IS BOSTON A RACIST CITY?

Chris Matthews’ Post-Primary Accusation Gets Some Face Time with Ex-Mayor Flynn, “A Real Cheap Shot”

By CARA BAYLES | CARA@WEEKLYDIG.COM

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The day after last week's New Hampshire primary, Chris Matthews, speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe, reintroduced the perception that New England and especially Boston have yet to shed their racist pedigree.

Speaking about the upset of Barack Obama's poll-projected win, Matthews suggested that voters had been lying to exit pollsters. "Me think paleface speak with forked tongue," he said, in an ironically offensive accusation of racism.

Joe Scarborough, the show's host offered, "I'm used to people saying that we in the South have race problems ... But, talk about New England."

"Boston?" Matthews replied. "Boston?" He added, "There's different kinds of prejudice in the North than there is in the South, but it exists. It may not be 'I think I'm better than you,' but it might be 'I don't want to live next door to you.'"

The choice to label New England, and single out Boston in particular, as racist, has rekindled an old debate among pundits who remember Charles Stuart in 1989 (who murdered his pregnant wife and blamed a "black man," sparking city-wide racial profiling by the BPD), and Barry Bonds' 2004 assertion that he'd never play for the Sox because "Boston is too racist."

But Raymond Flynn, Boston's former mayor, and the former ambassador to the Vatican, is having none of it and demanding an apology from Matthews.

"It's a real cheap shot," Flynn told the Dig. "I'm very disappointed that the media can get away with those outrageous, irresponsible and reckless dispersions. I don't think it has any foundation whatsoever and it shows the media's lack of sensitivity and understanding of this community."

Flynn admits that the national memory of the 1974 busing crisis is most likely what inspired Matthews' comments. Images of Boston's intolerance -- such as the iconic photograph of white protesters trying to impale a black lawyer with an American flag in City Hall Plaza -- still burn in the national memory.

While Flynn opposed the court-ordered public school busing that fueled racial violence here in Boston, he insists he was never a segregationist. "I supported the integration of public housing, which by the way, happened without a single violent incident," he says. "But I felt that the plan devised by the State Department of Education and implemented by the court was a short-sighted and essentially counter-productive plan."

"I'm not disputing that there was violence in 1974, but the city has changed dramatically since then," Flynn said. "For anybody to go back to 1974, and say that was the reason why the people up in New Hampshire didn't vote for Barack Obama ... well, I'm sorry, that's a stretch."

MSNBC's spokesman Jeremy Gaines was unavailable for comment about any of Matthews' statements.

Matthews' comments may have been an attempt to save face after his predictions of another win for Obama were upset by Clinton's victory. He also attacked Clinton's viability as a candidate, a move many political bloggers are terming as sexist. "The reason she's a US senator," Matthews said on The Morning Joe, "the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around."

Flynn says he plans to call the FCC about the electronic media's use of the very polls that ignited Matthews' accusations that voters lied to pollsters.

"They basically said at 5:30pm that the election was over, and that Obama was going to win by 15 points. Well, people who get up at 5am and don't come home until 6pm, after working hard all day, are not likely to stand in line for one hour to vote after they've heard the election is decided. The press cannot make those premature calls. It discourages people from voting."

While Flynn is retired from public office and has himself not yet picked a candidate in this election (he endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992, and supported George W. Bush in 2000), he still raises such working-class concerns and maintains a populist appeal here in Boston.

Flynn concluded that while "we still have work to do," he denies that it's a racist city and that Matthew's comments about Boston were off-base. "Boston has nothing to do with the election up in New Hampshire," he said. "To take this unsolicited reach and take a cheap shot at Boston is really way over the line. And neither one of the people commenting in the program have any understanding of Boston. Joe Scarborough's from Pensacola, Florida. Chris Matthews is from Washington DC by way of Philadelphia. So they have no roots here. They have no idea what they're talking about."