I am leaving Milwaukee now; I spent last night at the last hours of the Wisconsin State Fair in the wake of the unrest here. Most of the fairgoers near the rides were black, and recognizably poor (and nice– in line, my nephew talked the art of yo-yoing with two lovely and patient young women in their early twenties). The neighborhoods, block to block, are starkly segregated by race and class. And as this Times article notes, “While court-ordered and voluntary desegregation programs had helped to usher in school integration by 1987, those programs have since faded and schools in the metropolitan area are as segregated now as they were in 1965. Nearly three in four black students attend schools where at least 90 percent of the students are not white, according to Marc V. Levine, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Only 15.7 percent of Milwaukee Public School students tested proficient in reading in 2013-14, and 20.3 percent in math.”
(posted from Facebook)
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