Chanda Prescod-Weinstein  🙅🏽‍♀️  🇧🇧 🌈Verified account

When I was in college and when I returned, having grown up in Los Angeles, I understood Boston to be DEEPLY segregated. Income distributions are extreme.

Every city I’ve lived in has experienced profound gentrification in the last 18 years so I don’t think we are that unique but it looks different everywhere. I think Seattle is some of the worst I have seen. But maybe that’s because I’m used to Boston.

When my husband and I came back from a 3 week honeymoon in Korea and Japan (where we dealt with various racist incidents) I came home to Boston and realized that if all the POC disappeared off the street, many of the white people prob wouldn’t notice or worry much. That’s Boston.

So in conclusion, I guess, I am appalled at the situation for Black Americans in Boston, but I’m not surprised. We have all of these colleges and professors here but the schools don’t invest in communities by hiring faculty who reflect them and paying their taxes.

Harvard is literally grandfathered out of most of their taxes. Cambridge lowers property taxes and MIT certainly doesn’t pay as much as it needs to. And property taxes are regressive. Seniors and long term residents shouldn’t be subject to increases the way new ppl are.

People at MIT always seem surprised that I know pretty much all the Black faculty there but that’s because ... there aren’t many

Boston is a metro of white slightly multicultural haves and especially POC, particularly Black (American and immigrant) have nots

I’m in the unique position of being many standard dev away from what is normal in these numbers. And for this reason my household follows the data. We write to our city council and talk to our synagogue members about how we are voting. We call the governor. We GLADLY pay taxes.