When venturing out of state, I am often asked how I like living in Wisconsin. Aside from the weather, I usually quip that it's pretty damn good.
But then again, I happen to be the favorable skin color.
A week after our state celebrated the pinnacle of the civil-rights movement and a revolutionary leader who helped take us there, with vivid memories of passionate gospels and emotional speeches ringing through the Capitol Rotunda etched in our minds, a reality still remains. Wisconsin is black America's worst nightmare. Only this past summer, it was ranked the worst state to be black by the investigatory online magazine The Black Commentator.
Such a disturbing distinction is not without merit. In Milwaukee, our state's largest and most diverse urban area, a staggering 59 percent of black men are without work — the highest rate of any U.S. city surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly half of the state's black population lives in the most polluted neighborhoods, according to an Associated Press analysis. The latest Census Bureau data shows that Wisconsin is the fifth-worst state for poverty for African-American children. And, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice, the Badger State retains the highest African-American incarceration rate in the country — a disturbing reflection of America's severely disproportionate prison population, which is 50 percent black in a nation in which African-Americans make up only 20 percent of citizens.
A fall study by the UW-based Center on Wisconsin Strategies revealed that on a multitude of measures, the state's racial disparities are among the worst in the nation. Milwaukee's steep unemployment rate for black males is four times that of their white counterparts. Black youths in Wisconsin are six times more likely to grow up in poverty than white children. The tenfold difference between the black/white prisoner ratio is something I can personally attest to — as an intern for the state public defender in Madison last summer, I rarely spoke with a Caucasian while interviewing potential clients.
The disadvantaged conditions that minorities endure in America reflect a greater underlying societal problem — one which perpetuates the unfavorable racial conditions that have become Wisconsin's distinction. The social complexities of "white privilege" allow most of us to overlook elements of subconscious racial hostility, disregarding their existence as pure myths told by those who, as we love to allege, are merely "playing the race card." But the sheer fact that some individuals are unaccustomed to having to think about race in their daily lives reveals that white privilege is more than a fabrication inspired by unmet historical grievances.
The fact is, as a white man, I can apply for a job, stand in line at a nice department store looking disheveled and unkempt or drive a car blaring my music and not be considered threatening. As a white man, I can shop without being suspected of shoplifting, be broke without being suspected of being poor and speak without being suspected of being uneducated. As a white man, I can be pulled over by the police or airport security and the thought of racial profiling never enters my mind. As a white man, I can walk into a history class and be sure that the lineage of my country will be told from the perspective of my own race. As a white man, I won't have to seek special "white history" classes to learn about my ancestry, or wait until "White History Month" to remember great leaders of my race. As a white man, I can meet someone for the first time and know that his or her initial focus will not be on the color of my skin. For most individuals, racism is associated with blatant acts of oppression — but it also includes invisible systems of universal complicity whose intrinsic components construct an aura of superiority around one racial group. This is the racism of today — a much less distinctive, though just as ugly, head of bigotry.
Some still attempt to deny that the United States — where, according to the ACLU, one out of every four young black men is in jail, on probation or on parole — is a racist society. Though much of it now exists on a subconscious level, racism continues to be used as a tool of oppression. White privilege is the epitome of intuitive social domination, a hidden infrastructure that emerges, however minimally, on a daily basis. In a self-proclaimed "equal" nation, it continues to endure preserved by the adamant denial of its existence by those who benefit most from it.
Adam Lichtenheld ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and African studies.
