Take a look at the article and read the comments. These come from my email.
Dear Ms Crowley,
I recently read your article "Ivory Tower Yinzer" published in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and I feel a real need to respond.
I am a transplanted Pittsburgher who recently returned to the area. I was born in Braddock, raised in the Pittsburgh area and relocated to the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas in the immediate years before my return. My father and all my uncles worked as laborers in the steel mills. The work ethic instilled in me by my family along with some financial aid allowed me to graduate from Penn State. I worked in the metals business my whole life. I do not mean to bore you with my resume. I only want to say my circumstances are similar to yours although separated by some decades.
Therefore I am really saddened at the apologetic tone of your piece. Rather than standing back objectively to look at your accomplishments as an example of what others can do with their lives and the opportunities given to them you chose to be embarrassed by them. Yes, the wait staff was doing "real" work that evening but so were you. Maybe the waiters were working part time so that they could afford college and be tomorrow's communications professors. Maybe some were working to send their children to school or to pay medical bills. Did you ask? Did you or the other academicians offer a boost in monetary tips to them to lighten their loads and what appears to be a guilty conscious on your part? Gosh! Maybe some even like their job there for any number of reasons.
You missed a wonderful opportunity in your article to communicate and help reconcile the Trump/Clinton perspectives that evening as well as the dangers of the great economic disparity in this country as represented by all in that room. Times are tough but opportunities abound and we are in this together.
Maybe you truly are more ivory tower than you suspect. Come home to "yinzer" country Kelley Crowley. There is plenty of room for you here so that you can re-set.
AND
Dear Ms. Crowley:
I want to react to your piece on being an ivory tower yinzer that appeared in today's edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette but first let me introduce myself. My name is Bill Presutti. I am of a different generation being a Vietnam-era veteran. I also spent 29 years of my career as a faculty member at Duquesne in the School of Business before I retired in 2012. I was born and raised in McKees Rocks, Pa., a solid blue-collar working class town of steelworkers and railroad workers when I was growing up there in the 1950's. My father was a hot metal crane operator in the mills for 40 years. My immigrant grandfather worked as a riveter in a steel fabrication plan for the 40 years before he retired. I take a backseat to no one when it comes to working class bona fides.
You indicate that some people will never understand that in certain communities dads don't want to work two jobs and moms need to work because of the cost of child care. People are sick of feeling that they are working for nothing and just wanted to throw a brick through the White House window as if Barack Obama was the source of all their problems. I am a Democrat, always was and always will be. My maternal grandfather said something to all of his children (their were 14 of them) and his grandchildren over 50 years ago. Remember, you don't vote Republican because they don't care about you, they care only about the rich. He was right then and he is right now. How the white working class can possibly think that they are better off with another Republican in the White House and in control of the entire federal government is beyond my wildest comprehension. I supported Hillary Clinton, although I was disappointed with her campaign, because I believed she was the best hope of helping all Americans do better economically. She had specific policy proposals for helping with the cost of child care, for affordable college education, for raising the minimum wage, for improving the Affordable Care Act, for retraining for those who lost their jobs to technology and trade,etc. All of this would have greatly helped the white working class. Donald Trump offered them nothing but lies (bringing back the steel mills, reopening the coal mines, etc.). Instead he despicably preyed on their resentments, resentments aimed at those that don't look like them. And it worked to the everlasting shame of this country., In 2011 Barack Obama sent a proposal to Congress for infrastructure projects that would have created at least 2 million well-paid blue collar jobs. It went nowhere. The Republican congress wouldn't even bring it to the floor for a vote. And yet these white working class voters vote for Republicans.
I am always amused by people who are now feeling such pity for the white working class, that they are misunderstood, etc. Certainly, they have felt the economic hardships of a fast-changing world economy. I too would have like to have seen American companies invest in America rather than running off to chase low cost labor all over the world. And make no mistake about it--it is corporate America that is fundamentally responsible for what has happened to the working class. Yet through all of your musings about why the white working class voted for Trump, one subject is never raised. Perhaps because it is racially-based that it is avoided. As I noted, Trump played on their resentments. I have heard it said many times by white working class voters that they don't vote for Democrats anymore because the Democrats "give too much to the niggers." Think about that for a minute. There in a nutshell is why Trump won. He played racial politics. Republican analysts today are accusing Democrats of playing identity politics while their candidate and "president elect" played identity politics too the hilt. Yet, unfortunately, commentary like yours makes no mention of it.
I am a product of a working class background. Yet, today, I feel nothing but contempt for these people who incessantly vote against their self-interest then rail against the system they voted for. If they think for a moment that the Republicans are going to raise the minimum wage, provide for affordable child care, etc. they are sadly mistaken. We will see from them more of the same, tax cuts for the wealthy, the abolition of the Affordable Care Act which has provided many of the white working class health care for the first time, etc. So, the next time you feel compelled to write about the white working class, please do so but putting forth all perspectives.
Sincerely,
AND
I found you letter to the PG very interesting. My wife and I grew up in the burg and got BS degrees from Duquesne. I also got a MBA from the University of Chicago executive program which Mellon Bank paid for. We now live in Naples Florida, a Republican stronghold. My wife always says that while I left the Mc Kees Rocks Bottoms the Bottoms never left me. Our friends are generally people like us that grew up poor and made something of themselves. Our daughter has multiple degrees from NYU and Cornell and voted for Hillary. She never knew being poor. All of her friends live in the liberal bubble of New York City and she knew no-one that voted for Trump. The really rich people in Naples live on the coast in multimillion properties. That is not us. We live eight miles in from the coast and while the Mc Kees Rocks folks would say we are the rich ones. Your letter basically describes how the hard working people of the Rust Belt cities like Pittsburgh voted for Trump. I am surprised that you voted for Hillary though because you sound like you would have voted for Trump.
I did ask all of these people if I could use the comments.
What do you think of their responses?
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