Black Intel

Charles E. Phillips - Black Ops

Its my sentiment that the media in America doesn’t do a good job in showing the varying faces of Black people in America. They would have you believe there were only two types of Blacks that exist in this country. Those that have obtained the ultimate American Dream and those that have a more difficult time obtaining the American Dream. While the idea of obtaining this American dream can be seen as mundane I am using the idea of the American Dream to symbolize wanting more for yourself then what you are given. Wanting more for yourself can come as a steady growth in your finances, obtaining education or just investing time with your family. But I feel many in our inner cities have a mentality that excludes them from obtaining the American Dream. It was rapper Biggie Smalls that described the epitome of this mentality in his song Things Done Changed“ Either your slingin’ crack, rock or you got a wicked jump shot.”

Its more then 10 years later after he delivered this rhyme and things haven’t changed much. For some reason some Black folks in this country still suffer from the prison that Willie Lynch introduced during the time of slavery that has kept Blacks from reaching their full potential. We can thank Willie Lynch for establishing a mental prison that plagues many Black in America. Lynch’s letter to slave owners describs how to break down the slave, it depicts the effects of this process as “self refueling and self generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands”. Mr. Lynch definitely had the time line correct because some Black people still use every organ in their body except the one that counts in between their ears. It probably doesn’t help that our public school system under performs against most developed countries. Some of our children are plagued with the inability to read so they will never know of the great deeds and feats people in their blood line have accomplished in this country. Its so easy for me to see the bigger picture but I digress. The purpose of this section is to shed light on those people I refer to as The Black-Ops. This will be a monthly column I will update with todays Black Ops Hopefully this will help us to understand the images of Blacks beaten each other to death or not marrying certain infamous Armenians aren’t the only faces of Blacks in America. I would like to start this column off with introducing you to Mr. Charles E Phillips Jr. the President of Oracle.

For those of you not familiar with the software giant. Oracle Corporation in Redwood City Ca, is responsible for many of todays industry leader’s customer management systems and Hr management systems as well. Chances are if you enter your time at work on a computer, or have purchased anything online at your favorite shopping website you have interacted with an Oracle product. Signing on with Oracle in 2004 Charles E. Phillips is the current President of the company. I wonder how many times in a board meeting a fellow Caucasian executive has accused Mr. Phillips of lying. Charles E Phillips born in Arkansas in 1960 graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a B.S. Degree in computer science. He later moved onto the U.S. Marine Corps to become a Captain. He would eventually leave the US Marine Corps to pursue an MBA from Hampton University finally ending his academic pursuits with a JD from New York Law School. Maybe he wasn’t sure where he was going to end up but after completing his law degree he took and passed the bar in “Chocolate City”, Washington DC and Georgia. In 1994 he would join the financial sector as a software industry analyst for Morgan Stanley(a stock firm brokerage). He must have been very successful because as one of their technical czars he was given his own toll-free number 1800MRCHUCK, “Chuck” being his nickname.

The financial sector had so much praise to give Mr. Phillips that they recommended him to Oracle in 2003, to help restore credibility to the technological firm. In 2003, Phillips would move to the West Coast to join Oracles top executives. He currently sits on multiple boards including media giant Viacom Corporation, New York Law School and Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has been featured in magazines such as Black Enterprise and Forbes as one of the most influential executives in the nation. In February of this year he was appointed as a member to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide President Obama and his administration with advice and counsel in fixing America’s economic downturn. He has cemented his position as a Black Op and his drive and tenacity can only serve as an example for us to the feats possible when you use the organ between your ears.