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 threadLt. Commander Reggie
@mcmullin I think it’s marketing. They’ve in effect made their brand “whitest city” even though it’s untrue … now I’m going to watch all the tv shows and movies about Boston to just to fulfill my curiosity. I feel the city’s mayor, management, rich people would have made it urgently and abundantly clear that they want to include everyone….. if that was what they really wanted
Aug 30, 2023 at 2:50amMastodon for iOS