“Those communities are still building single-family homes in places where people can develop generational wealth, which they can’t do when they’re renting. That’s my biggest concernquite frankly. Apartments don’t build generational wealth.”
That’s one big reason Bauman thinks the economic inequality gap “hasn’t improved one bit” in the Madison area.
The Rev. Alex Gee’s “Justified Anger” essay is a powerful document for exploring the underpinnings of that racial dichotomy. Triggered in part by the singular Black-male experience of being wrongly pulled over by police in his own church parking lot, Gee says his anger is not with individuals but with ignorance, prejudice and systems of oppression.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway calls Gee a “visionary” for how he parses Madison’s racial politics. Steve Goldberg, who ran the well-regarded CUNA Mutual Foundation for 13 years before retiring in 2016, credits Gee’s Justified Anger initiative and the “Race To Equity “ reports for highlighting the gross disparities in the lives of white and Black residents of Dane County.
……
That targeting the cops is mostly performative politics to rally the team rather than substantive politics to change the game.
Education reformer Kaleem Caire, the founder of One City Schools, had the temerity to venture into this thicket in 2019 when, aghast at students cursing out School Board members over stationing SROs in the schools, he posted an essay that begins:
“I have had enough! Last evening, I sat in a Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education meeting only to listen yet again to a number of young people in middle and high school curse out and demean Madison School Board members in front of an audience of 200 people, and do so to the applause of other adults in the audience. I thought I was in ‘The Twilight Zone.’”
While Caire praised the students for “articulating their ideas and concerns with depth and precision,” he warned them that the power of their words is “lost and undermined by their foul, abrasive and derogatory language.”
This caused a stir.
Four UW-Madison academicians who, like Caire, are African American fired off an unrepentant response to the website Madison 365. They accused Caire of practicing “respectability politics” by telling young Black students they should “stay in our place and to push for justice in ways that suit our oppressors.”
Quite the charge. Caire, whose advocacy history includes a stint with Milwaukee civil rights titan Howard Fuller, brushes off the criticism. “I’m teaching our kids not to cuss people out,” he says. “Respectability politics? I’m sorry. Maybe you don’t like your elders, but I think there is something to learn from them.”
Caire has had his share of setbacks over the years, including lagging student achievement at One City and premature expansion into a high school program. Criticism has come his way. He says he can deal with it. In fact, Caire says he has no problem saying all local schools and nonprofits need to show more accountability.
“The Madison school system will never get better if it doesn’t have somebody pushing it,” he says. The fact that so many incumbent School Board members are returned to office without a challenge “is what you would expect in a system … where 90% of the Black kids can barely read,” he adds.
Chalk it up to the collateral damage of our stifled public debate.
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David Blaska commentary:
Questions we never expected to see askedin The Capital Times: “Progressives have full control of the city and its schools. Is it for the better?” Figures that it is a freelance journalist, not a CT staffer, posing the question — Marc Eisen, formerly editor of Isthmus
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Meanwhile:
The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
