A Visitor's Memory

It was a rainy day. The roads were empty. We drove for miles trying to find our destination, a local restaurant that my mother had read about. We drove through McKeesport then Glassport. It felt like a voyage in time. The sky cast that familiar Pittsburgh grey over everything. I sat in the back seat as my mother drove the way to Clairton. Neighborhoods began to blend together. Was I in Braddock or Rankin? Why do so many of these towns weave together? While we drove I closed my eyes and imagined the view from the 1950s. Suddenly I could see it. Buicks and Fords parked outside of the Clairton Works plant. Men dressed in smocks and welders masks walking through the parking lots. I opened my eyes. The view hadn’t changed much. The steel mill still stood as it always did the only thing different were the makes of cars in the parking lot. We drove on.

“Are we there yet?” I began to wonder as the GPS directed us in a three point turn. We’d missed our destination. So we pulled up and entered. Instantly, we got that look. Three African Americans and a Latina walk into a bar sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but that’s what we were that day. Ignoring the stares we were escorted to a table. But the waitress was rude, slamming glasses on the table. As every now and then people continued to stare at us and sometimes gesture. These were more than micro-aggressions the hostility was salient. Eventually, we finished our meal and left. My friend who is Latina, but could pass for white regaled to me the numerous looks and gestures that she received form people in the restaurant. “What are you doing with them?” They seemed to say. So was my visit to Clairton.

     Believe me when I say that I have not let the covert racism displayed to me that day sway my opinion of Clairton. Pittsburgh is an insular city and surrounding it are even more insulated boroughs. But, as I thought back on my experience at this restaurant I began to wonder about ownership and informal spaces. The majority of Clairton’s residents are white, 57.7% to be exact , but the concentration of African Americans in the city is high in comparison to the percentage of African Americans in Pennsylvania generally. We have discussed white flight, but what about those who want to flee but their economic or social status does not make it possible. The elderly and whites with lower socioeconomic status could be included in this category. Inspired by the rationalizations gleaned from a racist professor I began contemplate their perspective. 

     Imagine for a moment that you are a working class, heterosexual, Christian, white male. After working for years at the steel mill or serving in the military or both you secure enough money to buy a house in Clairton. All is well until the mills close. Suddenly, people are in danger of foreclosing on their homes or they succumb to foreclosure. The bank begins to redline the neighborhood. Property values falls. To secure more income people begin to rent the houses that they cannot sale. Renting cost less than owning so people with fewer economic resources begin to move into the neighborhood. These people are overwhelmingly single women and racial minorities. I suppose that at this point one could begin to become resentful after all the declining property values did correlate with the influx of transient and racial minorities into the neighborhood. You become resentful because you worked hard. You served in the military or you worked all day in the factory in order to purchase your home. No one has explained to you what “correlation does not prove causation”. You are angry and to cope with your anger you seek refuge in an informal private-public gathering space, your local bar/restaurant. Perhaps you go there for years to hang out with the boys and talk about how the (insert expletives) are ruining the neighborhood, then in walks three African Americans. Now imagine this hatred is continuously reinforced by mass media and politician’s rhetoric. Suddenly, it is even easier to see the reasons for the divide in Clairton between lower socioeconomic status and African Americans. Informal methods of segregation included.