Below is a transcript of episode three of By Every Measure, Radio Milwaukee’s new podcast exploring systemic racism in various sectors of Milwaukee, looking closely at how those systems were formed and how they can – and need – to be changed.
Tarik Moody:
Welcome back to By Every Measure. This is Tarik Moody. On this episode, we're going to talk about another systemic disparity that has been baked into the Black experience for decades, racism and housing, the rampant discrimination that kept Black people from owning property, renting homes, living where they wanted to live. It's especially bad in Milwaukee, not just the city itself, but all the suburbs around it. We have the most segregated metro area in the nation, in the entire nation. You don't just become the most segregated without years of policies. And we're going to show you just some of the levers that were pooled over time to create the segregation we see today, in Milwaukee and countless other cities like it.
Tarik Moody:
So if you're listening, Milwaukee, this topic has probably already rung a bell in your mind. When you think about fair housing, you probably think about 1967 and the famous Fair Housing marches that occurred in Milwaukee streets for 200 consecutive nights, led by the NAACP youth commandos-
NAACP Youth Commando:
It's my right to protest. I feel like protesting. I'm going to protest. Do you understand?
Tarik Moody:
Who were a group of about 250 young Black men, teenagers really, who organized, mobilized, protected demonstrators. They marched from the North Side of Milwaukee to the South, over the 16th Street Viaduct. This audio is from the UWM Library's Archive, originally gathered by WTMJ and Journal Broadcast Group. UWM, by the way, has carefully archived Milwaukee's Fair Housing marches on its website.
Tarik Moody:
Waiting for them on the south end of that bridge was an angry mob of White people waving the same Confederate flags you see today, hurling racial slurs and beer bottles. A handful of people died, and more than a thousand were injured. Protests went on for six months. The commandos teamed up with a White Catholic priest.
Fr. James Groppi:
We know what the attitude of the people is on the South Side, but we want a fair housing law.
Tarik Moody:
You might know his name as Father James Groppi.
Fr. James Groppi:
Well, for heaven's sake, apparently there isn't any leadership in the White community, because those people are going to church every Sunday. And I can't understand how they can go to church where they're supposed to be learning the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which is love and brotherhood, and then come out there and call people niggers and Black bastards, and wave that Confederate flag and chant, "We want slaves," and everything else. And then the flag ... brothers over in Vietnam, dying for them.
Tarik Moody:
Meanwhile on the City Council, trailblazing Alderwoman Vel R. Phillips fought to pass a fair housing ordinance, one that would make racial discrimination illegal in Milwaukee.
Ald. Vel R. Phillips:
Nobody is free until everybody is free. And we intend to march, all of us, until we get just some of the basic freedoms that are ours.
Tarik Moody:
It took six years, and it was a battle. But the city eventually passed one in 1968. It was a dramatic chapter of our history.
Ald. Vel R. Phillips:
If ever a matter demanded the urgent attention and forthright action of this common council, this is it. Gentlemen, the time is now. Thank you.
Tarik Moody:
But systemic racism in housing goes way further back than that, can be traced all the way back to 1865, with Special Fields Order Number 15, also known as 40 acres and a mule, where 400,000 acres of land was promised to newly-freed slaves. The order was overturned by President Andrew Johnson in the fall later that year. And at the same time, the Homestead Act, signed by Lincoln, gave land to 1.6 million White families, citizens and immigrants, while only between 4000 and 5500 Black families received land from that same act. And that was according to historian and scholar Keri Leigh Merritt, who wrote the book Masterless Men, Poor Whites, Slavery and Capitalism in the Deep South.
Tarik Moody:
In fact, MLK himself talked about the issue of housing. Many people only think of his famous 'I have a dream' speech, but he also spoke to many of the same issues we're talking about on By Every Measure, including housing. Here's a clip.
Martin Luther King:
Through an Act of Congress, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that it was willing to undergird its White peasants from Europe with an economic floor. But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money. And this is what we are faced with. And this is the reality. Now when we come to Washington in this campaign, we're coming to get our check.
Tarik Moody:
Back before COVID-19, Radio Milwaukee hosted a free event in our community space called How To Have Better Conversations About Race.
Reggie Jackson:
Thank you all for coming out. I'm going to do-
Tarik Moody:
We had a packed house in a snowy February evening. And Reggie Jackson started the evening off with a short presentation on the history of segregation and how we got to this point. And he showed how the federal government helped create the disparities in housing we see today.
Reggie Jackson:
Traditionally, and I have to be honest with you. I tell people all the time, to have these conversations, you can't pussyfoot about it and be dishonest. The reason that it looks like that, is it because White people wanted it to look like that. That's the bottom line. So I'm going to tell you some of the mechanisms that they had available to them to create-
Tarik Moody:
We're going to spend a few minutes going through different ways that Black people were left out of the American Dream of home ownership. And if I'm going to be completely, totally honest with you, the housing situation now for Black people, isn't all that much better compared to the time when Vel Phillips was an Alderwoman fighting for fair housing for Milwaukee.
Tarik Moody:
According to recent data from the real estate company Redfin, Milwaukee has the third worst Black home ownership rate in the entire country. Salt Lake City and Minneapolis takes the number one and number two spot.
Reggie Jackson:
Just to give you an example how little progress we've made, 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act was supposed to end discrimination in housing on a federal level, outlaw it, all those different things. The Black home ownership rate at that time was 41.3%. And it's 42.9% today. It peaked at 50% in 2005, and it's gone down every single year since then. We're moving in the wrong direction, but nobody knows.
Tarik Moody:
A couple of months after his talk at Radio Milwaukee, we follow up with Reggie on another conversation and go in more detail on all these systems. We'll go back to the stage in just a bit, but first we've got to go back, way back, to the Civil War.
Tarik Moody:
During the Civil War, the Homestead Act was created in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln and lasted until 1934. Basically in a speech by Lincoln, the purpose of this act was to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders, and to give everyone an unfettered start and fair chance in the race of life, except this act benefited mostly White families and left out a lot of Black people.
Reggie Jackson:
We learned about the Homestead Act in school. Oh yeah, the Homestead Act allowed people to immigrate and become homeowners and blah, blah, blah. No, you stole the land from the Native Americans and literally just gave it to White people. And guess what? When you have land in America, you have the beginnings of wealth building in America.
Tarik Moody:
Owning land is the major way American families built wealth.
Reggie Jackson:
And so you have this built-in advantage over people of color. And then when the federal government starts to help people become homeowners, by creating a new type of mortgage that allows you to pay only 20% down, White people are the main beneficiaries of that. Because when the federal government issued Federal Housing Administration loans to people from 1930 to 1960, 98% of those loans went to White people only.
Tarik Moody:
This discriminatory lending led to a practice called redlining, a term you might have heard. There is a fantastic book called Color of Law that describes redlining as a practice used to deepen segregation by refusing to insure mortgages in and around Black neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the FHA was subsidized, and developers were building these amazing suburbs for Whites, but with one caveat, they couldn't sell to Black people.
Reggie Jackson:
Every area that Black people lived in were redlined. It didn't matter if you had money or not. You were going to be redlined if you lived in that area and you were Black. So that's another economic advantage.
Tarik Moody:
And you have to remember, at this time, this was the era of the New Deal, but that New Deal enacted by President Roosevelt used coded language to exclude Black people from various programs that were meant to help all Americans.
Reggie Jackson:
One of my favorite books on this topic is called When Affirmative Action was White. And it talks about how we had a system in place, that when we created Social Security and Unemployment in 1935, both programs were written with very colorblind language. But then, all of a sudden, we decided that we would put a clause in it at the end, that said if you're a domestic worker or a farm worker, you're not eligible for either program. So here you are, most Black people in the South, which is where a majority of Black people lived in the 1930s. "You're a domestic worker, son. You can't put any money away into Social Security so that you have some money in your old age." "Oh ma'am, you a domestic worker. You work for Mr. Johnson, cleaning his house and nursing his children. You're not eligible for Social Security, ma'am, sorry." And that was the case from 1935 until 1952.
Tarik Moody:
So between the lack of Social Security, no Unemployment Insurance, and the widespread practice of redlining, it's no wonder that we're still dealing with these disparities in housing today. And you think it would stop here, but no, it even affected Black veterans.
Reggie Jackson:
To me, one of the greatest disservices ever done to any American in history is the GI bill that promised all those GIs who fought in World War II, came back after fighting fascism, were told that you'd be able to get access to a VA guaranteed home loan, and you be able to get free access to college or tech school, whatever postsecondary education you wanted. And in its face, it's colorblind. It doesn't discriminate. The law says all of these GIs are eligible. But guess what? You're a Black GI, you come back, like two of my mother's uncles, from fighting in World War II. Do you think the people in Mississippi are going to let you buy that house that you're trying to buy and give you that loan? Heck no, they are not going to do it.
Tarik Moody:
I told you the story about my dad, who, I'm a veteran, my dad was a veteran, came back, GI bill, and he was telling me he couldn't get the loan, but luckily he found a house where the owner was White, but he was just a developer, whatever, was just desperate to sell to whoever. So they worked a deal together. So my dad got his first home and built his wealth. Again, he's the first in the family to do that. So the generational wealth is brand brand brand new.
Tarik Moody:
And of course he's had issues of corporation racism, and being pushed out, and all this stuff. But that just got me thinking about what my dad is, in the generational wealth, the Black middle class is, wherever it is, Atlanta, wherever, it's usually first generation of middle class right now.
Reggie Jackson:
One element related to what you just shared about your dad, trying to buy a house. There've been multiple Black people here in metro Milwaukee in the North Shore region. They literally, one of my best friends, her mom and dad tried to buy a house. And these were both highly-educated people, had great jobs. And they couldn't buy a house. So you know how they bought the house? They had a White friend buy the house. And that's how they were able to acquire the house. They had this White person buy the house from this White family. And then when the moving truck pulled up and they saw some Black folks, they was like, "Wait, wait, wait, hold on, wait a minute. Why are y'all here?" "Oh, we just bought that house." They're like, "No, no. This name is ... Oh, that's my name."
Tarik Moody:
This isn't in the South. This is not Mississippi. This is not Montgomery, Alabama. This is right here in the suburbs of Milwaukee. The majority of the top segregated cities in the country today are all located in the Midwest and North, including right here in Milwaukee, which takes the number one spot for racial segregation. And when we mean segregation in Milwaukee, we mean suburbs versus the city.
Tarik Moody:
We're going to go back to Reggie's talk from the Radio Milwaukee stage, where Reggie shows evidence of the restrictive practices in place in Milwaukee suburbs.
Reggie Jackson:
This is a sign, "Nearing Wauwatosa, City of Homes, Restrictive Zoning." This is a sign that used to be all over Wauwatosa for years. For years this sign told you that Wauwatosa had what they call restrictive zoning. And what restrictive zoning simply meant was that only White people could live in Wauwatosa.
Reggie Jackson:
In these communities that had restrictive covenants in place, these were legally binding documents that said only White people could occupy this particular space. And so that particular sign was a sign. I went and took a picture of it at the Wauwatosa Historical Society last year. I used that photograph in a presentation that I did for the NAACP in Milwaukee. A reporter from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, John Schmidt, was there. He came up me. He asked me about the sign. I told him about it. He inquired about it. He did a really good article. I consulted with him on an article he wrote about the history of racism and segregation in Wauwatosa.
Reggie Jackson:
After that photo journalist, some journalist took a picture of that sign, the next day they took it down. They literally took it down. And that photograph, when I used it one other time, a Wauwatosa audit person, former audit person said, "Reggie, you know they had one of those in City Hall too." I'm like, Really?" He's like, "Not only did they have it in City Hall, but they just took it out last year." I was like, "Really?" And he said, "That's not even the worst part."
Reggie Jackson:
He says the worst part, back in the '80s, somebody came along with some green duct tape and they taped over the part that said Restrictive Zoning, with green duct tape, as if nobody knew what was under the tape. I said, "You guys should have left the sign up." I said, "That's a teachable moment for Tosa. Don't try to hide from your history. You can't cover that up. Listen, the photograph was on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Reggie Jackson has used that photograph like a hundred times in presentations. People, no, don't hide from it, use it as teachable moment." And that's exactly what they're doing. I'm working with them now to get the sign put back up there. So that's a good sign.
Tarik Moody:
But Wauwatosa certainly wasn't the only community with these restrictions in place. In fact, racial covenants, like the one in Tosa took place in multiple cities surrounding Milwaukee. Bayside, Fox Point, Hales Corners, Glendale, Greenfield, Cutahy, St. Francis, Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, they all have their own types of covenants.
Reggie Jackson:
This is an example of one from South Milwaukee. So it was written in 1937, set to expire in 2024. And let's read it together. Can we read it as a chorus?
Reggie Jackson:
At no time shall any such lot or building hereon be purchased, owned, leased, occupied, or used by any person other than citizens of the United States of America of the White race. This provision shall not apply to domestic servants, which may be employed by their owner or occupant of any such lot or building thereon.
Tarik Moody:
However, the government wasn't the only institution that played a role in systemic racism and housing. The banking sector played a devastating role in early 2000s, with the subprime mortgage crisis, which led to the Great Recession. During this period, Black people lost over half, half of their wealth. One bank, Wells Fargo, targeted Black communities with these mortgages within the last 15 years.
Reggie Jackson:
They were giving Latino and Black borrowers completely different mortgages than Whites who had the same exact credit worthiness. Wells Fargo Bank settled with federal government at the time for $75 million, in 2012 Countrywide Financial settled for $335 million, the largest lawsuit settlement ever for housing discrimination, and then Associated Bank settled for $200 million dollars.
Tarik Moody:
So what is the real impact of systemic racism in housing? What does it mean? Well basically, it means that Black people ended up decades, no, centuries behind people in terms of wealth building. They didn't have access to one thing, equity. Equity builds wealth.
Reggie Jackson:
Because you can use that equity to make repairs to your home, to send your kids to college without debt, to buy a boat to go out on a lake fishing, to buy a cabin up north, to go on vacations to Paris and France and other places. It leads you into the American Dream. And when you deny whole segments of society the right to build that generational wealth, you have what we have today. These are the things you need to know to have productive conversations about race. I believe that the biggest challenge we have, in terms of having these conversations, is that we don't know enough to start the conversations the right way.
Reggie Jackson:
Thank you all so much, appreciate your time.
Tarik Moody:
So that is the problem. And that is just scratching the surface. Coming up in the second half of By Every Measure, we're talking about an organization that is tackling one facet of systemic racism in housing.
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Tarik Moody:
We're back on episode three of By Every Measure. In the second part of every episode, we're talking to local and national experts about solutions in each of these areas.
Tarik Moody:
In the first half of this podcast, we learned that the government played a huge role in creating segregation across the country and right here in Milwaukee, with practices like redlining. But can the government solve this problem it created? Joining me is Bill Tisdale, president and CEO of Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council, to discuss the role his nonprofit organization plays in dismantling systemic racism in housing.
Bill Tisdale:
Government is not unaware of this. This is like, "What can we do?" This is not any place high on the government's agenda. This is not any place that the government feels this is a talking point. Basically, that's all it is is a talking point.
Bill Tisdale:
We have had laws on the books since 1864, back with Reconstruction. So it's not anything new. What we look at today is, why isn't government doing anything? And then, don't leave it just to government. It's citizen involvement. So our organization has actively been involved in proactively investigating the housing markets in not only sales, but also rental, mortgage lending, and homeowners insurance. All of those things play key roles in getting housing. People just generally think, well housing discrimination happens if you can't afford to get a house, so you're doing rental and you just go in and get a rental. It happens in the sales market, so we're talking about with steering, blockbusting, a denial of loans. But what our organization does is investigate housing discrimination through a method called testing.
Tarik Moody:
The Fair Housing Council actually sends people out to look for discrimination in housing through an undercover testing approach. They're able to test for bias in the real estate market and the rental market, even home insurance.
Bill Tisdale:
And testing is matching individuals equally on every socioeconomic characteristic, except for the one you're testing for, so protected classes of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, or sexual orientation, on down the line. So if you're testing for race, we want to match two individuals, one African American, one White, send them out into the housing market, see what kind of information they get. "I'm looking for a $70,000 home on the inner city." "I'm looking for $190,000 home in Ingress Park," and send those two people out and see what kind of information they get. That information comes back to us, and all we do is look at the differences.
Bill Tisdale:
Same, when I say people are matched, similarly on every characteristic, the same age, same income, same time on the job, same debt, same family structure. You've got two people identical, one person's Black, one person's White.
Tarik Moody:
And that is why testing is so important, because housing discrimination is hard to prove. You have to go out looking for it.
Bill Tisdale:
We can't wait for people to complain about it, because it's so sophisticated in this way. You don't know you're being denied. They're still taking your information. They're doing a credit check. They're doing all of the things that they need to do, and that what you think needs to happen for a legitimate sales transaction. You don't know if your property is being marketed the same way. You don't know if you're being listed the same way. So this is the kind of stuff that's going on today. This isn't old time information. This is information that we're dealing with on a daily basis. And there's no way to get to that without the investigative technique of testing.
Tarik Moody:
Speaking of testing, do you have any kind of numbers and results from your testing of when these people come back?
Bill Tisdale:
Well, yeah. Over the years, we've had thousands of incidences where we've conducted tests, and had tests come back, as far as positive results from the standpoint of showing differences in treatment.
Bill Tisdale:
We have had approximately over 700 times that we've been in court with testing evidence. We've only lost eight cases. So testing is a very viable means to do that. Most of the cases that we have, the thousands of cases that we have had, those settle out of court. Because when presented with the information, this happened to this person, who's African American, or a woman, or has a disability, those cases settle out of court generally, because the evidence is right there. So testing is effective, probably the best means of getting to the differences in treatment that occurred in the housing market.
Tarik Moody:
Here's a real life example. In the early days of these testing programs, Bill went out with a White colleague of his, Fred, to follow up with a property manager. We'll let him tell the story. But pay close attention to how subtle the discrimination and racism is.
Bill Tisdale:
Fred and I went down. There was a advertisement in the newspaper that been run for about two weeks, that there was a two bedroom unit available on the South Side of Milwaukee, and available immediately. This was the rent, this was the availability, all of that.
Bill Tisdale:
Fred and I drove down in Fred's car, parked around the corner. And I said, I would go in first. African American went in first, and see what they tell the White person who comes afterward. So I walk up to the door, around the block, the pennant's out, the little sign that says Open For Inspection. Knocked on the door, the guy comes to the door. He says, "Yes, may I help you?" I said, "Oh, I'm here to see the unit you have advertised." He said, "Unit?" I said, "You have a two bedroom unit's been advertised in the newspaper for the last month or so." "Huh. That's still advertised?" He said, "Well, come on, let me check this out. Let me check it out." He said, "Come on in."
Bill Tisdale:
So he asked me in. I had a seat in his living room. And he, I could see from the kitchen, was looking through a series of leases, what appeared to be leases on a clipboard, going through some other documents and some index cards, and came back and said, "No, that unit was rented several months ago." He said, "I don't know why that ad's still running." I said, "Well, it is still running." I said, "I'm sorry." He said, "Well." I said, "You don't have anything?" I said, "Do you have at least a one bedroom I could take a look at?" He said, "Well, yeah." I said, "Well, I'm going to school." I said, "I was going to use the second bedroom as a study." And I said, "I can just keep my book packed up, and when the two bedroom becomes available, I'll be first on the list."
Bill Tisdale:
He said, "Well, let me check." He said, "Well, we don't really have any two bedrooms. And we don't have any one bedrooms, we don't have any units." I said, "Well, this is really convenient to where I'm going to be working." I said, "I'm sorry it's still being advertised." He said, "Well ..." I said, "Do you have a model I can look at?" He said, "Well, they basically looked like my unit." And I said, "Well, can you give me a call and let me know when you'd have something?" He said, "Well, listen. Let me do this." He said, "Let me show you around." So he takes me around, and he shows me that he's feeling more comfortable with me, takes me out, shows me the parking places, asks me if I play golf. I said, "Yeah." He says, "There's a golf course not far from here. The green fees are not that bad."
Bill Tisdale:
We come back. He said, "I'm really sorry that we don't have anything available. You seem like a nice guy, the kind of person we like to rent to." And I said, "Well, I'm sorry you didn't have anything either." I said, "Well, just keep in touch." He said, "Well, before you leave, let me give you my business card." He said, "Now don't call on that front, on the business card. I'm going to give you my home number." He writes his home number on the back of the card and says, "Don't call the front office. They deal with all apartments, all around town." He said, "You can just get a run around going there. Call me back. As I was going through the clip boards, I saw a lease that's coming up next month." He said, "That might be the perfect unit for you."
Bill Tisdale:
I said, "This is great." He said, "Don't forget. Don't use the front, call on the back. Just cross out that front number." I went around the corner, back down to Fred. I said, "Fred, let's go." I said, "This guy was great. He wanted to adopt me." I said, "He was wonderful." Fred said, "Well, as long as we're here, let's go." I said, "Fred, it is hot in this car." I said, "It is 90 some degrees out." I said, "People are already looking wondering, what somebody parked in their neighborhood looks like." I said, "I'm a Black guy sitting in the passenger's seat of a car." I said, "This guy across the street that mowed his lawn about three times, going back and forth, wondering what I'm doing sitting in the car." I said, "Why don't we just go?" He said, "No, let me check it out."
Bill Tisdale:
Fred went up, talked to the same person. I said, "Where is Fred?" Fred is gone. Fred's just like 20 minutes. Fred comes back. I said, "Fred, what were you doing?" He said, "I saw three vacant two bedroom units." I said, "What?" I said, "You talked to Mr. So-and-so?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "You saw three vacant units. You just talked to the same guy I talked to." He said, "Yep." I said, "Well, you know what happened? Three people moved out between the time I came back to the car and the time you went up to see the units." This is housing discrimination.
Tarik Moody:
I knew it existed, but I didn't know to the level, to the extremes and how they use subtle ways to discriminate, my parents growing up in a time where they just said, "Get out of here," to where we are now.
Bill Tisdale:
Yeah. They just slammed the door. Yep. I was treated royally, and had I really been looking for a unit, I would have not reported it. People say, "Well, what ... you know? Not a big number of people reporting." How would I have reported this to HUD? How would I have reported this to the Equal Rights Division? Why would I have gone to the Fair Housing Council? This guy told me, "Don't call downtown. I'll get the run around. Call my home number back." So I'm thinking, "Shoot. If he didn't call me back, nothing came up, I'd find another place." We have replaced the slam door of discrimination, where you get it closed in your face, "We don't want your kind living here," with a revolving door, where you are revolved out of the system. Only through testing would I have found out that that man had discriminated against me. And there were three units available when he told me nothing was available. That's testing.
Tarik Moody:
You mentioned, when we were talking about policies and stuff, but you said something about everyday citizens need to get involved. How should everyday citizens get involved and help change this issue?
Bill Tisdale:
Citizens cannot sit back and think somebody else is doing this. No one else is doing it. And the folks who are doing it don't have your best interest in mind. And so citizens have to take action. Citizens have to become involved. If we had 200 Reggies, we would be moving. I mean, you're talking about somebody who has taken upon themselves to be this crusader, and I'm not saying that in a negative sense, I'm talking about, we need crusaders and advocates. We need Reggies out there, because you can't do this. And people say, "Oh, the government takes care of that." The government ain't on your side on all of these things. They don't have the staff, and ain't interested in putting funds ahead to make this. This isn't a top burner issue. So citizens have to pay attention and know that housing impacts all of us.
Bill Tisdale:
Housing is inextricably linked to where you live, it's inextricably linked to where you get job opportunities, healthcare service, delivery, employment, all of those things are tied together. And all of us are tied together in that. It ain't no us and them when it comes to housing. And we have to undertake activities and become involved in the political process. Talk to your alder people. Talk to your City Council. Talk to your supervisors. Talk to your representatives. Let them know this is an issue for you. And don't think that this happens accidentally. It does not.
Tarik Moody:
Thank you for enlightening. Thank you for telling us what you do to try to change this. So that's very important in letting our community know that there are people out there trying to make a difference.
Bill Tisdale:
Absolutely.
Tarik Moody:
To recap on this episode of By Every Measure, Dealing with Systemic Racism in Housing. Some of the things that we discuss as actions include press government officials to keep fair housing top of mind, just as Bill Tisdale mentioned. Housing is not normally a top priority issue. Neither party is even championing it right now.
Tarik Moody:
Also keep going out and looking for discrimination actively, bringing lawsuits against offenders, support organizations that are doing the work, like the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council. And a solution is not necessarily that Black people need to move to the suburbs, but we also need to invest in Black neighborhoods, create more opportunities to buy homes, rehab existing housing stock. There are great organizations in Milwaukee doing just that, like Milwaukee's Acts Housing. We have more information about them at radiomilwaukee.wpengine.com/measure.
Tarik Moody:
We also have a great reading list if you want to learn more about systemic racism, including Know Your Price, Valuing Black Lives and Property in America's Black Cities by Andre Perry of The Brookings Institute, and the Color of Money, Black Banks and The Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran. She also put together this amazing proposal idea for a solution, called the 21st Century Homestead Act. That proposal would create public trust to purchase abandoned property in target cities and grant them to qualified residents by pairing this plan with a suite of programs to redevelop these cities. Really interesting read. You can find links at our website at radiomilwaukee.wpengine.com/measure.
Tarik Moody:
On our next episode of By Every Measure, we're going to go even deeper on the conversation of wealth and the racial wealth gap. How big is that gap? Well in terms of housing, a report from the Institute of Policy Studies showed that the average Black-owned home is valued $48,000 less than White-owned homes. And that adds up to $156 billion dollars of lost wealth. And you can measure that gap in dollars, and in time.
Tarik Moody:
That same study showed it would take 228 years, 228 years, did you understand what I just said, to close the wealth gap, meaning Black families will not reach the wealth parity with White households until the year 2241. We'll break it down next time on By Every Measure.
program announcer:
By Every Measure is hosted by Tarik Moody and Reggie Jackson, executive produced and edited by Nate Imig, with additional production support from 88Nine program director Jordan Lee, marketing director Sarah McClanahan, marketing coordinator Erin Baggata, web editor Evan Rytlewski, audio producer Salam Fatayer, executive director Kevin Sucher, content marketing manager Amelinda Burich, community engagement manager Maddy Riordan, and imaging manager Kenny Perez, and crafted sonic inspiration from the License Lab, and our sincerest thanks to our members for making all Radio Milwaukee content possible.
program announcer:
By Every Measure, an original podcast production of 88Nine Radio Milwaukee.