I got my first overtly racist anti-Obama comment today while phoning central Pennsylvania. It was a 62-year old man, who said, simply, “I’m not voting for the black man.” I moved to end the call, but he continued, “I’ve worked with hundreds of black people.” He meant that as a defense (“Some of them are my best friends!”), but the point was clear. At least he was honest.

It’s interesting, then, to see in today’s NY Times, and then echoed on Daily Kos, on-the-ground reporting from Levittown, PA. “Levittown is whiter, older and less educated than the rest of the nation — and Pennsylvania is made up of many Levittowns,” writes Michael Sokolove, a Levittown native. Perhaps I was calling into one of them.

I grew up a short bike ride from the original Levittown — Levittown, NY, the one featured in all the social studies textbooks. Actually, I grew up in what Bill O’Reilly calls “the Westbury part of Levittown,” which is to say, Salisbury. In 1981, my family moved to a split-level (so, not a real “Levitt” house) just off Old Country Road. By then, suburban New York was in flux, and I suspect it’s around then that Levittown NY took a different turn than Levittown PA. Maybe a third of my high school classmates lived in Levittown proper, and I remember, as the Cold War wound down, hearing rumor of Grumman’s shrinking fortunes as demand for its F-14 began shifting away.

Back then, blue-collar work meant a middle class lifestyle. But the economic shock of Gruman’s decline and ultimate sale, coming so soon after the 1987 recession, put Long Island on the path to a post-industrial future. From Stony Brook in the east, biotech was coming; from the west lapped waves of money from New York’s capital markets. Gruman was to Levittown NY what Fairless Works was to Levittown PA, but with the luck of geography the older Levittown escaped the millstone around its neck. (Ironically, Fairless Works is called “the mill”). Today, the median household income of Levittown NY is $78,454 to PA’s $58,985; industrial work comprises 17% of PA’s jobs but only 9% of NY’s. (Latest data for NY, PA).

In other demographic matters, the two Levittowns are almost identical. They also share a similar history. As Sokolove reports,

And on matters of race Levittown has a particularly shameful history. It was billed as “the most perfectly planned community in America,” and part of the plan was for it to be whites-only: 5,500 acres, stretching across three Pennsylvania townships and one borough, closed off to blacks. The first development of mass-produced homes by Levitt & Sons, Levittown, N.Y., on Long Island, which dates from 1947, had the same exclusionary policies. William Levitt weakly insisted that he would love to sell houses to black families but had “come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours.”

And so, as of 2000, both Levittowns were 94% white, with PA’s having a few more blacks and NY’s having more Latinos (many of whom are counted as white) and Asians.

The racial history of Long Island was sometimes written in stone, as in the low highway overpasses that Robert Moses allegedly designed to prevent New York City buses from reaching the beach. It’s also written on the crazily overlapping boundaries that divide up our school districts. Mr. O’Reilly might be excused for not knowing whether he hailed from Levittown or Westbury; my high school drew from both, plus East Meadow, and belonged to the East Meadow School District. (Two other school districts also covered Levittown.) Yet our school did not take students from the other side of Old Country Road, a majority black and Latino community known as New Cassel. Those kids went to Westbury High School, in the Westbury School District.

I was one of about a dozen Asian kids in my class of 181 (ours was the smallest class the school had ever seen), and I’m pretty sure the only non-Hispanic black kid in the class was in the special education program (he was deaf). Unlike Sokolove’s experience in 1950s PA, Jews were much more numerous in my high school, and especially my part of town; today, Jews comprise some 15% of Levittown NY but only about 5% of Levittown PA. And while I don’t have up-to-date demographics at hand, from what I’ve seen Levittown NY has become more diverse since the 2000 census, especially among Latinos and East and South Asians.

I can’t speak directly to the Levittown, proper, experience, but growing up in the next town over in the 1980s, my experience of race was — while not uncomplicated — not fraught with hatred or even significant overt prejudice. I don’t know if it was our particular generation (the youngest children of the oldest hippies), religious diversity, or — as some of my friends have suggested — high marijuana usage in my school, but when I compare notes with peers from other schools from elsewhere in the country, I do believe that I had a uniquely peaceful, even idyllic, childhood. Which is not to say that race never surfaced in ugly ways (in retrospect, I think the Archie Bunker lookalike next door hit golf balls on our roof on purpose), but that it wasn’t quite as simple as kids lining the halls making Chinkie jokes, either.

On the other hand, I wasn’t black.

Still, it frankly surprises me that I haven’t encountered any overt racism in working on the Obama campaign these past few months until tonight. Even if racism is out there, it’s shrouded in code words or perhaps lying to pollsters — which implies that even racists of the old-school sort know that the public consensus is against them. There’s a lot to be thankful about in terms of race relations in this country, and the Levittown that I know in New York gives me hope about the future. So, too, do some of the Levittown, PA residents that Sokolove reports on. Said John Annunziata, a former local politician, “When he won Iowa, it touched my soul. I was very emotional. I felt like we were moving toward what this country should be.”

One of our fellow Obama for SC volunteers, Allison Lane of Baltimore, MD, popped up on NPR this morning as an Obama canvasser at the old Reading Terminal in Philly. Listen to her mad canvassing skills and interview (4:19 – 4:48), who notes that Obama’s support can’t be about race because “we’re only, what, 12% of the population?” You can also catch a brief glimpse of her here (0:43 – 0:45).

Keep it up Allison; our hopes are riding on you and the thousands of other volunteers!

Dear Governor Patrick:

This supporter and volunteer still stands by you… but it’s been hard, and I fervently hope to hear you once again taking up the moral leadership that so many of us invested in you as governor of our Commonwealth.

I volunteered many hours helping you win the nomination and then the election because you had explained to us all what a “Commonwealth” means: that we all share in a common civic, economic, and political life, and that we are each others’ keepers.

It was time for us to face tough questions about whether “Commonwealth” was merely a word, or represented our actual commitments. And we and you all knew that at the end of the day, this meant that we would have to consider reasonable, fair, and sustainable sources of revenue to enable the Commonwealth to keep its promise to all of us.

You were able to connect revenues — or let’s just be clear here now, taxes — to values that we all share: better education, health care, services, infrastructure. So when you were elected, I was ready to take up the cause and join with you to close corporate tax loopholes and then embark on a serious conversation with my neighbors across Massachusetts about what our own commitment might mean.

I hope you can therefore understand my disappointment when, since last summer, you instead pursued an unfair, unsustainable, and immoral source of revenue from casinos. I know that we need the money, and we need it badly. But going down this path meant losing your moral legitimacy. It took us off the idea that taxes represent our shared commitments and instead echoed the false belief that we can magically meet the state’s needs without personal sacrifice.

So rather than putting my energy behind supporting all that you stood for, I instead worked against you to battle casinos in Massachusetts. And I take no great satisfaction in winning.

But the fact is that the issue is over, and I for one and ready and willing to again join with you again in seeking reasonable solutions to our Commonwealth’s fiscal crisis. It is not an easy task, but we didn’t elect you to take on the easy tasks. We supported you, urged our neighbors to vote for you, and ultimately elected you by an overwhelming majority because we have faith in your ability to lead us through the difficulties ahead.

I still have faith in your ability to do just that. Please don’t let me down.

Sincerely yours,

Gene Koo
Cambridge, MA

Sozi Tulante is a close friend of mine from college and law school. He’s a Congolese refugee, married to a British woman, and lives in Philadelphia. In short, he’s an American, and I’d like to post his response to Senator Obama’s speech from Tuesday:

I am writing to ask for your support. Yesterday morning, I was fortunate to be in the audience for Senator Barack Obama’s speech – really a discourse – about the role of race in American culture, history, and politics. Quite a heavy topic. Yet Senator Obama managed to pull it off, with nuance, grace, honesty, and balance, and in doing so gave a speech that will define a generation. Listen to or read the speech yourself, more than once if you have to.

The speech was hastily arranged, and invitations sent out with less than a day’s notice. So we expected, like any politician would, that Senator Obama would carefully jettison Reverend Wright, issue some safe bromides, then cross his fingers and pray that the issue would be considered settled. That is not what happened. Rather, he explored in the most personal and direct way possible the centrality of race, the quintessential American dilemma, and both the challenges that it poses to us all – Black, White, Asian, Latino – as well as the opportunity it gives us to start healing our racial divisions in honest – and sometimes painful – ways, beyond Benetton ads or videos of the Black Eyed Peas. I know his speech may not settle every skeptic, but, as someone else said, “Agree or disagree with Obama, I ask people who are less inspired by him than I am to at least acknowledge that in this presidential candidate, we have a man of honor–and an honest man.”

Here in Philadelphia we have started taking up the challenge that Senator Obama issued and started having these discussions about race. And over the last weeks, after work and on weekends, rain or shine, Meriel – an Oxford-born professor and linguist — and I – an Ivy-League educated, North-Philly raised Congolese refugee and cab-driver’s son –have asked hundreds of people to embrace Senator’s Obama’s vision for change and register to vote. Despite efforts by hundreds of volunteers like us, there is still much to do as the polls show Senator Obama trailing. Although we can always work harder, to close the deal the campaign needs funds for the next five weeks of canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. Please contribute by clicking on the following link or if you cannot contribute kindly pass this e-mail along to someone you think would contribute:

Contribute to the Obama campaign

Anyone will tell you that listening to Senator Obama is a singular experience. Yesterday, though, there wasn’t the celebratory, whoopin’ and hollerin’ or the speech-interrupting-applause you find at the typical Obama event. It was more solemn, though no less inspiring. It is as though the 160 members of the audience – of all races – and the those watching on television or on youtube knew that on this occasion Senator Obama was only asking that we lend him our ears and attention for 40 minutes.

As Senator Obama pointed out, the history of race in America contains some of this nation’s most powerful moments, but also its most profound failures. Both these strands form the core of America. It’s true that “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” Yet, yesterday morning he showed how he would handle a crisis: directly, calmly, and confidently, and in a way that addresses all Americans. He also signaled that we no longer have to wait for a while yet, maybe a long while yet, because the time is now, the place here, the people us. Please join us!

Best,

Sozi

Co-Chair Young Lawyers for Obama – Philadelphia Chapter

P.S: Below are my immediate thoughts on the speech:

New York Times
New York Sun

Sozi is, by the way, the guy holding the Obama sign in my earlier post about PA.