8th highest poverty rate

[lioninaconcretejungle]

Originally Posted by JS20000

I have been following this forum for several months now but I have been motivated to make a post (a rather long post) concerning this thread.
I presently live in downtown Milwaukee but I am all too familiar with inner city blight and despair. I have recently moved to Milwaukee in February, and this city is doing WAY better than my hometown.
I grew up in Birmingham, AL, which had a reputation for being the most segregated city in the nation (a reputation that haunts the city to this day). My communities were all black, my schools were all black, my immediate world was full of black faces but television, magazines, and businesses did not illuminate my experiences. I grew up in cramped housing projects in a single parent family (at one point my cousins had to live with us); the median income was barely $5000/year. My mother flatly refused to accept welfare and she worked mopping floors while putting herself through school. She got her GED and went back to get her associates degree. She tried to pursue a bachelor’s but it proved too stressful and expensive (there were plenty of times the refrigerator was empty and I was only guaranteed a meal from the school’s free lunch).
There were absolutely no positive male role models within a 5 mile radius, it seemed. My community was no help and sadly, my [male] relatives were not an inspiration either. Going to school everyday watching winos disgrace themselves with bottles of rotgut, drug dealers openly making transactions with guns tucked in the small of their back while walking through walkways that reek of stale urine and broken bottles, garbage, and drug paraphernalia on the ground, I knew that an education was the only thing that could get me out of there (if you’ve never lived in such an environment you can not know how inundating it is; you will come to believe that the whole world is just like this).
My mother taught me the value of perseverance and acquiring an education despite the lack of immediate payoff (we were still in the projects for 4 years after my mother had gotten her associates degree). I never used my ethnicity as an excuse for failure or success; if you are an individual of integrity and exceptional character, as well as intelligent with a strong work ethic, it will be apparent to any employer. I focused on my studies despite the numerous distractions: almost daily shootings, drug abuse, illness/disease, pestilence, and the general behavioral symptoms of generational poverty, including psychosis (lots of people who were once completely normal have gone crazy).
I was an honor roll student; I was inducted into the National Honor Society and the Math Honor Society. I was made class valedictorian and my IQ consistently tested in the 98th percentile from grade school. I went away to college on a full academic scholarship; along with several other scholarships (my mother didn’t pay a dime). I graduated with a degree in electrical engineering and I haven’t looked back since. I prefer not to talk too much about my past because it does not speak for me as an entire person but I still understand how it has shaped what I have become.
The entire city [Birmingham] was written off by business leaders and was considered a lost cause. Birmingham has consistently ranked in the ten most dangerous cities in the US for several years, even outranking Compton, CA. I am by no means proud of these statistics in the least; I am illustrating a point that there are other places that would put Milwaukee to shame. I am surprised at the ease in which I can navigate traffic here and the dearth of sprawling subdivisions is a plus. The inner city still looks nice: there are not a lot of condemned or unoccupied houses, burned out homes, vacant lots overgrown with weeds, nor is there a lot of gang graffiti (I been up through Locust, MLK, Teutonia, and the side streets and this area is actually not bad for a city its size). Compare this to Detroit, St Louis, or even Birmingham and you have to give Milwaukee credit. I have lived in Houston and I have spent some time in So Cal and I have lived in Knoxville, TN, as well as visited a number of other major cities and Milwaukee may not be among the best but it is far from the worst.
As far as a remedy to the poverty situation, it is a combination of parental responsibility, personal responsibility, and a concentrated effort from non-profit organizations and volunteers (the government should not be asked to be the nation’s sugar daddy with social concerns-their focus should be to regulate/propose/enforce federal laws and manage those institutions). If proper parenting and the instilment of basic values are absent from the home, no other manner of social policy will help (they are band-aids). A shiny new school with internet access and state-of-the-art libraries, laboratories, and athletic facilities will have little effect (a number of new high schools have been built in Birmingham just like this and there are still gangs and shootings present). Contemporary efforts to reverse the tide of disparity in the inner cities are mostly misguided. A lot of the advocates of said programs are well meaning but they have not fully researched the initiatives they tout. The problem with my proposed solution is that it does not produce an immediate physical result (like the building of a new school) and local officials will have nothing to point to as an example of their “doing something about it”. It is easy to say something needs to be done about the dropout rate and the incidences of teen pregnancy but how can it be done? If your mother was 16 when she had you and your absentee father is in prison or a deadbeat, where is proper guidance going to come from? Non-profit organizations have not been successful in luring the masses into their social betterment programs (the stigma of being a sellout or some kind of dork because you are going against the grain is very strong in these communities). Misery likes company, and anyone trying to succeed is a pariah (my mother kept to herself in de facto; I had few friends growing up although my sisters fared better than me). If you can shake the apparent equivalence of success or achievement with “being white” or showing disdain for black people, then you’ve won half the battle.
This is not a “black/white” issue or a “liberal/conservative” issue; this a human issue (I am so sick of blame being tossed squarely upon some entity or institution as if they are 100% responsible for all the grief). Complex social problems have complex causes with solutions that are even more complex. It is shortsighted to assert a one-shot fix (schools can not raise children, proper parenting still can not teach children academics, HUD homes, Section 8 housing, and food stamps do not provide employment with a livable wage). Handing out contraceptives does not teach self respect and there are not enough Big Brothers/Big Sisters to go around. We do not need emphasis on one of these factors-we need emphasis on them all.
I know that I can not expect everyone from the inner city or the suburbs to be the student I was but there is no telling how many others are in ghettos all over the US with the same potential as I that will never make it because one of the key ingredients is missing. If a person has not walked in my shoes, they can not hope to know how tough it is to get out of poverty.

Milwaukee too has had a long held reputation as being highly segragated,for a long time it was considered the most segragated city in America.Milwaukee is considered the worst city to be black in America because of imprisonment,unemployment,and white/black income distribution being the widest.Milwaukee is NOT doing much better than birmingham,Birmingham simply has a much higher percentage of Blacks than Milwaukee does.Black poverty,impisonment,unemployment and Ill bet violence rates are higher in Milwaukee than in Birmingham.

[#Littledog]

Thank you for such an insightful and well-written post, JS2000. I read every word of it.

[erasure]

Originally Posted by karenabcde

Uh, excuse me, but I don't hear Hispanics complaining or Chinese people complaining, or Japanese people complaining, or Irish people or Swedish people or Russian people or Canadians or Europeans complaining.....how is it that the Black people have so much to complain about and get credit for doing so?

Excuse me, but if you don't hear Hispanics complaining in US, it doesn't mean that they are not complaining - it means that you don't hear them - just that.
As for Blacks - they have every right to complain in US, since they are mostly poor, and being poor in US is not a walk in the park, as you'd like to believe. Even living in a "home with running water" ( provided there is enough money to pay the utility bill ) and food stamps with TV ( provided there is enough of money to pay for that one too,) what else there is to do, and particularly for families with children? Wherever you turn - be that movie theater, ice-cream cone, amusement park - anything for a child to enjoy, is out of reach, because it costs pretty penny. Extra-curriculum activities for children - sports and all? - try to reach any soccer field without owning a car, on your own schedule on public transportation. Good luck with that. Education? But the quality of it in public schools is really poor for the most part, and private schools are out of reach for the poor, even if they have capable kids ( I am talking about Blacks now.) So the life in poverty in America is basically a life in confinment, although with "TV and running water." That's how the society is set and that's how it operates here; I bet somewhere in Africa where everyone is poor, there is more sense of freedom for everyone in the village with mud huts. In fact I know so, because I grew up in the Soviet Union and as far as my childhood went ( and I was not from a rich family,) - it was far more fulfilling and far more joyful comparably with my son's childhood, who was born and raised in American poverty. At that I've happened to witness everything that this person JS is talking about. The places where the Black kids are growing in US - uggghhhh... scarry places, I'm telling you. Yes, Blacks have every right to complain, it's just I'm pretty sure it will not do anything good or will change anything for this matter.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by Mathguy

P.S. Thanks for the post, it was refreshingly well written and honest.

B.S., It was blatantly racist and idiotic.

[AppOllO1990]

how about this one EDUCATION have any of yall gone to an inner city school

[Nuclear_Art]

Originally Posted by lioninaconcretejungle

Milwaukee too has had a long held reputation as being highly segragated,for a long time it was considered the most segragated city in America.Milwaukee is considered the worst city to be black in America because of imprisonment,unemployment,and white/black income distribution being the widest.Milwaukee is NOT doing much better than birmingham,Birmingham simply has a much higher percentage of Blacks than Milwaukee does.Black poverty,impisonment,unemployment and Ill bet violence rates are higher in Milwaukee than in Birmingham.

Source? Assumptions and hearsay don't count as sources. While there was a Chicago Sun Times article about 7 years ago that made that claim for the metro Milwaukee/Waukesha area, things have changed since then.

A more current source ranks that same metro area as 3rd. But lets get real. Including Waukesha or other burbs with Milwaukee is going to skew numbers. It's going to horribly skew numbers. About the only thing that Milwaukee has in common with Waukesha is that they are both in the state of Wisconsin. Looking at the censusscope website for the white/black dissimilarity index for the city alone buts it lower behind cities such as DC, Houston, Baton Rouge, Chicago, yada, yada, yada.

[pirate_lafitte]

Originally Posted by Nuclear_Art

Source? Assumptions and hearsay don't count as sources. While there was a Chicago Sun Times article about 7 years ago that made that claim for the metro Milwaukee/Waukesha area, things have changed since then.

A more current source ranks that same metro area as 3rd. But lets get real. Including Waukesha or other burbs with Milwaukee is going to skew numbers. It's going to horribly skew numbers. About the only thing that Milwaukee has in common with Waukesha is that they are both in the state of Wisconsin. Looking at the censusscope website for the white/black dissimilarity index for the city alone buts it lower behind cities such as DC, Houston, Baton Rouge, Chicago, yada, yada, yada.

That is something to consider. If you include some of the suburbs, the numbers will differ.

BTW, how is Milwaukee doing now in 2009? It concerns me because this is my father's hometown and in a way I feel a connection to it.

[tinaknutson]

Back to the problems of education, poverty in general, drug/gang use etc...

I was wondering if you guys could direct the focus to possible solutions. myelf and a few other alverno women want to start up a non-profit dealing and addressing issues of poverty in milwaukee. could we address what is already available in milwaukee, elsewhere, and what the greatest needs for a non profit organization in milwaukee would be. I would really appreciate your help, and anyone interested in getting involved

[pirate_lafitte]

Originally Posted by tinaknutson

Back to the problems of education, poverty in general, drug/gang use etc...

I was wondering if you guys could direct the focus to possible solutions. myelf and a few other alverno women want to start up a non-profit dealing and addressing issues of poverty in milwaukee. could we address what is already available in milwaukee, elsewhere, and what the greatest needs for a non profit organization in milwaukee would be. I would really appreciate your help, and anyone interested in getting involved

Your solution is a start. And it isn't the only way either. I think that a trickle down is the solution. The persons who have the skills to start businesses could use their skills to provide jobs for those who are unemployed. That can sow a seed for the future. If people are working and have money to support themselves, they are less likely to rob and steal from others or to do something else.
As for a non-profit organization, I can't think of alot of suggestions, but one thing I can suggest is to start a workshop to teach people marketable skills and to teach people how to start their own businesses. I hope your quest works for you. Your sowing a seed could be a start for Milwaukee's rise.
I have bounced around in my head the idea of the green industry. I am a firm believer that the green industry could work. I don't consider myself a "bleeding heart environmentalist" as some people might describe it, but I do believe that the green collar economy could work for Milwaukee. I have heard that energy bills can be quite high in the Upper Midwest. I figured the use of windmills, solar power, and constructing building with "green" in mind in cooperation to the current energy sources could work in providing jobs and lowering energy bills.