A popular chant on protest marches and rallies is for one person to say: “What does democracy look like” and the whole group to reply “This is what democracy looks like.”

Last night on CBS news there was a interview with four police chiefs from around the country, two African Americans, one woman and our own white Milwaukee Police Chief in Milwaukee.

One of the African American police chiefs remarked how if a policeman worked in certain neighborhoods and encounter particular persons committing crime it was easy to start to form stereotypes. The interviewer said that he was surprised to hear that since what the police chief was saying amounted to profiling. Our Milwaukee Police chief interrupted him and started to talk about how in his city, Milwaukee, 80- 85% of homicide victims are African Americans, two thirds of my robbery victims are African American, 80% of my aggravated assault victims are African Americans and the profile of the offenders is identical if not more so. He says this is the environment we are working.

I do not take fault with his numbers, be they true or not, but am offended that he is talking about our city of Milwaukee and not admitting, as the police chief who talked about stereotyping, was talking about certain neighborhoods.

Milwaukee is the most segregated city in the USA and North Central Milwaukee is 85% plus African American has the highest unemployment, lowest income, worst schools, and is the most improvised of any neighborhood in Milwaukee. It also has the highest concentration of police, since our police chief believes in ‘data driven policing’, policing the neighborhood that has the most crimes; and it has the highest incarceration rate of African Americans in Wisconsin which has the highest in the USA, which has the highest percentage of population incarcerated in the world.

In my opinion just taking numbers for the city out of context is what “racism looks like”. We have known for years that you put high numbers of poor people in one neighborhood and cut them off from other parts of the city and government and business, treat them poorly and give them little opportunity to get out of situation, you are bound to have more crime and violence in this neighborhood. It happened long ago in Irish or other cultural ghettos in the USA. Now those barriers to equal opportunity to jobs, education, transportation, housing, treatment with respect have been torn down for all cultures except African Americans, especially those who are poor.

As a white person I can drive through an African American neighborhood without fear of being stopped by a police officer for no good reason or for something petty like a taillight burned out. I do not have to worry about police inspecting my car or padding me down for no apparent good reason.

Milwaukee continues to isolate African American, especially those are poor, not serve them as other neighbors get serve, except for intense policing, and blame them, as our Police Chief does, for violent crime. This is the self fulfilling prophecy that makes Milwaukee the most racially segregated city in the USA, the most racist. (See M.A.P.S.) This is what racism looks like.

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