Rev. Jesse Jackson, famed movie director Spike Lee, award-winning journalist George Curry, Tuck School of Business professor Leonard Greenhalgh and esteemed economist and educator, Dr. Julianne Malveaux visited the MGM Grand Hotel in downtown Detroit on Monday, Oct. 13 for the 15th annual Rainbow PUSH Automotive Project. The highly anticipated event brings together auto executives and business leaders from around the region to dialogue about the state of the industry and minority inclusion in dealership ownership and minority supplier contracts. The capacity crowd assembled in the MGM dining room included many of the city’s most prominent business people and government officials.
The lunchtime discussion moderated by another award winning journalist and native Detroiter, Ed Gordon, brought Hyundai’s president and CEO Dave Zuchowski and General Motors CEO Mary Barra front and center for a provocative discussion with Rev. Jesse Jackson, president and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquartered in Chicago. Mary Barra received a standing ovation when introduced just prior to the discussion.
Jackson, seated between the two automotive leaders in a relatively intimate setting, opened the discussion with the candor the civil rights leader has long been known for. “I don’t like the word diversity. Diversity is a bad word to me, ” he confided to the crowd. “We don’t need diversity, we need equality. Whenever the playing filed is even and the rules are just, the goals are clear, and the referees are fair we can win,” he said. In a press conference earlier in the day, Jackson complained that business leaders “keep changing the rules,” indicating that business leaders had broken agreements with regard to minority participation. Jackson cited the decline in the number of minority owned auto dealerships and minority auto supplier contracts as evidence that some agreements to increase minority participation had not been honored.
Jackson joked that in the initial automotive summit in 1999, auto leaders were up in arms about demands from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. “They thought that seven blacks coming together was the overthrow of the auto industry,” he quipped.
“Inclusion leads to growth and as growth occurs, everybody wins. Those who fought against the growth benefit the most. Just as in the New South, those that opposed [inclusion] the mos,t have also reaped the most benefits,” added Jackson.
Rainbow PUSH executive director Glenda Gill stated she’d had similar experiences with securing commitments for hiring and contracting. “Sometimes in the past we’ve had lots of lip service where companies discussed and agreed to change business practices to be more inclusive and give minorities greater access, only to change their minds or renege on promises once they return to their home offices.”
Hyundai’s Zuchowski explained that the car company was working to shore up its diversity and inclusion efforts. “We do it because it is the right thing to do, and we do it because we will fail if we don’t do it.”
Jackson then asked GM’s Mary Barra about the U.S. auto giant’s minority recruitment and hiring practices.”How do you find blacks and Latinos to recruit and hire, because other people say they can’t find us?” he asked Barra. “One of the things GM does is we work with many schools K though 12 and colleges… and we create relationships with students to attract them to the automotive industry,” replied the company’s first female CEO.
Zuchowski added that since Hyundai is an Asian company, “We organically attract Asian Americans who seek us out for work. That is not so much the case with African Americans, who are no as apt to seek Hyundai out. Not that there is a concerted effort to keep blacks out.”
