Pittsburgh and western PA haven't been getting much love lately, what with the "racist" label, the Ashley Todd fiasco, the suspicion that McCain-Palin have reason to consider this fertile territory.
Like a lot of ex-Pittsburghers who left for reasons of work and life, I keep a close watch on a city I still love. I know the dark side of western PA--I grew up there. But the photo above says something about another side of Pittsburgh I know--it's from Mellon Arena on Monday, while Barack Obama was speaking. What does it mean? Follow me over the hump...
There's something happening this year everywhere in America, and it's happening a little differently according to the place. Race in Pittsburgh and western PA has always been complicated. The history of it is partly in the plays of one of America's all-time greatest playwrights, August Wilson.
The first time I met August Wilson we talked about (among other things) what all Pittsburghers talk about: the Steelers and the Pirates. Mostly, in that case, about the Pirates. August was a baseball fan. We talked about Roberto Clemente, his hero and mine too--I shook his hand once at Forbes Field. We talked about where we were when Bill Mazeroski hit the home run that won the 1960 World Series.
For all the racism that Clemente and other people of color experienced in Pittsburgh, in 1971 the Pirates fielded the first team comprised entirely of people of color in a World Series game. That year Clemente became the first Latino to win the series MVP.
More recently, Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers--which has been in the Rooney family since the team began-- was instrumental in forcing the NFL to consider black candidates for their coaching vacancies: the "Rooney Rule."
Now the Pittsburgh Steelers have an African American coach, and Dan Rooney has supported Barack Obama since the PA primary. Rooney campaigned for him in PA and Ohio recently. And he gave Barack that Steelers jersey before his speech Monday.
It's also worth noting that when Ashley Todd made her inflammatory allegations, aided and abetted by the McCain campaign, it was the Pittsburgh Police that kept their cool, carefully investigated, and confronted her with the evidence that got her to recant.
Things aren't perfect in Pittsburgh, or anywhere else. Western PA has its problems, and it's not for everybody--even those that leave part of their hearts there when they move on. But a lot of people in western PA and particularly in Pittsburgh are going to vote for Barack Obama this year. Because they're part of this country, too. They're part of this time. For some, black and white, voting for Obama will mean a lot.
The people there who will vote for Obama include my sisters, brothers-in-law and my nieces. When I called one of my sisters to tell her a load of Obama buttons was on the way, she told me that for the first time in her life she was volunteering for a political campaign, for Obama.
But there will be others who will refuse the limitations of their stereotypes, and always have. That includes some ornery old ladies I can think of, who will thrill to be taken to the polls by the young Obama volunteers. And there will be people who will do what they never thought they'd do or dared to do: vote for an African American.
I'm not saying Obama is going to win western PA, though he likely will win Pittsburgh. But this is what Obama has been talking about: this country isn't a collection of stereotypes, of beliefs defined by zip codes. And something else he's been talking about: This is our moment. This is our time.
The McCain-Palin campaign has tried everything this year. They've tried sarcasm and scorn. They've tried guns and abortion and gay marriage. They've tried palling around with terrorists. They've tried soft on crime, dangerous elite foreigner baby-killer socialist and communist. And above all, and behind it all, they're still trying racism.
None of it is working. For the first time in a long time, when the buttons are pushed, nothing much happens. Could it be that these are seen as empty as well as deceptive? Could it be that, as Frank Richwrote Sunday:
"As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense."
But it's not white virtue we're talking about. Andrew Sullivanpoints out:
"More interestingly, the polls suggest overwhelming Latino and Asian support for a black candidate, erasing fears that those racial dynamics would come into play."
President Obama is going to face the need for sweeping change, and he's going to need the active support, the ideas and the help of millions of Americans. So let the McShame campaign discharge all their poison, and get it all out there: let them use every last discredited charge and hateful suggestion. Let them bring into the light all those empty words, bankrupt ideas, deceptive names, destructive ideas and phony "wedge" issues so they can be purged from the body politic.
We can take a few more days of the Rabid Right's greatest hits in a final flow of poison. Then on November 4, flush them down the drain.
(One last photo, all from the AP: After his speech, Barack stopped at the Obama headquarters on the South Side--where I used to live and work--to make some phone calls, like we all should be doing this week.)