Posted by Pharzeone:

Posted by JohnWallace44:

Its crazy that its a city in the Liberal Northeast that is the place where black players feel unwelcome versus playing in someplace like Charlotte, Atlanta, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, etc...

I'm about as black as prcelain, but it seems like there would be worse cities to live in than Boston.

Anyone think the legend of Larry still hangs over that city and the fans just haven't appreciated anything since?

Even after he became a superstar on the Boston Celtics, Russell was the victim of racial abuse. Once, he refused to play a game when he and his black teammates were refused service at a local restaurant in 1962.[36] Matters in Boston were made worse by a hostile press failing to acknowledge Russell's torment, instead citing Russell's perceived "bad attitude" as the problem.[45] "I didn't play for Boston," he once said, "I played for the Celtics."[45] While the Celtics founded the most successful sports dynasty of all time, bringing in 11 NBA championships in 13 years, the Boston Garden was snubbed by the local sports fans. During Russell's career, the crowd averaged a mere 8,406 fans, thousands short of a sellout. By contrast, the Celtics teams of the 1980s led by white legend Larry Bird sold out the 14,890-seat Garden for 662 straight games.[45] The worst case of bigotry was recalled by Russell's white Celtics team mate Tom Heinsohn. He recalled the instance when Russell tried to move from his home in the Boston suburb of Reading to a new home across town in 1968. His would-be neighbors filed a petition trying to block the move, and when that failed, other neighbors banded together to try to purchase the home that Russell wanted to buy.[45] Vandals broke into Russell's home and defecated on his bed. This event that led him to call the city of Boston a "flea market of racism".[46] Heinsohn also added that two white sportswriters from Boston told him they would not vote Russell the league's Most Valuable Player because he was black.

All the Russell stories are horrible, but its hard to believe that Boston is worse than the deep South in 2007

you have to remember that these type of attitudes were prevalent twenty, thirty or forty years ago. as someone said before, time has changed. boston is not really like that anymore. however, like most of the teams in the northeast cities, racism is still embedded in most cases. the reason why is because most of the cities are still sectioned by nationalities. we still have neighborhoods for certain ethnicities whether it is chinatown, spanish harlem, hell's kitchen or bensonhurst. they live in neighborhods where they are close knit and very suspucious of outsiders, especially those of another ethnicity. it has been like that since some of their ancestors set foot on ellis island and made their own neighborhoods. however, the situations have become increasingly better. most of these neighborhods are integrated and these prioblems are not as bad as before, like the yusef hawkins tragedy in the 80's. but someone did make a great point. it seems like with racial problems, southern cities are more progressive than northern. i saw it first hand in richmond and atlanta. you can through in charlotte, dallas and houston as cities that made strides in racial relations. however, most of those cities only deal with the black and white relations. the population of other ethnicities are very small unlike the northern cities.