I like most of what you are saying here. It is a needed corrective. I think the problem runs deeper as well. The Eyes on the Prize North to Boston is very instructive.

When you realize that "Here we go Red Sox," was once "Here we go Southie." We begin to get a deeper sense of the buried past.

In uncovering New England's tangled racial history the process of assimilation is key. The residents of Southie turned against the Kennedy's as they had become a symbol of the Harvard educated elites.

Judge Garraty lived in a "W" town.

"Waltham and Woburn" were the locations of working class white flight from Boston.

This history has been taught and retaught for years. I attended a conference at the Kennedy Library in 2004 reflecting on the 40th anniversary of Brown v. Board and the long distance Boston still had to go to achieve racial equality.

The fears of upper middle class whites in the suburbs are now related more to how they will ever compete with Asian immigrants.

New Englanders have always burned records of the family money made on slave ships. They also forget the original "theft" of Indigenous lands.

Only when we have a broader TRUTH and RECONCILIATION Commission can we begin to heal.