Daily Inspiration Quote by Ray Stannard Baker

The sting here is in the timeline: segregation isn’t a dusty Southern relic but a spreading contagion, measurable in “a few years” and visible in the everyday places where a city congratulates itself on civilization. Baker, a muckraking-era journalist, isn’t reaching for poetry; he’s building a case like a prosecutor. The careful inventory of spaces - hotels, restaurants, “especially confectionary stores” - matters because it maps racism onto leisure, sweetness, and the petty rituals of respectability. It’s not just where people sleep or eat; it’s where they’re supposed to relax, be treated, be normal.

The phrase “even the best of them” is doing ugly work on purpose. It mimics the paternalistic grading of Black worth that white society demanded as the price of basic service, and then shows that even that dehumanizing bargain is being revoked. Baker’s intent is to expose regression: Boston, a city with abolitionist mythology, is sliding into a more organized, more performative color line. The subtext is that prejudice is not merely personal animus; it’s an institutional fashion, adopted by businesses that sense social permission and profit in exclusion.

Contextually, this lands in the early 20th century as Northern cities hardened racial boundaries amid Black migration, labor competition, and pseudo-scientific racism. Baker’s point isn’t that Boston has “become” racist; it’s that modern racism learns, adapts, and markets itself - right down to the candy counter.