Photo courtesy of Jasmine Tyler
Jasmine Tyler
Jasmine Tyler, 101.7's "BlackTalk" program host and community activist in Milwaukee.
Jasmine Tyler was the oldest of four children, raised by a single mother. Responsibility came early. At the age of 12, she was a student at Samuel Morse Middle School and started working as a hairdresser. She continued to work through her high school years.
“We didn’t really have much, so me working was a way to kind of help my mom,” Tyler said.
She grew up on 14th and Burleigh, in a family that knew something about starting over. Her grandparents, the Dougars, had migrated from New Orleans and Alabama by way of Chicago, arriving in Milwaukee in 1952. In 1959, the Dougars became one of the first Black families to purchase a home in their neighborhood.
After attending grade schools in her neighborhood, she did her high school years at Juneau and then at Bay View. She rode the city bus to get there. By her sophomore year, she was working at the Midwest Express Center, now the Wisconsin Center District.
But after high school, life became more complicated. She had a boyfriend, known him since she was 5. He moved to Minnesota to play basketball, and Tyler became pregnant with their first child. She returned home and had her baby at 19. A second child followed when she was 20, and the couple eventually married. Their youngest child was born when Tyler was 29. Through it all, she worked.
She drove school buses when she was 20 and 21, and went on to work for Kohl’s Corporation in its credit card department, then was promoted to the Office of the Kohl’s president. But at 30, Tyler’s life changed dramatically. In 2018, she was diagnosed with breast cancer while also going through a divorce.
Tyler was looking for a fresh start, away from what she describes as a toxic marital relationship and a difficult period in her life. After undergoing a mastectomy, she
reached out to Alderwoman Milele Coggs, a longtime friend who had witnessed Tyler’s long-time activism in the community. Coggs hired her.
Tyler soon became increasingly involved in neighborhood activist work. In 2022, she ran for District 9 alderwoman with the support of people who admired her community work. She lost the election, but the experience did not diminish her commitment. Working with community leader Vaun Mayes through the We Locked in MKE program, Tyler had seen firsthand what could happen when young people and families were given a reason to believe their neighborhoods could change.
We Locked in MKE is a youth advocacy and violence prevention program designed for teenagers aged 13 to 17.
On a Saturday morning in early September. I met Tyler at a coffee shop. She is a delightful conversationalist with a wide-open personality.
Let's get into your radio show, “The Tap in With Jazz Tyler,” each weekday afternoon from 4-7 p.m. on 101.7 the Truth. Who is your audience?
I am blessed to have many generations of Black listeners. I even have high school kids all the way down to elementary school.
What is your radio personality style?
I would say raw and uncut, I speak with certainty and compassion. I want my listeners to understand that I am them.
How do you decide what topics to discuss each day in your 3-hour time slot?
I do three different segments. The 4 o’clock hour, I discuss news, local and national. The 5 o'clock hour to 7 p.m. is based off conversations I have with family, friends, someone in the community, or something I've seen online. I also do a lot of interviews.
I like your interview style. You're a good listener, which a lot of interviewers are not.
I listen because I need my audience to listen. I bring guests onto my show who hold valuable information. Listeners don't normally have access to them.
You seem to do a number of segments on Black citizens as victims. This is my own personal opinion, but I wish more Black people would focus on the positive happenings in their lives.
If you watch the majority of my shows, I am trying not to highlight negative things. I rarely ever talk about murder or homicide.
I notice you bring up an issue, present both sides of that issue, and rarely take sides.
I do both sides because I have a wide range of listeners according to my demographics. My school students or the younger generation may not understand things the way adults do. A lot of our issues as humans is that everyone is so subjective, everything is just one side. Hardly anyone looks at an issue from the other person's point of view.
Your audience is made up of mostly Black listeners.
Here are a few topics that you talk about. Let’s start with Privacy.
Privacy is important. I've talked about privacy in terms of relationships and social media. But also from a city sense, like with the controversial Flock cameras. Currently, the question is should we have Flock cameras in Milwaukee?
If you think about it, none of us really have privacy. We have smartphones, laptops, the internet and social media. Privacy doesn't exist. It goes back to just helping people to understand this issue, seeing both sides.
Safety is another of your subjects. Safety is an important issue in the community, from criminal behavior to reckless driving to violence.
When I talk about safety, I know there is speeding and violence, but I try to focus more on youth, safety inside schools and out. I don't mean student on student violence but also being safe from adults and adult agendas. There are many different levels of safety.
You seem to be a supporter of technology, which a lot of people are resistant to, for instance, artificial intelligence.
I’d like to live off the land, make my life simple, but I think you either have to get with the times or get left behind. A lot of people are afraid of technology because they don't understand it. Whether we like it or not, technology has taken over our lives. And we need to figure out how to maneuver through it.
Another topic you cover is youth.
Yes, a lot of my show is based around youth now that school is back. By day, I am music teacher. What I'm learning from my students is they really don't feel like adults listen to them. Everything I do, even outside of the radio station, is a vessel to show kids someone is listening. My goal is to always have a platform where kids can speak for themselves. Occasionally, I have my students as guests on my show.
Another topic you discuss is mental health.
Mental health is very important. I've dealt with it. My children have dealt with it. My students deal with it. Everyone deals with it. All ethnicities, all people deal with mental health, to a certain degree. I don't believe we invest enough time into our own mental health. We look for the government to provide programming. But what are you doing for your own mental health? When you wake up, the first thing you do is turn on the radio or your phone, and the news is negative. Everything around you is programming you to think a certain way. There's so many distractions. There's TV, there’s internet, there's work, there's people. One day, I thought, “How often do I spend time with myself with no distractions?” I realized that I had so much inside of me that was, well, broken. I was staying busy, distracted, and this wasn't allowing me to be the best version of myself. I've actually gone through almost five years of consistent work on myself. I don't believe that we'll ever fully be healed as humans because of the way life is. We're always going through the healing process.
Another subject your show covers is reckless driving.
I don't think people are driving recklessly because they want to harm people. I think they're doing it because they find cars fascinating. It's like they think they're in a video game. Many grew up playing video games and with no social skills.
Another topic you discuss is the Fear of Violence in many Black neighborhoods. Fear of violence can be even irrational at times, but it's there. And inner-city residents do, occasionally, hear gunshots. The news sometimes makes it sound like everybody's being murdered. It's not true. But still there's this fear.
I think there's a multitude of things that contributed to the fear of violence. When I was growing up, there was a community of good neighborhoods where people got along, looked out for one another. I talked about this on my show. Home ownership combats violence because when people own their homes, they care, know their neighbors. When I grew up, everybody knew everybody by their first and last names. And now, a lot of properties are being sold to large property companies not from Wisconsin. And then they rent to anybody, and you don't know who's moving into the neighborhood. Or take vacant houses. Everyday, residents walk outside and see a vacant house. Some of our neighborhoods look like a Third World country. This is oppressive. It makes you feel like giving up, and there's been so many years put into the oppression of Blacks systemically. It's going to take generations to get Black people to unlearn and relearn that. But we still have to do our best. We still have to make sure that we are educating ourselves and stop making excuses.
What is the biggest issue in the Black cultural community?
I’d say lack of resources. I think we are expected to be great with nothing, to make something out of nothing. Yet, we do have way more than we've ever had, and we still don't have the amount of resources that our counterparts have. Black people are not giving each other enough grace and understanding. I talk about this often on my show. I give a lot of grace to my people, the amount of work that has gone into conditioning us to be a certain way. I think a lot of the violence, the bad things, is because we don't have enough compassion. We've allowed social media, big media, the music and film industry to dehumanize us and to make us numb.
There's a recent report that says only 9% of fourth graders in Milwaukee public schools are at reading proficient levels.
Schools need assistance from families and from the parents, right? But we also know that our children are in school eight hours a day. So the teachers are really spending more time with our children than us. I'm going to call out the school system for accountability because when we talk about this subject publicly, it's the parents who get the blame. But the reality is a lot of these teachers and educators are not compassionate enough. They want to pass the kid onto the next class. And if kids are at school eight hours a day, then are the parents to blame, or are the educators responsible, too?
You did an interview with Brad Facts recently. Brad had served prison time for murder. He said, “Our youth do not understand what consequences are. Many feel they have nothing to live for.”
Brad is a personal friend, a beautiful human being. In my personal opinion, the pandemic did damage to our youth. When kids spend 12 months of no contact, other than those in your household, play video games, rely on technology, they are living in a fantasy, literally. They are listening to music—I call it serial killer music. And teachers are not allowed to discipline them. Even the parents. These kids really do believe that they are not in reality, and then they begin to live life as if it's a game.
Your boss, Biko Baker, the station’s operations manager, told me, and I quote, "We need to focus on 25/55 plus women of color." Have you discussed that?
Absolutely. I've created a ladies' night segment each month where I have my real girlfriends come on the radio and co-host with me. We talk about relationships, we talk about sisterhood, we talk about motherhood. I want to show Black women how to coexist without always being in competition with each other over a man, for instance.
What else are you women talking about?
Relationships. In the last episode, it was more about me holding women accountable in relationships. And motherhood. Us women deal with having the weight of the world on our shoulders, having to do the doctors, the therapists, and sometimes being the breadwinners. And then sisterhood, what does it look like to have a healthy relationship as a girlfriend? I really enjoy it because it's positive. I’m a girl's girl. I love to have great relationships with women, especially Black women.
