I grew up in an era where people thought racism was no big deal. I grew up with race riots at the high school in my home town (players on the same football team on opposing sides of the fighting). In the face of that I learned from neighbors who were black that quality people are quality people regardless of their pigmentation and more generally their appearance. I went to college in Boston through the disgusting Charles Stuart claims. Over my lifetime I've watched the sports teams in Boston change or take a stand on racist policy. I saw a black hockey player wear the home teams jersey. I've seen the city I call home change and evolve in a lot of ways. Do I believe the job is done? No. Do I believe that racism still exists? Yes. But I do not believe it is accepted culturally in Boston at large. There may be pockets of such behavior - as there are pockets of all manner of behaviors that society does not approve of. At this point I believe that racist examples are the outliers in our city.
In my opinion, if you get 30K people to group together for a sports event and could perform instant analysis you'd find all manner of behaviors. You would find X percent of people who still in this day and age drink and drive (probably from that very event). You would find X percent who have an issue with domestic violence (maybe overlapping the drinking?). You'd find X percent that have been arrested for violent crimes. You'd find find X percent that have a white collar criminal past - caught or not. You'd have X percent that have crossed modern society's line for consensual sex, whether it was recent or far in their past. And yes you'd have X percent that are guilty of racism. None of these items would be acceptable to many responding here, but realistically they are still present in our community. But in that group of 30K or 1 million residents of the Boston area the question is - are these behaviors outliers? I believe they are - and as such wince at the perpetuation of a reputation that was true some time ago but I believe we have substantially grown past.
I reject the tired narrative that Boston is racist. There are outliers in every city, in every town, in every gathering of people in our society. I don't believe Boston is any more racist than the next town. What Boston has due to its past, and due to the mindset of those who live here, and the media who report here, is an extremely strong spotlight for these (and other) behaviors. And the act of shining a strong light on unacceptable behaviors is good. But painting an entire city with the broad brush of any label because of the acts of outliers isn't acceptable either.