The article talks about why the Patterson company did not go on to become a big automaker like Ford. Although they say that, on the one hand, few of the small early automakers made it, and Patterson was ten years too late, they also say that it was surely due to systemic racism. It's an odd thing to say not because racism would not have been experienced by the Patterson company but because it doesn't seem like it explains what happened, given the article's more general points about the fate of most of the early automakers.
While Frederick had the right idea, small firms like his own couldn’t compete for long with the mass-manufacturing might, and daily production capacity, of far larger automakers like Ford, General Motors, Willys, Studebaker, and others. Ford alone was building 10,000 cars a day, a number Patterson couldn’t begin to match.
Beyond sheer manufacturing scale, Patterson also lacked the engineering and design resources of these large concerns. Considering the time frame, that was no doubt due to the fact that, as the company’s own ads state, they were “the only Negro Automobile Manufacturing Concern in the United States.” Systemic racism and prejudice of the time made it difficult for Patterson & Sons to attract the financing necessary to compete. And on top of that, they were a decade too late. If automaking had been undertaken a decade sooner, it’s possible that Patterson & Sons might have grown along with the industry into a larger manufacturer rather than remaining a small-time assembler—something the company never was as a carriage builder.
_There have been more than 1,900 automobile manufacturers in the United States since the Duryea Motor Wagon Company sold its first automobile in Springfield, Massachussetts in 1896. Yet in the explosion of entrepreneurship that followed, only one American automaker has been founded and run by a Black individual: C.R. Patterson & Sons of Greenfield, Ohio._
The racism surely couldn't have helped. It already tells us something that this was the only automobile manufacturer founded and run by a Black man from among around 1900 competitors. I think the article suggests that if the discrimination hadn't made funding so difficult to acquire, they could have overcome their late entry. But it's hard to be sure 100% exactly what would have happened.
"that was no doubt due" is an ambiguous phrase. A consequence always has multiple but-for causes. We usually try to categorize causes by culpability, but even then there can be multiple of the most culpable. Plus we don't always distinguish but-for from contributing causes.
When someone says "no doubt due" I think people tend to assume but-for causation. But people who make the claim may not have intended that, even when they assume the opposite as listeners. In the next sentence the author uses the phrase "made it difficult", which to me has the effect of qualifying the previous claim, suggesting that "due" is not necessarily a but-for cause, but a notable contributing cause. I don't know what the authors intentions were, or even how much thought they put into it. And there are so many possible interpretations here, though undoubtedly many people will be primed to head down certain well-worn paths.
I wouldn't get too hung up on it. I see this everywhere. I even see it in my own writing. If we're being charitable, we can just chalk it up to not having enough time. (And there's never enough time.) We can probably safely assume a predisposition to emphasize matters of racial inequality. (I haven't read the article, just the title and your excerpt.) But so what? The phrasing is ambiguous, which means it's not wrong on its face, nor is it necessarily lacking support. There's little reason to be anything less than charitable, lest we draw flawed conclusions of our own.
According to the article, Patterson couldn't secure financing because of systemic racism. It is possible that, even if this weren't the case, they would have still failed. But the lack of financing didn't help. It is hard to imagine any manufacturer surviving without financing.
> It's an odd thing to say not because racism would not have been experienced by the Patterson company but because it doesn't seem like it explains what happened,
Doesn't it? How about the quote you included from the article?
Systemic racism and prejudice of the time made it difficult for Patterson & Sons to attract the financing necessary to compete
If I were black and reading an article like this, I think it would feel more empowering and encouraging if it was written like any other article about a historic person, and just causally mentioned the founder's background. As it is, it doesn't feel empowering at all.
Comparing it to something trivial from my own life, if I read an article about some surfer or skateboarder and he happens to be even older than I am, that makes me feel hopeful about improving my skills. But if the author again and again talks about how hard it is for older surfers and that it's basically a miracle that he even survives then I would feel the opposite.
Yes I know it's not the same but still, it would be interesting to hear from an actual African-American what they feel about this kind of article.
> If I were black and reading an article like this
You have no idea what you would feel, because you aren't.
> I think it would feel more empowering and encouraging if it was written like any other article about a historic person, and just causally mentioned the founders background.
No, whitewashing the context wouldn't make it more more “empowering and encouraging”.in any sense, it would just rob it of honesty and relevance.
> As it is, it doesn't feel empowering at all.
Yeah, honest stories about the Black experience in the late 19th and early 20th Century in the US usually aren't, except in the sense that making people feel less alone in the deep struggles they still face and see their community facing is.
That's not a problem with the storytelling.
> Yes I know it's not the same but still, it would be interesting to hear from an actual African-American what they feel about this kind of article.
As an actual Black American, it is, I guess, a fine piece of the struggle narrative, and notable as a reminder that the struggle was not then (and is not now) limited by either the geography of socioeconomic classes that are usually focussed on (though that focus, in both cases, is not without reason.)
It's not some kind of transcendent work that will liberate you from the struggle just because you've consumed it, but that's hardly the point.
I think we can talk about history - and Black history - without it having to fulfill some external function like making people feel good or bad or inspired or whatever. At the very least it's just one more historic anecdote about how bigotry kneecaps entrepreneurship and stifles talent - so we should strive to judge people by their character and talents and not conscious or unconscious biases or what social convention dictates.
Also - why a company might have failed is always relevant to discuss even if it leads you somewhere uncomfortable.
Careful, that talk in these times will get you downvoted, it's not approved by the Ministry of Approved Thoughts. You don't want to get put on the critical revaluation of bias education list, do you?
There's a somewhat better article, with more sources, about the company here.[1] They pivoted from cars, which had become a mass-produced item, to bus bodies and other specialty bodies. Those could be custom-built in small quantities. They supposedly made the transition from wood to metal, but had more trouble competing in metal, which is less about craftmanship and more about heavy machinery.
I used to live in the area and I pass through Greenfield often. Most of the buildings are likely still there and I don't think Greenfield ever recovered from the 1894 depression. It's also loaded with racists...quite the reversal. The only law enforcement around is in the next county over.
Agreed, it's an inspiring story. The article briefly touches on his involvement in his community. That's an extremely important part of success, for just about anybody.
Off the shelf hardware helped get them off the ground and scale but I wonder to what degree proprietary IP could have given them more of a long term advantage. Process innovation eventually leaks. It seems lack of access to capital played the biggest role in the eventual outcome.
Please do not take HN threads into ideological flamewar. We ban such accounts, because it destroys the curious conversation that this site is supposed to be for.
Feeding trolls like this actually does more damage than they do. A flagkilled comment with no replies is the proper outcome for the GP—it's what minimizes damage to the container. We can come along and ban the account later.
In egregious cases, heads-ups to hn@ycombinator.com are welcome.
i'm impressed actually. How do you get banned anyway? I can't flag comments either, how do you do that? I won't ask what the comment was, but i can guess the nature...
sorry for bringing this up, but your bio is beautifully poetic. I'm not into that sort of stuff, but i'm currently reevaluating my position. What does it mean, though?
Don't feed trolls, and don't look at the first comment as being the "best". It's there because it's the only top level comment. Downvote and post a better top level comment.
Please don't take HN threads into these extremely repetitive, generic ideological places. It just leads to tedious, ever-the-same flamewar. There's actually an interesting historical story to discuss about the OP, and comments like this (and the inevitable avalanche of replies) drown it out.
If you're genuinely curious, there are ways of satisfying that which don't damage the forum, e.g. a web search.
My question was "extremely repetitive" and a "generic ideological place" to the point that it "damaged the forum"?
I'm a regular HN reader and I never stumbled over any of those apparently very repetive and ideological talks about capitalization. I read global news like the Economist and sometimes Bloomberg/FT and they certainly didn't address this apparently rather new convention anywhere prominent.
Here in Germany, no ethnicity gets capitalized. We capitalize nouns, first words in a sentence and formal pronouns.
I know there's a lot of emotions in the US about race but I have the impression that in this specific case this alertness might stand in the way of genuine and curious conversation, which would be a cornerstone of every just and inclusive society.
I hope the damage you see caused by my question wasn't long lasting and I thought that I got some interesting, contentful and non-repetitive replies.
In my opinion, it’s far more damaging to the forum when moderators stifle all discussion of this issue. There are respectful and productive things to be said about it.
For one thing, the consensus among major newspapers on the capitalization of white/black is not absolute; the New York Times only capitalizes “Black,” while the Washington Post capitalizes both “Black” and “White.” For another thing, many white people find the selective capitalizing demonstrated in this article to be demeaning. I am one of them. Silencing that voice in particular strikes me as prejudiced moderation. Finally, non-Americans may be curious about this recent change in vernacular. They are entitled to answers.
It is prejudiced moderation in the sense that we're prejudiced against generic topics, ideological flamewar, and extreme repetition. This topic covers all three.
As long as it remains unresolved among publishers and society at large, I expect that this topic and questions related to it will continue to come up. Is there a gold-standard earlier discussion you could link when such questions do arise, to explain the situation to newcomers such as the GP commenter with less chance of a flame war?
Flamewar topics will always come up. Intellectual curiosity is plainly not motivating the desire to bring them up or argue about them, so they're not what HN is for. I don't see why HN needs to host 'gold-standard' discussions about this, or why people are entitled to answers can't look elsewhere.
Until recently, most publications didn't capitalize "white" or "black", but capitalized everything else ("Indian", "Native American", "Asian", etc.).
Recently, there has been increasing recognition that Black isn't just a (lowercase) skin color, but an identity like the rest and thus ought to be given the same capital-letter-recognition "Black". A large number of publications have made this change in the past couple years.
The reason "white" still isn't capitalized is because many people are uncomfortable recognizing white identity -- because in the past and still ongoing, that is often linked to white supremacism.
So as long as capitalizing "White" continues to carry (even unintended) associations of white supremacism, it's probable that most publications will keep it lowercase.
To be clear, I'm not expressing any opinions here as to whether this is right or wrong or desirable or not (edit: or even whether white identity exists). This is just a description of the reasons for things currently.
"because many people are uncomfortable recognizing white identity"
There is no unified "white" identity. I am white, my ethnicity is Romanian. There is no shared identity between me, and for example someone with German heritage. So to capitalize "White" is silly in my eyes.
edit: unified may have been a poor choice here. "Shared" is what I was getting at. Of course people across the US have different experiences and opinions.
To follow up on this, there is no unified "black" identity either, but there is a distinct Black identity especially among African-Americans. This is in large part because of the way their identities, cultures, languages, and traditions were forcibly stripped away from them upon enslavement. African-American cultures thus distinguished themselves with combinations of cultural elements preserved from African nations, as well as elements of mainstream American cultures due to the extreme pressure to "assimilate," later immigration from places such as Caribbean nations, and newer elements developed uniquely by African-Americans.
There's no unified black identity either though. There are millions of black people in both USA and Africa, but their cultures and lived experiences are so incredibly different. Not to mention the diversity within the country.
...black people universally get discriminated in a systemic fashion in the US based on their appearance. This is not unique to any one state.
Obviously people in different states lead different lives. It's still possible to have a shared identity through facing similar struggles and discrimination.
Just because I grew up in IL and my cousin grew up in CA doesn't mean we can't have a shared identity as Romanian-Americans either.
edit: I have amended this and my parent post to clarify I meant a shared experience, not a unified one.
To be clear, neither is there any unified "Black" identity, any unified "Native American" identity, etc.
Identities are generally fluid and reflect matters of degrees of commonality and shared experience.
In your case, there are certainly some things you share in common with Germans, e.g. you share an Indo-European linguistic heritage which you don't share, for example, with someone who has Japanese heritage.
Of course that's simply an academic point -- you're free to feel whatever degree of identity affinity you like, which is what matters. Identity is constructed.
"Identities are generally fluid and reflect matters of degrees of commonality and shared experience."
Well sure, and this is what I believe is happening with the Black identity. Unified may have been the wrong word to convey what I mean.
I have zero reason to feel anything like that with a "white" identity, germans being just an example. There is no real anti-white discrimination in a systemic sense like what black people face, so I see no reason that white would warrant a capitalization. There is just no similar shared identity.
As a white person, I agree with the staff of the Post. It would be conspicuous and demeaning to capitalize every demographic identifier except “white.” White Americans also have a distinct cultural identity, extending back to the writings and observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, which is more than just the actions of white Americans’ worst examples.
Italians also weren't considered "white" for a while in early US history, I believe.
The linguist John McWhorter mentioned on his podcast that he would personally capitalize white, just like Black, were it not for the fact that white supremacists started that practice long ago. And so they kind of ruined the usage since capitalizing white became indicative of that particular meaning (the supremacist one).
> Italians also weren't considered "white" for a while in early US history, I believe.
No, we weren't. And it's complicated. Half of my family is from southern Italy, and their skin is olive-brown. I've seen southern Italians being mistaken for middle easterners several times. Little surprise, as southern Italy was conquered many times over the course of history, by various Mediterranean peoples. But we gloss over this, and equate Europe with whiteness. Italian and Irish diaspora in the US benefit from this new classification (I'm actually unsure of when that change happened), and aside from my great-grandparents (who were immigrants), that side of my family was generally welcome wherever they've moved within the US.
> Italians also weren't considered "white" for a while in early US history, I believe.
I think this is more of a concept illustrating how arbitrary racial classifications are, rather than an actual reality. Historically, Italians in the Jim Crow era of American history were admitted to whites-only facilities and their marriages to people of British descent were not considered interracial, which I think shows handily that although they were mistreated based on their ethnicity, they were still considered white.
Louis Prima is a notable counterexample, having been barred from whites-only facilities during his career. He did take a role it was felt inappropriate for someone of African descent to take, so go figure.
"okay for black people form an identity behind their race"
Probably because they get referred to as black and get discriminated against due to their physical appearance regardless of their actual heritage or where they're from? It's not so much a choice as something that they get constantly reminded about.
Anecdotally speaking, there are Black communities, but I've never seen a "white" community (aside from white supremacist type groups)- just communities of nationalities or ethnicity. I grew up in Romanian communities and none of us ever used "white" as an identity.
"I get referred to as white. I put "white" on job applications and census forms."
So do I. And like every white person I know, if asked about identity, I state my heritage/background. Romanian/Romanian-American/American.
"I face an increasing amount of discrimination, from affirmative action making it harder to get jobs to subtle cultural discrimination like this or seeing stereotypes everywhere."
[Citation needed]. A lot (most?) companies still have issues with diversity because hiring is generally done via word of mouth, and it is likely among white people to have mostly white friends. edit: and as the sibling comment pointed out, there are tangible benefits that come with diverse teams.
(In my own opinion, it is also concerning to equate hires of minority candidates with lesser quality candidates. This is simply unsubstantiated and not true.)
Stereotypes have always existed. They're not appropriate regardless of the identity targeted, and reasonable people are aware of this.
What "cultural discrimination" are you talking about? There is no "white" culture in the first place.
"Imagine saying that to a black person when they were complaining about perceived racism that you disagreed with. "
Good thing I'm not. I'm saying it here because every single time black people talk about identity, white people butt in and go "what about me?". Literally every single time. Black people cannot talk about the issues they face without interjections of "uh hey we face issues too". Except you and I don't face the same discrimination and struggles that Black Americans do, not even close.
"But I and my age group was raised under the ethos that we should judge each other not by the color of our skin, but by the character of our hearts."
Cute story, but we need to acknowledge the real and systemic issues that people face precisely due to their skin color. And that means talking about race and identity, not conveniently ignoring it.
Please do not perpetuate ideological flamewar on HN. It's not what this site is for, and swipes like "Cute story" are obvious provocations which break the site guidelines in their own right. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Please stop perpetuating this flamewar and don't do it again. It's not what this site is for, and the transition into personal nastiness is entirely predictable (and seriously not cool).
They are doing it to disambiguate between the color black, and identity Black. [0]
If your question is "why not african-american"? It's likely because not every black person is from Africa, or is American. Personally I think African-American is a poor term and Black American is better (if they're American, obviously).
- Other ethnicities tend to be capitalized, and Black people often don't actually have black skin, so the word is more of a description of a cultural identity than a color adjective
- The use of capitalization in the word "white" has for ~a century been coopted by white supremacist organizations (of the openly racist, cross-burning, murdering people for looking at their daughters funny variety) as their own dogwhistle.
While Frederick had the right idea, small firms like his own couldn’t compete for long with the mass-manufacturing might, and daily production capacity, of far larger automakers like Ford, General Motors, Willys, Studebaker, and others. Ford alone was building 10,000 cars a day, a number Patterson couldn’t begin to match.
Beyond sheer manufacturing scale, Patterson also lacked the engineering and design resources of these large concerns. Considering the time frame, that was no doubt due to the fact that, as the company’s own ads state, they were “the only Negro Automobile Manufacturing Concern in the United States.” Systemic racism and prejudice of the time made it difficult for Patterson & Sons to attract the financing necessary to compete. And on top of that, they were a decade too late. If automaking had been undertaken a decade sooner, it’s possible that Patterson & Sons might have grown along with the industry into a larger manufacturer rather than remaining a small-time assembler—something the company never was as a carriage builder.