This is Democracy – Episode 113: Race in the American Midwest and Kenosha

Unknown Speaker 0:05
This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial intergenerational and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.

Jeremi Suri 0:19
Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today we’re talking about a very controversial current and urgent topic in our democracy, but a topic with a long, long history. And this is, of course, the topic of race. And in particular, the role of race in the evolving politics of the Midwest, a part of the country that is always significant in choosing our national as well as state leaders, and a part of the country that’s always the center of controversy if we think back to the period of Joseph McCarthy through the period of the conservative revolt in the 1990s and 2000.

Thousands to our current moment with racial protests and violence against protesters and others in Wisconsin and of course, evidence of horrible police brutality. In the shooting of Jacob Blake seven times by police just a few days ago. Much of the country is focused on this part of the state of Wisconsin right now. And we have with us I think one of the most thoughtful people I know someone who brings a historical perspective, a personal perspective, and political activism to these questions surrounding race and democracy in the Midwest. My former student, though now he’s really my teacher, Steve makara. Steve has been on our podcast a few times before, he’s one of our favorite guests. He is as I hope everyone knows the founder and president of the millennial action project, which as I’ve been writing about, in many places, I think the millennial project is doing some of the most important work to bring young people into our political system.

across party lines, and to get them involved in voting and becoming candidates themselves. Steve has a distinguished intellectual career a distinguished academic career. He’s won numerous awards. The most important thing I want to stress today, though, is that he grew up the child of Indian immigrants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And so what we’re going to talk about today is obviously a topic he studied, but a topic he’s lived so close to his heart and so close to his experiences. Steve, thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Jeremy. It’s always an honor to be on your show.

And we have with us of course, to start out our discussion and set the scene we have Zachary series, a scene setting poem. What’s the title of your poem, Zachary? A recollection of the discoverers? Well, let’s start recollecting.

Zachary Suri 2:49
When Black Hawk led his people to war across the plains of the Wisconsin careened himself into history as one of the last resistors the man determined not to give way given up to amateur

hockey logos and silly stickers on sidewalks. He was just an American discovering the ways of America. When my great grandfather across the sea from Hungary and landed feet first in Detroit, called achingly towards Traverse City to sell from a cart to the native peoples, and then found himself a gas lamp salesman in Chicago. He was just a Jew Discovering America, when Harold Washington came up from the deep south into the slums of South Chicago as a child, made his way to Congress and breathed mournful breaths in the heavy streets. Mayor of the Midwest preacher of the Promised future, he was dying, dead of a heart attack and driven peacefully to his grave under more mournful breaths, a black man who managed to stake his claim to the Midwest. And they were all here in spirit long before Jacques Marquette all here long before and long after the wheat and the corn it grew from so many souls, so many promises that were given so many taken away, and so many proven, it was this this collection of way words

souls who discovered the Midwest. They were there from the very beginning all of them a succession of retired her hungry her poor, but surely also her huddled masses yearning to breathe free, her huddled masses struggling to breathe. Her huddled black masses shot in the back as they bent into the passenger seat of a car. They too discovered America. Zachary, I’m amazed how you go from the Blackhawk war to Chicago politics to immigration and contemporary issues in Kenosha. What is your poem really about? my poem is really about the complex nature of race in the Midwest and the many contradictions, opportunities and oppression that has defined the Midwest and racial relations in the Midwest for the past two centuries.

Jeremi Suri 4:51
Well, with that introduction, Steve, maybe it makes the most sense for us to start with with a little bit of your experience. What was it like?

Growing up as the child of immigrants from India, in Milwaukee, in the 1980s, as you did, Sure, well, first of all, thanks again for having me on the show and Zachary, as always, I’m blown away by your poetry. And you’re right about the complex nature of race in the Midwest. And Jeremy, as you referenced, you know, my parents came to Wisconsin, not knowing what type of environment it would create for their children. But we were in suburban Milwaukee, and at the time, this region had about a 98%, Caucasian racial makeup. So needless to say, my brother and I were different. We stood out a lot, being first generation Americans and Sons of Indian immigrants and even frankly, just being people of color in suburban Milwaukee. And that was in the context of a larger racial and political divide.

Steven Olikara 6:00
I didn’t fully appreciate until I was a bit, probably close to the end of graduating from high school. And it was then that I started reading some of the great reporting in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and some other reports that had explained some of the larger divisions in the community. For those who are less familiar. The Greater Milwaukee area is the most segregated metro area in the entire country along lines of race, and you see disparities around income and housing and education as well. And that tracks along political lines as well. The Greater Milwaukee area is also the most politically segregated metro area in the country. So you can go from the bluest of the blue area in downtown Milwaukee, and within just a few miles, be in some of the reddest of the red areas in the suburban areas. They call it the wow counties.

And I’m personally from one of those

W’s Waukesha County. And so that has a lot to do with the experience growing up, you know, when I have a number of experiences when I was in grade school where my peers had, couldn’t figure out where to place me, racially or ethnically, and they would always have the uncomfortable question, and they would try and say it, but do it so in a very awkward way, and they would say, so what are you? And, and, you know, it explained my background, and they were a little confused by it. And they would just say, Well, I’m American. And I would, of course, always respond by saying, Well, I’m American. I was born in this country. And you know, a bit later in, you know, probably Middle School in high school would sometimes be, you know, teased for different aspects of Indian culture, Indian food, and the thing I took away from those experiences was that these comments would virtually never come from a bad place. Usually

It was they were trying to communicate and just didn’t necessarily have the language to do. So. Now I’ll share one quick story. When I was in my ninth grade biology class, my teacher asked the class, who here has traveled outside of the country? And in a class of roughly maybe 30 or so students, two people raise their hand, myself and another student, and he asks, Where have you been? And I responded, I’ve been to India and Europe a number of other places. And the other person responded by saying, Oh, well, I’ve been to the Bahamas.

And so that just gives you a little picture of just at that point, um, the exposure that people had to cultures outside of America. And, and at the end of the day, I think one of the things I took away from that experience when I especially when I got to college, and I was very engaged in diversity and race issues, is that we have to approach these conversations with a

high degree of empathy and a high degree of our humanity and trying to really understand where people come from. And while I was in college, I gained a lot more of the language of how to have conversations missed different races. But I also think growing up in Brookfield it gave me a sensitivity Brookfield is in suburban Milwaukee, a sensitivity where a lot of white people in Wisconsin are, where they’re coming from, and how we can start to build some bridges of cooperation. That that’s such a revealing story of of your own experiences. Steve, why, if we can step back a second, why is Milwaukee so segregated? People think about cities like Chicago, or Los Angeles is having issues of segregation. What why Milwaukee?

Unknown Speaker 9:51
Well, there’s an interesting history there. One dynamic that happened is as you had the great migration and you had

Steven Olikara 10:00
African Americans migrating north towards the Midwest. They arrived in Chicago and then later in Milwaukee, precisely at the time that a lot of the manufacturing base in this region of the country was collapsing. You had more and more manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas, you had the industrial sector, really getting hollowed out. And so just as African Americans were getting settled here in Milwaukee, they immediately had the rug kind of lifted out of their, out of their lives, and they weren’t able to get the same economic opportunities. And then you layer on top of that, a history of redlining of what I call educational gerrymandering, where the districts were lined up intentionally to segregate along lines of race. And you have these compounding factors that ultimately led to this deep segregation that you see here today.

And efforts to try and kind of break open, that segregation is often met with a lot of resistance. And because our politics is so partisan often met with just utter partisanship. And so those are some of the factors that I think led to the segregation in Milwaukee. And it’s not common in a lot of Midwestern cities that you’re in these studies that show the most segregated metro areas in the country. You know, cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit are usually in the top five.

Zachary Suri 11:32
Yeah, I mean, what’s also interesting, too, is that the Midwest has, in many ways been the center of progressive activism, at least in the early half of the 20th century. How do we reconcile the historical progressiveness of the Midwest? And in many ways, Midwesterners seeing themselves as more progressive than their peers across the country with the racial tensions and divisions in Milwaukee and across the Midwest. Well, that’s a great point, Zachary. I think, you know, I draw a lot

Steven Olikara 12:00
lessons about politics from the progressive area era in Wisconsin. And you’re right that we’ve had this progressive history. We had people like fighting Bob lafollette, we have Gaylord Nelson, and others who had a strong focus on rooting out corruption in politics and preserving the environment. And I think, you know, but you know, the degrees of immigration that Wisconsin had, particularly from minority or people of color communities, that was a more recent phenomenon that happened, in my estimation, probably in the 1970s and 80s. And, and so that has, I think, presented a unique challenge. But I think even if you go further back in the 20th century, when you had, you know, a lot of Irish and you know, Polish and Germans coming to Milwaukee, they had their own struggles with trying to integrate and, you know, build one community in Milwaukee.

You know, and that relates to another interesting dynamic that I see in Wisconsin and across the Midwest, which is, you hear this phrase a lot, Midwest, nice, Wisconsin, nice, Wisconsin hospitality. And those dynamics are real for anyone who’s grown up, say in the Midwest and then travels out to the coasts, you immediately sense that there’s a difference in culture a difference in welcoming and inviting, and just frankly, saying hi to strangers in an elevator on on the sidewalk. And so Wisconsin actually does have this history of civil dialogue of trying to work together across lines of difference and, and having less vitriolic rhetoric. It’s really been in the past, definitely in the past 10 years, but in some ways over the last 20 to 30 years where we’ve seen this worsening partisanship and there are a lot of structural forces for that I was talking just a couple weeks ago.

With a someone who identifies as a progressive republican out of that Bob lafollette Progressive Era tradition in northern Wisconsin, and he was saying, once this special interest money came in and infected Wisconsin politics, that’s when the divisiveness really got worse and ultimately metastasized into the denial dynamics. We’re seeing, you know, over the last couple of decades, and then I think one other force came in, and that was a politics that was explicitly about division. I think the scott walker campaign in 2010 really exploited this dynamic. He knew that the Greater Milwaukee area was highly divided along race and politics. He knew that there was a conservative radio, media and infrastructure that he could tap into so his political strategy, and you can make your own ethical judgment of whether this is right or wrong, was focused on amping up his own base and turning out that vote.

As opposed to building a much wider tent, and in many ways that became the playbook for the Trump campaign in 2016. And so those dynamics where you have political leaders who are not trying to represent the entire state or bring together the state, but instead trying to represent their party, then further amplifies the divisions in the state. And it’s to me, just heartbreaking that that polarization narrative in Wisconsin has completely, you know, subsumed, I think the Wisconsin nice narrative, and I think we need to turn that around. Absolutely. And you’ve been doing a lot of work, I think across party lines to do that working with legislators from both parties, etc. Steve, why is it that Wisconsin and other Midwestern states this is true for Michigan, Ohio and others? Why is it that they seem to bat back and forth between progressive and shall we say anti progressive, almost

Zena phobic positions you think about even going back earlier the experience of having a joe mccarthy from the state of Wisconsin and then having a Gaylord Nelson, or parts of Wisconsin and other states that voted for Barack Obama and then voted for Donald Trump. How do we understand this flipping back and forth? Well, I think one key dynamic that has simultaneously played out during that period of time, especially as you mentioned, the voters who supported Obama and then switched to Trump. The Midwest is the epicenter for that voting pattern in Wisconsin, specifically, Southwestern Wisconsin, which is primarily a farming region of the state rural area has the highest concentration of voters who supported Obama twice, and then switch to Trump in 2016. And one of those important dynamics is the extent to which

voters across the political spectrum have become become disenchanted with the political establishment. So in a place like the driftless, in the southwestern part of Wisconsin, it’s the political divide isn’t always a left versus right. It’s more of an establishment versus anti establishment type dynamic. And one thing we saw in 2016, was a lot of voters who became really frustrated with the business of government, who might have supported Obama were willing to take a chance on Trump to really try and disrupt the system. And Trump did a very effective job at reaching out to the disillusion voters across our state. And that’s one reason why Wisconsin became as some people describe the tipping point state in 2016. And so I think, when there’s this degree of disillusionment and disenchantment, it, I think starts to bring

out a version of ourselves where we start to have grievances and resentments along a variety of issues if our farm has just closed down on my podcast, meeting in Middle America, quick plug, they’re great. It’s a great podcast. it you know, we just interviewed a couple writers who spent a lot of time and in the western part of the state trying to understand the real pain and suffering, being faced by farmers who have, in many cases lost their farm, are being forced to find new lines of work are losing their sense of identity, you’re seeing the suicide rate among farmers just increase at alarming rates. And that disenchantment can be preyed upon by politicians who are interested in stoking those fears and anxieties.

And we have and, Jeremy know, you know more about this than I do. But we have a long, you know, history in our country and especially in the 20th century of politicians and political movements that seek to prey on our on our fears and our grievances. And our mutual friend, Kathy Kramer, at the University Wisconsin published a really powerful book about this dynamic the politics of resentment, which I think does a good job of trying to explain this dynamic. And so getting to your question about race in that type of context, a political message about racial resentment about economic resentment is extremely potent. And my own personal view is that in these times of intense disenchantment and disillusionment, and

moments of great polarization and now political tribalism, we need political leaders who are able to integrate

a culture of empathy, a culture of humanity, a culture of love. And by love, I’m referring to what Dr. King referred to as the gabbay love. It doesn’t mean you necessarily have to like everyone or have affection for everyone. But you have to love everyone as children of God. That’s what he was trying to get at. And that politics is is revolutionary, in my opinion, but I think it’s increasingly rare today. And I think my, the thing that keeps me hopeful is that amidst all of this turbulence, there might be a political movement that can seek to bring out as Abraham Lincoln said, are better angels. And, and there’s such a profound point in that, as you and I have discussed many times and as the scholarship, I think shows very clearly social movements become successful political movements, when they’re built on love and hope and healing. That’s what the civil rights movement was all about. It’s what abolitionism was about is what the

Jeremi Suri 21:00
The women’s movement was about in many ways what the gay and lesbian and LGBTQ movement had been about. It’s also what what movements for economic fairness have been been about, as well. This discussion and you’ve shared so much that’s so valuable for us as Steve has done exactly what we’d like to do on this podcast, which is contextualize our current moment. How would this rich context you’ve given us you’ve given us a feel for it, as well as the studied analysis of it? How do you come to look at these these horrible events in Kenosha, the shooting of Jacob Blake and and how do you understand that event and all the controversy about it in this context that you’ve given us? Mm hmm. Yeah. When an event like this shooting of Jacob Blake happens it’s it’s you’re so right, Jeremy. It’s happening in a larger context. There’s a reason why thousands of people have been protesting what happened in Kenosha and has in many ways been produced.

Steven Olikara 22:00
Testing throughout the summer, after the the murders of George Floyd and Brianna, Taylor and others, and it’s happening, it’s like you have this puddle of gasoline. And then finally, you know, you put a you light a match and throw it in the gasoline and just lights this fire. And that’s, in many ways what’s happening right now people in the communities of Wisconsin and Kenosha, and many other communities feel like we’ve reached a breaking point in our lifetimes, and that the time for action is now. Now one of the challenges when this happens is how do we, as we were just now talking about how do you embody a politics of humanity and empathy when people are so afraid, and there has been this violence, and we heard these unfortunate tragic stories about the killing of, of Jacob Blake. Additional killings during the protests of people who self identified as a million

Alicia and said they were going to keep one order but instead they created less law and less order and created more chaos by killing people that you know that just Stokes more fear and more anger in the community and eventually it has a spiraling effect. One thing that gives me some hope right now is that you’re seeing the community trying to rebuild. And and even today, Miss President Trump visiting the community. You’re seeing Jesse Jackson and other leaders trying to kind of heal the community. They’re doing things like giving out free haircuts today. There are community members are helping to rebuild businesses that were damaged from the over the last couple of weeks. And that process of rebuilding is is a metaphor in many ways. Because I think, you know, in these types of movements and this is where millennial action project seeks to have a unique contribution is we need to have

builders’ we need to have people who can help once an issue has been highlighted and demonstrated across all the airwaves and across all the media, that we can translate that into action. And, and, unfortunately, these calls for action. And we saw recently the Milwaukee Bucks and the NBA, you know,

going on strike and you saying the Wisconsin legislature needs to meet with a lot of NBA players and others are now realizing is that we have a broken political system. I mean, this the moment we saw those calls, you know, I got this pit in my stomach because I was thinking they’re going to see just how broken the Wisconsin legislature is, and in many ways, our political culture when

we don’t have the political bridging muscles in order to overcome the deep seated partisan divide and hatred that exists. And so when there’s a moment like this around race

injustice or you you consider after the Parkland shooting a moment around gun violence. And people wonder, why can’t we do something about this? We have to uncover those reasons why our political system and in many ways the health of our democracy is not what it needs to be. And what we tried to do with Millennial action project is over the course of years and years of building relationships of building trust, of building those political bridge building muscles, be able to start responding to these urgent issues and actually push bipartisan legislation over the finish line and, and I think that’s the type of politics that we need to see more of.

Jeremi Suri 25:43
That’s so compelling, Steve, but I want us to get the other side of the argument on the table and hear you respond to it. As many people know, Kenosha actually has a very strong movement of people that’s long existing right, who are very critical.

Have those on the left and blame the political left blame political movements blame minorities for the difficulties they’ve had? The most obvious case of this is, of course, the sheriff. Who I think a number of months ago right was recorded as saying and this video people can find online, basically talking about how the problem was these inappropriate people in the area of different backgrounds, often African Americans who he said were undermining the city by causing violence, bringing radical politics, acting in inappropriate ways. And then he blamed democratic legislators, particularly the the new governor, for restricting business and all sorts of other things.

That’s not a caricature. That’s what Some say that this the sheriff was elected with 55% of the vote in the area. What’s your response to those to those arguments that, you know, these this is external radicalism, undermining a good community of Wisconsin and

Just want to go about living as they as they as they want to. And people like Jacob Blake, who have criminal records shouldn’t be driving around with with knives in their vans.

Well, one thing that’s I think, tough for our entire community here is we still haven’t gotten a substantive explanation from either the police or the Wisconsin Department of Justice that’s investigating the shooting of why lethal force in the form of seven gunshots was required. And so I think they’re the burden is pretty high to justify that and so far, we haven’t seen it. But in a broader sense, to your question, Jeremy.

Steven Olikara 27:48
To the extent that we’ve seen violence in the community,

we’ve seen confirmed reports of people coming in from outside of Kenosha to try and rough things up and in

intentionally trying to stoke, you know, fear in the community. And, and I think that’s really, really troubling because the media doesn’t necessarily report on the origins of violence, they just report on the violence itself. And once that narrative gets out there, then it becomes extremely hard to advance efforts for, for racial justice. And that’s exactly why Dr. King was so fervent about building a non violent movement for civil rights because he knew that in order for this type of

reforms around racial justice to to, to move and to build a wide enough Coalition for success, that you really have to do so in a dignified way, in a way that doesn’t

lead to the violence and destruction but instead the a more constructive and a more creative effort that brings out the best in people. He part of this

Philosophy of non violence was to

make it so abundantly clear where the moral high ground is, and the moral high ground is around racial equality. And he knew that the narratives that would emanate from, you know, protests were really important. And I think, in many ways, with a lot of the violence and destruction that we’ve seen, the narrative is, is is, is very, very much threatening to the prospects of real progress and real change. So I think that’s, that’s, that’s the key dynamic here. And I think what’s super important now, as we try and rebuild from the situation, is that we do reclaim the narrative and understand that issues of racial justice and equality are not partisan issues. I think Democrats who try and demonize people on the other side and say, you know, you’re all racist, or you’re

All irredeemable is not helpful either. Because, because that eliminates any possibility of building a bridge. So I think

we need to transform the narrative and needs to be more about constructiveness as opposed to deconstruct liveness. And hopefully, the sheriff can can see that as well. So what do you say, Steve? I know you’ve thought about this. What do you say to the store owner in Kenosha? Let’s say it’s a white store owner who really isn’t very political at all. Someone who’s not really a Republican or a Democrat might have voted Republican last time but you know, maybe voted democrat before there’s that that person store has been looted and, and the windows have been broken and and he or she just wants to rebuild, and is skeptical of calls for political change calls for social activism because they seem to disrupt this struggling store owners effort just to get his or her stone

store opened and maybe more police forces the best way so that there’s safety in downtown for that, that store owner, what’s your response to that position? Well, I think it’s a completely reasonable position to have and that if you’re a store owner, you’re just trying to get by, and you’re barely making enough money to support your employees. And then you have all of a sudden gotten a $20,000 $30,000 expense that you hadn’t planned for, you know, then what do you do? And and it just speaks to the importance of why we need to. We can’t have any any violence happening in these protests. I understand where the anger is coming from. But, you know, I was talking once with a biographer of Bobby Kennedy and trying to understand like, how did Bobby Kennedy build this very unlikely, diverse coalition for civil rights in 1968, and he was making this point, channeling Bobby Kennedy that we can’t have stays safe.

streets without justice and we can’t have justice without Safe Streets. And his point was to say to someone like the store owner, we can’t truly have safe streets until we have the presence of justice on those streets. And without that, there will continually be a risk that things can spiral out of control. And, and in terms of the calls for, you know, more police or more, you know, National Guard stepping in, you know, to the extent that they can be helpful in in a, you know, peaceful and constructive way, trying to, you know, reduce the not only violence but the sense of chaos on the streets. That’s That’s certainly helpful. But on the other hand, there won’t truly be a kind of safe street or a peaceful street until we have justice, and that people who feel they’ve been people who have been just

violently in a literal

fencer violently in a metaphorical sense, faced with injustice by our society have some type of recourse and some pathway to a greater sense where they have a stake in the community. So these issues are not easy. And, and I think we need to get to a place where we’re approaching it with a much greater sense of, as I mentioned earlier, constructiveness and grace. And I think the voices that are so compelling right now are actually from the Blake family. You just hear the grace that you with Jacob Blake’s mom and his other family members, and they’re talking about the importance of, you know, building coming and coming together as a community. She quoted Lincoln as well saying that a house divided cannot stand. I think that’s the mentality in the spirit that we need. So both the shop owners and the protesters, and the police and other members of community can all be

Jeremi Suri 34:00
working together towards a safer street corner and the presence of justice. You’re so right I was so moved, hearing his his mother speak so evidently from the heart in her moment of grief, that I can’t imagine calling on people to pray for everyone to pray for. Not simply her family and those who have suffered but but to play pray for the police officers and and that, as you said, that love of humanity, I think came through in her as a voice shining amidst all the darkness. I think what she was doing is something that Martin Luther King, the third recently mentioned, to me at our recent future summit for a millennial action project. He was saying, I was asking him, how do you think Dr. King would respond to the polarization of this moment, both political and racial polarization? And he said, You know, I think my father would be trying to call us to a higher order, higher order a higher consciousness and I think that’s what Jake

Steven Olikara 35:00
a boy’s mother was trying to do there.

Zachary Suri 35:03
Yeah. as we as we begin to close, I want to ask you, there are a lot of people asking right now, why now? Right? Why are we seeing this moment right now? But I’d like to ask why the Midwest. I mean, we’ve seen so much of this violence. And so much of this tension played out in cities like Minneapolis and Kenosha, and in cities like Milwaukee and Madison and Chicago, we’ve seen mass protests and in some cases, riots. Why the Midwest, why not other parts of the country? Know, Zachary? That’s a good question. I don’t know the exact answer to that. But I do have a few theories on it. I think you know, when you think about Kenosha, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, it is interesting that a lot of this is the you know, the real kind of battle ground for racial justice has been in the Midwest. And I think, you know, one theory I have on that is the context that we talked about earlier that in many ways this

Steven Olikara 36:00
was a reckoning that needed to happen. And that has been delayed for a long time in the Midwest, I mean, a community. This divided is just not sustainable over the long term. And what’s really striking that I’ve seen right now and Jeremy and Zachary, I’m curious if you you agree with this.

Some of the images I’ve seen in Milwaukee and Kenosha, as well as from some of the protesters in Milwaukee, I don’t know if you’ve heard there’s a group that marched to on foot to Washington DC to participate in the anniversary of the March on Washington. Yes, yes. Some of the things they faced on that journey. They were sprayed with bullets, they were, you know, yelled at with lots of

very scary language and

you just wonder, like, we’re seeing in real time in real life in 2020. A lot of things

That you are accustomed to seeing in black and white images in the 1950s and the 1960s. And I think what that is provoking right now is a true awakening, to understand that we have some deep seated divisions and racial and justices in our country and that reckoning has common in many ways. I think it’s been more acute and more delayed in the Midwest, at least, that’s, that’s my theory on that. And, and again, it’s just not sustainable over time. So, you know, I think, you know, as I was thinking about this, you know, the group that was marching to DC, some of the things that they heard and that they saw that they reported on, you know, I think it’s a big wake up call to a lot of people and, and, and I think for a lot of people who’ve grown up in Wisconsin,

who learned in their history classes that you know, the

Jeremi Suri 38:00
You had the 1960s in the civil rights movement was really successful. I’ve heard people tell me that they thought racism was solved during that era of time. And now they’re being rudely woken up that that that’s not the reality right now. Well, and and those are really thoughtful observations, I think, bring us back full circle. It does seem to me that one of the challenges but also one of the great opportunities that you’re tapping into through your work with the millennial action project and all the other things you do, Steve, on the ground in Milwaukee and across the state, doing more, I think, than almost anyone else. I know. It seems to me that one of the issues is that the the composition of the state and the composition of the Midwest is changing. It’s one of the parts of the country that have remained whitest for the longest time. Yeah, and of course, what white means has changed over time. Many of the Germans and Irish immigrants who and Polish immigrants who came to the region were not initially

Considered white. But as we think of the 20th century, it has, as you pointed out at the start remained one of the widest parts of the country as the southwest and the coasts have become more diverse. Texas is much more diverse than then Wisconsin is right now, for example, and don’t you feel that it’s some in some ways the hyper partisanship is a consequence of people fearing they’re losing control. This is what Kathy Kramer Walsh also talks about people losing control, losing status, from established families and established areas, but also the new possibility that there are so many sivola cars out there. So many young people from various backgrounds who see a different future for the state. How do you negotiate those those two elements of demographic change at this moment? Hmm. Yeah, I think that’s right. I think

Unknown Speaker 39:51
you’ve had communities that are now amidst a major racial and

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