By many measures, Milwaukee is toughest US city for blacks
In the country’s long history of racial strife, a few cities have become flashpoints: Los Angeles. Chicago. Ferguson, Missouri. Baltimore.
But by many measures, there is no tougher place to be black in America than Milwaukee, where in recent days the shooting death of a black man by a black police officer has led to violent protests, riots that destroyed businesses and gunfire.
The city of 600,000 along Lake Michigan is also the country’s most segregated metropolitan area, surpassing larger, deeply divided Midwestern cities such as Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, a 2012 Manhattan Institute analysis of census data found.
The overwhelming majority of the black residents who make up 40 per cent of Milwaukee’s population are concentrated on its north side — where the rioting and Saturday’s shooting occurred — and away from the breweries and festivals that draw tourists to the waterfront.