Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) is on the hot seat after saying that Western Pennsylvania was a "racist area".
Murtha has since apologized, because sometimes you're not supposed to be so blunt with the truth.
"While we cannot deny that race is a factor in this election, I believe we've been able to look beyond race these past few months, and that voters today are concerned with the policy differences of our two candidates and their vision for the future of our great country," he said in a statement issued by his office.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s, in a small manufacturing town in the Appalachian Mountains. Tyrone, Pennsylvania, sat in the bottom of a fishbowl of tall, tree-covered ridges.
There were two major industries in the town then, Chicago Rivet and WestVaco, a paper mill. A large percentage of Tyrone's male population had fought, and died, in WW II, Korea, and Vietnam. It was an all-American small town.
The population at the time was around 12,000, give or take, and today it's about 5,000. The middle class did well until the 70s, when cutbacks began in manufacturing. And there was calm, accepted racism.
Tyrone then had a racial breakdown of 98% white, with less than 1% African American. A portion of the African American population of the town came from two families who were doing pretty well for themselves and were generally respected. One was a local doctor, and the other was the pharmacist at the largest drug store in Tyrone, which was a big deal, since this was before the days of CVS, Walgreens, or RiteAid. Doctors and pharmacists earned trust, regardless of skin tone. Around town, they were the "good" blacks.
So why was the area so openly and acceptingly racist? Perhaps the demographic data tells part of the tale. There weren't a lot of blacks around, plain and simple. So it was difficult to interact with them, get to know them, and discover that golly, they're just like us. And that certainly wasn't the message that was handed down, generation to generation. Tyrone was a long way from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
Another thing that occurred that exacerbated the sense of racism was the downturn in manufacturing. WestVaco downsized tremendously, and my father, a foreman whose father had been plant superintendant, lost his job in the early 70s. So did a lot of other folks. Then Chicago Rivet cut back, as did other, smaller manufacturing plants. The railroad enterprises up the highway in Altoona made deep cuts. With the job losses came reduced spending in the town's shops and restaurants, the effects trickling down everywhere.
These were good paying jobs that people had counted on for years, and most of those layed off never returned to the same types of careers or similar incomes. Who was to blame?
Certainly not the minorities - most of them had never held those management positions or had built tenure in the factories. They were mainly worker bees. But when the cutbacks came, a lot of the worker bees stayed, and the higher paid staff was pushed out the door. Suddenly, it was unfair.
My dad bounced from factory to factory for about fifteen years after that, as a foreman, but never with the same level of management or salary potential. He was older then, and they knew he couldn't be choosy. He also spent some time as a traveling salesman, working nights stocking in a beer distributor, and as time went by, he tended bar more and more. That way, he only had to slide to the other side of the bar when he was off instead of needing to drive in.
Dad was a good example - he fought in WW II, came back home, built a comfortable life, raised a family, then saw his world turned upside down. He wouldn't blame himself. He couldn't blame his friends. That left one group as the scapegoats. And he never let go of that for the rest of his troubled life.
Dad would make wildly inaccurate comments whenever he would read about a drug arrest, or a burglary, blaming it on the blacks without a shred of evidence. He was a kindred spirit of Jimmy the Greek in believing that black men were less bright but more athletic due to breeding and how they grew up in Africa. Interracial relationships were the first step to diluting what made the USA great.
If he was still alive, he would never understand how I could be such a vocal Obama supporter, and there would be no way I would have been able to explain it to him. But I can explain it to my son.
It's about fairness - taking care of those around us. It's about making sure the rules are in place and enforced equally so that for everyone who is willing to step up and do the work needed, the promise of a better tomorrow is there, a promise that allows you to take care of your family, maintain your dignity, and receive the thanks of a grateful nation for your service. And if your company shuts down, we'll invest in some retraining for you in a different field so that your dream lives on. We're all in this together.
If Obama had been around in the 70s, his leadership and policy positions could have been instrumental in keeping my father from sinking so deeply into irrelevance and hopelessness. A black man could have helped him up. I wonder if Dad would have accepted his offer.