“So whats it’s like being a black man in Milwaukee?”
I don’t even know the words that can really explain it.
You are reminded of being oppressed everywhere you go.
It’s a place where rejection occurs often you know.
It’s a place where you’re a threat, you know regardless of where you have ascended
to in society you’re a threat.
You know, you’re a threat, you know to many people in this community as a black man.
"The fatal shooting of 23 year old Sylville Smith thrust Milwaukee into a national spotlight,
igniting a weekend of riots in the cities Sherman Park neighborhood.
Milwaukee is one of the most racially segregated Metro areas in the US, minorities including
a 40 percent black population are concentrated in the city and whites in the surrounding
suburbs.
The state of Wisconsin also has the highest black incarceration rate in the country, one
in every eight black men is currently in prison or in jail.
The latest shooting is forcing residents to confront what many say makes Milwaukee the
worst place to be a black man in America."
This is the police leave the area.
Those folks aren’t just there because Sylville was killed, they’re there because they feel
has been the equivalent of somebody having their foot on your neck.
What the nation really saw was what happens when you inflict poverty on a group of people
when you control their access for food and you control their health and everything and
you say we are going to keep you there so what you saw was the young people retaliating.
Wisconsin, if its health, African American adult population is the most obese in America.
Incarceration, we lead the nation.
Unemployment.
The disparity between the white student the black student.
You know, Housing.
It’s a litany of issues that say that all of those things culminated to create that
moment that night.
So you see segregation, you see the little pocket areas all throughout the city of Milwaukee.
You know what I mean?
The little pockets of segregation, the little pockets of disparities.
There is almost an assault, if you will, on the dignity and humanity of black people,
particularly of black men throughout the city.
A lot of times like there’s this perspective that if you just straighten up, you pull your
pants up and you stay in school and you do well, uh that, you know, the trouble won't
find you.
I can have a suit on and I can be dressed and go to the courthouse, very nice, but if
I go change my clothes and drive down a certain street, I’m going to get pulled over by
the police.
It almost doesn’t matter that you followed the rules or internalized the playbook.
You are seen as belonging to a subclass here in our city.
The cameras come and the reporters come and all of the attention is shined on a community
when a gas station burns or the jet beauty supply or the auto parts store.
But, that community has been figuratively burning for a very long time.
And that’s really frustrating.
We have parts of our communities our neighborhoods that have seen lack of investment.
If you were to go down Burleigh, had you not been from this neighborhood, could you identify
the buildings that actually were burned or looted?
Those buildings on that corridor have been empty and boarded for decades.
It’s making us move out of town.
We’re leaving families, and we’re going places thinking there’s some great white
hope that’s going to rescue us, when young black boys now think that by the age of 25
they’re going to be in jail or dead.
What we see in Milwaukee and what we see in St. Louis and what we see in Baltimore, you
know what I’m saying, is an American problem.
One city uprising, maybe.
Two cities, three cities, four cities, five, all cities ain’t lying.
Trouble doesn’t stay still.
Trouble spreads.
And right now it’s in Sherman Park, but who knows where it may be tomorrow.
It’s not something that people living in Milwaukee created on our own.
It ain’t something people in St. Louis created on their own.
Right now although we do have the distinction of being one of the worse places in America
for black people to live, at one point in time we were the best.
So we’re a resilient community here.
Although we face our challenges, we’re very very very hopeful that we’ll be able to
turn the corner and make a difference.
It is a struggle, but it’s a beautiful struggle because people are going to survive we are
survivors here in Milwaukee and make lemonade out of lemons so we are going to keep doing
that.