I was recently challenged by a reader of my story celebrating a small town in Wisconsin. She said something like - try being Black in that small town. I had to agree. Wisconsin is one of the most segregated states in the country, with Black people concentrated in and around Milwaukee and anything out state is majority white. That is changing, but not fast, and it is Latinx, Hmong, and Somali immigrants who are coming to small towns and rural areas for Agriculture-related jobs and such.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I have to think that segregation is both caused by racism and causes more racism. Sort of like a chicken and the egg.

I grew up in Wisconsin, but my family moved to Memphis, TN right after I left for college. My younger brother was starting 9th grade and went to a public school. It was "underfunded" and the education was not anywhere near what he had been getting in his white public school in Wisconsin.

After one year, my brother chose to live with my dad in St Louis, where he went to a Lutheran school, mostly white. Later he went to a Lutheran school in suburban Detroit when my dad moved. There were no Lutheran schools where we had lived in Wisconsin, despite it being like mostly Lutheran. So these schools in St Louis and Detroit were not about getting a Christian education - just pure segregation masked as Christian values.

Both of those schools are the northern versions of Segregation Academies (St Louis is not quite north, but okay). Our family's reasons were that the public schools were not good. But the public schools were not good because of segregation. But if only Black kids went to public schools, then they would never get needed funding. The lack of opportunity would drive white families away and any Black families who can afford to leave. The outcomes for underfunded public schools produce more inequality. Chicken and egg.

I’m also learning about how lack of exposure early on in life to people with different skin tones can lead to children and (later) adults who have more pronounced racial bias. Segregation literally replicates itself like a virus.

I'm still stuck on loving Wisconsin and our historically good public schools that I went to, while knowing the property tax formula and private school voucher program is leaving Milwaukee public schools underfunded and in trouble. And that is by design. Not right.