Josh Michtom

We should take Gov. Malloy’s use of the phrase “racist in outcome if not intent” — and the Republicans’ disproportionate show of hurt feelings — as an opportunity for an unflinching examination of how our state’s system of town governments perpetuates the legal segregation of an earlier era. Historical factors and policies, many of them explicitly racist, have made Connecticut’s large cities predominantly non-white and predominantly poor, while its suburbs are predominantly white and better off.