× Expand Jimmy Emerson Welcome to Wauwatosa, Wisconsin Wauwatosa, an affluent suburb northwest of Milwaukee, has a history of restrictive zoning against black people, and today many minority residents continue to encounter racist attitudes in this disproportionately white community.

We don’t often talk about racism as causing illness, but that’s exactly what’s being discussed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a town often viewed as a microcosm of America’s problems with race and poverty. This spring, Milwaukee County leaders described racism as a “public health crisis” and dedicated the agency to actively engaging all citizens in racial justice work.

“Local government needs to take a leadership role and we intend to do so,” said County Executive Chris Abele in April.

David Pate, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, says the disease of racism has afflicted Milwaukee County for decades, ever since large numbers of blacks first began to settle in the Cream City in the 1950s and 1960s. “They came here at the tail end of the big boom of when you could get a factory job,” he explains. “They got put in the worst neighborhoods, because the best neighborhoods were already taken.”

In Milwaukee, Pate tells The Progressive, “there’s a twelve-year life expectancy difference just based on your zip code.” Pate says that Milwaukee’s segregation affects “access to employment, access to housing, and access to health.” A cascade of physical and mental suffering follows whenever these needs are deprived.

“There’s a twelve-year life expectancy difference just based on your zip code.”

And when people experience long-term unequal access to basic resources, along with burdens like heavy surveillance, Pate notes, “you start to destroy yourself.”

“Increased high blood pressure, increased diabetes issues, hypertension issues,” he lists off, “anxieties because you’re living in a very stressful situation.” Ad campaigns for unhealthy products like tobacco targeted towards minority groups also compound the issue. “It’s intergenerational,” he continues, “and people start to think, ‘This is what normal looks like when that’s not normal.’ ” And for serious mental health issues, “you never know what the trigger might be,” Pate says.

Marquette University President Mike Lovell and his wife Amy Lovell, a mental health advocate, founded the collective effort, Scaling Wellness In Milwaukee, to address what is widely acknowledged as an epidemic of racism-induced trauma throughout the city.

Though Milwaukee proper is around 40 percent black, Pate notes, the surrounding suburbs are 85 to 90 percent white and also very wealthy. Milwaukee’s African Americans are densely concentrated in its north side, Hispanics on the south side, and whites along the wealthier edges.

Surrounding municipalities include Brookfield (86.3 percent white, 1.0 percent black), Waukesha (78.1 percent white, 4.0 percent black), Shorewood (85.3 percent white, 2.7 percent black), Wauwatosa (85.5 percent white, 4.8 percent black), and others. According to Statistical Atlas, some Wauwatosa neighborhoods like Swan Park, Jennings Park, and Ravenswood have near 0 percent black populations.

And many of these very white zones have reputations for discriminating against minorities. Excessive police stops and restrictive housing practices date back to Jim Crow. This often not-well-known history has compelled the formation of diversity and advocacy groups, like Tosa Together, a community group started in Wauwatosa in 2016 shortly after a Wauwatosa officer fatally shot 25 year old Jay Anderson Jr. The group has since sought to address a variety of race and police issues in the suburb.

In May, Tosa Together proposed the formation of an “equity commission” to help ensure Wauwatosa is an inclusive community. The suburb has created many similar commissions focusing on issues impacting certain groups from youth, to the disabled and the elderly.

Nevertheless, the proposal drew criticism by Alder Jason Kofroth, who said he didn’t see a need for such a commission, pointing out the celebration of mostly black sports teams as evidence that America has moved forward. He subsequently walked back his comments after weeks of heavy, mainly negative, media attention.

Lynne Woehrle, who helped propose the equity commission, argues that these issues deeply impact the suburb. “There’s a concept of neighborliness and being unneighborly,” she says, “[like] how you respond when someone moves into your neighborhood.”

“There’s a sense that kids who are black and brown in our school district must be from ‘outside’ and are just coming to school here.”

In Wauwatosa, she says, there’s a sense of who does and doesn’t belong, even in the schools. “There’s a strong sense that kids who are black and brown in our school district must be from ‘outside’ and are just coming to school here.” She says to the contrary, many of Tosa’s minority students actually live within the district.

This is the type of invisible barrier that helps maintain Milwaukee’s racial zones. “We can think of those as really strong borders, or we can think of them as neighborhoods,” says Woehrle. A Wauwatosa resident herself, Woehrle tells The Progressive that her neighborhood, near the Milwaukee border, is rather diverse, although other parts of the suburb are exclusively white.

And whether you’re black in a mostly white suburb, or black in a mostly black neighborhood, the effects of discrimination can seem inescapable.

Community organizer Vaun Mayes has experienced the consequences first hand. Mayes lives in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood, which is 88 percent black. His grassroots activism focuses on providing food and services, and making the area’s parks a safe place for young people. Mayes emphasizes the impact cuts to Milwaukee’s mental health complex has had on his community.

“I have people who have family members who are schizophrenic and violent, and [family members] want to commit them, but they can’t.” The upshot is sometimes tragic. “Then you’ll hear about this person fighting with the police and getting shot.”

Being black in Milwaukee’s suburbs is also no walk in the park. “There’s an attitude that the city of Milwaukee is where the black people are supposed to be,” Mayes says. After moving back to Milwaukee from Mississippi as a teenager, Mayes was amazed that race issues were so prominent so far north.

He recalls being at Wauwatosa’s annual “Tosa Fest,” and being harassed by local police. “Everyone else was going to this strip mall ice cream place. When I started going up the stairs, the officer literally blocked me.” Mayes claims the officer told him “home ain’t this way,’ escorted him to a bus stop, and “made me get on the bus.” He says African American people are “being preyed upon.” In “any of these outside parts of Milwaukee,” he says, “I learned that you ain’t really wanted.”

Taking a birds-eye view of what Mayes is seeing on the ground, Pate says “the system perpetuates state violence.” Mass incarceration, for example, is another symptom of the disease of racism. Pate highlights the impact it has when “one in two black men are incarcerated in their prime working ages in Milwaukee.” In fact, studies suggest mass incarceration itself can reduce life expectancy by at least five years. Milwaukee’s north side 53206 zip code incarcerates the highest percentage of black men in America.

Solutions to these problems, however, can be more fickle to find. Abele and the Milwaukee County Board created an Office on African American Affairs in 2016, and have said that all Milwaukee County leaders have been trained on racial equity, with all 4,000 employees scheduled to be trained in 2019.

“What the County Executive wants to do is really commendable,” Pate tells The Progressive. “The big issue they have to address is, are people really ready to have a discussion about race?”

Woehrle agrees. “It’s a good step to take. It speaks to the policy and structural changes that need to happen in our communities,” she says. “You need to be committed to make the structural change.” But, she warns, “those are hard transitions.”

For Mayes, however, “it’s just a bunch of revolving-door conversations.” He denounces continued conversation without “real acting or implementation of any of the [things] that we’re talking about.”

Defining systemic racism as a health crisis may help hone a response. Regardless, it involves everyone. “Equity is about we all share in this,” says Pate, “and if we all share in this, we’ll all be better off.”