This fall, rising seniors around the nation are building their college applications list. There are many different considerations: Some may want the best school for their major, others may look at the most affordable schools, and a few may check to see which schools are located in the best college towns. But perhaps they should be considering another factor as well.
Boston, Massachusetts, a renowned college town, is filled with and surrounded by many of the top-ranked schools in academia, educating some of the nation’s brightest minds. Yet, it has the reputation of being one of the most racist cities in the United States. Prejudice in the Boston area runs deep, but the racist roots of America’s prized universities run even deeper.
What does this mean for the experience of students and faculty, as well as the present-day optics of these universities as it appears to the community of broader Boston? And most importantly, how has this foundation been perpetuated behind the iron gates of higher academia?
The first step towards tackling these questions is discovering how this reputation came to be. Boston was a hub for slavery in the mid-1600s. In fact, the Puritans who lived in the area started enslaving members of local tribes from the moment they arrived. By the late 1600s, however, the enslavement of Africans supplanted that of Native Americans. The act of purchasing enslaved people as a whole was widely adopted by the inhabitants of the city, with approximately one in four Boston households owning enslaved people. Everyone from artisans to public officials implemented slavery in some aspect of their lives. Notably, Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was one of these people, an unsurprising fact given that he gave the Massachusetts Bay Colony permission to start enslaving captured Native Americans.
The reality of the role slavery played in the Boston area was overshadowed by the more obvious slave trade. Compared to the South, where slaves took up the majority of the population, the existence of slavery in Boston was a constant but unnoticeable truth by any outsider. If one were to take a trip to the South at this time and observe plantation life, the importance of slavery to their society would be explicit. Contrastingly, no one would know how much money Harvard University gained from slavery just by standing on the campus. What resulted was a society where slavery was relied upon just as much as it was on a plantation, but did not get the proper attention, and consequently reform, that it needed.
It is quite clear that structural racism in Massachusetts has been deeply ingrained since the beginning, and Boston’s poor reaction to attempts at ending discrimination has further compounded the issue. When the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts required the integration of public schools in the 1970s, there was massive public uproar. The city aimed to integrate by sending white children to predominantly black schools and vice-versa until the schools were deemed diverse enough through a process known as “bussing.” Many White Bostonians were in disarray, and a series of violent acts named “anti-bussing riots” quickly became national news.
By the time bussing ended, the Boston Public School District’s student population had decreased by almost 25%, as a wave of White parents rushed to remove their children from the influx of Black students. The lasting legacy of bussing only succeeded in further segregating schools in the Boston area, as White families either moved to the suburbs where bussing was less monitored or sent their children to private “antidesegregation academies.”
Today, the legacy of the anti-bussing riots remains. Despite many efforts by the city to rebrand itself, Boston still remains heavily segregated. Additionally, the wealth gap and the continuation of housing discrimination in the area prevent the city from becoming more integrated. The divide doesn’t stop there.
Even professional athletes have relayed stories of blatant racism they experienced while playing in the city. Bill Russell, a former Boston Celtics center, basketball superstar, and black sports pioneer called Boston a “flea market of racism” and said that there was everything from “send-’em-back-to-Africa racists” in the city to “phony radical-chic racists” in the universities. More than 50 years later, athletes still corroborate this sentiment, with players like LeBron James describing Boston’s fans as “racist as f—.” This poses the question: If celebrated figures like sports stars experience blatant racism, what does this mean for everyday students of color?
It doesn’t help that when it comes to Black enrollment in academia, local universities seem to struggle. Enrollment of African Americans at colleges in the Boston Area was around 7% in 2015, which was less than the average national Black enrollment at the time (11%). Additionally, the fight for tenure by Black academics in Boston area schools, much like at other predominantly White institutions, has faced much resistance: – most notably, Cornel West’s departure from the Harvard Divinity School after pursuing a tenured position there for years. The problem also lies in the number of Black professors in general at these schools, which has a direct impact on the potential success of Black students.
While this phenomenon might be apparent in higher education, as the majority of the country’s highest-ranked schools are predominantly White, this problem is especially acute in Boston. The combination of lack of representation, the slew of casual racism that comes alongside it, and the fact that Boston itself has such a negative reputation makes the academic experience a unique and potentially daunting one for students of color. Furthermore, the racist history of many of these institutions is not easily shaken, especially since there are still reminders of that history all around the city. Harvard in particular has residential houses named after slave owners, including John Winthrop and Increase Mather.
So in many regards, Boston is only an ideal college town for a certain demographic. Its pervasive racist history, spanning areas from sports to education, stands as a stark warning to any academic of color looking for a welcoming place to learn. Time will only tell whether this reputation will change in the future.
