I was driving west on North Avenue looking for a Teutonia, a street that starts on North Avenue and angles northwest through the area I have come to call North Central Milwaukee. From landmarks, like the YMCA on the northeastern corner I knew I had arrived and prepared to turn right onto Teutonia. As now my habit I looked around at the four corners for street signs marking this intersection and there was none.

I was driving from one prayer vigil for a homicide victim in North Central Milwaukee to another one. Most of our prayer vigils on the sidewalk where the person was killed are located in North Central Milwaukee, the most racially segregated neighborhood in the most racially segregated city in the USA and the poorest neighborhood in the second poorest city of the USA. I am not familiar with many of the side streets in the area so often navigate us using street signs. Even the GPS on my phone talks in terms of streets being marked.
However, often, like the corner of Teutonia and North they are not marked. Sometime they have one or two street signs on one corner and sometimes by three or four street signs but seldom by eight, two on the four corners.

This observation is not true on the West side, South side or downtown or even the far Northwest area of Milwaukee. The lack of street signs on the corners in North Central Milwaukee defined as North Avenue north to Silver Spring, 60th east to the Milwaukee River, is for me a sign of racism. This neighborhood is 85% African American, poverty level is the greatest is this poor city, in one of the zips the average household income is around $20, 000 while is the southern suburb of Greenfield the average household income is $45, 000. The unemployment rate for North Central Milwaukee is over 50% and this area houses the greatest number of young adult African American who has been incarcerated in prison. This last fact is noteworthy since the State of Wisconsin has the largest number of incarcerated African American males than any other state in the USA. And with the USA having the greatest number of citizens incarcerated of all the countries in the world.

Many persons in North Central Milwaukee do not have cars or have lost their driving license, sometimes for an offense unrelated to driving a car. Because of this, some would say people in North Central Milwaukee do not need street signs on every corner, but I say it is a Sign of Racism.

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