If Not Racism or Ideaology, What Will Keep Us Apart?

I watched an HBO/MAX documentary on the Boston Celtics, and an entire episode centered on the racial divide that existed in Boston in the 70’s and how it impacted the black players on the team. Boston has always had a reputation for being a challenging environment for black players and their families. It is difficult to square that belief when you see how players like Bill Russell, Sam Jones, Pedro Martinez, and David Ortiz owned the region with their popularity. I recognize Martinez and Ortiz are Dominican but still black.

The episode explained the incredible division between Black-dominated Roxbury and the very Irish South Boston. In the mid-seventies, the government and the courts implemented forced integration of public schools by busing students from one section of town to another. This was not accepted well by any community, and the protests, violence, and civil unrest proved it. It was an ugly time in Boston, and the attempt at desegregation probably harmed more than helped any feelings of racism.

Today, politics has created a chasm between the people, with the differences between the Left and Right exaggerated by the 24/7 media. Looking back, you can always point to some social measure that has put various groups on polar extremes. Our young country has survived two world wars where we needed to defend ourselves against Fascism and Communism. It took the deadliest war of them all, the Civil War, to end slavery in the United States, and if you travel to certain parts of the Deep South, some people are still fighting that war. We lost over 620,000 Americans in the battle between the North and the South, which was greater than what we lost in both world wars.

Some would say we have been in a religious war since 9/11 when the radical followers of Islam made it emphatically clear they wanted Christians and Jews erased from the face of the earth. Radical Muslims have the quality of patience that will allow them to chip away at their prey, should we let them.

I remember my hometown, Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the middle of the last century when the city was divided into North and South Lawrence and where every neighborhood was identified by its predominant nationality. The Italians were on Prospect Hill, and the Jewish families lived on Tower Hill. The Wasps occupied the

Common area of South Lawrence, while the French were entrenched in the Mount Vernon area. Every section had churches named after the patron saints of the European region they represented, and there were small grocery shops that sold the specialty foods of the region. The immigrants from Central America, Haiti, and Vietnam were populating the city’s core. No civil issues existed between the areas, but the divides were apparent.

Unfortunately, though many wish for harmonious bliss between people, different factors will always pull them apart, and when there is no natural pull, someone will create one. Except in the rare cases when war or civil disobedience becomes the solution, most of the differences smooth out over time. Using the schools to try and solve social, economic, or ideological issues through indoctrination is not the correct path to solving problems. They only exacerbate the situation by putting focus on it. Children are born colorblind and accepting of differences until they are taught differently by parents or teachers. Let’s keep teachers out of the equation and try something old-fashioned, like letting parents be parents and kids be kids for as long as possible.