Wisconsin is failing its children of color, particularly African-American children, according to the “2017 Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for All Children” report released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The gap in well-being between the state’s white and African American children is the largest in the nation.
“I wish I could say I was surprised by the findings, but I can’t say that I was,” Ken Taylor, executive director of Kids Forward, tells Madison365. “The main finding is that we are still a state that has huge racial and ethnic disparities. In fact, the gap between the well-being of our white kids and our African-American kids remains the largest in the nation. That was the case when the Casey Foundation first did the report three years ago and, unfortunately, that’s the case that remains today.”
This is the second Race for Results report by the Casey Foundation; the Foundation released the first report in 2014. The report measures children’s progress on the national and state levels on key education, health, and economic milestones by racial and ethnic groups.
“We just have to do better as a state, as a community, and as a nation,” Taylor says, “because the gaps are profound.”
The report shows just how far Wisconsin lags in K-12 education and a strong pathway to economic success. In Wisconsin, just 64 percent of African-American students graduate high school on time, compared to 93 percent of white non-Hispanic students. Only 78 percent of Hispanic and American Indian students graduate on time.
In addition, the report found that Wisconsin’s Latino, American Indian, and Hmong children also face significant challenges to well-being. It highlights the barriers children from immigrant families face and encourages policymakers in Wisconsin to create policies and programs that present immigrant families with opportunities for learning, developing, and contributing to the well-being of the state. Wisconsin is home to 143,000 children who are from immigrant families — 11 percent of all Wisconsin children.
Fifty-six percent of children in immigrant families are financially insecure compared to 36 percent of children in non-immigrants families, the report says. “The way I look at that is that 8 of 10 from immigrant families are kids of color so they have all of the challenges that kids of color have in our state and then they have this added challenge of being kids in immigrant families and the challenges we are placing on them to really achieve the American dream,” Taylor says.
To live up to our reputation as a state that genuinely cares about children and families, Taylor says, we need to do a better job of addressing the obstacles immigrant families face and show that we care about children. Locally and nationally, policymakers have made it a priority to roll back programs and policies that provide opportunities for children and families like public investments in education, affordable and accessible health care, and safety net programs.
According to the report, 72 percent of white children in Wisconsin live in families that are economically secure compared to just 24 percent of African-American children, 30 percent of Latino children, 31 percent of Hmong children, and 36 percent of American Indian children. (Economically secure means having incomes 200 percent or more than the federal poverty level. For example, a family of four that makes $49,200 would be 200 percent the federal poverty level).
The new report shows divesting from these programs will create even larger gaps between Wisconsin’s white children and its children of color, and it will put the economic stability of the state in jeopardy. But just how do we convince white people that it is to their benefit to work on decreasing these huge gaps?
“That’s a great question that we are grappling with here every day because it’s pretty obvious to us how we all do better when we all do better. The economic disparity is huge in so many ways,” Taylor says. “For instance, when Social Security was created, there were four workers for every retiree. When I’m going to retire 20 years from now, there will be two workers for every retiree – and one of them will be a person of color.
“So, even if you don’t care about the well-being of other people … or let’s say you look at these racial disparities and you say, ‘That’s their fault. They are lazy.’ … if you care about your own retirement, then you need to care about the future of our country which is gonna be a lot more diverse than it is today. So, if people of color are not successful and people of color is where the growth is, then we’re all going to be worse off as a result.”
For America to reach its full economic, democratic and moral potential, all children must have the opportunity to grow, develop and thrive, the report says. Taylor says that almost all of the population growth in Wisconsin for the next 20 years and beyond will be with people of color. “The white population is actually shrinking,” he says. “The child population across the state is much more diverse than the adult population. Look, to me, the moral imperative is clear. But if you don’t care about that, the economic imperative is just as clear.”
Kids Forward, formerly the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, recommends that policymakers begin addressing the gap in well-being for both children of color and children in immigrant families by:
• Increasing the state’s minimum wage to a family supporting wage so that parents can secure employment that allows them to support their families.
• Investing in public education, especially programs that provide access to a high-quality, culturally and linguistically appropriate education for children of color so that every child in the state can reach key developmental milestones.
• Advocating and implementing policies that support the success of immigrant families and opposing anti-immigration policies at both the state and federal levels.
“First and foremost, we need to not rip children and families apart. For children in immigrant families, for DACA recipients – a significant portion who are parents themselves, we need to not rip families apart because the long-term negative impact of that is huge,” Taylor says. “The trauma that we are perpetuating on kids is going to have untold negative consequences over the years.”
The other recommendations mirror what Kids Forward has said through time since the Race to Equity Project.
“For children and families to be successful, it takes family supporting jobs, high-quality education, and targeted support for working parents,” Taylor says.
A larger point that needs to be addressed beyond these recommendations, is the giant disparity in the wealth passed on from generation to generation. The gap between blacks and whites in income is big, but nowhere near as big as the gap in inherited wealth.
“That’s an important point,” Taylor says. “This particular report does not have the wealth information within it, but the wealth information is even more troubling. When there’s a 20-1 ratio of wealth, that is so huge. When we see impacts that are 2-1, 3-1, 10-1 in the justice system, that is very big. But when you look at the 20-1 wealth gap, that’s a whole other story. It’s important to bring that up whenever we can because you do have those [discriminatory] examples of redlining, home loans and the G.I. Bill, just to name a few, where these clear systematic preferences led to wealth disparities.
“When people understand that this was systematically held away from people of color by design – that was no mistake – I think that’s an important story to tell,” he adds.
