By Frederick E. Jordan

Ward Connerly, a Black man and the architect of Proposition 209 in 1996 which banned affirmative action for minorities in California State contracting, college admissions and state employment, is at it again! He has gotten a Prop. 209-type anti-affirmative action measure, deceptively called the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, on the ballot in the State of Michigan to get rid of State affirmative action for mostly African Americans. Also, through his law firm, the Pacific Legal Foundation, he is attacking the Federal affirmative action program. Because of the Pacific Legal Foundation’s recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Western States Paving Co., Inc v. Washington Department of Transportation et al., the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is required to consider terminating the race-conscious Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program goals on all federally funded contracts.

If 45 days of public hearings throughout California do not substantiate discrimination, then Caltrans, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, BART, MUNI, etc. will go to a Race Neutral Program for affirmative action. Caltrans receives over $2 billion a year from the federal government and has admitted that a Race Neutral Program will provide little access to opportunities for minority businesses. If the Federal DBE Program goals are terminated, it will be “The Death Knell for Affirmative Action” on any government work in California to include the state, counties, cities and government districts.

In the backdrop of the African American’s historical struggle for civil rights and equal opportunity, other issues have surfaced. The issue around reparations to descendants of slaves is a continuing dialogue. The California cities of Oakland and Berkeley have adopted ordinances that would require companies doing business with their cities to disclose whether their companies have ever participated in slavery.

The loss of opportunities from the demise of affirmative action is demoralizing! To engender a sense of pride and identity, the Museum of African American Technology (MAAT), in Oakland, recently presented a program with African Ancestry, of Washington, D.C. for African Americans to trace their origins back to a specific country and/or group in Africa through DNA. I was the first in line to do my DNA, since my father and I had always envisioned us as descendants of African Kings. One month later, as we huddled anxiously, the returned Y chromosome DNA results revealed that from father to father to father, no match was found in Africa for our ancestors. But our people were “people living in Spain.” Angrily, I got the President of African Ancestry, Gina Paige, on the phone as my father exclaimed, “My father’s father was a slave and my mother’s father was a slave! How did I get to Spain?” Calmly, she responded to my Dad, “Well, we can’t cross over to your mother’s father, but who was the father of your father’s father…plantation owner, overseer or someone aboard the slave ship?” Ooooh…the room fell silent.

On the other hand, my mother was consistently discouraging of my DNA testing (her mother’s father was white and her father’s father was white). But her maternal genetic ancestry, from mother to mother to mother, led directly to the Mende people in Sierra Leone, West Africa. It was the Mende people that revolted and seized their slave ship, brilliantly arguing their case of freedom in the American courts as depicted in the movie, Amistad, by Steven Spielberg. The 1839 American landmark case of determining “who is free” was ultimately argued before the Supreme Court by Ex-President John Quincy Adams, and the Mende people were set free to return to their homeland. My mother beamed with pride, as no one could take away her heritage.

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