Race to Equity 10-Year Report: Dane County

An initiative of Kids Forward

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Executive Summary

Economic Well-being

Health

Education

Introduction

Advocacy and Reporting Prior to Race to Equity

Year after year Dane County has been named by several sources as one of the best places to live in the country.

It is often touted as a resource-rich area where families and young professionals can thrive. But, Dane County is not an island. It is a product of the state of Wisconsin, which has been described as one of the worst states to live for Black people. While many Black families are thriving in Dane County, it is not an oasis for many of its Black residents, especially those making low and moderate incomes.

Black residents have not been silent over the years about the very real racial disparities that they experience. Black community members, religious leaders, parents, youth, educators, practitioners, and public officials have dared to name and fight against systemic racism for decades. The Urban League of Greater Madison’s 2008 State of Black Madison: Before the Tipping Point is one of many important reports that described the experiences of Black Madison residents, highlighting “some of the significant challenges that African Americans face in the areas of employment, income, entrepreneurship, health, education, housing, criminal justice, and political influence in Madison and Dane County.”

The Race to Equity Initiative stood on the shoulders of Black residents, community activists, and leaders who used their lived experience and positional power to call attention to some of the country’s most extreme racial inequities.

This research was funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc., and we thank them for their support; however, the findings and conclusions presented in this report are those of the author(s) alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Foundation.

Themes From the Race to Equity Baseline Report

On October 3, 2013, Race to Equity (R2E)—an initiative of Kids Forward, previously the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families —released “Race to Equity: A Baseline Report on the State of Racial Disparities in Dane County.” The R2E Baseline Report was a databook designed to highlight the profound and persistent Black-white disparities in employment, income, wealth, education, criminal justice, health, and child welfare. It added to the historical narrative that racial inequality was, indeed, an issue in Dane County. The R2E Baseline Report built upon many decades of resistance within Dane County’s Black and Brown communities. The R2E Baseline report uplifted several themes¹:

  • The magnitude of racial disparities were profound, persistent and—on many indicators—exceeded state and national levels;
  • While outcomes for white Dane County residents measured far above national averages, Dane County’s Black residents, on many indicators, measured far worse;
  • These profound and persistent disparities created a racialized poverty and economic “disadvantage” for Dane County’s Black residents despite professional success and financial security;
  • Allowing this racialized “disadvantage” nurtured stereotypes, fostered profiling, and produced differential expectations for achievement within the community at large;
  • For Dane County, “continued marginalization of communities of color, undermine[s] the region’s cultural vitality, economic competitiveness, and overall quality of life in a world that increasingly valued and demanded racial and ethnic diversity and inclusion.”

The R2E Baseline report attributed these findings to several forces and factors²:

  • A mismatched labor market oriented to advance-degreed, heavily credentialed, and well-networked job seekers leaving a substantial portion of Black residents with fewer pathways to quality jobs.
  • Small, under-resourced, disconnected communities creating a challenge for Black residents. Given these systemic and environmental factors, residents were likely to be highly mobile with diverse origins, making social connection and political visibility a challenge.
  • Dane County and Madison needed to respond more effectively, inclusively, and accountably to this growing racial equity challenge by evaluating and addressing underrepresentation of people of color in the Dane County workforce, especially in management-level positions.

Harm Caused by the Race to Equity Baseline Report and Subsequent Publications

We fully acknowledge and thank the many Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) who have been calling attention to the racial inequities in Dane County for decades.The R2E Baseline report and subsequent published work attempted to add to the historical narrative and challenge the efficacy of claims that Dane County is a progressive safe haven for all of its residents. We also acknowledge that the Race to Equity Initiative missed the mark on achieving many of the goals it outlined in the Baseline Report.

Affected people are the best experts at explaining the forces and factors contributing to racial disparities, but community voice was missing from the R2E Baseline Report. While community engagement efforts certainly informed the work, the report was designed to be a databook. The R2E Baseline report also only acknowledged the contributions of activists and community leaders, but was silent about the contributions and realities of the everyday Black Dane County residents whose experiences qualify the data.

The R2E Baseline report and subsequent efforts lacked the contextualization necessary for readers to understand how and why the disparities existed. This led to dangerous, deficit and poverty-centered narratives that allowed people and the media to perpetuate a distorted understanding. In fact, when the report was released, most Black and Brown community members were not shocked. Black and Brown residents felt vindicated. In contrast, white residents were shocked that the place they called home was so profoundly harmful to their Black neighbors. We know the different ways Black and white readers made sense of the Baseline Report was not a coincidence, but a result of missing context and the socialization of white residents into racist norms and stereotypes.

Race to Equity tried hard to acknowledge Black community leaders and organizations at the forefront of this movement in Dane County. Simultaneously, the R2E Baseline Report did not adequately acknowledge the work of its teammates (especially those who were Black) which minimized Black intellectual leadership and contributions. Black staff and community organizers leveraged (and continue to leverage) their personal and professional relationships to contribute to the success of the Race to Equity Initiative. Kids Forward thanks every Black staff member, past and present, for their invisible labor and intellectual contributions.

Because of the privileged position of Kids Forward as a predominantly white organization with longstanding connections to high profile decision makers and funders, there was significantly less scrutiny than there would have been on smaller, BIPOC organizations. The report received a level of conscious critique which is rarely afforded to Black organizations involved in racial equity work, allowing for minimal transparency and community accountability.We acknowledge how Kids Forward has benefited from that privilege and are working to use our positionality—as a 140 year-old organization—to stand in solidarity with BIPOC community members, parents, caregivers, leaders, and organizations.

Kids Forward Has Shifted

In the ten years following the release of the R2E Baseline Report, Kids Forward has learned a lot about our role within the racial equity space in Dane County and Wisconsin. In response, our team, priorities, and orientation to the work is different. Our new team is personally and professionally committed to antiracism. Our antiracist policy and advocacy model is the foundation of our new theory of change, which embeds racial equity and lived experience into all areas of our work. We now choose to consult with lived experts first, elevate their insights and solutions, and prioritize their recommendations for policy change.

This 10-Year Race to Equity Report is a Result of that Shift

Community members and leaders have asked countless times whether there would be another Race to Equity report since the release of the Baseline Report. In September of 2022, Kids Forward committed to releasing a ten year report. Building upon years of community engagement efforts by Black and Brown staff members, we executed a vision for the report reflective of Kids Forward’s values and antiracist mission. Our multiracial team – led by our Senior Racial Equity Policy Analyst – partnered with Silver Lynx Consulting to conduct an antiracist analysis of the quantitative data. The Race to Equity – Dane 10 Year Report is one of many ways Kids Forward is working to embody our antiracist mission.

The goals of the 10-Year report are different. It is designed to:

1. Unpack—using a root cause approach—how race, class, and in some cases gender impact Black Dane County residents, applying what our team has learned from years of community engagement and lived experience.

It also begins a discussion of why: Why extreme and persistent Black-white racial disparities continue in Dane County.

2. Be different from the Baseline Report; the 10 year report focuses narrowly on Economic Well-being, Education, and Health.

The 10 year report suggests that by focusing on the root causes of inequity we can gain insight into how systemic racism and anti-Blackness manifests into profound Black-white racial disparities in Dane County. While Kids Forward fully understands that the youth justice, child welfare, and adult justice data were particularly useful for advocates and community leaders, quantitative data in these areas can be particularly harmful if not adequately contextualized and leveraged. Because of this shift, we have not covered youth justice, child welfare, and adult justice in this report.

3. Provide a recent snapshot of quantitative, mostly pre-pandemic, county level data.

Of note, this report is not designed to compare current data to data from the Baseline Report. Readers may not be able to concretely answer the frequently asked question “are things better or worse?” Black Dane County residents are the best people to answer that question and their answers may vary based on proximity to overall wellness.

4. Include recommendations, which we hope will serve as a tool to support communities as they advocate for investments and against anti-Black racism throughout the Dane County and State legislative processes, as well as in their efforts to hold public and private employers accountable.

Dane County is Not an Island

While this report focuses mostly on the experiences of Black residents in Dane County, it’s critical to note that the impact of state policies is experienced by Black residents across Wisconsin. Unfortunately, disparities between Black and white residents across Wisconsin are some of the most severe in the country compared to other states. State decision makers, for example, passed a law that prohibits local communities from increasing the minimum wage, a move that would especially benefit Black residents in Dane County.

Themes From the 10 Year Report

Our process allowed us to bring multiple sources of data–qualitative and quantitative–into conversation with each other: one informing, elucidating, clarifying, and the other contextualizing. It is through this process that we arrived at our conclusions about the context of Dane County as it relates to Black residents’ experiences.

Black residents are substantial assets to the Dane County community. In the most highly educated county in Wisconsin, there is a growing population of Black professionals. These Black professionals have witnessed more opportunity in the workplace, and with economic opportunity comes greater means to devote themselves as parents and caregivers, towards civic engagement, and as staples of the community. Despite the fact that the Black professional population in Dane County is strong, racial disparities in health, education, and economic well-being still exist, even for them. In contrast, low-wage earning Black residents’ voices are often unheard in conversations about wellness and prosperity.

Dane County is currently the fastest growing county in the state. But unfortunately, Black and low-wage earning residents are not experiencing the shared prosperity that working, paying taxes, and being an asset to the community and the workforce should afford them. Even despite improvements in wages, Black residents at all income levels—especially those earning low incomes—are more severely affected by this lack of shared prosperity than their white counterparts. This disadvantage is certainly racialized but—less obviously—there are also gendered disadvantages which affect Black women and girls, Black boys and men, and Black gender non-conforming residents differently.

The lack of shared prosperity has come at a cost for the entire county (and state), not just Black residents. Black residents report disproportionately experiencing negative stereotypes, profiling, and differential expectations for achievement while white residents bear witness to these inequities – both not without consequence. The R2E Baseline Report was clear that the consequences of not addressing the then growing—now spiraling—problem of racism would cost us all. The R2E 10 Year report takes this a step further and suggests that anti-Blackness and racism will continue to undermine the County’s “cultural vitality, economic competitiveness, and overall quality of life”³ if its decision makers and employers do not stand firmly against it.

In our conversations with community members and leaders, the question that we were asked consistently was: Have things gotten better? Many Black residents are not convinced that things have, but they push forward because they must.

I feel the city will never be as healthy as it should be until we truly invest in these nine low-income neighborhoods. I don’t care what you say.

- Will Green

The state of Black Dane County is: we’re in a state of emergency, even within our own community…It seemed like we were surviving back then when we started this [Race to Equity Community Ambassador] program. I feel like, now, we are all in survival mode…and no longer surviving and thriving.
COVID really did a major number and showed the issue of discrimination. [It] showed the racism. It showed the inequities…It really opened our eyes to a lot, but I think part of that is also a lot of companies and organizations are still using that as an excuse for things that are happening…going to go back to pre 2020…We’re never going to get that version of experience back. It was almost like we all died, partially, in so many ways.

- Felicia Turner-Wallace

The purpose of the Race to Equity report of course is to shine a light on the deep disparities … and it tells the truth and does just that. However, my experience also is filled with joy and community and support. My life, my family, and my work have been deeply influenced, impacted and encouraged by the work and words of the Black Community. I see us win, smile, celebrate, laugh, support, heal, build, etc…despite what we are facing. That is also my experience.

- Alia Stevenson, Health, Racial & Social Justice Change Agent

The lack of shared prosperity that impacts Black Dane County children and families will continue to influence the amount of control, autonomy, and opportunity they have access to if racial inequity and systemic racism continues to be embedded into the fabric of the community. While there is no way to fully measure reductions in anti-Blackness and racism, we can reasonably interpret substantial improvements in the economic well-being, health, and education of Black Dane County residents as evidence of true progress.

Download the Full Report

Executive Summary

Economic Well-being

Health

Education

Share your Feedback

Our new policy advocacy model pushes us to begin by listening to BIPOC voices first, to understand the community’s needs and solutions. Please share any insights below or email racetoequity@kidsforward.org.

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Dedication

This report is dedicated to our current and former Black colleagues. Their devotion of professional expertise, lived experience, trusted community relationships, and emotional labor ensured the Race to Equity Initiative’s relevance to Black life. These contributions often occurred outside the limelight. 

Then and now, we see you, we honor you, and we thank you.

Mrs. Carte’cia Lawrence, M.P.A.
Mrs. Christin Calloway, Ed. M., M.A.
Dr. Corinda Rainey Moore, Ph.D
Ms. Michele Mackey, M.S., J.D.
Dr. Michelle Robinson, Ph.D
Dr. Torry Winn, J.D., M.Div., Ph.D

In solidarity.

Acknowledgements

This report is the product of the contributions of many Dane County community members, Kids Forward staff members, and consultants. 

Cartecia Lawrence authored, developed the strategic antiracist vision, interviewed community members, and generated the arguments of this report. Silver Lynx Consulting co-authored the report and led the quantitative data collection. Michele Mackey provided antiracist insight and advice to focus the messaging and recommendations. William Parke-Sutherland provided invaluable thought partnership, recommendations, and editorial support. Emily Miota provided essential communications and layout support. The multiracial Kids Forward team – Liliana Barrera, Nicole Hoffmann, Amanda Martinez, and Daithi Wolfe – provided thoughtful suggestions and reviews.

Christin Gates Calloway provided evaluation and qualitative data support. Nina Collective provided invaluable outreach and community engagement support.

To our interviewees and external reviewers whose experiences and insights contributed to the formulation of this report, thank you for trusting Kids Forward with your stories and feedback.

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1. Wisconsin Council on Children and Families “Race to Equity: A Baseline Report on the State of Racial Disparities in
Dane County”, 2013, https://kidsforward.org/assets/WCCF-R2E-Report.pdf.
2. Ibid
3. Ibid

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