Is Boston Racist?

 

This Is Me

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown 'em out
I'm gonna send a flood
Gonna drown 'em out
Oh
This is me

Recently The Daily Show had an Instagram post concerning a piece it did on "Is Boston Racist"?

Boston, my hometown, is not a racist city.  It is far, far worse.  It is racist, and anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and nativist, and sexist, and….. well you get the idea.  Isabel Wilkerson proposed combining all of these forms of discrimination in one word, Caste. The ancient Aryans divided the people of India into four castes ( five if you consider Untouchables who have no caste) based only on their ancestors, even though caste members spoke the same language, practiced the same religion, lived in the same country, and otherwise seemed exactly the same as those in other castes.  Nazis were not shy about adopting this system of Caste, in fact they proudly proclaimed themselves to be Aryans. 

But as Isabel Wilkerson also reported, Nazis did not only borrow from the Aryans,  they borrowed from America, especially the Jim Crow laws of the South .  Slavery and the Jim Crow laws of the Old South were not the only example of Caste in American.  The North might have opposed slavery but it proudly embraced Caste.  The drinking toast in Boston goes.

Here’s to Dear old Boston,
The land of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.

Slavery was an extreme from of Racism.  But Racism is only one form of class/caste.  So if the question is Boston a Racist city, the answer will be no.  But that is only because Boston embraces a rigid system of Caste and race is only one of the lowest levels of that Caste system. Does South Boston look down on Roxbury? Of course, but as South Bostonians will tell you that is because Beacon Hill looks down on South Boston,  and South Bostonians think that this is perfectly proper. South Boston does not look down on Roxbury because it is predominantly Black.  It looks down on Roxbury because is residents are a lower caste, and South Boston has accepted their place in the caste system.  Just because this is how things have always been, is not a valid reason for how things will be. For all of us, including Boston, please be you.