In 1974, and the years following, busing made Boston national news. Non-violent opponents to Garrity's order, men like Ray Flynn, and goons belonging to such organizations as the still-active South Boston Information Center turned the educational system upside down, and made it dangerous to be a Black living in Boston. Roxbury residents trying to reach the public Carson Beach in Southie were assaulted, and when Black activist Melvin H. King led a peaceful procession through the heart of Southie, locals threw rocks and bottles.
But the bloodshed taught Bostonians one important point that tensions would exist as long as the city's neighborhoods remained as isolated as they now are Perhaps more than any other major city. Boston is a city atomized, split between the neighborhoods and downtown, and split along geographic, racial, and ethnic lines Working class Southie is isolated across the channel and the harbor from the city's skyscrapers. The subway system barely skirts its perimeters, and to reach Southie's center, one must walk for 10 minutes through barren streets, flanked by run-down housing units and abandoned warehouses West Roxbury and communities such as Mattapan and Hyde Park are self-contained mini-cities with little outside interference.
Busing put a dent in the imagined security of these communities, and, as with all innovations, it met resistance. But today, Blacks attend South Boston High, with only one or two quickly-hushed reports of racial scuffles. Blacks, running city wide, were able to gain several seats on the City Council and the school committee.
Of course the busing controversy has ebbed for other reasons, including wholes-cale "white flight" from public schools and from the city to suburbs such as Brookline and Newton. A member of the South Boston Information Center told me last fall. "The only reason things are different from '74 is because all the people that really cared about Blacks coming to South Boston High got their children out." SBIC currently runs its own school, and its president, James Kelley, serves on the city council.
Yet, the fact that progress is taking place is indisputable. Candidate Flynn last fall found a sympathetic audience when he argued that what ailed Roxbury was what ailed Southie. "In South Boston everybody thinks that because of affirmative action the Blacks are getting everything," then-councilor Flynn told The Globe in 1982. "Everybody thinks that because people in South Boston are white, they're getting everything. The reality is that neither one is getting anything."
What seems to be getting through is the notion that the city's self-conscious neighborhood orientation is the real culprit. "Community groups have begun to talk to each other, they have crossed neighborhood lines, which is an enormous transition for a city like Boston that was built on neighborhoods," White says. The city has changed not because of say lecturing from the papers of political leaders running for or away from the issue," he adds.
White remembers the racial strife that existed when he was a youth. "When I was a boy the real tensions were between the Irish and the Italians, and they were bitter, and they were physical, and they weren't just fun. But it was neighborhood turf."
Boston is a city in flux. Many of the neighborhoods are changing, as outsiders sweep in, disrupting the status quo that has characterized most of Boston's history, and the racial tensions that currently exist are more a product of resistance to change rather than prejudice directed specifically at Blacks.
AS A RESULT, Flynn, Dukakis, and Law--who, as archbishop, will prove to be a crucial figure in improving race relations in coming years--should focus their political and moral spotlight on institutional racism in Boston. The Globe put it succinctly and bluntly. "Boston today is the most difficult place in America for a Black person to hold a job or earn a promotion."
The minority hiring record in Boston is abysmal for a number of reasons, all of which contribute to a feeling among Blacks that they are not wanted in the city. Although goo-goos have pushed through programs like the Boston Compact, which provide jobs to untrained high school graduates--many of them minorities the affirmative action record within Boston's institutions is disastrous.
From the government to the Red Sox, Boston is one of the whitest major cities in the country. Though it has grown almost exponentially in recent years, institutions have stubbornly maintained their former all-white status.
Observers call it a vicious cycle. Qualified Blacks are loathe to remain in Boston, knowing they will find more opportunities and lets harassment elsewhere. The Globe report, for instance of the 60 Blacks who graduated from the Harvard Business School in the last two years, only five new work in the city. Two of them are planning to have.
The lack of qualified Blacks is the area has required an extra effort on the part of employers, few of whom seem to be willing to do so.
Blame is harder to pin here. Is the low level of minority employers, and the fact that most employed are on the lower end of the pay scale, the result of corporate negligence, or a desire to keep Blacks away from power? Possible, but that is only half of the problem.
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM continues largely because of a lack of public relations, a lack of consciousness among non-minorities about the yawning gap between the races. It is to this end that would-be reformers must devote their time. Ray Flynn knows such problems exist. But he suffers from limited resources, and must deal with one of the poorest major cities in the country. Whites are not well off either, and Flynn has wirely couched his rhetoric in communal rather than divisive terms. He must step up efforts to bring black leaders like Mel King and City Councilor Bruce C. Bolling into the spotlight. King, who won about 20 percent of the white vote in an inspired but unsuccessful bid for mayor, will continue to be a force for change in the city, and Flynn should again encourage him to join up.
City Hall, which for years has coddled developers, now has the responsibility to use its power for change. One can only hope that if attention is brought to bear on local business, some progress will follow.
It is within the Hub's newly affluent corridors of power that change must take place In discouraging the city's residents, be they any ethnic or racial group, from working and living in Boston, the City puts its future in peril.
Kevin White has left the skyline as his legacy; but Boston will never become a great city so long as its newfound prosperity is offered only to a select group.