Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Will Boston ever shake its reputation as a racist city?

In the January 2008 edition of Boston Magazine, writer John Gonzalez has an interesting article on the lingering perception that Boston is a town filled with folks who don’t like blacks. Despite tremendous racial progress in this region, Gonzalez notes, non-Bostonians still regard the city through the lens of racial incidents from years ago.

"More than anything," writes Gonzalez, "we have busing to thank for that reputation. There’s no getting around it. Instead of inspiring racial harmony, the experiment failed miserably as white parents threw stones at busloads of frightened black children without compunction. Boston has been known ever since as the racist city of segregated enclaves like Southie and Charlestown."

Other major cities have also had high-profile racial incidents (in fact, Charlotte’s streets also exploded in the wake of court-ordered busing in 1971), but Boston has somehow developed the reputation for being more racist than other cities. USC professor Todd Boyd notes in the article that "[Boston has] never been seen as a black city. On the other hand, it has a reputation for being a liberal city. That’s ironic, and I think, for some people, that’s a bit of a contradiction that’s caused some confusion. Well, how can a city with such a liberal history be racist? These are the things that need to be discussed. We need to talk about it openly.”

Having grown up in Boston, I’ve always been surprised when people wonder how a city can be liberal and racist at the same time. "Liberal" does not necessarily mean tolerant. People can vote for liberal Democrat politicians and still harbor contempt for other groups. I don’t think a lot of whites in Southie who threw stones at black kids in the ’70s were Republicans, based on the political demographics in this region.

(For a modern-day point of comparison, look at blacks who vote for liberal Democrats but who strongly oppose the gay-rights movement. Just as whites who voted Democrat back in the day nevertheless opposed liberal concepts like busing, many blacks who vote Democrat today nevertheless despise liberal concepts like same-sex marriage.)

Boyd calls for an open discussion about race in Boston, but the reality is that such an open discussion will never happen, in Boston, in Massachusetts or in America, for that matter. People are (naturally?) defensive about race, reluctant to revisit the past. Gonzalez writes of "…Boston’s visceral reaction whenever someone so much as hints that the city is prejudiced. Some of Boston’s anger may be caused by guilt over its previous wrongs, and some of it may be a genuine belief that the city’s identity should no longer be tied to its ugly past. Either way, it’s self-defeating."

Self-defeating it may be, but it’s also reality. Any conversation about race in this region would inevitably result in whites being accused of being naive/insensitive and nonwhites being accused of being paranoid/hypersensitive. Who wants that?

Let’s face it, Boston will continue to be perceived as a racist city for some time to come. The horrid images of the busing riots became part of American lore, and it will be decades before those images pass from the country’s collective memory. Gonzalez writes of "…great black baseball players who either said they were reluctant to come to Boston or had language written into their contracts specifically preventing them from being traded here: superstars like Ken Griffey Jr., Albert Belle, David Justice, Tim Raines, Dave Winfield, and Gary Sheffield." These players obviously remembered those images, and thus decided not to bother with Boston.

Boston may have changed, but history remains the same. No one wants to talk about that history–and honestly, I can’t fault people for not wanting to talk about it. It’s the same reason people are generally reluctant to see movies dealing with past civil-rights issues (and why Hollywood is just as reluctant to make such movies). People, white and nonwhite, don’t like having the past thrown into their faces.

Is Boston a racist city today? No, but there are racists in Boston, just as there are racists in every city and country in the world. Racism will never truly go away, any more than cancer will ever truly go away. Since racism can never be fully obliterated, the only thing to do is to encourage people of color to succeed in spite of racial obstacles. (Of course, with few exceptions, the only folks who regularly preach a message of succeeding in spite of racism are nonwhites who are conservative/right-wing in their views–and since those nonwhites are regarded by their more liberal brethren as, well, scumbags, this message rarely gets out.)

Gonzalez closes his article with a quote from Harvard professor Guy Stuart, who advises whites to "[not] go around simply saying you’re not racist” if they’re truly desirous of improving race relations. However, what does one expect a nonracist white person to say other than they’re not racist? Anything else from a nonracist white person’s mouth will come across as either phoniness or pandering–and thus, it won’t come across as being in any way conducive to improved race relations.

This is why whites and nonwhites are so reluctant to talk about race in Boston–or anywhere else. Such talking will almost certainly lead to screaming…and then, right back to silence.