David McMullinMay 3, 2023

The other day, talking about issues on the fediverse, @mekkaokereke proposed an (apt) analogy which led to a tangential conversation about racism in Boston. I noticed, as I have whenever this comes up, a curious thing about what “Boston” seems to represent in the public imagination.

A thread (a rant?) about #Boston #demographics…
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https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/110283766606470442

David McMullin (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Boston resident here with one clarification: Boston is _not_ especially white. What it is is segregated. But there are plenty of Black people here and they’re not hiding. (Imagine listening to everyone agreeing about how white NYC is, as if the Upper East Side below 96th St. is the whole city.) Whether Boston is as racist as everyone thinks, I’m not qualified to say. (Black Bostonians can tell you.) But compare it to NYC, Philadelphia, New Haven—not VT.

Musicians Today
Show threadDavid McMullinMay 3, 2023

I’m not going to offer an opinion about racism in Boston, because there are 1.3 million residents of color in the Boston area who can speak about that with more authority.

Does that surprise you? That’s actually what I want to talk about.

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Show threadDavid McMullinMay 3, 2023
One thing everyone seems to agree on is that “Boston” is about the whitest city there could ever be. That’s apparently its defining feature. People say things like “I lived there for a year and there were no Black people anywhere!” Then it turns out they’re talking about Cape Cod or the exurbs beyond 495. Or Vermont, even.
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Show threadDavid McMullinMay 3, 2023
You could never get away with saying “New York City has no diversity at all,” and then trying to back that up by talking about Greenwich or the Hamptons. But use that logic for “Boston” and everyone just nods along. Whatever this place is that people mean when they say “Boston,” it’s not the actual city of Boston.
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Show threadDavid McMullinMay 3, 2023

The City of Boston itself is less than 50% white. Granted, the city lines are rather arbitrary, and it’s part of a larger metropolis including several other municipalities and rings of suburbs. But many of the nearby communities are also quite diverse. It gets whiter the farther out you go, but however you define Greater Boston, it’s going to include a substantial nucleus of non-white residents: 1.3 million, according to the Census Bureau.
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https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/Massachusetts/Boston/Race-and-Ethnicity#figure/place/non-white-population

Show threadDavid McMullinMay 3, 2023

The only way Boston could be as white as everyone thinks is if these people just don’t count.

The “Boston” people are thinking of seems to mean: just the white parts of the largest possible geographic area around the city, excluding most of the city itself. And sure, if you do it that way, then “Boston” is all white.

But so is Chicago. So is Detroit. And no one ever talks this way about those places.

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Show threadDavid McMullinMay 3, 2023

Why are people so committed to this odd mythic conception of an all-white “Boston,” and what agenda does it serve?

(Not a rhetorical question; I’m honestly curious.)

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Show threadMaxMay 10, 2023
@mcmullin As someone who grew up in the suburbs of Boston, I feel like it's exacerbated by the fact the places visitors go are in the places dominated by white culture, and it's not clear unless you spend time in the area that the other cities in the greater Boston area are more akin to boroughs in NYC, for example. As for locally, I know in my internal biases I think of Dorchester and JP as different cultural entities than Boston.
Show threadDavid McMullinMay 10, 2023
@absconded
That’s true, as others have also noted, about where visitors go. Your last sentence is interesting, also commonly true, and relates to what I was asking about. The Upper East Side (below 96th) is as white as Back Bay. But people know that Harlem is right there too, and it’s also NYC, as are (in a different way maybe) the outer boroughs. Why it works differently for Roxbury (vs. Harlem) and Dorchester (vs. Queens) is what I’m curious about.
Show threadMax
@mcmullin Hope someone can come with more insight on the whys about that frame of mind beyond the generic platitudes I have. I can say that Roxbury and Dorchester are not in media the way Harlem or Queens are. Even from the suburbs, the only reason I knew either of those places was fearmongering stuff (granted, I do come from a pretty white town of privilege).
May 10, 2023 at 7:19pmWeb
Show threadDavid McMullinMay 10, 2023
@absconded
Yes, Harlem is a cultural symbol of international significance in a way no other city’s most-equivalent neighborhood is. Chicago’s South Side kinda maybe. Let’s say North Philly then for a better Roxbury analog, though I’m not as familiar with that.