Swing State Debates Episode Three: Talking Race and Racism in. . . Wisconsin

This week’s episode of Swing State Debates takes me to the great state of Wisconsin, where I sat down with a group of voters to talk about race and racism in America.

If Wisconsin sounds like a strange place to have such a discussion, you might be surprised to learn that Milwaukee, where we filmed our conversation, is one of the most—if not the most—segregated cities in America. It is a city where even if you don’t believe America is a structurally racist country, it’s hard to disregard the effects of an unequal past.

Ask most people for a definition of racism and they’ll likely say, “It’s bigotry based on skin color.” But Merriam-Webster recently expanded its meaning to “the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another.” These two definitions of racism—bigotry versus systemic inequality—reflect the fundamental tensions between Republican and Democratic policies on this contentious issue shaping modern American life. 

The Biden administration’s sweeping program of racial equity, for instance, may have been inspired by an individual act of apparent racial violence (the killing of George Floyd), but its official purpose is to address “systemic racism.” Based on summaries of Biden’s Equity Plan, his administration views any disparate outcomes along racial lines as problems warranting federal intervention. To left-wing voters like the ones I spoke with, it seems obvious that inequities are the result of a racist system that has kept black Americans down for centuries—and of course the government should correct them.

But Republican voters tend to view systemic racism as a thing of the past, and any current racism as a social ill best addressed by antidiscrimination laws already on the books. The Wisconsin debaters on the right told me the best remedy for racism is generally “color blindness,” or—if you like—racial neutrality. They consider the left’s race-conscious approach to be un-American—and potentially illegal.

As America faces a choice between its first black and Indian American president and an encore performance from its first orange one, and with the “racial reckoning” of 2020 still going strong, racial politics continue to stoke furious debate in the run-up to the election. 

Neither side seems willing to come together to hash out their competing narratives and then hug each other goodbye. My Wisconsin debaters hugged after the cameras stopped rolling, so you’ll have to take my word for it: More than any other discussion I hosted, this race talk reminded me of what makes America great.

Of course, these may have just been nice people from Wisconsin.

This series is presented with support from the David Merage Foundation and Evoke Media. For more information, please visit weareevokemedia.com. Click here to watch Episode One of the series, a debate on education in Florida, and Episode Two, a debate on immigration in Arizona.

As well as hosting Swing State Debates, Ben Kawaller is the host of The Free Press series Ben Meets America! To learn more about that series, click here.