Wisconsin Is Number One in Racial Inequality Between Black and White Children

Historic white antagonism towards ethinc minorities continue
with Wisconsin leading the way in targeting minorities with
punitive policy and taunts. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's
Race for Results study offers stunning data showing minority
children remaining victims in white-dominated America, (p. 5).

Madison, Wisconsin—Black children facing systemic socioeconomic obstacles have made Wisconsin the worst state in the country as judged by the disparity in well-being between white and black children, a national social scientific study, the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Race for Results, finds, (Gothner , WISC-TV).

Notes WISC-TV news:

Wisconsin ranked 10th in well-being for white children, but ranked 41st when it comes to black youth, making for largest well-being gap of its kind in the country.

'I wish that I could say I was surprised with the findings,' Ken Taylor, executive director of Kids Forward, formerly the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, said.

Michael Johnson, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, which works with youth of color in the Madison area, agreed with Taylor.

'(It's) the same report we've seen for the last 40 years,' he said. 'The question is: When are we going to get serious about investing in young people and coming up with programs that are going to help to change these disparities in our state?'

The Race for Results report comes amid increased open hostility towards minorities by racists in municipal and state government in Wisconsin emboldened by the election of Donald Trump and Gov. Scott Walker, (R), both of whom have long histories of campaign taunts and the use of public policy to target black and brown families.

In the segregated city in southern Dane County, Fitchburg, non-profits serving large minority populations have been targeted for defunding because of resentments in Fitchburg city government by whites towards minorities. Fitchburg also continues to place racially antagonistic white poll workers in a voting district with a large minority population.

A white municipal columnist in the Wisconsin State Journal, Chris Rickert, commenting on the Fitchburg defunding-of-non-profits scandal, emits the racist trope of reckless black parents who neglect their children:

[I]t’s not surprising that [Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, Michael Johnson’s] allies have on occasion framed the [Fitchburg] funding dispute as one between those who favor helping low-income kids of color, and those who don’t — even though it has way more to do with differing opinions about the government’s obligation to such kids, as opposed to the obligation owed to them by, well, their parents.

The study's findings confirm the everyday experience of minorities in Wisconsin, which remains a virulently racist state.

The report described the disproportionate barriers facing children of color, and it recommended strategies that policy, community and civic leaders can use to guide their decisions so that all our children have a fair chance to thrive.

Race for Results was our first report to measure how children from different racial backgrounds — African American, American Indian, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latino and white — were faring on the path to opportunity. The report introduced an evidence-based set of 12 key indicators that serve as steppingstones to opportunity, which were combined to generate a composite index score for children of every race in every state. Thanks to researchers, writers and activists, conversations about race and implicit bias have begun to include a more sophisticated vocabulary to discuss how and why race and racist behaviors, systems and structures shape life trajectories. ..

... African-American children had a composite index score that placed them further from opportunity than kids of other races and ethnicities. The index scores were not much better for American Indian and Latino children. The index scores for white children were significantly better, and Asian and Pacific Islander kids had the highest index scores, although disaggregated data showed wide variation depending on their parents’ nation of origin. While the scores do not tell the story of individuals, as each has his or her own experiences and talents, the data offer  an important snapshot of disparity in opportunity and the barriers that exist for different groups of children. 

The index quantifies how much work we still have to do if our nation is to live up to its values of opportunity and justice for all, regardless of race, ethnicity or country of origin. [pp 2,3, introduction]

For racist Republicans in Wisconsin, inflictions against minorities are a strategic Party initiative, so the findings of Race for Results represent success.

No Voter IDs Required for Recall Elections

The above headline is a fact.

Voters do not need a new Voter ID "until the Presidential Preference Primary in the Spring of 2012," as the Wisconsin Governmental Accountability Board clearly states.

Unfortunately, the Wisconsin State Journal editors appear committed to confusing the issue in its hard-copy edition of the Sunday paper.

It's top-of-the-fold Sunday piece includes a teaser with a sub-headline Voter ID Law, "find out what you'll need to bring to the polls."

Inside the State Journal on p. 11, the below-the-fold lede in the referenced piece reads: "Voters in Tuesday's primary election and next month's state Senate recalls won't have to show a picture ID."

Running this fact on page one as a method of informing readers is not so hard. One would think hyping this fact on would be instructive.

Timing of Challenges

As the right to vote in Wisconsin is well-protected in the Wisconsin Constitution and state statute, ...

[See] ... The Wisconsin Constitution vests and warrants the right [to vote] at the time of election. Every one having the constitutional qualifications then, may to go the polls, vested with this franchise, of which no statutory condition precedent can deprive him, because the [Wisconsin] constitution makes him, by force of his present qualifications, a qualified voter at such election" [Wis. Const, art III, section 1] Wood v. Baker, 38 Wis. 71: (August 1875)] Wisc. - Wisconsin Supreme Court

... it's likely that a challenge in state Court is forthcoming.

But timing is critical to achieve the objective of halting the GOP-desired disenfranchising of Democratically leaning voters.

So, a Wisconsin court judicial injunction against the voter suppression bill that would, one fears, be overturned by a corrupt Wisconsin Supreme Court has to be timed so that the ultimate result is adjudicated during or shortly before the presidential general November 2012 election.

Federal Challenges

As noted here in February:

A federal court challenge seems unlikely as one effect of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (No 07-21) (2008) upholding an Indiana voter ID law is that "future challenges to voter laws must be filed with respect to the application of a specific law—after its controversial mandates are already applied in an election," as noted by the Brennan Center, a leading civil rights organization. [See also Justin Levitt's The Truth About Voter Fraud.]

On the other hand, a federal challenge could be filed after the Presidential Preference Primary in the Spring of 2012, with the result being that the suppression act is enjoined before the November general election.

But the voter suppression bill is crafted to meet the federal test of the burden imposed on eligible voters vis a vis the "integrity and reliability of the electoral process itself." [Harper’s standard. Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780 , n. 9.]

The fact is that the GOP program to suppress and obstruct voters is not deemed relevant to corporate media coverage.

One would think that the integrity and reliability of the process facilitates and does not obstruct legal voting. That is an incorrect assessment.

Barry Sarlin (TPM) notes:

Former President Bill Clinton weighed in on Republican efforts in several states to pass new restrictions on voting, comparing the measures to the Jim Crow laws of the past.

'There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,' Clinton said in a speech at a Campus Progress conference in Washington.

No such remarks from President Obama yet who apparently feels that fighting for the right to vote is a politically losing proposition, just not worth the trouble.

Wisconsin

Of course, it is possible that the tortured reasoning that would lead the Wisconsin Supreme Court to uphold the voter suppression bill is too much even for the state Republican justices.

Let's hope a judge hearing the state challenge notes, as did Judge Sumi in 2008 on the concerted GOP voter suppression effort, the Roth v. LaFarge School District Board of Canvassers (2004) [No.02-0542] case:

[T]he Supreme Court four years ago pretty cogently summarized what the law is. The court ... concluded in Roth v. LaFarge School District Board of Canvassers in 2004, this is Justice Crooks speaking for a unanimous court: It is evident, the court said, noting Wisconsin's proud history of protecting the right to vote, 'It is evident that this court has constantly placed a premium on giving effect to the will of the voter.' And not just the will of the voter with respect to whether there's a checkmark in the right place, whether, if we were in Florida, hanging chads, or any other formal problem, but the will of the voter in terms of the ability to go to the polls, vested with the franchise [to vote].

Fighting for "the will of the voter in terms of the ability to go to the polls, vested with the franchise," sounds like the American thing to do, certainly the Wisconsin thing to do.

Justice Crooks in Roth v. LaFarge School District Board of Canvassers (2004) [No.02-0542] writes:

¶ 44 Wisconsin's general principle of inclusion supports the conclusion of counting the vote in this case. As the majority correctly recognizes, this principle is supported by our precedent, 'Wisconsin courts have consistently noted that they do not want to deprive voters of the chance to have their votes counted.' Majority op., ¶¶ 19-25 (citing e.g., State ex. rel. Wood v. Baker, 38 Wis. 71 (1875), Ollmann v. Kowalewski, 238 Wis. 574, 300 N.W. 183 (1941), Hackbarth v. Erickson, 147 Wis.2d 467, 433 N.W.2d 266 (Ct.App.1988)).

Faced with an array of anti-democratic forces in the press and GOP, whether President Obama is worth the trouble of casting a vote for is a different, wide-open question; Obama cannot be depended on to act as if our vote counts.

Wisconsin Voter ID Legal Challenge Likely

Republicans buzzing that the Party will pass the nation's most restrictive voter ID legislation—obstructing and suppressing Democratically leaning voters—ought to ease up on their unseemly celebrating.

Update: See Bill May Deny Legal Voters Access to the Franchise and the Brennan Center for Justice for developments on legal challenges to the bill signed May 25, 2011.

The voter suppression bill will be litigated and likely prevented from taking effect. And at least some of its noxious provisions likely will be ultimately struck down as unconstitutional under the Wisconsin Constitution; hence the concomitant effort to amend the Wisconsin Constitution, and another bill to stop same-day registration of Wisconsin citizens.

A federal court challenge seems unlikely as one effect of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (No 07-21) (2008) upholding an Indiana voter ID law is that "future challenges to voter laws must be filed with respect to the application of a specific law—after its controversial mandates are already applied in an election," as noted by the Brennan Center, a leading civil rights organization. [See also Justin Levitt's The Truth About Voter Fraud.]

Voting is not very well protected under federal Constitutional law.

Voting is however, extremely well protected under Wisconsin Constitutional law.

The last time Wisconsin's partisan Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen, engineered a major public effort to obstruct voters, Van Hollen lost and his desperate lawsuit was thrown out never to see the Courts again.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi's opinion in 2008 tossing Van Hollen's suppression case instructs today on the weight the Wisconsin Constitution and other Wisconsin statutes place on the right of citizens to cast votes [See Sumi's Opinion - Order and Hearing Transcript (Case No 08CV4085)].

Writes Sumi citing an early Wisconsin Supreme Court case protecting voters:

"The [Wisconsin Constitution] vests and warrants the right to vote at the time of election, and everyone having the constitutional qualifications then may to go the polls vested with this franchise, of which no statutory condition precedent can deprive him." [Wood v. Baker]

There is no clause in the Wisconsin Constitution that says you need a photo ID to vote.

Sumi, speaking from the bench in 2008, also cites a 2004 case bearing on the current voter obstruction law.

[T]he Supreme Court four years ago pretty cogently summarized what the law is. The court ... concluded in Roth v. LaFarge School District Board of Canvassers in 2004, this is Justice Crooks speaking for a unanimous court: It is evident, the court said, noting Wisconsin's proud history of protecting the right to vote, 'It is evident that this court has constantly placed a premium on giving effect to the will of the voter.' And not just the will of the voter with respect to whether there's a checkmark in the right place, whether, if we were in Florida, hanging chads, or any other formal problem, but the will of the voter in terms of the ability to go to the polls, vested with the franchise [to vote].

Political Consequences

Even given the God-awful communication strategies of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, it ought to become clear that the GOP-imposed burdens placed disproportionally upon the majority poorer, ethnic minorities (especially blacks in Milwaukee County), elderly, busy working families and rural voters (all of whom are less likely to have photo IDs) is an unacceptable barrier to voters being able to go to the polls, vested with the franchise to vote.

This is a years-long, national GOP effort and Republicans and Tea Partiers have their marching orders.

What is disgusting, even sad, is the disdain shown for democracy and duplicity involved.

I know Republicans who know very well exactly what this voter obstruction project is, and yet they have no remorse in lying; in fact, lying to my face.

The fact is political lies are still lies.

And one suspects that this lying, anti-democratic GOP program will offend most Wisconsin citizens' sense of fairness.

Sure, the Republican Party is simply after power.

But there is something uglier that the GOP uses to carry out this project: Racism.

The idea that a bunch of blacks and Latinos are out there voting will never sit well with many Republicans who—even as we approach 2012—are committed to a whites-only club in Wisconsin politics. You want to vote? How much money you make?

On a personal note, I grew up in a small Wisconsin city where 'nigger jokes' were frequent throughout Elementary school, and indeed through the public school experience. This racist culture is still very much with us in Wisconsin today.

The problem is kids picked up this culture at home. A worse problem is many of these children never grew up to realize that as an adult human being and Wisconsin citizen you have rights; and you stand up for the rights of those with whom you may disagree of whatever color or creed.

Let's hope this sentiment carries the day; and the Democratic Party communications team gets its act together fast. Better yet, Republicans dissenting from this despicable voter suppression project: We need your voice now.