It is one of the enduring paradoxes of American racism that those black Americans most likely to exercise their full rights as citizens - to vote, to stand, to speak out - are the most likely to be branded as unpatriotic.

Like many, if not most, readers of this magazine, I often vote against my economic interests. Whenever I vote for a candidate who wants to redistribute wealth–which is basically whenever I vote–I am electing to make myself poorer. Like many of you, then, I am a values voter. There are more important things to me than money. This is not entirely selfless. I vote not only for a world I want to see but a world I want to be part of and a world I think would welcome me as part of it. It has never really occurred to me that I might cast a vote in solidarity with those who earn like me.

The 90-minute drive from Pittsburgh to Uniontown winds and dips through rural western Pennsylvania, flanked by bare trees waiting to be clothed by a late spring, and drops you at the Appalachians. Historically at least, Uniontown (population 12,500) is an all-American town. Like the country, it was founded on July 4 1776. Thanks to its mills and coal mines it boasted more millionaires per capita than any other town in the US at the opening of the last century. The town centre is littered with tributes to its favourite son - George Marshall, the architect of the Marshall Plan that distributed American aid after the second world war to rebuild the European economy and stem the advance of communism. The Big Mac was invented and test-marketed here.