Bucks prez: Milwaukee the 'most segregated, racist place' he's been

[Feigin] also said that the [Bucks arena development] project will infuse life into a part of the city desperately in need. The New York City native said he’s had his eyes opened to the issues facing Milwaukee and said the team is determined to help wherever it can. Its top three priorities are wellness, education and work development, he said.

“We know we can’t cure the world,” Feigin said. “But we are very determined to get ourselves involved in programs that we can measure a difference in and put our claws into for a long period of time and show a difference.

“Very bluntly, Milwaukee is the most segregated, racist place I’ve ever experienced in my life. It just is a place that is antiquated. It is in desperate need of repair and has happened for a long, long time. One of our messages and one of our goals is to lead by example.”

Feigin certainly isn’t the first business executive or public figure to make statements about segregation and racial issues in Milwaukee, which made national headlines during the Sherman Park unrest in mid-August that caused millions of dollars in damages to local businesses. However, Feigin’s remarks do stand out for, as he said, their bluntness — in this case from the most public face of a professional sports franchise that relies on fan and sponsor support and is seeking more of both for the new $500 million arena.

As Milwaukee took a step back from the unrest sparked by Saturday’s fatal police shooting of 23-year-old Sylville Smith, two questions were repeated over and over.

The first question: Why did this happen?

And the second: Why didn’t it happen sooner? […]

To the people asking the second question, a series of obvious and relentless factors contributed to the unrest Saturday and Sunday nights: concentrated poverty, high unemployment, broken families, pessimism about the future, a sense that people with power don’t care or have turned their backs. Smith’s shooting was the spark. He was well-known and fleeing in the light of day through Sherman Park, a once thriving neighborhood where quality of life has diminished and tense episodes involving residents, businesses and law enforcement have become almost routine. There and in some surrounding neighborhoods, police are struggling for the public’s trust as homicides and shootings tick upward.

“When it finally all over-boiled and people got tired of the oppression, that’s what happens: People just take out their anger the best way they can,” said Tay Smith, 23, who lives about 3 miles northwest of where the shooting occurred. “If they ain’t got nowhere to go, they tear up their own neighborhood, tear up their own things.”

“When you hold a person down so long, they are eventually going to fight back,” said [Sherman Parks community activist Randy] Jones, who recently ran for election to the city government but lost. “It was going to happen eventually, it was just a matter of when.”Jones said when he was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, he had a job each summer. Now teenagers, especially young black men, have no income potential and too much idle time.

“They have no hope at all,” he said.

By some measures, Milwaukee is the most segregated city in America. The Brookings Institution think tank last December ranked the segregation of cities on a scale of zero to 100 using U.S. Census Bureau data. Milwaukee came in first with a score of 81.

Almost 40 percent of black males in Milwaukee between ages 24 and 54 lack a job, a rate four to five times higher than for whites, said Marc Levine, founding director of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Center for Economic Development.

In Milwaukee, African-Americans are overwhelmingly concentrated in the city and a few nearby suburbs.

Blacks and Hispanics outnumber whites and account for 57% of the city’s nearly 600,000 residents.

By comparison, the surrounding suburban counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington are less than 2% African-American and less than 5% Hispanic. […]

On virtually every indicator of racial inequality, Milwaukee consistently ranks among the worst five cities in the country, experts say.

“Milwaukee is emblematic of a whole range of challenges facing the United States right now,” says Robert Smith, an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

“And when we add the question of race to the mix, we rise to the top. It’s very fair to say that the cultural and political wars of our day are playing out in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in egregious patterns. This is one of the ground zeros.”

When I asked Feigin for further comment Monday, he said: “This is a difficult issue and complex conversation that requires some hard truths. We’re focused on working with the terrific community leaders and organizations that are taking meaningful action to help bring people together and bridge divides in our community.” […]

“There clearly are issues that exist in the country and they’re not Milwaukee issues and they’re not Chicago issues,” [Bucks co-owner Wes] Edens said [during the team’s Monday Media Day session]. “To me, the question is not whether there is an issue. The question is how can you best do something to identify the root causes of it and make inequality something that is in the past. I think that actually Peter being as direct as he was about it is the kind of thing you need so that people don’t debate whether an issue exists.”