“Boston” and “racism” have become near synonyms. Whether it’s that infamous line from Martin Scorcese’s The Departed (“You’re a black guy in Boston. You don’t need any help from me to be completely f****d.”), or Roy Wood Jr.’s Daily Show exposé, “How Racist Is Boston?”, or Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che calling out Boston as “the most racist city” he’s ever been to, it’s clear that something is rotten in Beantown.
But as Reverend Irene Monroe highlights in her commentary “Boston’s Racist Past Haunts Its Present,” racism in Boston is by no means a new phenomenon, with the busing crisis of the 1970s standing out as perhaps the most egregious episode. To quote Reverend Monroe: