Black Workers Hurt by Detroit’s Ills

Source: NYT

DETROIT — Since millions of African-Americans began leaving Southern farms for Northern factories nearly a century ago in what is still known as the Great Migration, the destinies of many of them have been entwined with the auto industry’s.

Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image

Stephen McGee for The New York Times
"If it wasn't for the factory, the average black would not have been able to survive all these years." CLAUDIA PERKINS A daughter of auto industry employees, she has worked in the industry for 33 years

Enlarge This Image

Stephen McGee for The New York Times
"The credit market has always been extremely tight and difficult for black suppliers even before this meltdown." LEON RICHARDSON The owner of a supplier doing 65 percent of its business with the auto industry
The car companies were hardly multiracial utopias, but they, especially Ford, employed blacks when many industries would not. Through the decades, the automakers and their higher wage scales provided a route to the middle class for many blacks, especially those with limited education, and their children.

Now, with Detroit reeling, many blacks find their economic well-being threatened.

By last month, nearly 20,000 African-American auto workers had lost jobs, a 13.9 percent decline in employment, since the recession began last December, according to government jobs data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington research firm. That compares with a 4.4 percent decline for all workers in manufacturing.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/business/30detroit.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1230645159-/c1dEXHF5WWsTBd3rU+RoA

---

Am I paranoid in thinking that repugs aren't just acting out of anti-labor sentiments? That perhaps they see a bonus chance to act on their long standing racism without being outright blatant about it?

The poor suffer the worst when the economy tanks!!!

Seriously...everyone is suffering...

Are whites\asians\latinos not getting fired? Is it only black folk that are hurting? If NOT - then this is just an article intended to stoke the fires of fear and blame someone else.

But it doesn't change the fact that an industry that historically gave opportunities to the black community has been denied aid by the exact same people from the same geographic region that denied opportunity to them historically. That doesn't set off any warning bells in you?

Not everything is a conspiracy and not everyone is out to get someone else.

But...having been wrong already twice this morning - I could be wrong about this as well.

You're being paranoid, they've been against all the bail outs.

They were against the Wall Street bail out and that's not exactly an industry known to be full of African-Americans.

a hard time rationalizing the difference in treatment between wall st. and the auto industry. The auto execs asked for a LOAN and got bashed for it, albeit arriving in jets didn't help, but calling for the head of GM ceo and asking for ridiculous concessions from the uaw and blaming them for the hike in prices (absurd), reasonable health benefits and the list goes on.