when it comes to how society and even teachers approach African American students, and you’ve got a potent recipe for low graduation rates, which lead to poor employment opportunities and poorer health outcomes. All of this often feeds higher crime rates. The cycle repeats.
It was an intentional outcome. With official policies such as redlining (which kept African Americans from getting bank loans for home mortgages in certain neighborhoods or entire cities), racial profiling in policing, segregation in schools even now when it’s technically illegal (think white flight and anti-busing movements), and so forth, everything has been designed to put up as many roadblocks as possible for people of color seeking the American Dream.
Even in my liberal city of Madison, we face serious problems in supporting minority population. The city is largely segregated by neighborhood, and those places that have majority-minority residents tend, for some strange reason, to get the shaft in
terms of even basic services, such as access to grocery stores, reliable public transit and community programming.
There are many smart, passionate people working to address these complex problems, often from within the communities most affected. But it remains an uphill battle, especially given the continued refusal to own up to our racist past and how it feeds our present situation. We must all do more to first listen to those people who are and have been experiencing bias and bigotry, and then fully support (with votes, with money, with policy) the efforts of folks in the trenches who can offer the leadership and ideas so desperately needed to build a more just and healthy society.
I adore much about my state, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. We owe it, and ourselves, tough love if there’s any hope for making things better.