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.

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.

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.