Word: africanizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...chairman of TLC Beatrice International Holdings, which has the odd distinction of being America's largest minority-owned enterprise without having any U.S. businesses, Lewis has made a habit of defying the odds. Following the death in January 1993 of her husband Reginald (Reg) Lewis--the African-American tycoon who demolished the Wall Street color line in 1987 by buying Beatrice International for $1 billion--it was widely assumed that his widow would remain secluded as majority shareholder and silent partner...
...turns out, that "Lewis thing" may be the only business trait she and her husband shared. Reg was a brash Harvard-trained lawyer who became the richest African American in U.S. history through ruthless ambition and sheer willpower; Loida is scholarly and low key, the author of three textbooks, and deeply religious. She is perhaps the only CEO of a multinational company who greets visitors with a hug rather than a handshake. He smoked power-broker cigars, traveled in a custom jet and kept a Louis XIV-style office suite in Paris as a pit stop. She finds little...
Even more unimaginable, Loida loosened the company's connections with the African-American community, in which Reg Lewis was a legend. She fired most of his confidants, some of them black, and replaced them with her own, some of whom, like her, are Filipino. "I want the company to speak in one voice, and there's no room here for those that don't share that view," she explains. "I know where I want this company to go, and I know how I want this company to get there." Honest dissent is fine, she says, "but my motto...
...important for him to take the lead on issues that are below the surface for a lot of people," Jonathan M. Gramling '99 said. "This election is important for the African-American community...
However, this answer smacks of justifications for segregating the military along racial lines. It is ironic to the point of social satire (or some sick, dark comedy) that Colin Powell, the first African-American to hold the position of chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in our country's history, would speak a language that so obviously resounds with the echoes of racist claims of the past. The significance of this comparison centers on the understanding of the emptiness of the racist arguments in favor of excluding blacks from the military...