A Reckoning In Boston: The Growing Racial & Economic Divide In The City

Power of Good

Like all cities, Boston is a composite of many cities, many histories, and many realities that play out across neighborhood, race, ethnicity, and class. Yet Boston stands out in its extremes. While Boston thrives, its innovation and tech economies sore, housing development booms, there is perhaps no other US city with as stark a difference between those thriving and those surviving. Boston’s wealth gap between white residents and residents of color is one of the largest in the country. In this episode of Power of Good, I interview those who are telling this story of a divided Boston – Boston residents, Kafi Dixon and Carl Chandler, and Tim McCarthy, a Harvard Lecturer. The three of them met in The Clemente Course (www.clementecourse.org), a rigorous community-based humanities class taught in 34 sites across the U.S. The Clemente mission is to foster critical thinking through deep engagement with history, literature, philosophy and art history. Kafi and Carl were students in the Clemente course, Tim was one of the course professors, as he has been for over 20 years. While in the course, they also met James Rutenbeck, a documentary filmmaker, with plans to capture and share the transformative learning of the Clemente class experience. James quickly gravitated towards Kafi and Carl – and as the film project progressed, it changed direction. Dramatically. It became not only about the course - but also about the lives of Kafi and Carl and their experiences in a racially and economically divided Boston. Kafi, Carl, and Tim joined me to share their perspective on the transformative nature of the Clemente Course, their experience making the film, and their guarded hopes for what Boston might become in the future.