The Rev. Jesse Jackson of Rainbow/Push was about closing the "digital divide" on May 2 and 3, 2000 in San Jose as he brought together 600 hi-tech oriented people, mostly Black, to hear from Silicon Valley Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of some of the most powerful companies in the world. "Stop the rhetoric and embrace diversity," stated Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard. Dr. Craig Barrett, Intel's CEO and John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, proposed educational initiatives to close the "digital divide." Cisco is now considered the largest asset based company in the world replacing Microsoft.

But harnessing powerful Silicon Valley CEOs for a commitment to diversity is only the tip of the iceberg in America's private industry. Of the 1000 largest publicly traded companies in the U.S., only six Blacks have reached the rank of President and CEO. Barry Rand, Avis Rent A Car; Clifford Alexander, Jr. of Dun & Bradstreet; and Lloyd Ward of Maytag are among them. John Thompson of Symantec Corp. and Robert Knowling of COVAD are the only Silicon Valley CEOs in this group. "Although I was Senior VP with another company in charge of a much larger operation, becoming CEO of Symantec allowed me the opportunity to determine the destiny of my company and fulfill my own American Dream" Thompson confided to me privately.

So, as the dialogue continues on affirmative action, some interesting global perspectives have developed. The attacks on affirmative action as a remedy for the present and future effects of past and continuing racial and gender discrimination have primarily been initiated in this country by Black conservatives from Northern California (e.g. authors Shelby Steele at San Jose State University, Tom Sowell of Stanford's Hoover Institute and U.C. Regent Ward Connerly). Their philosophy served as the basis for the "gutting" of affirmative action in California and their contention is that Blacks should not depend on affirmative action to succeed.

"There is no replacement for affirmative action, except revolution," states Dr. Arthur Fletcher, the former Assistant Labor Secretary under President Nixon, who first implemented affirmative action enforcement in this country through the Philadelphia Plan. "Looking at the emerging African countries, even success at the ballot box has brought only minimal economic parity for the Black African. Notwithstanding, taking the land and businesses as in Zimbabwe or South Africa, affirmative action has provided tremendous advances in this country for minorities and women and its reversal could be disastrous," he continued.

Meanwhile, reports attained from the California Dept. of Corrections, one of the top three state procurement agencies, indicate that minority and women business participation in agency procurement has fallen from 16%, prior to the passage of anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 in 1996 to 0.004% (zero) on June 30, 1999. To add insult to injury, approximately 66% of the Department's prison population is Black and Latino! Yet, no matter what, "affirmative action" will always remain with us, in one form or another. On May 21, 2000 marathon runner Reuben Cherulyot of Kenya won the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco running among more than 70,000 runners. Similar to San Francisco, Kenyan men have won the prestigious Boston Marathon every year for the last 10 years. After Kenyans took six of the first eight places in the 1997 Bolder Boulder races in Boulder, Colorado, land of the anti-affirmative action Supreme Court Adarand Decision, white race officials there decided to implement affirmative action to"level the playing field." To prevent the Black Kenyans from dominating the races, an affirmative action rule has been devised to limit a race to only three runners from any one foreign country......Touche!