People often ask me what it’s like to be Black in Madison.
The question is understandable. Madison has cultivated a national reputation as one of America’s most progressive cities.
The answer, however, is far more complicated.
Madison isn’t the South. You won’t find many burning crosses or people screaming racial slurs. What you’ll find is something far more subtle and, in many ways, more difficult to navigate.
Walk into almost any restaurant, coffee shop, brewery, or public gathering, and you’ll often notice you’re the only Black person in the room. Maybe one or two others. If there are more, they’re usually working there rather than enjoying the space. You begin to understand, without anyone saying a word, who those spaces were built for.
Sometimes you’ll be acknowledged immediately. Sometimes you’ll watch white customers who arrived after you get served first. Sometimes everyone is perfectly polite, but there’s a distance that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. The best way I know to describe it is like being a very tall person trying to get comfortable under a blanket made for a child. Nothing is openly hostile. It just never quite fits.
Madison is also the pinnacle of performative progressivism. You’ll see “Black Lives Matter” signs in neighborhoods where you can walk for blocks without seeing a single Black resident. Allyship often functions more as a signal to other white progressives than as a commitment to changing outcomes for Black people.
One thing that often gets lost is the phrase “people of color.” It’s a useful coalition politically, but it also becomes a shield that hides the unique experiences of Black people. Progress for one minority community is too often presented as progress for all minority communities.
It isn’t.
Madison has become increasingly welcoming to many communities of color. That’s worth celebrating. But Black representation remains remarkably limited. We have relatively few Black-owned restaurants, almost no Black nightlife, few spaces centered on Black culture, and comparatively little visible investment in Black economic development. When Madison celebrates diversity, Black people are often expected to be satisfied simply because someone else made progress.
The numbers tell the story better than I ever could. Black residents make up roughly 5% of Dane County’s population, yet routinely account for around 55% of the county jail population. Per 100,000 residents, Black people are incarcerated at rates exceeding 1,400 compared with fewer than 100 for white residents. Black unemployment remains roughly double that of white residents. Homeownership rates lag dramatically behind. Educational outcomes remain deeply unequal. If you judge a community by outcomes rather than intentions, Madison has a lot of work left to do.
And that’s what makes the city so frustrating. Madison has been governed almost exclusively by Democrats for generations. It prides itself on being progressive. We have a Black sheriff, a Black district attorney, and a Black president of the Common Council. Yet despite that representation, the systems continue producing the same racial outcomes year after year. Representation matters, but representation alone has not changed the outcomes.
The root of it isn’t simply individual prejudice. It’s the legacy of redlining, exclusionary housing policies, unequal educational opportunity, economic disinvestment, and generations of decisions that concentrated disadvantage while allowing the city to preserve its progressive self-image. The disparities didn’t happen by accident, and they won’t disappear through symbolism.
Madison has a way of reminding you that you’re Black. Not because people constantly tell you. Because the city quietly asks you to leave parts of yourself at the door. Respectability politics becomes the price of admission. We are expected to assimilate into white cultural norms while our own culture is tolerated only in carefully controlled doses. Black spaces are scarce. Black nightlife is nearly nonexistent, and when it does emerge, it’s often met with a disproportionately heavy police presence. Sometimes the reminders are almost laughably small. You walk into a neighborhood bar, flip through the jukebox, and realize there isn’t a single Black artist represented. Even the soundtrack quietly tells you who belongs.
That’s why so many Black people describe Madison as exhausting rather than openly racist. The hostility isn’t usually loud. It’s ambient. It’s polite. It’s systemic. And because it exists beneath a carefully cultivated image of progressivism, it can be even harder to confront.
I still believe Madison can become the city it believes itself to be. But it will never get there by pretending these realities don’t exist, or by hiding Black outcomes behind the broader success of “people of color.” If we’re serious about equity, then we have to be honest enough to say that while many communities have found a home here, Black Madisonians are still waiting for the city to live up to the values it so proudly proclaims.
