Vol. 6    No. 12
JUNE 16, 2011

The Capital City Hues
(608) 241-2000
gramling@capitalcityhues.com


Subscription Information:
The Capital City Hues
PO Box 259712
Madison, WI 53725
($45 a year)
Contact Number:
(608) 241-2000
Advertising: Claire G. Mendoza
sales@capitalcityhues.com

EDITORIAL STAFF

Jonathan Gramling
Publisher & Editor

Clarita G. Mendoza
Sales Manager

Contributing Writers
Rita Adair, Ike Anyanike, Paul
Barrows, Alfonso Zepeda
Capistran, Theola Carter, Fabu,
Andrew Gramling, Lang
Kenneth Haynes, Eileen Cecille
Hocker, Heidi Pascual, Jessica
Pharm, Laura Salinger, Jessica
Strong, & Martinez White

Webmaster:
Heidi @
heidipascual@sbcglobal.net
Before we resume my regularly scheduled column, we take a commercial break.
On Sunday, June 26th, we will be celebrating the fifth anniversary of The Capital City Hues with a
street festival on the 200 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in front of the City-County Building.
The Hues Alive at Five: Celebrating Our Communities of Color will feature 12 performances that
represent many of Madison’s communities of color. We will showcase the unveiling of the
absolutely gorgeous and large cultural banners depicting diversity within Madison’s communities
of color.

And we will be showcasing some very tasty ethnic foods like red curry samosas, tamales, Jollof
rice with chicken and plantains, fried chicken and macaroni & cheese and Indian tacos. Due to the
restrictions on our street permit, we cannot make any sales on that day. People interested in eating
at the festival must purchase or order their $15 food/drink coupon by June 19th. For just $15 — $10
for children 12 years and younger — people get portions of the food mentioned above plus three
drinks. It is quite a deal.

For those wishing to eat at The Hues Alive at Five — and who wouldn’t want to eat this great food
over the course of a seven hour festival — get your order in immediately. I will be taking orders at
The Capital City Hues booth at Juneteenth in Penn Park. Order your food/drink coupons today!
***

As Juneteenth Day approaches, we are constantly reminded that freedom is never permanently
secured. When the last Africans who were slaves were told about the Emancipation Proclamation
on June 19, 1865, while they were technically freed from slavery, they would soon be entrapped in
the pseudo-slavery system of share cropping.

In terms of having a say over their lives, the newly freed African American slaves enjoyed a brief
stint of freedom during Reconstruction, having many African Americans elected to local and
statewide positions. But the savagery of the Ku Klux Klan and the loss of will on the part of the
northern faction of the Republican Party, led to a de facto loss of that freedom and about 70 years of
apartheid-like segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North.

While African Americans helped turn the tide for the Union against the Confederacy during the Civil
War, they were soon deprived of the fruits of victory and returned once again to their chattel-like
existence albeit with no visible chains shackling them. This pattern was repeated after World War I
and it wasn’t until the end of World War II that the final push to eliminate segregation occurred.
But people must be leery lest history repeat itself. On  this issue, we reprint Danez Smith’s — who
was one of the first UW-Madison First Wave students to graduate in May — poem Venom about his
experience walking down Langdon Street and seeing a dark figurine hanging from a rope off a
balcony.

It is shades of the 1980s when students at a fraternity party dressed themselves in black face and
then made the excuse they were dressing as Filipinos, an equally egregious stereotype. For African
American students on campus, it is, as Yogi Berra would put it, déjà vu all over again.

While the students stated that they weren’t intentionally hanging a Black man in effigy, this incident
points out the pervasive existence of insensitivity at best or bigotry at worse that still pervades our
society. While we are allegedly in a “post-racial” society, the only thing that is “post racial” is the
imagery we may see on television or the punditry of politicians and talking heads on television. For
all too many African Americans and other people of color, there is nothing “post racial” about living
their lives every day.

And it isn’t just this incident that causes concern. Starting July 1, the state is quietly implementing
a change to Medicaid procedures where transportation for individuals receiving Medicaid can no
longer be made by the health service provider. It now has a bureaucratic barrier by which low-
income individuals must make their transportation requests well in advance of their appointment.
In my view, this will increase the racial disparity gap in terms of health care in the state of
Wisconsin.

Many measures like this — including the Voter ID bill — give me flashbacks to the 1870s when
African Americans took a giant step backwards. The struggle continues. How long will this last?
Reflections/Jonathan Gramling   
                  The Struggle Goes On!
TRANSITIONS
Rainey Briggs named as Glendale Elementary School Principal;
Nancy Evans retires as James C. Wright Middle School Principal