Hub race woes serious, study finds

Despite metro Boston's increasing diversity, 80 percent of African-Americans and roughly half of Hispanics polled recently said that racial discrimination remains a somewhat serious or very serious problem that can cost jobs or promotions and make others feel unwelcome at sporting events and shopping centers.

More than half of African-Americans and almost four of 10 Latinos said they face day-to-day discrimination at least a few times a month -- for instance, by being treated with less respect, offered worse service, or called names.

''I've actually stopped defending Boston," said Elizabeth Miranda, a 24-year-old Roxbury resident of Cape Verdean descent, who was not surveyed. ''We are not trying to keep people of color who go to school here. . . .The black middle class, the Latino middle class -- that never really gets built."

One of four respondents said he or she was locked out of a job over the past 10 years because of race or ethnicity, and one in five said he or she experienced racial discrimination during the past year at work. The study's authors contend that the perception of limited job opportunities in the Boston region could help drive black and Latino professionals to other cities.

''In Boston, we have corporations and governments that celebrate their diversity hiring of three African-American or Latino employees coming in the front door. However, there are six walking out the back door," said George ''Chip" Greenidge, 33, of Roxbury, who launched the ''State of Young Black Boston" conferences about six years ago.

The poll of 403 African-Americans and Hispanics, conducted last October, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and conducted with the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It covered Bristol, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, Suffolk, and Worcester counties.

The Globe interviewed several area residents who were not involved in the study about the findings.

The authors planned to release the findings last night at a conference on race and religion at Boston College, where they intended to ask religious leaders to help bridge the divides. ''We need some moral leadership in our institutions," said Gary Orfield, director of The Civil Rights Project. ''But that's not the experience people are having here. I really do think a lot of whites simply don't realize the experience minority families are having."

The 2000 Census declared Boston to be a city where a majority of residents are minorities, and recent elections have broken traditional barriers in electing more African-American and Latino politicians.

No one disputes that Boston has made great strides since the explosive battles over busing black and white children to integrate schools in the 1970s. But a region being flooded with immigrants is not getting much more integrated. Ninety percent of school students in the suburbs are white, while 85 percent in Boston schools are members of minority groups, said Josephine Louie, who authored the study.

''Not only do people live in separate towns and neighborhoods, but they socialize in different places," Louie said. ''You go to a symphony, it's a sea of white faces. You go to nightclubs, it's either all-white or all-Latino or all-black."

Eighty percent of African-Americans and Hispanics polled said that more should be done to integrate schools. But the segregation is tough to bridge because it is so deeply rooted, said Orfield. It starts with housing segregation, which produces school segregation, which provides unequal opportunity for jobs and economic success, he said.

Wilbur Rich, a Wellesley College professor of political science who reviewed the study before its release, said Boston is not unlike other cities. ''People are sort of escaping to be among folks in their class," he said.

And he can relate, somewhat; as one of a smattering of black faces on campus, he lives in Wellesley but continues to go to a multiracial church in Cambridge, rather than seek an Episcopal congregation closer to home.

Many minorities reported in the survey that they felt unwelcome in metro Boston's public places. One out of three respondents who attended sporting events reported feeling out of place or unwelcome because of his or her race or ethnicity. One out of five who went to a museum reported the same. And close to half of African-Americans and a third of Hispanics said they felt unwelcome in shopping centers and restaurants in Greater Boston.

''I can see it just in how uncomfortable I make certain people -- even minor interactions in an elevator," said David Jones, 29, a credit analyst who grew up in Mattapan and moved to Washington, D.C. ''They don't want to ask you to push the button for them even though you're right there."

Felix Arroyo, who became Boston's first Latino city councilor two years ago and now represents the entire city, said he promotes a philosophy that embraces both similarities and differences: ''There are good Joes and there are bad Joses and bad Joes and good Joses."

But earlier this month, he saw a gathering of both traditional Italian and new immigrant neighborhood groups, called East Boston United, develop into ethnically directed gripes. ''People talked without really listening to themselves," Arroyo said. ''They said, 'Latinos are dirtying the streets. When we talk to them, they behave like they don't understand what we're saying.' I listened patiently and I said to them, 'We are so equal that we also have bad people among ourselves.' "