A Spotlight newspaper story about Boston racism has ended. The public had comments. 3,000 people held interactive conversations on Facebook with article writers and among each other. Meghan Irons is a reporter for the Boston Globe newspaper ( in the photo). You can message her with any story ideas or thoughts at meghan.irons@globe.com or call 617-929-8423.
In the articles, investigators examined data, compared trends, looked at how other cities like Boston were performing. Boston was given critically low marks. Many blacks were not surprised by Spotlight team reports because the issues had been already been well stated by Boston’s NAACP, www.becma.org the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, MAMLEO, The Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, Boston Means Business, www.beji.org the Black Economic Justice Institute, and other voices including Black Lives Matter of Boston and Cambridge.
Writers exposed the power outage in Boston causing blacks to miss out on opportunities in real estate and business development. They found evidence of discrimination when blacks apply to jobs and apartments. They compared white middle class neighborhoods to black middle class clusters and found a 500 to 4 difference in Metro Boston.
Pushback was thoughtful and immediate. Over 2,000 people on Facebook expressed their personal opinions about racism in Boston ON THE RECORD and those comments are here. Black Boston radio talk show hosts and their audiences Boston spoke up.
Boston’s oldest African American owned newspaper must have not seen this article coming. The following week, the paper printed a recap of the Mayor’s public dialogue meeting Race. Black business owners were not saying much about it in public either.
This writer attended the mayor’s forum by livestream. It was being held on Saturday, the final date of the racism reports seven day print run. Several hundred had assembled to listen and talk back. Not one power broker who could have made a difference showed up. Not one. They mayor said the big executives that should be here soaking up his Resilience Policy are not here.
URLS: https://www.facebook.com/groups/raceinboston/
url: Boston Communities United
www.bostoncommunitiesunited.com
url: Black Economic Council of Massachusetts
www.becma.org
url: Boston Praise Radio, black talk radio
www.bostonpraiseradio.tv
