Banks are the cornerstone of our economy, but in the San Francisco Bay Area, they victimize the Black community with predatory loans (Federal report) and generally ignore African Americans in contracting and corporate boards (Greenlining Institute Report). So, when Wachovia (pronounced wa-ko-vee-ah), the country’s fourth largest bank, bought World Savings Bank of Oakland and flew executives in from Raleigh, NC to take over, the Black Community was waiting.

In a meeting at World’s headquarters in Oakland on October 14, 2007 with Wachovia CEO Ken Thompson, Allen Temple Baptist Church brought 45 of its business and financial members, buoyed by members of the Bay Area Black Chambers, OCCUR, and other ethnic minority organizations. In a passion-filled room and an organized agenda of demands, agreements were established on minority lending, the foreclosure crisis, local philanthropy, branches in underserved communities and supplier diversity. “We have brought the struggle from the streets to the Board room, and now we have a new civil rights platform,” states Merlyn Edwards of the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce.

This November 2007 elections may be lack-luster, but “Super Tuesday,” November 2008, will hold much more at stake than a Presidential election. It appears that Ward Connerly, the Black man that led the campaign for the voter approved demise of affirmative action in California, Washington and Michigan, is well on his way to getting up to five other states to “trash” affirmative action. These states are Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma and passage would ban affirmative action for minorities and women in college admissions, public hiring and public contracting. Battle lines have been drawn.

Speaking of the demise of affirmative action, it is astonishing to hear U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas blame his admission to Yale on an affirmative action program in the 1970s, after the racial unrests of the 1960s, for his difficulty in finding a job after graduation from law school. In his autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son,” Thomas explains how he came to oppose affirmative action after his law school experience. “I’d graduated from one of America’s top law schools, but racial preference had robbed my achievement of its true value.”

My reaction would be, “Wow! How fortunate you are as a Georgia Black man to be admitted to Yale University in the 1970s and today enjoy one of the highest positions in the country, US Supreme Court Justice!” This shows that affirmative action works! Former U.S. Secretary General Colin Powell and numerous other Black leaders consistently state that without affirmative action, they would have never had the opportunity to attain their positions in life. One thing for sure, President George Bush got into Yale on an affirmative action program called the Legacy Program, but he doesn’t have a problem about being there simply because his father attended Yale!

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