Traveling with History: Racial Lines and the Color of Crime in the Cambridge-Boston Area

Various reports show that the Boston-Cambridge area has a history of racial tension dating to the 1970s, when court-mandated busing led to violence as whites threw rocks and bricks at buses carrying black students.

These ugly incidents are revisited with the arrest of one of the country's most renowned African-American intellectuals. It must be noted that race relations have calmed down since these days.

Even President Obama was once experiencing profiling as he wrote in The Audacity of Hope. "Although largely through luck and circumstance, I now occupy a position that insulates me from of the bumps and bruises tha tthe average black man must endure - I can recite the usual litany of petty slights that during my 45 years have been directed my way: security guards tailing me as I shop in department stores, white couples who toss me their car keys as I stand outside a restaurant waiting fo rthe valet, police cars pulling me over for no apparent reason. I know what it is like to have people telling me I can not do something because of my skin color...."Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope.