The United States now has a minority population of 100 million, about one third of the nation’s total population of 300 million. Hispanics provided almost half the growth of the entire nation and now make up the largest minority group of 44.3 million, followed by African Americans with 36.4 million. Leading the nation in diversity, California’s 57% minority population, known as the “new majority,” constitutes 13.1 million Latinos, 5 million Asians, 2.7 million Blacks and 689,000 Native Americans.

In the meantime, legislation has passed the U.S. House of Representatives giving small, minority and women owned businesses a bigger piece of the federal government’s annual 400 billion procurement pie. Small businesses will now have a contracting goal of 30% and the current goal of 5% for both minority and women-owned businesses will now increase to 8% each. Of course, the federal government has never came close to attaining the 5% goal, but setting the bar higher should help.

However, while the federal government is attempting to increase minority contracting, the City of Oakland has been found in a recent study done by Mason-Tillman Associates, to be grossly discriminating against minorities and women owned businesses. As an example, Black construction contractors make up 20.6% of all the businesses in Oakland, but won only 7.8% of the city’s construction contracts over a three-year period.

Perhaps such discrimination prevails in all the Bay Area cities, resulting in, for the first time, not one Bay Area Black firm making the June 2007 list of the Black Enterprise 100 largest industrial/service companies nation wide. Atlanta and Detroit, each had eight and seven firms, respectively, on the B.E.100 Industrial/Service list. Car dealers, advertising agencies, banks and asset managers that manage large assets are listed separately. But, guess what? No Bay Area Black car dealers made the top 100 Auto Dealers list and there hasn’t been a Black owned bank in the Bay Area for 25 years.

Yet, if you go no further than Fairfield, CA, MV Transportation, Inc ranks as the 10th largest Black Industrial/Service firm in the U.S. with sales of $450 million, even after San Francisco cancelled their contract last year under protest. More good news is that Oakland’s Carol H. Williams Advertising is the second largest Black advertising agency in the U.S. with sales of $367 million and Maryland Heights, MD’s World Wide Technology is the largest Black firm in the country with sales of $2 billion.

Yet, the man known as “The Father of Minority Business,” Black former Congressman Parren J. Mitchell, who opened the doors and advocated for Black entrepreneurship to develop to such levels, died on May 28, 2007 at the age of 85. All African Americans, rich or poor, stand on the shoulders of those strong Black men and women that have gone before.

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