Here’s the story that New England tells itself: Racism is a Southern problem. But our region’s abolitionist past hides a darker history of racism, slavery and segregation. It’s a legacy that lives with us today.

From suburban Connecticut to rural Maine, demonstrators occupied highways and town greens over the summer with banners and calls for racial justice.

Racial segregation is a modern-day problem that is perpetuated in New England through local zoning laws. That’s the argument from Sara Bronin , a land-use expert and law professor at the University of Connecticut. She talked to NEXT about the ways zoning can exclude people of color from affluent towns — and how the national…