Wisconsin’s Equity & Inclusion Laboratory and the Todd Anthony Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male have announced that the eighth Annual International Colloquium on Black Males in Education (ICBME) will be held in Milwaukee.
The 2019 gathering will be held Nov. 6-8 with a pre-event slated for Nov. 5.
Milwaukee was chosen because colloquium organizers view the city as at the forefront of racial relations in the United States.
Dr. Jerlando F. L. JacksonIn 2018, The Brookings Institution ranked Milwaukee as the most segregated city in America, and sociopolitical comedian W. Kamau Bell recently investigated #LivingWhileBlack in Milwaukee on his show, “United Shades of America.”
The state allots more funding for corrections than it does higher education, and incarcerates the most Black men in the country. In Milwaukee, more than half of all Black men in their 30s and 40s have served time. In one zip code in particular, 53206, 62 percent of Black men have spent time in a correctional facility by the age of 34.
Additionally, White flight, mass incarceration and education inequality have fueled racial disparities in Milwaukee, as they have across the country.
Event organizers plan to engage attendees in exploring solutions to the challenges for Black men in Milwaukee and across the globe.
