“Those People: An Autobiography” A Letter to Ourselves in Southwestern PA

 “Do you know ‘those people’ over there?  You know, they look different than us.  They dress different than us.  They talk and walk different than us.  They were born in different places than us.  They believe different than us.  Do you know those people?”

They are all around us, on our streets and in our neighborhoods.  They work next door and go to school with our children.  They shop in our stores and root for our Steelers.  We can’t get away from them. 

It would be very easy for us to hate ‘those people’.  After all, some of our politicians want to keep more of them from coming into America.  Some of our neighbors don’t even want them here in Pittsburgh.  Others want to watch them when they pray and others graffiti their taco stand in Brookline with “Go back to Mexico.”  Some people don’t like them so much that they write “We are KKK” on a Black barber shop in downtown Pittsburgh.  Our Muslim neighbors feel like outsiders in their own home town.

Hating the other is an ugly side of human nature.  That is why Jews, Christians and Muslims can turn to the Bible to read no less than 36 times the injunction to love the stranger as yourself, to treat the stranger with equality and/or to know that God loves the stranger more than others.  That is why Hindus can turn to sacred scripture Yajur Veda to read “The one who loves all intensely begins perceiving in all living beings a part of himself.”  That is why all of us, Americans and those who admire American values, can declare, “All men [sic. and women] are created equal….”

That is why we, residents of Southwestern Pennsylvania, who have signed below are committed to treating all the ‘those people’ in our lives with respect for race, religious, economic, gender, social, ethnic, identity… differences. 

After all, we are ‘those people’ to ‘those people’.