GM

Americans are not giving up their cars anytime soon, but they sure are quick to give up their car companies. No where is this pain felt more keenly than Detroit, America’s Motor City. While Congress debates, Detroiters are suffering for the sake of a lost principle. The seventh city, my city, is the fall guy for all eco-wrongs in the current era, from the ecological decline of our planet to the economic woes of big business manufacturers. Warren Brown explains the misconstrued logic in his Washington Post column. Like most socio-political cataclysms, casting blame does not explain the whole truth, nor does the finger pointing represent all sides of history, which has never been kind to Detroit.

Detroiters are used to it — the land of Robocop, Beverly Hills Cop and every negative urban myth to break open in recent decades of post-industrial decay. Middle America’s quaint dream vaporized before I was born in the 1970s, after the ‘67 riots and the first fuel crises. Claiming Detroit has long opened the doors for fodder, criticism and bad jokes. As a young Detroiter, I visited my grandparents in Baltimore during the 1980s, sometimes taking the airplane by myself. Proudly, I told the other travelers I was from Detroit, who would then ask me if I was scared of the city. Their reactions confused me. Detroit was home, the place with the gigantic fist, the big Hudson’s store, and my favorite art museum.

In the ’90s working for techno music labels , I frequently played hostess to Europeans that journeyed in droves to see the parade of mishaps in the metro region, to criticize the suburbs and the city’s inefficiency, to diss us, and then to go home and make documentaries about us, without contributing anything to a solution that would aid or fix our systemic problems.

To stay in Detroit after childhood meant you were probably going to work in the car industry. People like me, with other creative aspirations, eventually left to pursue other vocations. Whether staying or going, those of us who identify with Detroit, never seem to leave it completely behind for all the unsung qualities. Down to earth people, humility, hard work, and reliability. Detroiters do well where ever we land.

Yet, near and far, in the past few years, it seemed that Detroit was tiptoeing to a rebirth, buoyed by a flush Super Bowl showing and sexy cars like the Corvette, Chrysler 300C, the Cadillac Escalade, and the revised Ford Mustang. People began to speak about Detroit with a degree of pride, as downtown slowly drew businesses and a little extra gloss. Simultaneously, Detroit auto companies took the lead and began to pay attention to the culture of drivers – women and minorities were included in marketing plans, which I saw firsthand as a lady journalist and writer for multicultural publications. The cars were getting better, and the small cars, once forgotten, were finally competing and sometimes winning against foreign cars. The Cadillac CTS, the Ford Focus, the Chevy Malibu and the Dodge Charger could ride against any foreign subsidiary. Detroit had cleaned up it’s act. These days, excluding a few Chinese pirated models, there are no terrible cars, and so we journalists became razor sharp in the subtle differences in our reviews, hankering over leather qualities, without really criticizing effectiveness of power trains or crucial safety features.

Yet, as soon as the notion of a rebirth occurred, the erosion set in, and now the implosion is here. We first saw it in the shameful political cronyism at the mayor’s office and in the slipping stocks. Automakers, heralded by an approving public of big products, have became a symbol for fuel economy shame, though the foreign automakers have developed thirsty vehicles on par with America’s biggest guzzlers, also in pursuit of the large profit margin that helped to restore Detroit. The strong middle class work force that migrated to Detroit from the Antebellum South and immigrant waves off of Ellis Island in the 1900s, is described as spoiled and bloated by good benefits in reports. Many of these workers have spent countless hours of their lives grinding unglamorously in loud assembly plants, following the footsteps of family members. Car executives (many of whom are Michigan college graduates) that live in large houses a fraction of the cost in comparison to more cosmopolitan cities are described as greedy and ineffective. And while Toyota, Nissan and Honda established r & d, and design offices in metro-Detroit to woo Big 3 talent, Detroit’s engineers, designers and marketers were cast as out-of-touch dolts. While the University of Michigan and the College of Creative Studies produce the most elite engineers and designers with every graduating class, youth are poo-pooed from Detroit and told there is no future in this region. This is “dead end Detroit” that has somehow managed to contribute some of the most influential and culturally significant icons of the past century.

Somehow it doesn’t add up. It never has.

It doesn’t make sene that GM, Chrysler and Ford, vertebrae of American capitalism, are now seen as nostalgic throwbacks though they are everywhere in our cultural landscape. The insults on Page 1 and headline news are crassly thrown around by experts, economists and legislators, most of whom are largely unfamiliar with actual product and don’t have a keen understanding of how the Motor City serves the transportation community still maintaining nearly half of the market share in tough times. Our workforce, cultivated from experience is disregarded. This disdain is familiar, reminiscent, and painful. The eerie quiet on Detroit streets is pervasive, the streets empty. What will we do without our car companies? What are we left with? Everyone I know in every walk of life across the metro region is anxious. Perhaps the bailout should be discussed in Detroit, not just with company leaders and politicians. Maybe these discussions should be had on the wide open roads, where these critics could drive Detroit cars and have to come face to face with what’s really going on in the Motor City.

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