Here & Now

Noon Wednesday: What Does Healing Kenosha Mean?

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to “Noon Wednesday,” I’m Marisa Wojcik, multimedia journalist with “Here & Now” on PBS Wisconsin. Today is December 15. The city of Kenosha has been hurled into the national spotlight for more than a year after Jacob Blake was shot by a police officer seven times, and a Black Lives Matter protest in response, Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people killing two. Now, no charges were brought against the officer who shot Blake, and Rittenhouse was recently acquitted of all charges. So, to hear from one community leader about how Kenosha moves forward, we turn to James Hall, interim president and CEO of the Urban League of Racine and Kenosha, and, James, thank you so much for being here.

James Hall:

Thank you for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, after no charges were filed, the officer who shot Jacob Blake and now Kyle Rittenhouse has been acquitted, how is the community feeling and reacting, especially Black and Brown people in the area?

James Hall:

Well, unfortunately, the Black and Brown communities expected no charges to be filed, and we expected Kyle Rittenhouse to be acquitted because the judge tipped his hand already in which direction the case was, so we expected that.

Marisa Wojcik:

Is there exhaustion from fighting this same fight over and over? Is there feelings of kind of trauma after dealing with this for more than a year?

James Hall:

Well, the Black and Brown population has been dealing with this for 400 years, unfortunately, in this country, so it is a lot of trauma involved, but what do we do? Year after year, month after month, there’s new cases around the country, and, you know, Kenosha, Wisconsin was put in the spotlight with the cases that rippled throughout the country, and the problem is that the Black and Brown population is just used to it, unfortunately. We don’t expect any justice in this country. We have no expectations of being treated fairly, but we still figure out a way how to forge forward.

Marisa Wojcik:

And you said given the outcomes of these two major events, it shows that white males get away with what Black and Brown males cannot. You said we still need to move forward. How do you propose doing that?

James Hall:

Well, the Black and Brown population, how we move forward? We move forward based on hope, hope that it gets better someday, one day, but reality of it is it’s never gotten better. We’re fighting the same fights we fought in the’ 60s and prior to the time, and Jim Crow era, weve fighting the same fights for years, and, however, Black folks and Brown people as individuals have done better in this country, but as a culture, we have been dealing with the same issues for 400 years.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, is this an issue that people who are white need to be addressing and dealing with, or instead of the burden always falling on the Black and Brown population?

James Hall:

The only way this problem’s going to be solved here in America is white people must be looking in the mirror, examine themselves, examine their families, have these conversations at the dinner table, and then in their personal conversations amongst family and friends, and in their personal and private conversations. This problem is not going to be solved with just a Black and Brown population because it didn’t start with the Black and Brown population. The Black and Brown population ultimately is the victim in this case, and in order for us to advance and move forward, we literally have to have white men and women to really examine themselves and say, wow, this is going too far. What can we do to stop this? We — there’s been laws in the books, you know, we have laws in the books at the federal level, state level, but it still happens because white males tend to believe that the law doesn’t apply to them. They can do what they want. And I view that as —

Marisa Wojcik:

Do you think certain laws are written in a way to — to be more privileged to certain people than other people?

James Hall:

Well, if we look at it on the surface, the law is the law. It is supposed to be blind. You know, however, people of privilege always have been a factor of the laws because they have the resources to work around the law, but in the case when it comes down to white males, white males tend to disagree with something, they do what we see happen on January 6th. They get together. They rally. They decide to do what they want to do. And oftentimes, there’s no repercussions, none at all. Look at Kyle Rittenhouse. A young man that should not have been in Kenosha, but at the same time, he felt that he needed to be a part of this action. Now, I believe Kyle Rittenhouse, his issue started way back when he go to the ideas of what happened years ago in Florida when the young man only had some skittles, and the guy that was acting as security — I’m not going to say their names for obvious reason — was acting as security and killed a man. That was the prelude because we didn’t do anything to address that issue there. That empowered white males to say, we got — we can take justice into our own hands and do what we want any time. We don’t need to call the authorities. All the other coaches are already coached and trained, please call the police, do not get involved. Call the police and allow the police to handle it. Well, white men tend to get away with taking things into their own hands. It’s like, you know, being the victim. In this country, when it comes down to white males versus everybody else, everyone else has been a victim to a degree because the white males are often the predators, and the predators always, in this country right now, get away with anything, and then a victim is taught to be shamed, even though you suffered the crisis and went through the pain and you went through the trauma, you are still victimizing them more after the incident. Like Kyle Rittenhouse. He get to be called a hero for taking some lives. How is that even fair in this country? How is it fair in this country? Murder is murder no matter what. He was allowed to say he was there in self-defense, but how is that even possible when he shouldn’t have been there to begin with? He was not defending his property. He was not defending his family. He was not defending anything that had to do with him personally, yet he had the right to claim self-defense. Wow. If that was any Black and Brown person being in the place where they were not supposed to be, and Black and Brown people often are given five, ten year cases because they was at the wrong place at the right time, they would have had nothing to do with it, strolling down the park, but happened to be there, no evidence points to them, but they get years of their life taken from them. Now, oftentimes people say, well, he had resources. He was able to hire the best attorneys. Well, I’m confused by that. Because my understanding is this money was raised for Kyle Rittenhouse, the outside white America said, well, that’s one of ours, and we have to protect ours. Been in Florida, taking pictures with the Republican party. You know, he’s only like a hero circuit right now. Many innocent people all throughout this country that oftentimes never get their voice heard simply because they don’t have the resources. No one steps up to help them.

Marisa Wojcik:

Do you think that white people understand the fear of yourself when you leave the house? Do you think that it’s important for people to understand the fear that of just being out in the world as a person of color?

James Hall:

No, the white people don’t understand that. Every Black and Brown person, when they — especially when they leave outside their community and go to other communities and shop, white people can never understand that. To walk in a store — myself, personally, I’m not a criminal. I don’t have any background, but to this day, I could have a shirt and tie on and walk into the local mall, and it has happened to me, I’m not going to say in any particular store, but people follow in the store and look at you like you don’t belong there, and it’s, like, well I have money, and I’m spending money just like the other person. They watch you. And the excuse is, well, your people always commit these crimes. Well, I’m confused. We often are profiled based on what some other group of people have done, okay? I understand that there is a lot of crime that’s committed in this country that Black and Brown people stereotypically get the bill for, but should we be looked upon as individuals? In this country, Black and Brown people never judge like white people as individuals. They are always judged based on culture. That’s not fair.

Marisa Wojcik:

In our first “Noon Wednesday” interview this year, we heard from Tonya McQueen from Leaders of Kenosha, and she expressed she was frustrated because she felt like city and county officials were not listening and working with local community leaders such as her or yourself. Has that been your experience, and what reforms or demands are you calling for from people in power, elected officials, law enforcement, of the Kenosha area?

James Hall:

Well, what I’ve called for in the past is more communication with the Black and Brown population from the police force, from the mayor, and the elected officials in leadership. Long term, right after the incident or the tragic incident that took place, communication was there. We were talking pretty much, you know, every week, but that’s because they knew that there was a possible outcome, you know, a case of things coming by, but once it wears thin, then it goes back to normal. It goes to business as usual like it didn’t exist. So white people have the chance in Kenosha to actually heal. They know what comfort feels like. They go back. They take the boards off the windows. Their doors. They go back to business as usual. Well, sometimes Black folks and Brown folks don’t have that opportunity because we never had the chance to heal. We’re always under constant attack. Always under a constant terror. You know, that’s what this is. It is a form of terrorism inside the Black and Brown community, and that’s what we have grown used to. It is no different from what’s taking place in third world countries. We experience traumatic issues daily, every single day we experience that, and whether Racine, Kenosha, or somewhere in Wisconsin. Recently, we had a major situation in a high school where it was some racial slurs that was, you know, written inside the high school, and the school that was receiving the school knew the players were predominant black, so they did it on purpose. The excuse we always get when we deal with these issues is, well, we have to figure out a way to parent better, or we can’t control how parents parent the children. No one wants to put a solution in place and say, okay, enough of this. Stop it. We always have more excuses. Well, we didn’t know Johnny was like that. Well, here’s the thing, if you — the Kyle Rittenhouse situation already produced copycat situations. If you look at Oxford, Michigan, I believe that’s where it’s at. Because the Kyle Rittenhouse issue was not fully addressed properly, then you have another case that’s going to pop up and appear. The same way that, for years, the Black and Brown people have been complaining about drugs in their community and violence in their community that’s been overlooked for year after year after year, we saying the same thing when it comes down to police brutality and white males getting away with everything and anything, and if we don’t stop this now, what are we teaching the younger white males that are 15 years old, 12 years old, watching this stuff on social media and on tv. We’re literally telling them, you can do what you want, and nothing will ever happen to you. You can take someone’s life. You can harass somebody. You can traumatize somebody. You can rape somebody. You can do whatever you want. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Think about that. We have a Supreme Court Justice that was challenged a few years ago, and they — the victim that was on display, they really traumatized her even more to pretty much call her a liar from her experience in her own life. When we approve the last Supreme Court Justice, it was okay. That’s the historic pattern that we see here that white men can literally do whatever they want all the time, and nobody does anything to them because they can appeal to themselves for the most part and get out of jail free card each and every time.

Marisa Wojcik:

What are you asking for from the people of Kenosha, specifically?

James Hall:

What the leadership in Kenosha is, the leadership in Kenosha need to begin to invest in Black and Brown community, seriously invest. When I say “invest,” I’m saying re-examine the schools that’s in the Black and Brown community, the parks in the Black and Brown community, the local police and policies that are located in the Black and Brown community. I must say, to some degree, the Kenosha Police Department has some fairness to it. I cannot say all of the police of Kenosha is unfair, but what I am saying is the mayor and the chief need to constantly re-examine the policing policies. How to police the Black community, how they deal with police structures here, how they — the lack of investment in the Black and Brown communities, and literally decide to say, we have to really, physically invest in this community as a whole because I believe a rising tide raises all ships. Now, if they don’t make these investments here in this region in Kenosha, it is too small to not be affected by poverty, by crime. Last week or the week before last, someone got killed in the downtown area, okay? Is that crime? Is it poverty? What’s it linked to? What is — in my opinion, it’s just linked to a poor investment across the board. The poor investment, lack of resources in the Black and Brown community that we need to have to give the people in the Black and Brown community some sense of ownership and pride. We need to have more home ownership programs to allow Black and Brown people to be able to purchase a home instead of paying extremely high rates. Small things like that creates a lot pressure. If someone struggles day-to-day because they work at, say, a local retail store making minimum wage or $15, $16 an hour, which everyone thinks is the living wage, which it’s not if they have five or six children, and they are not there to police their children because they have to work, then what happens is the kids raise themselves. We don’t have any day cares. We don’t have any — we don’t have any resources in the park for the kids to go. We don’t have any of these programs for after school for kids to be a part of. They are in select neighborhoods. When you go to the white communities in Kenosha, they have all of the outstanding programs. They have things for people that look like them to do on a regular basis. Okay? We do have a Boys and Girls Club here in the city of Kenosha, but it is not in the heart of community where the Black and Brown people are. They have to travel. They have to get on the bus. It’s not within reasonable walking distance to where the communities need it to be. It’s on 52nd street. I mean, it’s over there in the area where they have the youth at, but then at the same time, it’s not open long enough for those children to be able to benefit so kids get out of school and say, 2:30, 3:15, the Boys and Girls Club is closed right around, I think, 6:00, 7:00. Well, most crime happens between 3:00 and 10:30. That means the kids are not engaged somewhere so we don’t have places for the kids to go, not just to hang out, but to get additional leadership, get additional foundation from different environments. We leaving it all up to the schools. Okay? The schools can’t solve all the problems. The schools can’t parent. The schools can’t educate 24 hours. We happen to have other things in community where these kids can turn to so they can actually improve themselves, and at some point, these children know right and wrong. They just need a place to help them do discover themselves, and so that’s what we are trying to do with the urban league with some of the programs we put in place for the most part.

Marisa Wojcik:

I was going to ask, what are, you know, the biggest priorities for you and the people you serve through the urban league, and it sounds like youth, in particular, is very, very important to you and your organization.

James Hall:

Yes. Youth development. So right before the Jacob Blake situation took place, our board decided that we needed to re-examine how to help this community, so we re-examined our programming. Our focus is on youth development. Youth development from middle school all the way through 24 years old. So, what we are going — what we’re doing is we have a program called urban 3s where teenagers come in, pretty much sophomore, 10th grade and up, and express their experiences that they have had in the area around Kenosha. They talk about it. They express themselves. It is team led. One adult facilitator, but the way it is formatted, the adult can only take notes and not interject. It’s led by the team so we understand they are experiencing. That’s in place because we knew children were suffering in silence. Most of the kids here in the Kenosha region and Racine region are suffering in silence. They don’t have anybody to turn to. They are not comfortable often talking to their parents because they believe their parents are too old to understand. They suffer based on whatever they experience in school, and based on a lot of microaggression that these kids experience in our school system, and so then they feel not welcome. They feel not wanted. So, they try to figure out ways to escape that system. And then they figure out ways not to want to be involved in school, period. That’s one thing where we have a reading program where we are trying to be really proactive to catch the kid as early as possible so we can make sure that they know how to read because it is a really uncomfortable stat that — I’m sure you guys have heard the stat. If a student reads in the 3rd grade, they pretty much will survive or not go to prison for the most part. If you can’t read in 3rd grade, he or she is pretty much going to go to prison. So, we trying to interrupt that school to prison pipeline completely. That’s why we have the reading program as early as possible. Trying to catch them early as possible. Where we have a team leadership program that we’re trying to help individuals craft their ideas and shape themselves to become leaders so they can be more outspoken and lead themselves in these school programs and can voice themselves properly. They know who the right person that they can go to advocate for them, and then we have stem programs where that, you know, teaches the arts and brings out creativity to allow people to — allow the students to rediscover who they are. Those programs we are focusing on, and then we have the jobs, the general — what we call soft skills, job interviewing, job training. We have that in the program in general, but we’re finding out that the kids want to do things, they want to be a part of things, however, they are not given the opportunity, but then when you talk to the other side, they are not given opportunity because of kids not being skilled enough. So it is like a two-edged sword here. We are trying to help the kids solve their problems on their end, but also get them prepared to be able to move forward in their lives, and that’s the focus of the urban league in Kenosha at this point.

Marisa Wojcik:

As we’ve already mentioned, the events of the last year and a half are a very intense, short period of time, but then you said there is decades of trauma, so how do you define “healing,” both in the short term and the long term?

James Hall:

Ha-ha, healing in the short term is — well, I’ll do it this way. Healing typically goes back to when you heal, you go back to what is considered normal. Okay? Black and Brown people don’t know what normal is because we never had a chance where we have had a chance to breathe. I’m talking about as a culture/ I’m not talking about individuals. Individuals in the Black and Brown community, I’m reiterating this, have had successes and moved up the ladder and they have been able to realize the American dream, but when it comes down to the culture as a whole, we have not been able to discover the American dream because we’ve never had a chance to heal from the perspective of what’s normal? What’s normal to the Black and Brown population is terror in our community. So that’s, in the short term, is allowing more white people to come into the Black and Brown communities, find out and talk to people at the local grocery store. Talk to someone you never talked to before. You my dais cover why while you’re at the grocery store you have more likenesses than differences, however, the long-term is we got to figure out a way to bridge the gap between equity and inclusion in Wisconsin and Kenosha, in Racine. White people have to not be afraid if a Black person advance in their job or get a new career or open up a business that is not taking anything from them. There’s tons of resources out here. I believe, in most cases, that most white people believe if one group gains, the other one loses. That’s not true. If we all work together and work together collectively, we all can win. I believe we all want the same for our families. We all want great school systems, great health care, we all want that. It doesn’t mean just because one person has it or one group has it, that the other group won’t get it or will lose it, so in the long term, I would love for white people to remove their fear of Black and Brown people, and that would go a long ways to us improving this racism relationship.

Marisa Wojcik:

People have been seeing and reading about Kenosha, even in international news, like we’ve said for more than a year. What do you want those who have been on the outside gazing in to know and understand about your community?

James Hall:

Well, the Kenosha community is a small microcosm of what we see in the world. If the outsiders can observe Kenosha — so let’s not make any mistakes. Kenosha is a resilient community. Most people in Kenosha know each other, went to school with each other at one of the local high schools or worked together, and so most people in Kenosha know each other. It’s actually like a small town, a small town feel here. Everybody knows each other or related in some way, shape, or form, and so that’s what I want everybody to know, but at the same time, I don’t want everybody to look at Kenosha as this extremely divided city because we’re not divided. Just because Kenosha has had some disagreements with law enforcement or in the judicial system, most of the people still go out to lunch together when it’s all over. They sit at the dinner table discussing issues, not the issues that I think they should discuss, but they are discussing issues with each other in their households, so I don’t want everybody to think Kenosha is just this — this crazy place where, you know, we have people running around killing each other, and we have a judge that just does what he want to do, so to speak, and that’s not the people of Kenosha. I believe the people of Kenosha is a very fair, resilient, and respectful people that help each other out. I mean, oftentimes we have a lot of snow that falls here, and you see neighbors helping each other, you know, helping one another dig out of ditches and be a part of each other, doing this after dinner, during the coronavirus, we had people grocery shopping for one another. You know, it was a strong community here. That’s what we have here, but we do have problems, and the problems that exist in Kenosha are long-term institutional problems. It is not personal. It is institutional problems that need to be fixed. That’s all. We can begin to fix the problems institutionalize at the state level, federal level, it’ll trickle down, but I believe Kenosha could be the example. If we get this right, if we get this right, Kenosha has the potential to be the example for the entire country, because we are a small microcosm of what exists in America, how America exists today.

Marisa Wojcik:

All right, we leave it there, James Hall of the Urban League of Racine and Kenosha, thank you very much.

James Hall:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

For more from “Here & Now” and PBS Wisconsin, visit pbswisconsin.org/news, and thank you so much for joining us on “Noon Wednesday.” we’ll see you next year.