[Chewbaccus]

I was born and spent the formative years of my childhood in Bayside, Queens. Now, though there are of course other ethnicities represented in Bayside, the town is widely (and widely known) as Irish-Italian. Lots of Catholic churches in the town, though synagogues, mosques, and temples are not uncommon. Now, the inherent nature (and greatest thing, IMO) of New York is that everything is interconnected. One quick bus/subway/train ride, and you're in a Jewish neighborhood, a black neighborhood, Hispanic, Korean, on and on and on. This, incorporated with the fact that each of these neighborhoods has one thing over all the other, one thing that makes it unique, and thus, one thing that draws you in time and again, keeps the idea of racism down. Black, Asian, Hispanic, White, Arab, Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, it made no difference to me at that age, and I assumed it to be the same the world over.

Then, when my parents split up, my mother moved us down to Plum, a suburb of Pittsburgh. This was like leaving Rome to dwell amidst the Huns, or so I thought it (when I knew what the hell that all meant). Pittsburgh is one of the most Protestant (and Protestant isotpes) cities in America, including the South. There are churches to the effect everyewhere, and even the local Catholic parish my family attended was, no offense, corrupted by the influence. It had curves, pastel color pattern, carpted floors, upholstered pews...I termed it "amateur Catholicism". I mean, I grew up with a Church that was a Church - tile floor, big thick wood doors, hard wood pews, and alabaster statues of people long dead all giving me a look of "Oh, boy, did YOU fuck up!" This just didn't gel with what I knew.

Further, Plum isn't the most diverse town on the planet. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Plum has a white-to-black ratio of 97:3. To put it simply, for every 97 white people in Plum, there are precisely 3 black people. And don't even bother with anything else. In my graduating class, there were three Asians and an Arab. That's it. And a few Jews, but they tried to keep it down, tried to blend, such that I knew of one in my class. Now this, to a kid of my background, was real strange. Not to mention that the town was very underdeveloped, like a rural community vainly trying to be a suburb. My best description was "It's a whole lot of farm, with a little commerce in the center. It's a socioeconomic donut." I mean, I was used to sidewalks, traffic, noise, culture, the smells of industry and foods from a dozen different places blending together, not...trees. My brother (who was in his soph. year of HS when we moved) flipped when he saw there were no fences around the Plum HS campus. Then he realized that it was because there was no other place inside walking distance to go.

To cap it all off...Pittsburghers in general and Plumites in specific are very very discriminatory people. I have a good friend of many years here, and he is racist. Not hate-speech, hood-wearing racist, but he and his family take a definite "guilty until proven innocent" attitude towards blacks. And it's like that all over, that small-town mentality, the idea that if you weren't born here then you have no reason to be here, and if you were born here, you have no reason to leave. I would watch as people literally stood in amazement at my mother when she said she moved here of her own choice from New York, like they couldn't understand why we would. Truth told, neither can I. It wasn't until we mentioned we had a friend who'd lived in Plum for years now that they kinda stopped challenging us, like we needed a fucking sponsor to come here. Even then, I was still treated differently, and this was kidnergarten! I still had my accent, I still called Coca-Cola and Pepsi "soda" instead of "pop", and this made people suspicious of me.

As time wore on, the accent faded (I don't really speak with any accent, unless I'm very emotional about something - yelling or giving orders and the like - then it comes pouring out) though the terms haven't changed. If I ever unconsciously call a Coke "pop", shoot me. Please. It'll all have been over by then. I never made an effort to adapt to Pittsburgh, in fact, as I grew older, I made it a point to flout the Pittsburgh accent, slang terms, and gave myself an identity in doing so. On 9/11, as we heard of the attack and then watched the towers come down, I noticed more than a few eyes giving me a once-over, wondering how I was taking this. A year later, I was approached by a history teacher to participate in a 9/11 remembrance ceremony they were going to put on, specifically because I was who I was.

When I realized that I was going to be in southwestern PA for a long time, I took a stand. I said "I am who I am, you don't like it, take your damn Primanti sandwiches and shove 'em up your ass sideways. I ain't changin'." I have known racism, I was oppressed, until I drew my strength from my background - changing a town's mind of me through sheer force of will. Now that I look back on it...I don't know who I would be if I hadn't, nor would I want to really be him. I'm Mike Twomey, a Scots-Irish son of the greatest damned city in the world. You don't like it, I got this neat trick with a sandwich I want to show you...