Many are wondering what the new millennium holds for African Americans. The confederate flag flies prominently over the capitol of South Carolina. Florida is blatantly "gutting" affirmative action. California has eight times more African Americans in prison that at UC campuses. And, the Colorado based Adarand Constructors, the white firm whose 1995 Supreme Court decision dealt a staggering blow to federal affirmative action, is now disadvantaged business (DBE) in the affirmative action program. The
new millennium looks like a case of two steps forward and three steps backwards for race relations.

In South Carolina where the NAACP has called for a national tourism boycott of the state to force the lowering of the flag which it considers a symbol of racism, white Republican State Senator Arthur Ravenal called the NAACP the "National Association of Retarded People." When asked to apologized, USA Today reported he apologized only to the "retarded folks of the world for equating them to the NAACP."

Even Bill Bradley, the Democratic Presidential candidate, on February 7 accused Republican Presidential candidate George Bush's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, of committing "a clear wrong" by proposing to repeal the state's affirmative action program. The controversy has been spurred
by California's African American Ward Connerly's initiative on the Florida ballot to repeal affirmative action in the State. Martin Luther King III has been active in Florida opposing Connerly's Initiative and condemning Gov. Jeb Bush's intent to repeal affirmative action. On February 17, the Florida State University Regents approved rules to end affirmative action in its 10 public universities.

In California, Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a strong supporter of affirmative action, declared on February 10 before students at Hastings College of Law "there is not much left of what we would think
of as affirmative action remedies." He is preparing to defend a San Jose ordinance before the State Supreme Court that would require city contractors to merely outreach to companies owned by minorities and women for bids as an informational effort. Lower courts have ruled that the San Jose ordinance violates Proposition 209.

One bright spot, however, for African American justice recently was the Tulsa 1921 Race Riot Commission recommending that Oklahoma pay reparations to the survivors and descendants of the 1921 race riots. The racial violence by 25,000 white men and boys burned 35 blocks of Tulsa's "Black Wall Street" and killed 200 to 300 people, mostly African Americans. With U.S. reparations made to Japanese-Americans and large plots of mineral rich land returned to Native Americans, African Americans are encouraged by the Tulsa decision to seek some type of reparation for slavery. After the Civil War, congress voted for reparations to former slave in the form of 40 acres (and a mule), but President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill. Congressman John Conyers has introduced HR 40 to set up a commission to study the impact of slavery and weigh the need for reparations.

In January, 2000 Randall Robinson was at Marcus Book Store promoting his explosive book called
The Debt: What America Owes To Blacks which deals with reparation to African Americans for slavery. Referring to his critics in the Black community, Robinson responds, "When the train moves, they will be on it."

And the struggle continuesÖ