Matt Rothschild here and welcome to another episode of the Wisconsin Forward podcast.
On this one, we're going to be talking about how racism against blacks in Wisconsin affects
our politics.
The history of such racism here is long and ugly.
Before Wisconsin became a state, white settlers brought slaves here, a fact that few people
may know.
I know I didn't know it.
And when Wisconsin state constitution was being drawn up in 1846, the delegates voted
down a resolution to allow blacks to vote, citing some of the most racist stereotypes you've
ever heard.
After the Civil War, Jim Crow came to Wisconsin with widespread discrimination and segregation.
During the Great Migration, the black population exploded in Wisconsin, and after World War
2, Milwaukee became a boom town for black men working in the manufacturing sector.
Still discrimination hit hard, especially in housing in Milwaukee until civil rights
activists in the 1960s marched for 200 nights to force the city council to outlaw it finally.
When the industrialization hit in the late 1970s and 1980s, it devastated the black community
in Milwaukee as the manufacturing sector was decimated, leading to a huge percentage
of unemployed people.
Next forward to the Walker era and Republicans did everything they could to make voting harder
for minorities.
First, by passing the voter ID bill, which civic media's own Todd Alba witnessed up close
and personal.
There was a closed door meeting to discuss what they're going to talk about on the floor.
So no press or anything else.
And Mary Logic, former state senator who was chair of the election committee in the state
Senate at the time stood up and she kind of pounded her finger and she said, hey, we need
to start thinking about what this would mean for places like Milwaukee and the college
campuses.
And of course, it was a louder than loud dog whistle to say, how do we suppress black
and brown votes and college votes who tend not always, but tend to go more democratic?
My boss, former boss, state senator Dale Schultz was the only one who raised his hand,
leaned forward and said, hey, maybe you ought to think about what you just said here.
The effort to suppress the vote continued with the move to how law drop boxes and other
insidious un-American tactics.
To discuss all this, I spoke with Earl Ingram, who hosts the Earl Ingram show on civic media
and with Angela Lang, the executive director of black leaders organizing for communities.
How is racism contaminated or politics here in Wisconsin?
I couldn't answer that question without first giving some backdrop.
So the state of Wisconsin is one of the most segregated states in the entire nation.
It still is, either number one or number two, and I think many people don't realize that.
Black people only make up 5% of the population in the state of Wisconsin.
So when you don't get to see people who look like you, you know, people can draw conclusions
based on what they hear.
And so if you don't ever get to see somebody who looks different than you, you draw these
conclusions based on things you've heard.
And unfortunately, in my 69 years of living, all in the state of Wisconsin, it's frustrating
that we've kind of seen a backslide.
I lived at a time when the Civil Rights struggle took place and there were some gains made.
But now things seem to be reverting back to the way they were.
And I'm really worried and concerned about the younger generation of people of color,
who did not have a Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights struggle to fight for them
that opened the door and paved the way for my generation to be able to live the American
dream.
Now, starting with Walker anyway, there have been a lot of examples of Republicans in
Wisconsin using racism, let's be frank, to try to advance their agenda.
That was true first and foremost with the voter ID bill, where according to Todd Alba,
a specific media who was in the room at the time in the state capital, when he was chief
of staff for a Republican state senator, the other Republican state senators were giddy
that they were going to disenfranchise minority and young voters with voter ID.
Did you see that at the time as explicitly or implicitly a racist move?
Well, you have to understand that I've lived my entire life in the city of Milwaukee and
in the state of Wisconsin, so I see it crystal clear.
And so, you know, I know Scott Walker, I know him personally, Scott Walker used to be
a state representative, he became the county executive in the city of Milwaukee, and before
he became the governor.
And so it was always amazing to me that a guy who didn't have a college degree could rise
to the level that Governor Walker was able to rise to, but Governor Walker played to
a certain segment of people who were in the state at that time.
And then that kind of conservative view of things was gaining ground, Ronald Reagan.
I remember when Ronald Reagan became the president of the United States, and you started
seeing things move in that direction.
And Scott Walker jumped on a wave that was not just in the state of Wisconsin, but was
a national wave.
And so he was able to benefit because there were people who said, we've got to take away
rights of people.
Part of what was so important to my parents, nothing was more important to them than having
the right to vote because they came from the South.
And their parents didn't have a right to vote.
And so the whole thing about gaining the right to vote was like a lifeline to people of
color.
It was the great equalizer.
And so when Scott Walker and other Republicans set up a master plan to take away the rights
of people to vote, a photo ID was never necessary before Scott Walker and other Republicans
concocted that plan a way to stop people from having the right to vote.
Something that I think after you think back about it today, after all those years, just
how sinister that was because they wanted to make sure that they stayed in control and
control meant that as long as we have control over the Senate and Scott Walker in office,
they were able to change laws that made it possible for them to stay in control for the
last 12, 14 years prior to Governor Evers breaking through six years ago.
And following the vote ID law that they passed, they started to do other things too, like
getting rid of drop boxes.
Now drop boxes were very popular prior to them getting rid of them.
And I know during COVID in Milwaukee, there were like 16 drop boxes all across the city.
And then they made this move to get rid of drop boxes both legislatively and then in
the courts.
What effect did that have or what was behind that, do you think?
You know, the same thing.
You have to understand at the same time, truth and sentencing, three strikes are out.
No parole came into play.
So if you wound up, you know, having committed a crime, your voting rights were taken away.
The drop boxes that were in our community that worked for people who have trouble getting
around the conditions that exist in the city of Milwaukee, where many people don't own
cars, stable cars that can get them, especially elderly people, the idea of the drop box that
worked well, excuse me, the drop boxes themselves, there's nothing more safe than the drop boxes.
Nobody can get access to them, they're, you know, they're canned to a pill box in Germany
during a D-Day.
There's no way to get access to those.
The only people who have access to those are the people who work.
But somebody came up with a lie that said that anybody with the key can get into those
lock boxes.
There was no proof.
There was no proof needed.
And when you had control over the legislature, as Republicans there, they were able to change
that.
And so the State Supreme Court, that they also controlled, was able to say, we're going
to do away with the drop boxes.
The great thing, though, is that there's a Democratic control, a State Supreme Court.
And for all, you know, reasons in the world, the drop boxes are going to be coming back.
That's their fear.
We don't want to make it easy for them to vote.
People with drop boxes and early voting is something that works.
And early voting is open to everybody.
Democrats, Republicans, it doesn't matter whether you're in Rhineland or if you're in Milwaukee,
you can vote early.
But they even vilified that because they believe people were cheating, which has never
been the truth.
And they shortened the period that you could do early voting.
So they were, they were getting it at, you know, six ways to Sunday here to restrict the
right to vote.
When you mentioned three strikes, you're out in the incarceration problem, which is extreme
here.
And the racial disparities extreme here in Milwaukee, it has a voting rights component, though.
Because if you're convicted as a felon here in Wisconsin, you can't vote.
You can't vote even when you walk out that prison gate if you're still on paper, as they
call it, if you're still on parole or extended supervision.
And a lot of states in this country, including Illinois, you can vote as soon as you're out
of jail, as soon as you're out of prison.
And yet here in Wisconsin, there's something like 60,000 people who are who've served their
time and are members of the community paying their taxes and still they can't vote.
How disgraceful is that?
Well, you know, all people have to do is look, you know, to the west of us, a state called
Minnesota, which does not have anywhere near the draconian laws that they have in Wisconsin.
You know, Minnesota has been able to be fair and equitable to people.
And so they've got less than one half or one third of the people locked up that we still
have locked up in the state of Wisconsin.
So there's something going on inside of this state that needs to be exercised.
And when you can get a felony for possessing crack cocaine, let's think about that.
The way it was set up in the state of Wisconsin is if you had two vials of crack cocaine,
over $10, and you were on the street corner selling that, boom, you got a felony.
And you could have done that at 18 years old.
Guess what?
Locked you out of ever voting again.
And back in the 80s when crack cocaine was ravishing our neighborhoods and our communities,
and people felt like they didn't have any other option to do anything other than sell drugs.
So many wound up going down that path and being disenfranchised.
They've lived, they've corrected their lives, they've corrected their problems, they're
upstanding citizens, and they still have that on their record, and they're still shackled
with that.
Those things aren't accidental.
Those things have been done purposely to again disenfranchise Americans, whether they're
black or white, they're still American citizens.
And so that's the reason behind all those things.
I wanted to get your reaction to a comment that Bob Spindell made after the 2022 election.
Bob Spindell is a member, a Republican member, of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
He is also one of the 10 notorious false electors from Wisconsin, and he's a Republican activist.
And he, after the 2022 election, was bragging in an email to fellow Republicans in the Milwaukee
area saying, we did a great job in suppressing the vote of African Americans and Latinos.
Didn't that shock you?
Well, as I stated before, if I sneezed too hard, I'm going to be 70 years old.
So I've lived in America my entire life, I've lived in Wisconsin my entire life, and
I've experienced some things that may make me cynical.
But the truth of the matter is it does not surprise me because things on the one hand have improved,
but on the other hand, they've gotten worse.
And so the fact that there are people who will openly say those things in spite of the struggles
that took place, and the people who lost their lives to fight, to make America equitable,
to American citizens who only because of their birth, were treated in a different manner
and continue to be treated in that manner, it doesn't surprise me.
Because unfortunately, there's people who live in this country who still believe that
things should be unequal.
And I do think when elected officials can outwardly make those kinds of statements in the
open, you know, used to make those kind of statements under the cloak of darkness.
But the fact that they're comfortable enough to make them out in the open is a testament
to how far we've fallen away from justice and righteousness in this nation.
I also talked about Bob Spindell with Angela Lang of Black Leaders of Organizing in Communities.
Here's what she had to say on that subject.
They said the choir parts out loud.
I have been organizing for quite some time, 2007 to be exact.
And I remember one of the big things on campus that we were organizing around were things
like photo ID and making sure that our student IDs were compliant if a photo ID law went
into effect.
And this was in like 2010-ish area and it feels like now where we're, you know, having
the same conversation years later, again, going back to the gap, there's a lot of gas
lighting in politics.
But I remember saying, hey, these are the unintended consequences of a photo ID law.
And they're like, no, no, no, no, that's not what it is.
And that's how you know it's exactly what it was.
One, years later, they put it in writing.
And two, if I'm writing policy and I've heard directly impacted people say, hey, this
is actually racist upon implementation.
If you actually meant to solve whatever issue you're trying to solve in good faith, you
would say, hey, didn't realize that help me go back to the drawing board and find something
that doesn't have those effects.
And obviously that never happens.
And so people like Bob Spindell, I'm just going to say it.
I've said it before.
All of our partners needs to go firebob.org or dot com.
Firebob.com, firebob.org, but Bob needs to go.
I think it is wholly inappropriate that a Wisconsin election official, who conducts
our elections, brags about turnout being down in the black and brown community, knowing
that there's intentional voter suppression, taking credit for it, and then also being
a fake elector.
I have zero confidence in your ability to administer elections in the state of Wisconsin, point
plank period.
And it is long overdue for him to step aside.
And he keeps saying that he will not.
And so we're going to keep being a pain and a thorn in his side then.
We'll hear more from Angela Lang in a few minutes, but I want to return now to the conversation
I was having with Earl Ingram.
Economically, what role has the industrialization played for the black community in Milwaukee
and the rest of the state?
Well you'd have to understand that my dad in his generation came up north from the south
and wound up going out west because of the industry.
Coming out of World War II, the United States was the only nation that still had everything
intact.
We weren't bombed.
We didn't have to rebuild infrastructure.
So we were able to produce everything that we needed.
We produced.
We were a manufacturing hub.
And so we didn't have to go outside to China if we wanted washing machines and sewing
machines, cars, everything was manufactured inside of this country, which meant middle
class jobs, opportunities for people to live the American dream existed for people who
couldn't read and write.
And so people could come up here and wind up working one job as I did for 34 years right
out of high school.
I went to an automobile factory and worked 34 years, wound up with the pension.
Milwaukee had the highest standard of living for blacks in the entire United States during
my lifetime.
And now today we arguably are either one of the worst or in the top 10 of the worst places
in the entire United States for people of color to live.
And the standard of living has also wound up in diminishing to the degree that young people
who are graduating today don't have an opportunity, those, especially those who aren't ready to
go to college to even be qualified in many instances to get a job in McDonald's.
And that's because the industrial jobs fled Milwaukee.
Yeah, yeah, that's correct.
When you were talking about the integrated neighborhood that you've been living in for
26 years, a question came to mind and that is when you were in manufacturing, or you
were a union member, I assume you were a union member.
And unions were one place where people of different races and backgrounds would get together.
To what extent do you think the decline of unionism has hurt the ability for us in Wisconsin
and in this country to get over our racist hang-ups?
Well, see now you threw a fastball right down the middle.
I'm a fastball hitter.
It was back in the 1950s, 35% of Americans were in unionized jobs.
The American dream came because of unions.
It wasn't the benevolence of companies that companies were going to do the right thing.
People were organized and by, you know, the thing that I loved about union so much, and
I'm a union guy, I spent 34 years in the union, you know, all for one and one for all.
You can't possibly understand how the role that the unions played in creating the middle
class that spurred my life in many, like mine.
Today unions, private unions are probably down to 6%.
Private unions are 10%.
It's not a coincidence that the fact that the middle class has died or is dying is tied
into the fact that they've destroyed the unions.
And so when you talk about the unions and the fact that it didn't matter whether we were
black or white, was their racism and bigotry still there absolutely?
But what the people did understand is when it was time to negotiate, we negotiated as
one.
There was no black, there was no white.
We were all one because we knew the importance of that union and what the union was able
to do for us to make it possible for us to send our kids to college to save some money
and to do those things without a college degree.
Walker dropping the bomb on unions in Wisconsin, did that surprise you and what effect does
that have?
It did not surprise me because Walker, I think we're giving Walker too much credit.
So what Walker did was, you know, Ronald Reagan and others began that whole slide.
And so Scott Walker was able to just, you know, drag on the coattails of those who created
those things.
But you asked me, Scott Walker came up with something called, it's a simple term where
you don't have to be a part of the union right toward.
He came up with right to work, what's right to work?
What right to work means, hey, I don't want to pay union dues.
But guess what?
You're still going to represent me.
At the end of that, what does that do?
It destroys the unions because they can't financially do the things that they needed to do.
What was the purpose of it?
What was the root reason and cause for destroying unions because unions for the most part would
vote Democrat and unions would put money into campaigns of Democrats.
They destroyed the unions for political reasons.
And it always amazes me when I hear people say, well, the unions were no good, the unions,
and I remember guys who I used to work with.
Why do unions no good?
They're for guys and lazy guys.
And I'm like, do you understand why you have six weeks of pay vacation?
Do you think it's because you're such a great guy?
Do you understand why you have a pension?
People before you fought for those rights.
Unions came into this country not very easily.
There was some bloodbaths that took place before the unions came into existence.
So they wiped the unions out.
Not only did it destroy the middle class, the lives that people had that worked in the unions,
but the unions also were able to keep the salaries and benefits of non-union places up.
Because what the unions got for the most part, if the other businesses wanted to have a
chance to get some employee, they had to total line.
And so once they did away with all those things, it's not a coincidence.
And if you hear even today, or the Republicans talking about how terrible the unions are.
And I've always said to them, you know, let me tell you why you're such hypocrites.
You destroyed police and fire unions.
You didn't touch.
Well, so you destroyed teachers unions.
Well, you know, the teachers, their fat cats and, you know.
But police and fire, well, we can't.
And I said, this is Scott Walker.
You didn't say anything about the police and fire.
Well, we just thought that if we did that, it would probably create something just ridiculous.
It showed exactly what these people did, what was in their minds, and the outcome of it we see today.
Let's look at the 2022 election, and especially Mandela Burns' race.
The racist campaigns that were leveled against him, especially, well, by Johnson himself,
and also the outside groups, funded to the Hilt, to the $230 million by some of the richest right-wingers in Wisconsin,
and Hendrix, Richard Eline, saying on air, and I saw these commercials,
do you know who Mandela Burns is?
He's not like you.
He's different.
How do you react to those ads?
Well, first of all, I know Mandela Burns will.
I think the first time Mandela Barnes ran for a state representative on a different radio station that I was on,
he announced his running on my show.
The second time Mandela Barnes decided to run for a state senate, he announced on my show.
When Mandela Barnes decided to run for Lieutenant Governor, he announced on my show.
So I know him well.
And if Mandela did not grow up in the heart of the central city,
Mandela Barnes is as vanilla a person as that could possibly be.
Did it surprise me that they levied those racial?
No, not at all.
But again, I've lived in America my entire life.
None of those things surprised me.
Part for the course.
And so, you know, the fact that Mandela Barnes was winning and winning handily most of that time.
There was only one other thing to do.
And that was to pull out the race car.
And that was happening right out in the open.
Right?
And it worked because people wanted to believe that.
Right?
That if, you know, nobody can convince you of something that you don't want to believe.
And I think it does point to the fact that again, we live in such a segregated state that people don't get to see.
People of color.
And then they were led to believe that these people are going to come, these criminals are coming for you.
Right? I mean, this is what they lead people to believe.
But if you only make up 5% of the population and 60% of people of color are in the city of Milwaukee.
If you add in Racine and Kenosha and Madison, 80% of the people of color are right here in the corner.
And the rest of the state is segregated.
I also spoke with Angela Lang about racism in Wisconsin and the racist attacks against Mandela Barnes.
Here's a snippet of our conversation.
Angela Lang, tell me how racism affects politics in Wisconsin.
I think it's a huge underlying factor that I think due to our Midwest nice, we don't always want to actually address head on.
We don't want to label some microaggressions as racism sometimes.
And I think the most important in recent memory is the candidacy for US Senate Mandela Barnes as well as Judge Everett Mitchell in trying to be a Supreme Court justice.
There also were macroaggressions in that Mandela.
Oh, yeah. I mean, they darkened his skin on a mailer.
And there was a clip of a shooting and they like circle somebody and then had his name and proximity implying he was the shooter.
And I can only feel for him and how frustrating it must have been to have to deal with that.
But also as like a human being and as a black man, your response had to be incredibly calculated to not feed into angry black man's aerial types in the state like Wisconsin.
It was great to hear from Angela Lang. Now we're going to go back to my conversation with Earl Ingram.
And we're going to be talking about Milwaukee and what it means to him and why they're all these misperceptions about Milwaukee.
Milwaukee, when you're outside Milwaukee, the word Milwaukee is used by a lot of people just as a code word.
I don't go to Milwaukee or why should Milwaukee get all this money or you know just using Milwaukee is a synonym for something derogatory.
How does that make you feel as a lifelong Milwaukee?
Well, you know, Milwaukee is the economic engine of the state.
It doesn't matter how hard people want to try to move it to Madison, Milwaukee.
Milwaukee is the economic engine always has been always will be.
Anybody who's visited Milwaukee in the last five years will attest to one of the most beautiful downtowns.
Milwaukee is a beautiful safe city.
And so because people are led to believe something different for heaven's sake.
If Milwaukee was what everybody says it is, all those millions of people who come to summer fest, who come to the brewer games, who come to all of the fireworks and all of the things that Milwaukee offers wouldn't be here.
All of the students at Marquette, all of the students at UWM, all of the students at MSOE and their parents who send them here.
Anybody who's been downtown and looked at how beautiful and safe and clean it is.
I would say to those who have been misled, take a look at it yourself.
Come into Milwaukee, look around for heaven's sake.
First time we've got cruise ships docking and coming into Milwaukee.
Milwaukee was everything that everybody says it is.
Those cruise ships wouldn't be coming here as much as they're doing it.
Trump, why don't you tell me what effect racism had in Trump winning this election on November 5th?
So as a 70-year-old black man who grew up through the civil rights struggle, who watched my father, who never saw equality and justice, a grandfather who never saw equality and justice.
I'm never going to see equality and justice, my sons are never going to see equality and justice.
And so it's clear, as I speak with blacks across the nation, my friends that I have and death thoughts and what they feel, they clearly feel that at the root of this was racism.
In the fact that many people voted for Donald Trump for no other reason other than Donald Trump is going to try to make things the way they once were.
And when white people can control things in this country and not be ashamed ashamed of it, they could say whatever they wanted to say, they could act in whatever manner they wanted to act in.
And nobody would say a thing during my father's lifetime, that was the way it was.
And so even during some of my lifetime, that's the way it was.
And so some people grew accustomed to that. As things changed over the last 40, 40, 50 years or so, you start seeing some accountability for what transpired in this nation and opportunity started to arise.
The equality was starting to work his way through the system, affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion.
You can't tell me that people who voted for Donald Trump, I hear them constantly saying, I don't like Donald Trump. I did not like him. There's nothing about the person that I liked. Well, I'll say this.
I don't vote for people who I don't like. I don't know if anybody else character is the number one thing. If I know you are a person who lacks character, even if I don't like the other person.
I guess what side of the fence, I'm going to come down on. I'm going to vote for the person who I believe has character who is concerned about the impact and what's right in a society.
People who voted for Donald Trump, who said they voted for Donald Trump because they couldn't trust Kamala Harris. She didn't say anything of consequence. Well, for heaven's sakes.
We know what Donald Trump is. We saw him four years ago. Anybody who doesn't know who Donald Trump is and what Donald Trump was going to do and they voted for him. Anyway, you know, it's got to be something other than you didn't like Kamala Harris.
Well, there's something behind that. What kind of a human being can look at another human being and think that that person is less than human. Well, Donald Trump is one of those kinds of people.
And I'm not saying that the people who supported him that way. The man birds of a feather flock together. There's there's 50% of white Americans who didn't go down that path. So I can't say all white people. I like the ones who voted for Donald Trump because they're not. But the ones who did.
There's no question about the reason why they voted for Donald Trump. Clearly they have a problem with people of color coming across the border.
And so that's another one of the issues that, you know, made this where it is not to mention the the the racist overtones and all the commercials that were put out.
They weren't hidden. They were out in the in the in the in the light. All of that stuff used to be done in the dark when I was a young man. You didn't dare say those things. They put it on national television. These things were out for everybody to see racist tropes.
So I'll say this last thing. So as a black man who lives in this country is living in here all these years. Man, I'll tell you something. America has they've got a long way to go. A long way to go for equity justice and fairness. They failed this time around. Let's see what they do the next time around.
Lastly, hope. What gives you hope? You're getting close to 70 here. You've been doing radio for a while. You worked in manufacturing for a long time. You've seen the country in the state change a lot and sometimes for the worst. What gives you hope?
Well, you know, first off, I've been married to the same woman for 43 years. And I'm a treatment foster parent. And I've been a treatment foster parent my life and I for 21 years for a totally disabled child who's now an adult who's totally disabled who still requires 24 hour care.
I'm a servant. I'm a believer that there's something good in everybody and that if if I don't have any hope, then, you know, what was the purpose of my life?
So every day of my life that I wake up, my goal is am I making the difference in somebody's life. Sometimes it only takes a kind word.
Life is difficult. It's not easy. Nobody ordained life to be easy. I don't care how much money you have or how much fame you reach.
Your life is not going to be separated from the evil consequences of what happens in life. So since we all have that in common, let's focus on the things that we have in common and and use the time we have left to improve somebody else's life.
If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be getting up before like every morning and having the dialogue and conversation that I have with the listening audience.
I think that I have something to value to say and I'm blessed that civic media has given me a vehicle to say that, but I relish every second of every minute of every hour of every day that I get a chance to talk to the people in the state of Wisconsin and beyond.
So yeah, I'm just honored to have and privilege to even sit here and have this dialogue with you.
Well, the pleasure is all mine, Earl Ingram. Thanks for being on this episode. Thank you.
I'd like to thank Earl Ingram once again and Angela Lang for being my guest on this episode. And of course, I'd like to thank you for listening.
In my next podcast, I'm thrilled to be talking with Jim Santel, the host of Amicus, a law review right here on civic media.
He'll be delving into the three worst U.S. Supreme Court cases in the last 15 years. That's Citizens United, the DOBS decision and the horrible immunity ruling and what we can do about them.
He also has some insightful things to say about our newly transformed Wisconsin Supreme Court. So you won't want to miss it.
I'm Matt Rothschild and thanks for listening to the Wisconsin Forward podcast on the civic media network.
