Black Pittsburgh struggles in the shadow of the G-20
OPINION - For the most part, African-American Pittsburgh seems to be invisible, not only to the public relations hucksters who tout Pittsburgh's successes, but we are equally invisible to the protesters.
While most of us in Pittsburgh still enjoyed the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup, the Most Livable City awards and the comeback accolades from around the world, we host the G-20 Summit deeply aware that there is another City on the other side of the tracks.
The headline of an editorial page column in the morning’s Financial Times says it well: Pittsburgh should be a turning point for the poor. We know about third world conditions because so many of our own people still live near those levels of sustainability.
For the most part, African-American Pittsburgh seems to be invisible, not only to the public relations hucksters who tout Pittsburgh’s successes, but we are equally invisible to the protesters. There is, of course, the lone exception of the Tent City for Homelessness and Unemployment, who pitched camp a week early, in the heart of the black community’s Hill District. However, when they marched to the Freedom Corner Monument and made speeches for three hours, they were speaking to themselves. The homeless and unemployed people they were speaking about were nowhere to be found.
It appears that the left has lost the organizing skills demonstrated by its forerunners of the 1960’s and the Civil Rights Movement. It seems as though they think that organizing the masses is done by making speeches to each other.
Certainly, black Pittsburgh is as proud as anybody is that the black President we worked so hard to elect has selected Pittsburgh as the host of the G-20 Summit. We even enjoy the re-invention of Pittsburgh from a dirty, smoky steel-churning history to the bright, clean, green financial success that the business leaders and politicians boast about so loudly. Nobody is more proud of the Super Bowl winning African-American coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Tomlin. But none of that feel-good stuff erases the pain of the stubbornly high unemployment among African American young adults and the staggering dropout rate for young black males from the public school system.
While the Mayor brags of 7% unemployment, one that is lower than the 9% national unemployment rate, no one is talking about the joblessness in the black community that allowed a brand new hockey arena for the Stanley Cup winning Pittsburgh Penguins to be built in the Hill District – with only 2% black employment among the construction crew! Neither the G-20 Summit leaders, nor the protesters will notice the hundreds of young, black males who slaughter each other in a mad rush to the top of the narcotics and gun trafficking underground economy.
So, just as we cheered the Steelers on to Super Bowl victory (some of us even cheered for the Penguins), we will cheer President Obama’s successful convening of the G-20 world leaders in our “Most Livable City.” But, come Monday morning, after all is said and done, the black community of Pittsburgh must face each coming day with record unemployment, no health insurance, and the daily, deadly body count on the six o’clock news.
As Pittsburgh seeks to become a leader in the Green Economy and creating green jobs and training opportunities, we must continue to fight to assure that the black unemployed are included in the new green jobs. We wish we didn’t have to be in such an everyday fight-mode, but we remember the warning from Frederick Douglas, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” We must do more than pray that “Pittsburgh will be a turning point for the poor.”
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