About Milwaukee (Washington, Lena, Wells: fit in, crime, find a job)

[brewtown12]

Originally Posted by chi town freddie

The community continues to make strides in racial relations.

.

lol.What strides?

[43north87west]

Originally Posted by James Bower

I had never lived in a place where my car got busted, and someone stole junk from my backyard. This city is dirty, it smells bad, there is garbage everywhere, out of control poverty, violent, and the job market here is in bad shape.

Some parts aren't that great. Other parts are 3/4 million dollar houses and no crime, save for the occasional broken car window. But it is still a city.

One has to take into account many factors when deciding to live in a city or a suburb.

Suburbs have the idyllic, safe, secure feel. Crime is something on TV. The police mainly watch for traffic violators and suspicious vehicles. They are also sleepy and require more driving. To me they feel more isolated. Cities are the opposite. Urban, more accessible, more likely to have city type problems. What you have described is no different than some areas of any city I've lived in, and Milwaukee has been the smallest. I would take the smell of industry that is common in Bay View or that area, over the smell of sewage in NYC and Chicago, especially in the very large population centers, and especially in hot weather.

The Upper East Side of Milwaukee is not smelly, has low crime rates, and no garbage floating around. There are car break-ins periodically. But it is easily walkable, is very safe, is located right next to Lake Michigan, and doesn't have the sleepy feel of the North Shore suburbs. There are people who would not consider living anywhere within city limits either. It depends on expectations and lifestyles.

[Milwaukee Ronnie]

Originally Posted by James Bower

I can’t wait to move out of here and never come back.

Bye!

(Ten characters??!)

[Milwaukee Ronnie]

Originally Posted by brewtown12

lol.What strides?

I agree with Chi Town Freddie that Milwaukee is improving in race relations. We clearly have a long way to go, no doubt. But look where we have been. There was a time when you would rarely if ever see Blacks and Whites mingling in public places. These days there are an increasing number of bars, restaurants and nightspots in downtown Milwaukee where it's common to see all kinds of people. In 2007 I can go out and have a drink with a friend of another race and it's not like me or them are the "only ones" of our race in a particular place. It was not like that before. Sure, there are still many places that are basically "all Black," or "all White, or "all Latin" but places that serve a truly mixed clientele are growing in number.

At no point have we had more African Americans in positions of real influence in the city. The common council president (whom some would argue has more power than the Mayor, under our system of government) is Black, as is the County Sherrif. The City has a growing Black and Latino entrepreneural class. Look at MLK Drive, for instance: it's doing much better as a commercial area than it was 10 years ago, and most of the new businesses you see there are Black-owned.

And the city has gotten more diverse over the past decade. We are no longer a "black and white" city. We have a large and growing Latino and Asian population. This helps.

Clearly we've got some major work to do. While there are neighborhoods like Riverwest, Sherman Park and Washington Heights, places where many different kinds of people live, the city is still segregated by race and income. We have racial disparities here that are some of the worst among large cities.
But I have hope we can address these disparities. I have hope because while the city's governmental and business leadership has been asleep at the switch for most of this decade, there remains in this city a lot of people working their tails off to help bring opportunity to everyone.

[brewtown12]

Originally Posted by Milwaukee Ronnie

I agree with Chi Town Freddie that Milwaukee is improving in race relations.

I disagree.Milwaukee is not improving on race relations,I dont care if some blacks mingle with whites at bars.The disparities between whites and blacks here are horrible,in everything from jobs,housing,you know,the stuff that really matters to a persons quality of life.Blacks still have less than half the wealth of whites in wisconsin.blacks still make up over 45% of its prisons while being only 5% of the state.The majority of black males are still unemployed in Milwaukee,with the vast majority of the rest being underemployed.Its a mess, and blacks clearly are second class citizens here.Its as if we dont exist and are not apart of America.And I dont see it changing anytime soon.

[Nuclear_Art]

Originally Posted by brewtown12

I disagree.Milwaukee is not improving on race relations,I dont care if some blacks mingle with whites at bars.The disparities between whites and blacks here are horrible,in everything from jobs,housing,you know,the stuff that really matters to a persons quality of life.Blacks still have less than half the wealth of whites in wisconsin.

Are we talking about the city of Milwaukee or Wisconsin as a whole? The city of Milwaukee is pretty well integrated. Step out of the city limits and I would agree with you. Shorewood and Brookfield are not Milwaukee. Inside the city there is a sizable black middle class in areas you probably never set foot along Sherman Blvd, in old North Milwaukee, and on the northwest side.

There is black poverty, there is white poverty, and there is latino poverty. But in Milwaukee I would doubt any assertion that the majority of blacks are poor. In Milwaukee there isn't a lot of disparity between whites and blacks. All too often people compare the suburbs with the city and make unfair comparisons. I think you should revise your comments to say that the suburbs of Milwaukee are not improving on race relations and not the city itself. That would more clearly reflect reality.

[brewtown12]

Originally Posted by Nuclear_Art

Are we talking about the city of Milwaukee or Wisconsin as a whole? The city of Milwaukee is pretty well integrated. Step out of the city limits and I would agree with you. Shorewood and Brookfield are not Milwaukee. Inside the city there is a sizable black middle class in areas you probably never set foot along Sherman Blvd, in old North Milwaukee, and on the northwest side.

There is black poverty, there is white poverty, and there is latino poverty. But in Milwaukee I would doubt any assertion that the majority of blacks are poor. In Milwaukee there isn't a lot of disparity between whites and blacks. All too often people compare the suburbs with the city and make unfair comparisons. I think you should revise your comments to say that the suburbs of Milwaukee are not improving on race relations and not the city itself. That would more clearly reflect reality.

How many blacks live in Shorewood or Brookefield?Lets cut the crap,very few whites live in Milwaukees inner city neighborhoods and very few minorities live in most of Milwaukee's suburbs.The vast majority of blacks come nowhere near to being able to afford to live in these areas even if they wanted to.

I live in one of the nieghborhoods you claim that I probably have never stepped foot in.Clearly you are out of touch with reality if you think Milwaukee is intergrated and that there isnt alot of diaparity between blacks and whites.At least 80%,(well over 90% in some schools) of the student body at most high schools in the city are minority.Studies have proven that blacks in milwaukee's labor market make 46 cents for every dollar made by a whites.The majority of black males are unemployed in the city.The rest are for the most part underemployed,confined to low wage or temporary jobs.Nearly half of black children in the city are raised in households that live below the poverty level.Upwards of 70% live in female headed households.This fuels the fact that blacks make up only 5% of the state and over 45% of its prisons.Blacks also make up 80% of the homicide victims in the city,and on day the Milwaukee county jail is packed with blacks.Clearly this is nowhere near the racial utopia you seem to imagine.

[brewtown12]

But the numbers also reveal a continuing and significant gap between the prosperity of whites and Wisconsin's minority communities.
Moderator cut: do not post copyrighted articles

Racial Gap in Pay Remains Sharp in Milwaukee, Census Shows - HireDiversity.com

Even so, black households in the Milwaukee area on
the average earned 49 cents for every dollar earned
by whites by the end of the decade...
Moderator cut: do not post copyrighted articles

http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/o...ntOL092502.pdf

The report said blacks in metropolitan Milwaukee were 5.6 times more likely than whites to be rejected for a mortgage last year. The Latino mortgage rejection rate was almost 2.9 times higher than denials for whites.

JS Online: Income fuels mortgage gap

Milwaukee had the highest black unemployment rate of the major cities surveyed in 2002 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau also found that 59 percent of Milwaukee’s black males 16 and older were idle, and that the city’s black unemployment rate was more than three times its white unemployment rate (

http://www.votemarkgreen.com/atf/cf/...E%20AGENDA.PDF

[brewtown12]

Yet another study finds that racial discrimination is alive and well in the hiring process, and it's keeping black men in metro Milwaukee on the unemployment rolls.

The study offers this fictional scenario:

A young, white, male high school graduate with a felony conviction applies in person for entry level jobs as a driver, a dishwasher, a laborer, warehouse worker and production worker that are advertised in the newspaper and admits to employers that he served 18 months in prison for possession of cocaine with intent to sell.

A young black man with similar education, work history and style of presentation, but with no criminal record, applies for the same jobs.

Who do you think is more likely to be called back?

If you picked the white man with the felony conviction, you guessed right.

This study offers evidence that discrimination remains a major factor in the economic lives of black men, and highlights the fear and misunderstanding of black males that permeate the local job market.

Devah Pager, a sociologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., sent equally matched pairs of testers - two black and two white - to apply for low-skilled jobs at 350 places of employment in the Milwaukee area and found that white ex-offenders were more likely to be called back for an interview than black applicants who had no criminal record.

The study's findings would surprise few African-Americans in this city, who know from experience that this kind of discrimination exists in the job market. Research shows that white Americans, however, have been led to think that direct, racial discrimination of this nature has become less of a problem in our society

Study Shows How Deeply Black Men Face Discrimination In Hiring

[brewtown12]

Originally Posted by Nuclear_Art

There is black poverty, there is white poverty, and there is latino poverty.

yes but the amount of blacks(and latinos) in poverty,percentage wise,is much,much higher then the amount of whites.Thus making your comment,which seems to pretend that ''all is equal'' inaccurate and ignorant.