brendan halpin

Just saw that Chris Donisi of Burlington MA is the new Voice of Logan Airport.

And the man does have an objectively beautiful voice. And yet.

He’s welcoming people to Boston. Not to Greater Boston. And he lives 18 miles from Logan Airport, a solid 45+ minute drive from Logan at most hours of the day. And apparently grew up in Arlington, which is also not Boston but at least is only 10 miles from Logan but also probably a 45-minute drive because of the magic of Boston traffic.

And he’s a white guy with the working class accent that used to define Boston, which makes him a “real Bostonian” in the national imagination, despite the fact that he doesn’t live in Boston. And despite the fact that Boston is a majority-minority city with a large Black and Hispanic population.

I don’t know Chris Donisi’s family history, but a whole lot of white people with that accent are descended from people who moved out of Boston and into the suburbs in the 70’s so their kids wouldn’t have to go to school with Black people.

If that sounds ugly, it’s because it is.

A cornerstone of white supremacy in the USA is that white people are “real” Americans, and everyone else is just a guest in our country who should be grateful for the opportunity to live here. (never mind that white people stole this country and a lot of non-white people are descended from people who were trafficked here.). Choosing a white suburbanite to be the voice of Boston only reinforces the view that Boston is a city of and for white people. It’s out of step with the reality of 2026 and represents a fascist nostalgia for a bygone era when “real” (aka white) Bostonians were a majority of the population here.

You know who actually grew up in Boston and does a lot of voice work? Ayo Edebiri. But she barely even registers as a Bostonian in the national or, for that matter local conversation. I wonder why?