During a city-led dialogue on race Saturday, Breannah Conward-Lewis posed a question to Mayor Martin J. Walsh that captured the isolation and despair many black Bostonians experience in this city.
Conward-Lewis described herself as a Dorchester resident who attended city public schools and graduated from college. She went on to work for a prominent university in Boston, where she said she met blunt racism that left her feeling she was not welcome in her own city.
“[It] was the first time I ever encountered severe and blatant racism ... in my life,’’ Conward-Lewis said, though she did not share any details. “It’s a terrible feeling -- like I don’t belong in the city I was raised in.’’
The mayor said he wants to work with her so she can help him convey the importance of keeping young, black people like Conward-Lewis in the city.
Their exchange came in an hour-long question-and-answer period during the city’s second annual race dialogue at Northeastern University’s Blackman Auditorium that city officials said drew about 500 people. Last year, 800 people attended the first talk.
The event also featured a video showcasing black, Latino and Asian employees of the city — including cabinet members — who highlighted the administration’s progress in incorporating race and equity into city policies. Sixty percent of the school principals are black, including those at all three exam schools, and 54 percent of new city hires are people of color, officials said in the video.
Moderator Jorge Quiroga, a WCBV-TV reporter, brought up the Globe’s Spotlight Team’s seven-part series on racism in Greater Boston, adding that the issues it chronicled are experienced by all people of color.
As a long-time journalist, Quiroga said, he has witnessed the city’s worst moments in the violent racism that plagued the city around the time of court-ordered school desegregation and the best moments, such as the unity that followed the deadly Boston Marathon terrorist bombings.
Why, then, he asked, does this racist perception stick to the city? And is there an unwillingness to effectively address the issue?
The mayor said the Globe series sparked a conversation on racism, one that companies, nonprofits, and other entities need to heed.
He recounted a 2013 story he has told repeatedly about how he stumbled in response to a woman who had confronted him about racism in the city. Since then, he said, he has made a conscious effort to ensure that racial equity is “tied to everything’’ the city does.
“We can’t be afraid to have a conversation about race and racism in Boston and be afraid to ... acknowledge the fact that we have racism in our city,’’ said Walsh. “We have racist acts in our city, and we have to confront those.’’
But Walsh faulted the Spotlight series for not exploring the gains blacks made following the civil rights movement.
After the meeting, some audience members pointed out that blacks have been helped through persistent activism and federal court orders that not only desegregated schools but also tore down racial hiring barriers to lucrative jobs in the police and fire departments. Those legal efforts helped create avenues for blacks in the workforce but over the past 30-plus years, a collective backlash and lawsuits have quashed many gains.
Walsh took questions for more than an hour, including one on equity in community policing and the police body camera initiative. The first draft of the body camera review, he said, will be coming out next week.
He also faced a question about inequities the Spotlight series exposed in the development of the Seaport District.
“How did the African-American community prosper from that?’’ asked the Rev. Joseph Rocha, a local minister.
Walsh said most of the development in the Seaport is private so the city has no jurisdiction over it. He said the city can push to have more developers of color to do work in Boston.
Walsh also fielded a question about the controversial proposal to shift school start times that has met huge public backlash recently.
Why, asked Aveann Bridgemohan of Mattapan, is the city balancing the school transportation deficit “on the backs of single black mothers of 4-year-olds?’’
The mayor said the savings were intended to put money back into the schools in neighborhoods including in Roxbury and Mattapan. Those schools have not gotten the attention they deserved and the district’s goal is “to make the adjustments’’ for them, Walsh said.
“That’s what this is about,’’ Walsh said. “It’s about making sure we have better equity in our schools. ’’
The mayor at times seemed defensive and at other times contrite.
At one point he said the incoming questions had a bit of “an edge’’ to them.
That was the case when Christopher Huang, a photographer, challenged Walsh’s response to previous racial incidents. The mayor, Huang said, would say things like, “This is not who we are as a city,’’ which Huang called dismissive.
“That’s your opinion,’’ the mayor shot back.
But then the mayor recalled his own internal wrangling after divisive racial flareups that followed police shootings across the country, including in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore. He said he consulted with some men of color in his administration afterward who gave him sound advice.
As the conversation inside the auditorium played out, members of a coalition of black residents, which calls itself Boston Communities United, held a press conference nearby, calling out racial divisions in the city and accusing municipal leaders of hiring too few minorities as teachers, firefighters, and police officers.
“Boston stands as a place of racial apartheid in terms of housing. Blacks are disproportionately poorer in the city. Education opportunities and its public schools disproportionately harm African-Americans,’’ said Kevin Peterson, a member of the coalition and founder of the civic engagement group, New Democracy Coalition.
He was joined at the news conference by about a dozen people, including former Boston city councilors Chuck Turner and Gareth Saunders. The coalition formed in September, issued reducing violent crime, addressing gentrification, and diversifying the city’s workforce among its recommendations for addressing Boston’s race problem.
The group is also requesting some specific changes like giving Dudley Square a new name, Nubian Square, building a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on Boston Common, and reducing the school dropout rate to zero.
Laura Crimaldi of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Meghan E. Irons can be reached at meghan.irons@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @meghanirons.
