9/27/2010 update: When properly standardizing and averaging the U.S Census Bureau’s five published segregation measures, Milwaukee goes from being the most segregated metro area to the second most segregated metro area, behind Detroit. Read more.
Milwaukee is a wonderfully diverse city full of unique cultures and a broad array of worldviews and life experiences. But like many cities, these cultures and worldviews are too often walled off from one another due to the effects of segregation. Such segregation, and the racial climate that is part and parcel to it, create challenges and inertia that reach every significant issue that the city ever faces. Issues of citizen empowerment, education, economic development, poverty, public service levels, and countless others are all intimately impacted by the state of Milwaukee’s racial climate. The poor racial climate makes collective action difficult and sometimes impossible, burdens business attraction, fosters brain drain, and reduces quality of life in the entire region. If it doesn’t improve, the city’s potential will forever be constrained. While there’s commendable activity taking place at the individual and grassroots level to improve racial climate, civic leadership in this fundamentally important area tends to be absent.
Residential segregation is a worthwhile starting point when examining Milwaukee racial climate and what can be done to improve it. The following is the first in a multi-part series that will take a look at the prevalence and impact of segregation in the Milwaukee area. The meaning of segregation, its causes and effects, how it can be addressed, and how it impacts racial climate are all issues that will be examined in this series.
It’s commonly accepted that Milwaukee is very segregated, but how segregated is it really? First, most information on this involves not the City of Milwaukee itself, but rather the Milwaukee Metropolitan Statistical Area (“metro Milwaukee”), a region that includes the entire counties of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington. Second, there are lots of ways to measure segregation, and it’s not easy to tell which measures are better than others. Third, the mainstream measures of segregation can only handle two races at a time. The publicized segregation claims tend to involve only white and black populations, excluding Latinos, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans entirely.
So when it is said that “Milwaukee is the X most segregated city in the country,” what is really meant is that “the area comprised of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties is the X most segregated area in the country when it comes to black and white residential patterns based on some measurement of uncertain quality.”
Maybe the most respected measures of segregation are drawn out in a study done by the U.S Census Bureau. This study focused on five measures of segregation: dissimilarity, isolation, delta, absolute centralization, and spatial proximity (for descriptions of these measures, see U.S Census study, pages 8-10).
The study analyzed data from the 2000 census, compared metro areas that had a large enough minority population to analyze, and then ranked these metro areas in terms of segregation, with a ranking of 1 being the most segregated. The following table displays metro Milwaukee’s segregation rankings in terms of black/white segregation and Hispanic/white segregation. It also shows metro Detroit’s black/white segregation rankings for context. Metro Milwaukee did not have a large enough Asian-American or Native-American population for analysis, so there aren’t rankings for those populations.
| Metro Milwaukee | Metro Detroit | ||
| black/white | Hispanic/white | black/white | |
| Dissimilarity | 2 | 8 | 1 |
| Isolation | 8 | 21 | 2 |
| Delta | 1 | 15 | 12 |
| Absolute Centralization | 10 | 22 | 13 |
| Spatial Proximity | 6 | 8 | 1 |
| AVERAGE | 1 | 12 | 2 |
There is a user-friendly website that focuses on the dissimilarity index. This website ranks metro Milwaukee 3rd, behind Detroit and Gary, IN in the black/white category.
In response to the U.S Census rankings, researchers from UWM created their own ranking system based on the number of blocks in an area that had populations that were both at least 20% black and 20% white. They created their rankings “not as a competitive model for ranking cities and metro areas, but to expose the biases and limitations of the segregation indexes” (which they describe in their report). Metro Milwaukee ranks 43rd in this ranking system, substantially better than its rank in any of the Census’ measures.
The publication of the UWM report created an impassioned debate, with various individuals and groups coming out in support of or in opposition to UWM’s rankings. Marc Levine, a highly respected UWM social scientist, slammed the UWM report as “a blend of shoddy research and specious analysis” in an op-ed that systematically critiqued the report. John Gurda, Milwaukee’s foremost historian, wrote that the UWM report confirmed his firmly held impression that Milwaukee was “somewhere in the middle of the pack” when it comes to integration.
When the UWM report questioned the severity of metro Milwaukee’s segregation, some politicians and business leaders took this as an opportunity to gloss over the area’s racial issues for the purposes of improving the city’s image, an image that consistently makes business and talent attraction difficult. Some black leaders expressed outrage at the UWM report and responded by citing racial disparities and using those disparities to reaffirm the victimization of the black community in Milwaukee. If the UWM report placed segregation into question, the response to the report left no question that the city’s racial climate is poor.
This spring, the 2010 census process will begin. The result will be an updated view of Milwaukee’s demographic and socioeconomic standing. This sharing of new information and insight will provide Milwaukee the perfect opportunity to reassess its level of segregation, what it means for us, and what can be done about it.
Confronting metro segregation is critical, as Milwaukee’s economy spans across municipal and county borders. Action here involves heavy cooperation between the City of Milwaukee, its suburbs, surrounding counties, and the State of Wisconsin. Historically, such cooperation has been difficult to sustain (to say the least).
Almost as importantly, Milwaukee must examine the level of segregation that exists in the city itself. Such segregation works to frustrate cooperation and unity of purpose amongst the city’s population. As a result, the city often is not able to put up a united front when seeking action and cooperation with surrounding suburbs and the state. Before the City of Milwaukee can secure this cooperation, it first needs to get its own house in order.
***
Race Matters in Milwaukee
Part I: How Segregated is Milwaukee?
Part Ia: How Segregated is Milwaukee? Part 2
Part II: The Causes of Milwaukee’s Segregation
Part III: The Effects of Milwaukee’s Segregation
Part IV: Segregation and Education
Good post.
Engaging, scholarship-based commentary such as this is always welcome. Unpacking and interrogating issues such as Milwaukee’s hypersegregation will deem critical to notions of future empowerment for our black community. However, one related issue that warrants further investigation : If our sgeregated spaces were to become “liberated spaces” of social, cultural, and economic development, would segregation be all bad for our people?
Great point, D. Rogers. Bronzeville was about as segregated as you can get — it was a Black City. But you had African-American owned businesses, which were thriving. You two great Black newspapers. (Much better than Courier and Community Journal today, I’m sorry to say.) You had Mayor Josey and a community sense of pride. Everything was clean and there was almost no crime. Literacy rate was close to 100 percent. I’m absolutely NOT saying that we should go back to segregation, but I know one thing — we were self-reliant and our community was successful in many ways that it is not now.
Does race matter? Are you kidding? It’s ALL about race. Once we admit it we can then recognize it for what it is. Which is, an impediment to any substantative discussion about the impact and reality of race ,conscienciously or unconsciensously, as the least common denominator to the historic, pervasive disparity that currently exists between blacks and whites in this community. Just like an alcoholic, if you don’t admit you got a problem, rehab won’t do you any good. Race has to be a major topic of discussion in Milwaukee. We run from it, hide from it and most of the time, in order to get along, act like it don’t even exist. However, at every turn you will bump you head if you don’t open your eyes to it. Constant reminders are everywhere. There is no such thing as “color blind” or “race neutral”. These are symantic tricks.(If a disparity and unfair results are caused by racial considerations, how can you have a race neutral remedy to compensate for the negative disparit impact?) That’s like balancing the scales of justice with, “your side steel and my side cotton”. It won’t balance out. In order to have “reverse discrimination” you have to have intentional discrimination in the first place. I don’t know if Milwaukee can handle a real discussion or accept the truth about race. Our thoughts about race have been built on intentionall targeted misperceptions and fears which lend themselves to the continued perverted notion that superiority is an inherent right built into and supported by “institutions” of white privilage and power. You can disagree with my observations and opinion but you can’t refute the facts. Scholarly debate and discussion starts with the facts not fiction. My concern is not about what anybody feels, believes or thinks about race. It’s about the proof and evidence backing up what you know about race. If you don’t know me, you don’t know better. It’s not about intergration, it’s about self definition. It’s not about segregation it’s about self preservation in a climate that perpetuates, supports, protects and provides you with a basis and opportunity to be proud of who you are and what you are regardless of what other people, who don’t even know you, feel, believe or think about you regardless of your race. (That’s what Bronzville was to black people even though they called it segregation. Why do the surburbs exist? To get away from intergration in the comfort of segregation. (This has nothing to do with a black family living on your block.) We know the history of race in this city and country. History is factual. If you can’t face the facts, maybe we should end the discussion about race and all claim ourselves to be bi-racial.
Bro, it appears that Milwaukee can’t accept, deal with when recognized or organize to repair even when the truth about anything is brought to their attention, from it’s politics to the education of it’s children. But it is not just Milwaukee, however, what makes Milwaukee so unique is that it is small enough, where Black people for the most part are intimately connected and large enough with enough Black folks to make a difference. It is sad indeed.
This is a very good article and one I think of constantly because I see the difference in downtown Chicago only 90 minutes away and downtown Milwaukee. One look frmo Union Square and you see people of all backgrounds walking and talking together while in Milwaukee, well there are not that many black folks working there and the ones that do tend to stick to packs. It seems like the Twilight Zone when you venture out of this city and state!
We need only look at the “esteemed” Hoan bridge named in tribute of Mayor Daniel Hoan who carefully orchestratesd the demise of Bronzeville (but yet we pay tribute every time we use it) and the demolition of 8000 homes along 43 South and North. These constant reminders always remind me why Milwaukee is the way it is. carefully orchestrated, carefully kept in our places, educationally and economically.
As a Chicago native, I say to WW dont let the 8×10 glossies from Chicago’s Manificent Mile fool you. Chicago has a ugly history of racial segregation, blighted black neigborhoods, house negroes in office the whole nine. Once that diverse group of people share that bus/train ride from the loop, they go their separate ways and nary the twain shall meet until they punch back in the next morning. The interstates ran through the west and south sides of Chicago displacing neighborhoods and families just like Milwaukee.