The article was lousy and Reilly comes off as stupid again. According to his "racism logic" wouldn't a predominantly white Bird team in a league of mostly black players be loved by a supposed racist city? His statement made no sense.
For those celticsbloggers who are older this whole Boston is a racist city perplexes me some. Most of it comes from the 70's when black kids were bussed into Southie and white Southie kids were bussed to predominantly black schools correct? Was there any other city in America where they attempted to bus working class family white kids into predominantly black schools? Seems to me that if they attempted this in Philly or NYC, or D C or Detroit or Chicago, etc that there wouold have been the same bus rioting unfortunately? Is this a valid thought? So Boston gets a bad rap for attempting to be the most "liberal acting" in terms of school segregation more or less. And if I'm correct the law was passed by white surbanites, but when it was proposed that suburban white kids get bussed into inner city schools, all the MA liberal lawmakers then drew the line. Is this basically the story? Please someone who lived through the bus riots clear this up.
While there is no excuse for the riots, i do believe it would have happened in any city if the same experiment was done. As someone who has taught in a 99.9% low income school (in Chicago) I don't blame parents for not wanting their child to be bussed into a school let's say in Roxbury. I don't know the whole Boston is a racist city thing sort of has always been perplexing to me, because Boston is such a liberal city. Imo, every city has its share of racists (of all colors actually) and when a non local reporter (in this case Reilly) just continues to perpeuate stereotypes 30 yrs later its redundant imo. I wonder if he would want his kids going to a 99.9% low income school.
Now maybe I'm off and Boston doesn't get its racist label from the bus riots. i know russell talked about how he experienced racism during his yrs playing here, but again unfortunately wasn't there racism in every city in America? And as poor as the sox were in terms of racial progress, the Celtics were the leaders in that regard. So while you might have had some idiots who through rocks at buses, used slurs at Russell, and were bigoted running their team (Yawkey), I don't think that makes a city "racist." If one player out of 12 on a team sucks (let's say Scalabrine), does that mean the whole team sucks? I think we won the championship last year if I'm not mistaken. By the same thinking, I don't think that Boston should be labeled based on the actions of a small percentage of its people.