Boston is so homogenous how can you live there?
I’m surprised to see that you’re living in Boston! maybe I’m just being cynical, but it seems like everyone in Boston is optimizing their life for prestige at every turn, at the expense of everything else, which results in a very un-interesting monoculture. I’m excited to be leaving Boston soon (we moved here for my boyfriend’s residency which is ending in July) but I’m curious what your take is, having lived a few places across the country.
We moved to Boston for my son’s cello teacher, but we stayed here well after we needed to be close to the teacher.
I would say the most oppressive monoculture in Boston is doctors doing their residencies. Few families live in Boston because the schools have been equalized so there are no neighborhood schools for rich people. And students live near their university, most of which are not actually in Boston. This means the only people who are left to live in Boston are immigrants and doctors doing their residencies who don’t want to live far from their hospital.
Penelope
What a funny pair of comments:
1. Help! Everything in this city I’m not from seems so homogenous!
2. What’s homogenous about it are people like you.
There’s a long New England tradition of not talking to people until they’ve been around for a while, and the OP decided not to cross that bar before she even came here. She’s going to leave anyway, so it’s no wonder she’s not engaging with anyone outside her narrow clique, or that people don’t want engage with her.
I live in Boston (and am neither a medical doctor nor an immigrant), and we have friends – mostly friends with families – in many different walks of life, also living in Boston. It’s true that a lot of them are immigrants… and doctors… but cultural homogeneity is less than we’ve seen in, say the midwest.
The thing about Boston that I’ve noticed is that every white person I know who’s been there says they love it, while every non-white person I know who’s been there – including some raised in the deep South – says it’s the most racist place they have ever experienced.
I forgot to reply to this comment. When I read it I loved it. I agree that Boston is insanely racist. I’ve lived in NYC, LA and Chicago. Nothing comes close to Boston. The diversity in Boston is a diverse population of foreign students who can afford to pay full tuition.
That said, both my kids love Boston, so it’s hard for me to not love it for giving my kids a place to feel at home.
Penelope