Studying Boston’s race trends

Guy Stuart, an associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, is the author of a new study, “Boston at the Crossroads: Racial Trends in the Metropolitan Region in the 1990s and Beyond.” “The rest of America looks very different from Boston,” Stuart said. “Whites here are very isolated. When kids go out into a bigger, wider world, they will encounter more diverse universities, a more diverse work force, and they may not have the interpersonal skills to deal with those situations.” In his study, Stuart compares Boston with three other metropolitan areas – Atlanta, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area. He finds that Boston differs from these areas in several significant ways. It is more racially segregated than the Bay Area, but less so than Chicago. “People think there’s a highly concentrated black ghetto in Boston. There isn’t, not compared with a city like Chicago. When I was working there in community economic development, I would often get on a bus and not see another white face for miles and miles. That doesn’t happen here.” Stuart’s research was supported by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government.