Fourteenth in a series

Boston was nearly torn apart by the forced busing experience. The palliative quality of time healed many of the wounds, as did lot of hard work by people of good will. When the 1983 mayoral election presented voters with a choice between South Boston native Ray Flynn and the city’s first African-American finalist Mel King, Boston was on its way toward a new way of thinking about itself as a more racially open and inclusive place. King’s campaign attracted a broad “rainbow coalition” of minorities and progressive whites, demonstrating that with the right leadership Bostonians from different neighborhoods and backgrounds could join together in common purpose. King had the uncommon ability to transform typically polarizing social and economic justice issues into causes that enabled people to develop consensus and coalesce around principled positions. Flynn, who won the election, deserves much credit for transcending the city’s old parochial prejudices, bringing a commitment to integration and healing that enabled the city to set itself right again.

Boston in 2013 appears, for all accounts, to be a largely color blind city. We live in a more integrated city, a decidedly less white city – indeed a minority majority city. Some indication of how far we’ve come might be found in this year’s mayoral primary election results. Those results may be a harbinger of where Boston is heading: the collective votes of Golar-Ritchie, Barros, Arroyo, and other Democratic minority candidates was 38,749, almost equal to the combined total of the top two finishers, Walsh and Connolly. The votes appear to be there, if properly corralled, to at least make a minority candidate competitive on a city-wide level. The overwhelming support garnered by Ayanna Pressley topping the citywide city council list with 42,875 votes appears to confirm that a minority candidate can marshal significant citywide support. And earlier this year the election of Linda Dorcena Forry to the Senate seat once held by Bill Bulger, Steve Lynch, and Jack Hart – the seat John Powers and Joe Moakley once held – was interpreted by some as a reflection of the city’s changing demographics and changing attitudes toward race. A person of color representing South Boston in the state senate – the very idea of it seems an impossibility, yet it is very real.

But before we take this disconnected electoral data and extrapolate too much from it, let us consider whether real progress has been made, because Boston appears to be stuck in a mindset that continues to disproportionately favor white faces in places of power. Is this a reflection of institutional racism? Or is this, to paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a time of benign neglect? Has a period of overt antagonism been replaced by a time of tolerance propped up by a façade of inclusion?

The private sector in Boston is still slow to promote people of color to high-level leadership positions, although there have been important appointments: at Blue Cross/Blue Shield with the tenure of Cleve Killingsworth, at Partners with Brent Henry as VP and General Counsel, and with the recent selection of Lee Pelton as President of Emerson College. The Partnership, a leadership development group led by Carol Fulp, has had some success working with the private sector to support the development of more diversity in significant positions, but one continues to have the sense that an invisible barrier remains – a barrier that makes many talented African Americans choose to find jobs in other cities. Kevin Peterson, who runs the New Democracy Coalition, has observed that “many middle-class professionals educated and trained in Boston are consistently choosing to live in other parts of the country.” It is interesting to note that both Killingsworth and Pelton were recruited to their jobs from out of state. While there is nothing wrong with that, the question remains whether Boston can produce senior level private sector leaders from its own roster of citizens. What can a new mayor do to alter this dynamic, or facilitate change?

One thing is clear: while we may be a more integrated and tolerant city, we remain separated by a vast gulf of access and opportunity, a gulf exacerbated by chronic and persistent conditions that have a deeply corrosive effect on the ability of many in the black community to compete with their white (and increasingly Latino and Asian) counterparts. According to recent studies, black unemployment rates remain the highest of any group in Boston, and black median household income is significantly lower than that of white households. Census data shows that households at or below the poverty level are concentrated in the Roxbury/Dorchester/Mattapan neighborhoods. Those same neighborhoods have some of the city’s lowest educational attainment rates. Lack of education holds people down, with just about 18 percent of the adults in these neighborhoods holding a four-year college degree, and nearly 50 percent lacking even a high school education. Without adequate education, these citizens have little hope of entering an increasingly technology-driven job market. Instead, they will have to compete for the fewer and fewer entry level jobs that remain available. Massive unemployment, and underemployment, is the consequence.

Not surprisingly, crime is highest in those neighborhoods where the pernicious impacts of poor education, underemployment or unemployment, and poverty combine to drain hope and perspective from people. Although Boston is certainly not alone in having high crime neighborhoods, we cannot accept as the norm a level of violence and dysfunction that this year alone may lead to over 200 shootings in Boston, most of them in Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury. The outgoing police commissioner has born the brunt of criticism, with concerns raised about the paucity of high-level black officers in the police department. There may be legitimate concerns about whether black officers have fair opportunities for career advancement, but improving career opportunities in one city department won’t solve the structural problem that provides fertile ground for the kind of violence that takes place when isolation replaces engagement, despair replaces hope, and anger replaces civility. These are problems that need to be solved from the bottom up, on a household by household basis – hard work, but necessary, because after decades of programs and good intentions and prayer meetings, can we truly say that they have made a meaningful difference?

Assessing race relations in the city is made a bit more complex because people of color are not a monolithic political or social force in Boston. Indeed, the diversity within our communities of color may impede their ability to coalesce as a potent power force in the city. Many people of color – and many of those who are most energetic about political participation – trace their origins to places with different culture and languages. The minor controversy during the primary campaign surrounding efforts to coalesce people of color around one strong candidate missed the point: the varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the leading non-white candidates were so varied (African American, Latino, Cape Verdean) that they did not easily or comfortably lend themselves to cohesion. This reality may, in the short term, result in a fractured minority vote that is unable to win elections, but in the long term, if a leader emerges who can knit together the various pieces into a workable fabric, who can transform Mel King’s 1983 Rainbow Coalition into something more contemporary that fits a New Boston demographic, it can become a powerful force for positive change in Boston. No one leader has yet been able to reach out to Boston’s disparate groups and find a way to have them coalesce around a unified vision.

Ultimately, equality of opportunity comes with equality of access. This is also an issue for poor and lower middle class whites, but for people of color it is exacerbated by the absence of a large cohort of effective leaders in the private and public sectors. Access to good jobs, and to equal quality education, healthcare, and mobility, depends in large part upon access to power and public-sector decision making. This is not a theory: I know this from a lifetime of personal experience. It’s hard to ignore the importance of access in day-to-day life in Boston. When the chief operating officer of Suffolk Downs gets invited to an election day luncheon for the political elite in East Boston, where the mayor and the Senate President and other elected officials are present, in a community where the fate of a casino is in the balance, no one can doubt what that access means. Access like that is invaluable, indeed more valuable than any campaign contribution, because access helps people form the kind of personal relationships that establish comfort levels and enable important things to get things done. That is the kind of access that counts, and until and unless people of color have that kind of access they will forever be relegated to the margins of the political and civic debate.

Access may come when people of color insist on it through effective political leadership – leadership that is sorely lacking. This is a reality that must be acknowledged in a candid assessment of what is holding progress back. There are notable exceptions, of course, but my own personal experience with the city’s black legislative delegation when I was transportation secretary was that there was little vision and little interest in thinking creatively about how to solve long-standing mobility issues in communities of color. The responsibility for this dispiriting state of affairs must be shared by the voters who have returned underperforming legislators to office, and by the last two mayors of Boston, who have chosen to end-run elected black leaders. Mayors Flynn and Menino were both drawn to empower groups of black ministers as a proxy for black political leadership. The ministers have a built-in weekly forum to reach people, and the respect and deference that often comes to spiritual leaders. This strategy has enabled the last two mayors to sidestep elected officials, diminishing their importance and, in a very real way, suppressing interest on the part of qualified younger candidates to seek higher office.

One thing is certain: the next mayor of Boston will be a white Irish-American male. He will have the opportunity to transcend the political paradigms of the 20th century by acting decisively on a reform agenda that brings game-changing ideas and initiatives to Boston’s communities of color. There isn’t any credible way to argue that race relations in Boston haven’t improved considerably since the days of forced busing. The question for the new mayor and his new city hall leadership team is whether the status quo, which appears to be stuck in a comfortable but false complacency, is enough. The answer is that the status quo cannot be sufficient, because the status quo conditions continue to relegate people of color in Boston to the back benches of our civic power structure, and to the lowest rungs on the ladder of upward mobility.

Perhaps more than anything else, a commitment to creativity is necessary. The problems of poverty and poor education and joblessness that disproportionately affect Boston’s communities of color won’t be solved by a continuation of policies and programs that haven’t worked. To quote FDR, it will require an approach that “demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” Empowering a new generation of leadership will be critical to any efforts, and there are ways this can be done with mayoral leadership. For example, charter reform may be one element of an overall reform package, including taking a hard look at city council districts that may not offer level playing fields for all. A more proactive approach to improving mobility in the city, with an emphasis on underserved communities and corridors, could be another element of a strategy of inclusion. Groups like the Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Project (REEP) are training young people of color to be smart community activists who have sophisticated views about how to improve mobility, sustainability, and opportunity in their neighborhoods. A new mayor and his team should reach out directly and frequently to tap into the potential gold mine of energy and commitment that is there, right now, with young people who are ready to roll up their sleeves and take on leadership roles.

When asked recently in an NPR radio interview how much progress he thought had been made toward achieving full racial equality since the 1963 March on Washington, a participant in that march reflected a moment and replied, “Not far. Long way to go.” Boston in 2013 is a city of unprecedented diversity, with a younger population more open to creativity and new ways of thinking. This may be the moment to make historic strides toward achieving the goal of a more racially equitable city, comfortable in its diversity, open to providing full and meaningful access for people of color in the power centers of the public and private sectors. The goal may be closer than ever before. Not far. And perhaps, if we get it right, not even a long way to go.

Jim Aloisi is a former state secretary of transportation. His most recent book is The Vidal Lecture.