Have you ever lived there? (I went to high school in Boston and university in Cambridge). Of all the places I've lived in the USA (Massachusetts, NY, Texas, California) Massachusetts was by far the most overtly unashamedly racist, with certain Boston neighborhoods particularly bad.

I was just visiting a few weeks ago and a couple of my friends told me "it's not as bad as it used to be" but when I asked, admitted it hadn't improved that much from the late 70s/early 80s that we remembered.

Just a casual example: my mum entered her retirement home with some groceries, using her own electronic key, and was told "deliveries are to be made through the service entrance." This to a woman who has been living there for years and whom the "diversity board" keeps trying to recruit (as it's always been 100% white people).

This attitude is deeply rooted. Remember, though Massachusetts was famously abolitionist, its immense wealth started out from funding slave voyages and slave mortgages. And of course the Bay Colony was founded by a shipload of notoriously intolerant people.