Do you own a Toyota? How many Blacks do you know that own a Toyota? Toyota may not talk about your "mamma", but may be talking about your "daddy". An ad created by Saatchi & Saatchi for the Toyota Corolla states, "Unlike your last boyfriend, it goes to work in the morning." Toyota's latest ad depicts a male African American mouth, exaggerated lips, white pearly teeth and a gold Toyota Rav-4 embedded on the tooth.

Jesse Jackson says, "Toyota Motor Sales, USA has a trade deficit and an insult surplus." After Jackson threatened a boycott of the car dealer, Toyota announced a 10-year, $8 billion pledge in business with minority-owned companies at the recent Rainbow/Push convention in Chicago. Now a recent study of 300,000 Nissan car owners located in 33 states reveals that African Americans paid, on average, double the discretionary finance charges than that of Caucasian borrowers.

"While appalled, I am not very surprised," states Taammi Parker, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of BlackCommerceMall.com. "Blacks do not have much of a voice since we spend over 95% of our money outside the Black community, leaving little or no support for significant Black entrepreneurship. After all, to whom you give your money, is to whom you give your power," she continued. BlackCommerceMall is a Black owned E-commerce service provider that features an online mall of Black owned businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area.

On the Government side, President Bush is being assailed by opponents of affirmative action for supporting a U. S. Transportation Dept. program to help minority contractors. Adarand, a white-owned construction company in Colorado Springs, Colorado, challenged the affirmative action program before the U. S. Supreme Court resulting in a 1995 ruling that such programs are only permissible if they are "narrowly tailored and necessary to further a compelling governmental interest." Adarand was subsequently admitted as a disadvantaged business qualifying for the program but still unsatisfied, has filed again.

Ironically, the most effective opponents of affirmative action are conservative minorities who have benefited from affirmative action programs themselves. Linda Chavez, a Mexican and President of a conservative group that opposes affirmative action, most notably attacked Bush for his position supporting affirmative action. Ward Connerly, a Sacramento Black businessman, received over a million dollars in contracts while participating in the minority affirmative action program, but then led the ban of affirmative action at the University of California and in the State of California. Black U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has voted against affirmative action programs in most 5 -4 decision rulings. African American Gerald A. Reynolds is awaiting Congressional confirmation to head the U. S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. He is considered to be counter-productive to implementing civil rights since he is President of the Center for New Black Leadership, a group that has a long record of opposing affirmative action.

Do these Black and minority conservatives truly feel that we have reached a colorless society where the playing field is level? The August, 200l Conference on Racism in South Africa attended by 15 Heads of State doesn't think so.