African Americans break into global business elite

The recent purchase of Time Warner by America Online created the world's biggest media company. AOL provides internet access to half of America, while Time Warner controls cable networks CNN and HBO, Warner Bros movie studio, Warner Music Group, New Line Cinema and magazine titles Time, People and Sports Illustrated.

The merger was conceived when the internet boom was at its height and Wall Street assumed that AOL executives would be running the show with their "new-media" savvy.

But as AOL struggles to maintain growth, the "old media" people at Time Warner have been taking over.

The process was capped by the appointment last week of Time Warner veteran Richard Parsons as chief executive of the joint company, rather than AOL's Robert Pittman who had been the hot favourite, to succeed Gerald Levine when he steps down as chief executive of AOL Time Warner in May.

Mr Parsons (53) thus becomes the most prominent of a small but growing elite group of African Americans who have risen to the top in corporate America. He will, in fact, be the world's third most important business leader, at least according to a table of the top 25 most important global executives, published on Monday by Time Magazine and CNN.

Top of the list is Carlos Ghosn, the 47-year-old Brazil-born Lebanese who turned the Nissan company around, second is Bill Gates (46) and third is Mr Levine whom Mr Parsons will now replace.

Another African American in the top 25 is Stanley O'Neal (50), born in segregated Alabama to descendants of slaves, who became the first black executive to run a major investment bank when he was appointed president of Merrill Lynch this year.

Other prominent black leaders in US boardrooms are Kenneth Chenault, chairman of American Express; Franklin Raines, head of Fannie Mae, America's leading mortgage lender; Clifford Alexander, head of Moody's credit rating agency, and Barry Rand, head of Avis.

"Just like the National Football League, they finally found blacks can play the game," said Jack White, a friend of Mr Parsons from Time Magazine.

Up to the 1970s, most African American business executives were to be found in niche markets like legal services, newspapers and insurance where white companies failed to provide service to black customers. The first black business fortunes were made back then in hair care.

Since then affirmative action has encouraged corporate America to cultivate colour blindness. Some companies like American Express opened their doors to African Americans while others had to have them wedged open by legislation. Even so today in some big companies like General Electric white males still run practically everything.

Many black Americans bristle at the idea that companies should give them jobs because they need to employ minorities.

The new generation of top black business leaders would argue that education, drive and self-confidence are more important to success than affirmative action.

"Blacks complain that whites think blacks are intellectually inferior," wrote African American Newsday columnist Sheryl McCarthy earlier this year.

"They do think that. But the biggest obstacle to black achievement today is that blacks believe it, too."

The entry of a few black males like Mr Parsons into the ranks of the Fortune 500 can overshadow the still-low proportion of African Americans in management jobs, and the fact that a high number of able African Americans in middle management get passed over for top positions, cautioned New York state comptroller Carl McCall recently.

"Too many companies have focused on one person, a man or woman they highlight as their total commitment to diversity," he said.

Mr Parsons was born in Brooklyn, the son of a technician, and went to public school in Queens. He graduated first in his class at law school in Albany and took an internship at the New York state legislature.

At a time when few blacks had a prominent role in professional or political life, he found a powerful patron in Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller, who saw the likeable and disarming African-American as a future Supreme Court judge.

Mr Parsons worked in government jobs, as a member of a law firm and as president of the Dime Savings Bank in New York before joining Time Warner's board in 1991 where he gained a reputation as a conciliator and a deal-maker.

He turned down President George W Bush's offer of the job of US trade representative but is co-chairman of the President's Commission to strengthen Social Security, and heads up the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone that aims to revitalise neighbourhoods such as Harlem.

Throughout his life he has not been trying to prove himself, Mr Parsons told the New York Times after his promotion was announced on Wednesday. "I will respond and rise to the level of expectation of others who mean something to me," he said.

When leaving a celebration party on Thursday Mr Parsons met former Democratic New York mayor, David Dinkins, who told him that his elevation to the head of AOL Time Warner would be an inspiration to African Americans in all walks of life. "I'm not important," Mr Parsons reportedly replied. "It's the trendline that's important."