Diversity

I spent the first dozen-plus years of my life on the 1300 block of Bell Avenue in North Braddock, PA.  North Braddock is:

• southeast of downtown Pittsburgh
• just above the Monongahela River as it wends its way north to meet the Allegheny and form the Ohio

and was the home of Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill.

In those 13 years, I regularly heard five languages other than English.  From the corner of 13th Street and Bell Avenue, I could look down the hill toward:

• Braddock and the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad
• the Edgar Thomson mill

and the spires of at least a half-dozen ethnic-centered churches.

But let me be clear.  The 1300 block wasn't all white or all eastern-European.  There were two African-American families who lived a few doors down from us; one of their sons was our paperboy.  As significant, one regularly heard blues and R&B on my block, and indeed all over western Pennsylvania.  The vitality so characteristic of black popular music was everywhere in the 1960s, thanks largely to a disk jockey named Porky Chedwick.  From the small AM radio station WAMO, across the Mon in Homestead, Porky gave the region the only largely black playlist in a largely white major metropolitan area.

There's a trail of breadcrumbs here that Hansel and Gretel would appreciate, and Trump and Company could benefit from emulating.  From five languages on one block, through the ethnic churches of Braddock, to the joy in black music that Porky taught, one finds a path to celebrating, rather than fearing, diversity.

During the civil unrest of the late 1960s, Allegheny County was notable in remaining peaceful.  To this day, a rich mix of ethnicities lives amicably in North Braddock.  How much better off would the entire country be if Mr. Trump would cease trading on fear.

Perhaps we can send a message to that effect on November 6th ...