This isn’t much of a surprise at all, but since Boston has been on my radar of places that I may live one year from now, I took notice. It’s not like 1989 was that long ago. And as you surely remember, there was that thing over a black professor and white cop there recently.

(Yes, I know that if I chose my new home based on lack of racist asshats, I might as well plan on moving to Jupiter, but I can hope, right?)

Diary of Boston Cop Hints at Deep Racism

The legacy of the Boston Police Department’s ugly racial past is playing out behind closed doors and under seal in federal court as lawyers battle over an explosive diary written by a former head of the homicide division.

Retired Lt. Detective John Daley – who led homicide from 1985 to 1989 – scribbled his personal thoughts on murder cases and professional life within the department in the 1980s in a diary that includes sharp critiques of black officers and the black community, according to brief excerpts contained in court papers.

According to the records, filed in the Shawn Drumgold federal civil rights case, Daley wrote that the department was “getting the bottom of the barrel” as it recruited black cops in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He called the removal of two white homicide detectives involved in the controversial Drumgold investigation a “sacrifice to the black community.”

“I’m not interested in talking about it,” Daley said when asked for comment outside his Marshfield home yesterday afternoon.

Of course you’re not interested in talking about it. It’s because all the other racists have moved on to, um, subtle racism.