Powell said that citizens of other countries who see themselves as one class will unite against corporate injustice, while Americans will respond racially, not seeing that they all face the same fate.

Civil rights expert John A. Powell told an audience at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that instead of segregating, we should realize that our fates are linked.

Powell, executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, gave the keynote address at the “Common Ground Conference: Building Coalitions Against Racism and Privilege in Greater Milwaukee,” in the Union Ballroom on Friday, Jan. 27.

Powell began his address, “Linking Fate: Addressing Racial Structures to Promote Fairness to Everyone,” by saying that the word “race” usually evokes the connotation “black,” but in fact, what is perceived as being one group’s struggle is everyone’s.

What happens to black people may not happen to whites in as extreme ways, but it happens, Powell said.

The problem, he said, is Americans do not always address universal problems such as economic downturn directly, but respond by reacting racially.

He said that the American middle class produced by World War II was purposely maintained as being exclusively white until the civil rights movement. At the onset of globalization and recession during 1975, however, whites reacted racially and found ways to segregate themselves in the face of economic downturn.

“Our response was that the middle class turned its back on racial inclusion,” Powell said.

Powell said that citizens of other countries who see themselves as one class will unite against corporate injustice, while Americans will respond racially, not seeing that they all face the same fate.

“If five black folks show up at a factory in Detroit and said they wanted jobs as a part of affirmative action, you would have white folks marching, you would have editorials in the paper about how this is so wrong and why we can’t afford this,” Powell said. “But General Motors can announce that it is laying off 30,000 people, and all we can do is feel bad.”

Powell said that economic and corporate expansion “shrinks rights of citizens in racial terms.”

Segregation, he said, “is not based on skin color,” but “isolating people from opportunity.” He said most blacks in Milwaukee are in low opportunity areas, and there are also 200,000 whites in the metro Milwaukee area in the same situation.

His solution is to provide opportunity for all people by coalition-building. He cited examples such as a Chicago project called Metropolis 2020, which he said is the business and faith communities coming together for the future of the city.

“We have to have a common framework, an imagination where the driving force is not fear, but the driving force is hope,” he said.

Many members of the community who attended the conference joined in the mission to extend racial justice beyond the conference.

Barbara E. White, of Milwaukee Brighter Futures, said Powell’s inclusion of Milwaukee in his speech was useful.

“He put the mirror on us. He used data from us, saying: ‘This is you — if you don’t take heed to it now you are going to be lost,’ ” she said.

Jim Stewart of Planned Parenthood said that unity was the theme.

“That was a common theme today — that we are in this together.”

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