WASHINGTON -- I'm often chided for my passionate support of the domestic automobile industry. But I don't mind the ribbing.
My passion is a product of my faith in America, my belief in its ability to compete and excel, to innovate, to lead.
There is something else -- gratitude ... and the desire to save an industry that put so many of my people on the road to prosperity.
I am a black child of the Deep South who watched legions of neighbors and relatives flee economic apartheid in pursuit of opportunity in the automobile factories of Michigan and Ohio and in the steel plants of Pennsylvania and Indiana.
Those black men and women often were assigned the dirtiest, most dangerous, least desirable jobs in those factories. But if whites happened to be working alongside them, they tended to be paid equally for the same tasks. There was hope for the future in that treatment, a quantum of dignity.
That hope and dignity eventually became codified in contracts between the car companies and the United Auto Workers union, as it did between other manufacturing entities and their labor organizations.
But, alas, hope and dignity were corrupted by greed on both sides -- on the part of unions that always wanted more, and on the part of domestic car companies, which became more interested in building Wall Street portfolios than they were in turning out cars and trucks of superior quality.
People make mistakes. But redemption is found in the good that they do, and the domestic automobile industry has done a lot of tangible good for this nation.
The American Three -- General Motors, Ford and Chrysler -- largely have been responsible for the development of a black middle class in this country. Many children of factory workers followed their parents onto automobile assembly lines. But many others went to colleges and universities, medical and technical schools, thanks to good UAW salaries and educational benefits.
Think about that:
People who left the South as field hands to become factory hands spawned generations of teachers, doctors, lawyers, technicians, engineers, inventors, designers, scientists, politicians -- and more than a few journalists. A country without a viable manufacturing infrastructure, a nation lacking a commitment to excellence and innovation in manufacturing could not have authored such progress.
But things now have gone sadly amiss; and we're all to blame because of our incessant push for more without sacrifice.
The unions demanded more pay and benefits but seldom petitioned for better product quality. Auto executives and their shareholders asked for more profits and productivity but often shied away from expensive innovations to avoid upsetting the moneychangers on Wall Street.
Consumers demanded safer, bigger, faster, higher-quality vehicles at lower prices. They evidenced concern for fuel economy only when they were forced to pay more for gasoline. Politicians kept a finger in the air, trying to determine which way the electoral winds were blowing, asking for more fuel economy when that seemed the popular thing to do but always promising their constituents continued access to the cheapest motor fuel in the developed world.
Foreign car companies globally went on the hunt for low-cost employees, often finding them in the Southern United States with the assistance of politicians and economic development officials offering tax breaks and union-free environments. One form of irrational exuberance led to another.
Things were bound to come crashing down. And now that the collapse has occurred in the form of economic recession, there is little sympathy for the domestic car companies, which are losing sales, market share, money and jobs. Federal rescue triage, it seems, dictates saving banks and mortgage firms first.
In a credit-driven economy, it is difficult to question the wisdom of the banks-first approach. But without a concomitant policy to assist and strengthen our nation's core manufacturing enterprises, it runs the risk of being short-sighted.
An America that manufactures nothing, or an America that owns nothing it manufactures, is an America with a frightfully vulnerable middle class -- an America that threatens to become a society starkly divided between haves and have-nots, a throwback to the Deep South of my segregated youth.
That is not the America I want.
Detroit News Autos Insider
My passion is a product of my faith in America, my belief in its ability to compete and excel, to innovate, to lead.
There is something else -- gratitude ... and the desire to save an industry that put so many of my people on the road to prosperity.
I am a black child of the Deep South who watched legions of neighbors and relatives flee economic apartheid in pursuit of opportunity in the automobile factories of Michigan and Ohio and in the steel plants of Pennsylvania and Indiana.
Those black men and women often were assigned the dirtiest, most dangerous, least desirable jobs in those factories. But if whites happened to be working alongside them, they tended to be paid equally for the same tasks. There was hope for the future in that treatment, a quantum of dignity.
That hope and dignity eventually became codified in contracts between the car companies and the United Auto Workers union, as it did between other manufacturing entities and their labor organizations.
But, alas, hope and dignity were corrupted by greed on both sides -- on the part of unions that always wanted more, and on the part of domestic car companies, which became more interested in building Wall Street portfolios than they were in turning out cars and trucks of superior quality.
People make mistakes. But redemption is found in the good that they do, and the domestic automobile industry has done a lot of tangible good for this nation.
The American Three -- General Motors, Ford and Chrysler -- largely have been responsible for the development of a black middle class in this country. Many children of factory workers followed their parents onto automobile assembly lines. But many others went to colleges and universities, medical and technical schools, thanks to good UAW salaries and educational benefits.
Think about that:
People who left the South as field hands to become factory hands spawned generations of teachers, doctors, lawyers, technicians, engineers, inventors, designers, scientists, politicians -- and more than a few journalists. A country without a viable manufacturing infrastructure, a nation lacking a commitment to excellence and innovation in manufacturing could not have authored such progress.
But things now have gone sadly amiss; and we're all to blame because of our incessant push for more without sacrifice.
The unions demanded more pay and benefits but seldom petitioned for better product quality. Auto executives and their shareholders asked for more profits and productivity but often shied away from expensive innovations to avoid upsetting the moneychangers on Wall Street.
Consumers demanded safer, bigger, faster, higher-quality vehicles at lower prices. They evidenced concern for fuel economy only when they were forced to pay more for gasoline. Politicians kept a finger in the air, trying to determine which way the electoral winds were blowing, asking for more fuel economy when that seemed the popular thing to do but always promising their constituents continued access to the cheapest motor fuel in the developed world.
Foreign car companies globally went on the hunt for low-cost employees, often finding them in the Southern United States with the assistance of politicians and economic development officials offering tax breaks and union-free environments. One form of irrational exuberance led to another.
Things were bound to come crashing down. And now that the collapse has occurred in the form of economic recession, there is little sympathy for the domestic car companies, which are losing sales, market share, money and jobs. Federal rescue triage, it seems, dictates saving banks and mortgage firms first.
In a credit-driven economy, it is difficult to question the wisdom of the banks-first approach. But without a concomitant policy to assist and strengthen our nation's core manufacturing enterprises, it runs the risk of being short-sighted.
An America that manufactures nothing, or an America that owns nothing it manufactures, is an America with a frightfully vulnerable middle class -- an America that threatens to become a society starkly divided between haves and have-nots, a throwback to the Deep South of my segregated youth.
That is not the America I want.
Detroit News Autos Insider