Progress made, much to be done

RE Renée Graham’s “Yes, Boston, you are racist’’ (Opinion, March 29): Progress has been made since 1983, when my colleague at UMass Boston, James E. Blackwell, and I made recommendations to Boston’s business and civic leadership on steps needed to improve race relations in the city. The presentation of our findings and recommendations at the JFK Library were met with enthusiasm and a sense of “We can do this!’’ Unfortunately, some 34 years later, much remains to be done.

I moved to Boston in 1971 from Michigan with my young family. I was surprised when I could not get a white taxicab driver to take me from Logan Airport to my home in Dorchester. I was less shocked a few years later when white tradesmen would not travel to my house to make repairs. I soon learned to seek out only black taxicab drivers at Logan and to rely only on black tradesmen for home repairs. As a UMass Boston professor, I soon learned that, if my face or name appeared in the Globe or Herald, there would be a racist message taped to my office door the next day. My wife worked at Boston television stations and routinely experienced racist comments from fellow workers and those she met in the field. We never experienced such treatment in Michigan, where my wife grew up, or Colorado, where I grew up, or in California, where we now reside, or in other locations in the United States, even the Deep South. Yes, Boston, you are racist, but you have recognized your malady; now what are you going to do about it?

Philip S. Hart

Los Angeles

The writer is author (with James E. Blackwell) of “Cities, Suburbs and Blacks: A Study of Concerns, Distrust and Alienation.’’

Compared with other cities

Is Boston racist? Yes. But so are New York, Baltimore, and other places I have lived and visited. But Bay Staters also elected an African-American, Edward Brooke, to the US Senate, and Deval Patrick to the governorship, twice. New York, the home of all things progressive, cannot claim one of those victories.

Gene Roman

New York City

Feeling the words

As I read Renée Graham’s column (“Yes, Boston, you are racist,’’ Opinion, March 29), I couldn’t help but fear some of the letters she would receive from my fellow lifelong Bostonians, who still can’t understand what it’s like to be a person of color in the city that is, and always will be, home.

To them I say: Please, hear her words. Try to feel them. They are the truth.

Beverly Mire

Cambridge