How do they support a republican party that clearly is doing to immigrants, people of color, what was done to their own families. See: Deep Roots of White Nationalism from The Atlantic. Another article mentioned in ABBREVIATED PUNDIT ROUND-UP,How Trump’s Brand of Grievance Politics Roiled a Pennsylvania Campaignwas quite upsetting to read. Reading the Atlantic article fills in the history, but does not assuage. Let me explain.
I grew up in SE PA, a few miles outside of Philly. My community was a factory town, small and large companies from steel to tires to chemicals located on the banks of the Schuykill. (Schuykill is Dutch for Hidden River as the river is surrounded by heavily wooded hills on both sides of the river). By the time I was born at the end of WWII, the town was heavily populated by neighborhoods of immigrants; Irish first, then the Polish and last, the Italian immigrants came looking for jobs and a better life for their children.
There was a small African American community who had been there since the Revolutionary War. The street where I remember living when I was about age three to age seven was called Hector Street. I learned, when doing a history on my town for a college paper, that that street was named for a freed slave who had been in George Washington’s army. My area is also strewn with buildings once used for the Underground Railroad. Just a stone’s throw from where I live, is Abolition Hall.
Many of the people on Hector street and the next two streets that went toward the river were heavily populated by African Americans. We rented there. But the Italian neighborhood where my dad and his ten siblings spent their childhood was just a few blocks away on the other side of the main street. It had grown up around the Italian Catholic Church. There was an Irish catholic church and a Polish catholic church. So we had those four neighborhoods. The last three blocks of the town, farthest from the river, were where the white anglo saxon protestants lived. I learned from my research that the poorer you were back in the day, meant working in factories so you lived in those neighborhoods closer to the river; then you could easily walk to work. There were four elementary schools when I was a child: the public school, the three ethnic catholic schools. I started in public and switched to catholic in the 5th grade. Our Italian catholic school was not built until I was in the second grade and my parents did not want to move my sister and I until we were ready. By the end of fourth grade, we had moved to our row home my parents could finally buy. Most of the kids there were ethnic. It was a break through in the upper avenues. The ethnics started moving uptown as the wasps moved to newly constructed housing outside the town. I had become very lonely in my public schools. I did not fit in and I knew it. I happily transferred. But still there was no animosity between children because we all played at the same community center, being allowed to join when we were seven. Most of our mothers worked in the textile factories. So going to the Fellowship House was the norm for most of us. There we played with and against (in sports) kids from the other schools; we all mixed; we got to know each other. There were dances put on by the Firehouses for ALL the kids. THIS was my norm and my world view at age twelve. But as I matured, I read more, thought more, and began to question thing.
So when headed to college in August of 1963, I was excited and scared. I had grown up among a very diverse population (or so I thought). I knew black kids, I knew Polish kids whose grandparents spoke Polish, I was best friends in HS with Irish kids who parents disliked Italians but understood they were not going to pass on those grudges to their kids; and I knew about every Italian American family in the town, and my particularly family was not going to pass on their prejudices, especially my Dad, a town cop who knew families from every community. He had partners on the force who were Irish, Polish, African American and all had been welcomed in our home. As well my mother worked with mostly immigrant women, or the daughters of immigrants. My mother was born in Sicily. I got to college and suddenly I was a part of the one group with whom I had no history. White anglo saxon protestants from Central PA. However, as a kid from a poor family, I got a chance to work on campus in the school cafeteria. Only those whose families earned below a certain amount were offered jobs. And my work force friends were more familiar. Mostly ethnic. In fact many of them were from that area in the article, Old Forge, PA, and it’s surrounding areas, including Wilkes-Barre, Scranton. They were Irish, Italian and Polish/Ukrainian. Most of their grandparents or parents were immigrants and like me, they were the first in their family attending college. Many of them, probably most of them had fathers who were union men; mothers who worked in mills. They were mostly the campus dems, while the majority of the campus were Rs. These people, my peers, are now senior citizens and when I read the hate in that article about the town in PA, the hate directed at immigrants, from those with the Italian and Polish surnames, it crushed me. How did it happen? I do not get it any more than I get how the union men in WI went with Scott Walker, how the coal miners in WV go with the most virulent anti union president ever; I know no group is a monolith. Still it saddens and upsets me.
I am happy to say that the majority of my immigrant grandparents’ descendants are NOT like that. Of my grandparents twenty-nine grandchildren, (I am the oldest), fifty great grandchildren, the overwhelming majority are Ds. Of the ones that are Rs, I know two of them who would NOT vote DJT because of his anti immigrant remarks. There is one who lives in FL and he and his family are evangelicals and I know he is a diehard conservative, but I rarely see them and only once did we discuss politics and I was shocked about his right wing views. And that was before Trump.
I have a friend with whom I am still close and who lives in a small town in the county of the PA town in the article. She and her husband remain dems, hate Trump but have told me too many of the people in their area have become anti immigrant, anti women (in that the men, mostly in their 70s will never vote for a woman or a person of color). How do we beat that? How do we get people whose own grandparents were treated horridly back in the early 1900s wake the h*ll up and see this is no different. I posted the article linked above about the deep roots of White Nationalism in the hopes some will share it and some who really need the history lesson will read it. I am very vocal and open on social media as well as in real life about my progressive views; I am proud to call myself a democratic socialist, and I am proud of my immigrant heritage. I do not understand the hate. I simply do not get it.