Wisconsin State Capitol
Madison, Wisconsin. You may have heard of my hometown, as it's been in the headlines a lot over the last couple years, mostly because it's the state capital, and we have a governor who, isn't exactly a popular guy in progressive circles. That being said, the latest news out of Madison is not good, and it has nothing to do with our esteemed governor. On Friday, March 6, a young man was shot and killed by a police officer. We know the young man was black, and the officer was white. We know very little else about the shooting.
As a white male, I will never understand exactly what it's like to be in a minority. I do my best to treat people equally; however, I can never fully comprehend what the black community here in Madison is going through at this time, or any other time. Even though Madison is a very liberal city, we do have our share of racists, and racist incidents.
We know that the young man had an arrest in his past, we know the officer had been involved in a shooting once before. Neither of those things should define either man and are unrelated to this shooting. What matters is that one man is dead, and another, regardless of the outcome of the investigation, will be haunted by the events of that night for the rest of his life, and will likely never be able to work as a police officer again.
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Some of you will say, "But, yeah, the cop is alive." Yes, he's alive—but that does not change the outcome of this situation. A young man is still dead, and the officer's life has been forever changed. Two families have been impacted by this tragedy.
Madison, and Wisconsin as a whole, is not without its problems when it comes to race. Based on census data, Wisconsin is 88 percent white, and 6.5 percent black. According to a 2013 UW-Milwaukee study (pdf), as a percentage of total state population, white males make up 1.2 percent of the prison/jail inmates, black males make up 12.8 percent of prison/ jail inmates, making Wisconsin the worst state in the nation when it comes to incarceration rates for minorities.
Dane County, where Madison is located, is 86.4 percent white, and 5.4 percent black. A 2013 study, A Race to Equity, found that:
African-American adults were arrested at a rate more than eight times that of whites in 2012, higher than the black-white arrest ratio of 4 to 1 for the rest of the state and 2.5 to 1 for the country. In 2012, black men made up 43 percent of the new adult prison placements in Dane County ....
Wisconsin is also the home of the
worst school achievement gap in the nation. Just five years ago in the Madison Metropolitan School District,
just five black and 13 Hispanic graduating seniors in the district were deemed ready for college.
My hometown has a lot of problems, and there are no easy answers. This hit home this past Monday night while I was attending the all-city high school wrestling banquet with my son. One of his senior teammates, a team captain, is African American, a young man with a good head on his shoulders. He'd attended the peaceful protests at the state capitol and at the city-county building earlier in the day. He was having a difficult time processing all of the information, and the events that happened March 6. For the first time in my life, I felt helpless. He was talking about many of the things discussed in this post—the high incarceration rate of black males, how black males are more likely to be shot and killed by police than their white counterparts. What could I say to him? What could I do to take away his pain? I am still at a loss as to what I can do to make a difference.
Madison, while liberal, is not the paradise we would like it to be. There are pockets of deep poverty around the city, we have a burgeoning gang problem, and we need to face the race divide we have in this city. The recent shooting did not make this any easier; however, our police chief, Mike Koval, is trying to set the right tone:
Reconciliation cannot begin without my stating "I am sorry," and I don't think I can say this enough. I am sorry. I hope that, with time, Tony's family and friends can search their hearts to render some measure of forgiveness.
Certainly, this will not take place soon given the circumstances. It may take some time for this loop to close but I pray that it will, in fact, close.
On Monday evening, coming home from the all-city high school wrestling banquet, driving down Gammon Road on Madison's west side, a Madison police officer had a car pulled over across from Elver Park. The lights from the squad car were almost blinding, and the officer was shining a flashlight into the face of a young black man in the driver's seat. I have no idea why the young man was pulled over, whether he ran a red light or was speeding, or if it was something else. I can only hope that he was not pulled over because of the color of his skin.
I weep for my city, and can only hope that we, as a community, can find our way from here.