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James G. Patterson, 62, started in public relations by working for his uncle, Frederick Douglas Patterson, founder of the United Negro College Fund and a former president of Tuskegee Institute. James Patterson has made a name for himself through Patterson Partners, the Greensboro company he has owned and managed for 13 years. His clients include meat-packing giant Smithfield Foods, Sara Lee and GlaxoSmithKline. His public service includes two terms as chairman of the Small Business and Agriculture Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He recently spoke with staff writer Richard M. Barron.

Q. What person or company has made the biggest impression on you?

A. One would certainly be my uncle Fred. Later on, I have to give a lot of credit to ... Bob Brown. Bob (the owner of a successful management consulting firm in High Point) was a tremendous influence on me in terms of a process for getting things done.

Q. What are the best attributes and abilities of Patterson Partners?

A. We don't have our minds made up about what we want to do before we learn what the company needs.

We push it all the time: research. If you do it blind and you were successful, you just were lucky. We don't like to depend on luck. ... We don't get as many bites at the apple as some other companies might.

Q. Why is that?  

A. Racism takes a whole lot of different forms. It's unintentional many times, but there are preconceived notions about you when you walk in the door, and if you make a mistake and someone holds such a view, then you don't get an opportunity to make another (impression). And it's just that simple.

Q. Do you believe we could see an erosion in corporate diversity as the nation's economic problems mount?

A. There are certainly companies that may have pockets of resistance to hiring and doing business with people that don't look like them.

I think that most successful companies are, at the top, trying to do the right thing. They really don't care about ethnicity, race, gender or anything else if they've got somebody who's instrumental in helping them make money because that's what business is about.

Q. You wrote a paper in 2001 about labor unions in the South, saying they would be making gains. Does the Smithfield Foods battle at the Tar Heel plant with the United Food and Commercial Workers union fit those predictions?

A. (Unions such UFCW) tend to go after companies that have a high level of hourly workers that are less educated. And they have a policy of targeting companies that have X percentages of blacks and Hispanics. They're very racist.

They will play on old issues and feelings and emotional things. And that has some level of appeal for a lot of African American workers and, to some lesser degree, Hispanic workers and that white male worker who has seen that he can't do the same things that his father did and doesn't have the same opportunities.

Q. Smithfield has been working to improve some problems it had with hiring illegal immigrants. How difficult is it for a professional like you to manage such an issue?

A. When you really look at the body of law around where you check when you hire (workers), a company is very restricted. There are certain questions you can't ask. If a person shows up and the paper looks legal, you've got to accept it on the face of it. But once everything goes into the system and those Social Security numbers don't add up or match up right, (they can dismiss a worker). But you cannot refuse to hire a person. 

Q. What are the best ways for the government or a corporation to handle the public information side of a crisis?

A. If you go back to the Tylenol crisis - tell the truth. It's as simple as it gets. And then deal with what the truth is and then come up with solutions to get you past that crisis. But you've got to be truthful, and I think that's where a lot of this (current world financial crisis) breaks down - in this political posturing and bickering.

Q. What marks do you give to the president and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and their management and the sales job they've been doing?

A. The sales job, you can't give them better than a D-plus. Paulson probably has done as good a job as can be done from where he sits. He has probably been the most effective person from the administration side.

Q. Why was it so hard for the administration to communicate the message that the bailout was as much for consumers as it was for Wall Street fat cats?

A. I think there are legitimate gripes and criticisms about the legislation and how it could potentially fundamentally change this country and move it in a very leftward socialistic direction. ... The leaders? I'm just not so sure we've got any.

Q. This presidential campaign is all about public relations. How they spin themselves. Critique how they're doing.

A. I wish I had a choice of somebody else to vote for. This is not an election of our best and brightest. There certainly are people in the Congress ... that do take their jobs seriously. Unfortunately, they're in a shrinking minority. We have a Congress that is the Guilford County commissioners on steroids. That can't be good.

Q. You had an unusual interest back when you were a younger man in the late 1960s that involved Toyotas and drag racing. How did that happen?

A. I was one of the first guys in the U.S. to work on Toyotas. As a kid, I was a partner in a service station. I got a job in Lakewood, N.J. - Toyota Town. The owner agreed to let us campaign a car. We raced a (four-cylinder) Corona. We used to beat cars (with such engines as the) Hemi.

We were quick. There was a car out of Chicago, a '64 Chevy. It was one of the hottest things out there called the Chi-Town Shaker. So we got one called the Saki Shaker. The folks at Toyota did not like that. They took it as a racial insult. You run into things. People do things not knowing beans about things, and your words can be misinterpreted. We thought we were identifying with the Japanese by putting "saki" on it.

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com