The outline area is North
Central Milwaukee. Black area
is 85% African American
Today I finally finished a project I have been working on for some time, M.A.P.S., Maps of Segregation, Poverty, Criminalization of African Americans and the Catholic Churches in North Central Milwaukee.
These maps tell visually of how the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee has pulled out of areas as they became more African American, poor, criminalized and marginalized. Simply said when an area becomes full of persons Jesus’ man mission is to, the poor, marginalized and rejected, the more the Catholic Church as withdrawn.
These M.A.P.S. not only show the racism of the institutional Catholic Church but the racism of other major institution, city, country, state, business world, educational and police. For not only is North Central Milwaukee the poorest, most segregated, criminalized and marginalized area in Milwaukee and the nation it has extremely high unemployment, a high homicide and shooting rate, a poor transportation system and a poor educational system. It is like Milwaukee institutions are building a wall around North Central Milwaukee and ignoring it, just dealing it with superficially, like adding more police to the area.
Racism is not a word people want to use these days or even in the past. When we fought against “institutional racism” at Marquette University in 1968 Marquette tried to blame the troubles on a few students but after suspending them when on to make the very changes the student groups had demanded. Today as we struggle against ‘institutional militarism’ Marquette’s tactics has been to ignore the protest and when that did not work to make one person the ‘scapegoat’ to avoid dealing with the issue of militarism on campus. Be it racism or militarism with the institution of Marquette, Archdiocese of Milwaukee or the City, some feel compelled to call it like it is.
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