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I unbolt my response to Mr. Robert Stewart's Bermuda Sun column (Sept. 25) with the closing F.A. Hayek quote he dedicated to CURE and Mr. Cordell Riley: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they know about and what they imagine they can design."

Notwithstanding being a lifelong student of economics, Mr. Stewart grasped precious little of the economics of race, class and gender, as his commentary was little more than wishful laissez-faire ideologue.

Mr. Stewart presents a libertarian argument on the determination of wages purporting:

n That the free market accurately assigns wages based strictly on supply and demand;

n Consumers, absolutely and without interference of the employer, determines the wages of the employee;

n The highest producing employees receive the highest wages, without any social biases inserted by the employer.

He explains black Bermudians' salaries are a derivative of their lower productivity due to lower quality government education, insufficient and/or inferior college level training and less or lower quality experience.

Mr. Stewart's conclusions can be attributed to his structural economic belief that the free market unilaterally determines all outcomes, which is patently false as it fully ignores the micro-organizational systems that are highly influenced by social norms and intrinsic biases, despite inefficiencies such practices may knowingly or unknowingly impart in the market.

In a truly "free market", how many companies would provide their workers with health insurance, pensions and workers compensation? Perhaps a few, but most will not - which is why governments impose their respective constituents' interests through social economic programmes to moderate the behaviour of the free market.

Case in point; President Obama's health care proposal is trying to establish for America what the Bermuda Government implemented as social economic benefit for us 40 years ago.

Mr. Stewart stated ". . . the most productive employees are those with the best education. Those who attended government schools are penalized and hence earn lower wages. Until the fiasco called the Department of Education is sorted out there will be a persistent shortfall in the earnings of those who are badly educated." On principle, I cannot allow this ignorant statement to stand. I have an advantage that many white Bermudians or British cannot claim. I am a third generation black Bermudian college graduate and actually somewhat of a failure as I am the only male in my maternal family that did not graduate from Oxford or an American Ivy League school.

My grandfather Dr. Kenneth E. Robinson, was a Harvard PhD who was once penalized for speaking out in support of integration. As a member of a family that has a long history of formal education, individually we have all been subjected to diminishing levels of racism in the Bermudian workplace, but subjected nonetheless.

Academic success in my family, as in many black families that have benefited from university education, did not insulate us absolutely from racism, but we have been taught to persevere in spite of it.

Mr. Stewart asserts the obtainment of quality education automatically eliminates wage discrimination, whereas extensive testimony to the contrary can be solicited from contemporary and precedent black professionals in the local workforce. These challenges are not exclusive to black Bermudians, but universally to women, ethnic minorities and even to a limited degree white Bermudians in some areas of our local economy. Anecdotal accounts can be dismissed, the CURE statistics establish there remains work to be done in eradicating wage discrimination.

Some 60-75 per cent Bermudians attend Canadian or British universities, which are consistently of high quality. Historically the majority of black students graduated with medical, legal, teaching, nursing and engineering degrees.

Degree attainment has diversified considerably over the past three decades as college became more widely accessible. The quality of education is a concern, with a small cohort of students attending non-competitive American colleges, but their numbers do not materially impact salary data for the entire population.

The Department of Education is challenged and overdue in righting an educational system that was capsized by the previous Government as the reality of Pompeii loomed over them. Perhaps Mr. Stewart needs reminding that until the Department of Education discontinued the University of London G.C.E. examinations the public Berkeley Institute and Warwick Academy never played second fiddle academically to the private schools.

If you unjustly assumed, every graduate of the new senior secondary system over the past 10 years underperformed all of their private school counterparts, statistically this would not explain the variance in wages due to substandard public education across the entire population. Unless the free market had not fairly determined the wages of black workers that exited the former competitive public education system and attended a competitive or highly competitive universities. n

R. Scott Pearman holds a Masters Degree in Labour Relations & Human Resources from Michigan State University and is a certified Professional in Human Resources.

See part 2 of this article in next Wednesday's Bermuda Sun.[[In-content Ad]]

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