Why is milwaukee so segregated

Wisconsin lawmaker proposes resolution honoring white people, among others, during Black History Month. Wisconsin once had a 'model' voting rights program for people with disabilities.

Officials have let it decline. Facebook Twitter Email. Milwaukee is the most racially segregated metro area in the country, Brookings report says. Mary Spicuzza Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. JS OnPolitics, 9. Francis and South Milwaukee categorically excluded blacks. Francis, and West Allis were still using covenants to exclude blacks from newly created subdivisions. As late as , ten years after the United State Supreme Court outlawed judicial enforcement of these covenants, race restrictions were recorded in the courthouse for a new subdivision in Greendale.

Decades later, White people ask me why the suburbs are so segregated and what we can do about it. There is an underlying assumption that Black people want to move to these communities in large numbers. I doubt that they do. There are more than enough Blacks in Milwaukee that could easily afford to live in the burbs but chose not to.

The latest U. Census Bureau estimates for show a population of , residents of Milwaukee County, , in Waukesha County, 89, in Ozaukee County and , in Washington County. The percentage of Blacks in those places is instructive.

In Milwaukee County , Blacks are residents but most , live in the city of Milwaukee. That means that That is the lowest percentage in the suburbs of any of the most highly segregated metro areas in the country. By comparison, in Buffalo According to a report entitled City of Milwaukee Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council MMFHC there are multiple barriers still in place many years after local, state and federal laws were passed making housing discrimination illegal.

They listed issues in the city of Milwaukee as well as in our suburbs. Moreover, the Ordinance provides vague and inadequate enforcement mechanisms for persons who bring claims under this Ordinance.

It recognized the reality that the many factors inhibiting or denying individuals fair housing choice and access are rarely confined or isolated to a single community, particularly in and adjacent to urban areas.

In addition, these impediments are by their nature contentious, systemic, and longstanding. To address these issues comprehensively, multiple jurisdictions must be: able, first, to identify them; willing to acknowledge them; open to understanding how they affect access to fair housing in the region as a whole; and prepared to actively and jointly pursue strategies to remove them.

It is easy to see that many of the impediments they identified are the same as those listed by the MMFHC in What has changed is that very little has been done to address these impediments over the past fifteen years.

There has been a lack of real action by policy makers and elected officials to do something substantial about these impediments which contribute to the segregated nature of metro Milwaukee. Many whites in our suburbs claim to support integration. However, that support only exists as long as it is not in their neighborhood. Blacks in metro Milwaukee realize we are not welcomed in the suburbs. There is no rational reason Black people would be in a big rush to move to suburbs around Milwaukee in large numbers.

It makes more sense to leave Milwaukee and move to Texas, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and other more welcoming places in the South. How ironic that Blacks left the South to escape racism but are now returning to those places to escape the racism in the North.

If white people continue to believe we can fix segregation with check-the-box practices and policies they are delusional. Your neighborhoods that you cherish so much are not that attractive to Black people. Black people want to see diversity in their neighborhoods. And we are nestled in the southeast corner of the state that incarcerates more Black men than anywhere else in the country.

A New York Times travel article last fall described 36 hours in Milwaukee. It showcased the classic white experience — jaunts and activities located downtown and on the near south and east sides. The photographs depicted only white people.

A community that rarely strays from its exceedingly white neighborhoods and professional and social circles. To traverse beyond the walls an oddity because segregation runs so deep here that whites and people of color live and socialize almost exclusively within their own defined spaces. In theory, we recognize the significance of this issue: for some the importance rests in the negative impact it has on our ability to attract business and talent to our city and region and for others it is a matter of moral or personal consequence.

Incessantly, really. We never stop designing and launching projects, programs and initiatives to talk about race and address the disparities in our communities of color. And now, with increased national attention on race, suffice it to say, everyone has jumped on this bandwagon.

It is hard to find a local organization that is not rushing an inclusion project into being. Last year, I made a commitment to explore these issues in a more personal way. Guided by a genuine sense of curiosity, I interviewed 72 diverse Milwaukeeans about how they create a sense of belonging in such a racially segregated place. People of color, on the other hand, recognized the impact of segregation in their lives, sharing that it prevented them from developing the connections that led to professional opportunities and stymied the creativity that is born out of individuals with diverse perspectives and experiences regularly engaged in dialogue.

Many Black and Hispanic people told me that it is burdensome to always have to meet white colleagues and friends in white spaces, where there are few, if any, people of color. And there was the perception that it was simply out of the question for those same white folks to venture beyond those spaces, to places where they would be the minority. These have been my experiences too. I asked a white friend once whether he thought anyone found it odd that I was the only person of color in the restaurant where we were having dinner, in a city that is majority minority.

He assured me that no one around us noticed or cared — except maybe me. We do talk about it, work on it, professionalize it and workshop it — but our real lives remain so separate. What I know to be true is that without change in our actual lives, our many programs and strategies are not likely to create change.

The irony, of course, it is that segregation suffocates the potential of all our efforts. We switch things up often, perpetually fixated on the newest and shiniest silver bullet, certain each time that we have found the solution that will propel us toward real change. We remain willfully oblivious to the fact that the critical component rests within our individual lives.