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There's been a lot of back-and-forth over the last few weeks about the wage gap between whites and blacks, what caused it, and what causes it to remain.

But it's been a worthwhile education.

More people than ever before are aware of the wage gap, aware that it doesn't seem to be changing, and aware of a lot of different views on the subject too.

The two main schools of thought about the 42 per cent wage gap between white and blacks, as everybody ought to know by now, are that (a) it's caused by white employers discriminating against blacks and (b) that it's caused by an education system that has failed public school students, almost all of whom are black.

The correct answer, of course, is: "All Of The Above". Every instinct, every piece of information, and every casual observation tells me that both of these things are true.

Also true, I am sure, are some of the other "exacerbating factors" that have been thrown into the debates and arguments.

Like the impact of Government employment. It's overwhelmingly black - so much so that Bermuda's private sector employment is mostly white, even though the country has a majority black population.

But for all the public discussion of the wage gap, I'd be surprised if many people reached new conclusions. Most people probably hold to whatever they believed before.

Race, more than most subjects, is laden with vague myths and stereotypes: "Blacks aren't good at this....Whites always do this...". This kind of stuff is hard to change.

It's even harder to change attitudes, prejudices and discriminatory ways of doing things when they are being done in an unconscious way.

Indeed (as we have seen these last few weeks) accusing a business executive of racial discrimination will often provoke feelings of outrage and insult and defensiveness. Nobody wants to be called a racist, especially someone who sincerely believes he is doing the right thing.

One of the most exciting things about the debate in recent weeks, I think, is that the business community hasn't just sat there in arrogant silence.

They've made their arguments strongly. They've promised to produce research that will back their case that the problem is education, not discrimination (the detailed information hasn't been produced yet). And they've asked for more detailed breakdown of statistics from the Government.

The big conversation

Surely this is "the big conversation" in real life. Even those tempted to roll their eyes in exasperation at what they see as denial should seize the opportunity to educate and inform.

We have to face the fact that, when we're dealing with issues that involve so much myth-making, mistrust and defensiveness as race, that we have to be very calm, careful and detailed with whatever data we can get our hands on.

Simply convincing people that there is racial discrimination isn't enough: We have to convince people that they, personally, are involved in perpetuating the problem and that they, personally, can do specific things to help end the problem.

So that's another thing I hope we've learned over the last few weeks. All of us - the media, the Government, business and interest groups involved in fighting racism - need to get better at presenting data in detailed, accurate and convincing ways.

It's not so much about winning an argument. What's more important is doing a much better job going forward at overcoming racial discrimination, closing the wage gap once and for all and ensuring that all Bermudians are well educated.

One thing that is crystal clear from the data we have already is that we haven't done a good job so far in solving racial discrimination.

If we're ever going to take action against employers who discriminate - which we absolutely need to be able to do - we're going to have to be such persuasive masters of the detailed data that we can prove our case in court.

If we're every going to have, and enforce, any kind of "equal pay for equal work" legislation - which we should - we're going to have to be fluent with the most specific like-to-like comparisons of skills, qualifications and performance in the workplace.

And if we're ever going to do a better job at solving racial inequalities in Bermuda - and our record so far seems poor - it's bound to help if we have a more detailed understanding of where the specific problems are and how they can be fixed.

The recent debate over the wage gap has reminded us of a painful lack of progress.

One letter writer to the Gazette last week pointed out that many of the same problems of discrimination, and the same excuses about poor education, were being made during Bermuda's 1953 election campaign.

Yet the debates of recent weeks make it clear that more people recognize the depths of the problem, and that it isn't going to go away without huge, determined efforts by all of us.

The data - what we have already and whatever we collect in the future - cannot be an excuse for anyone. But it can be used to move forward with greater wisdom and greater success and greater unity than we have so far.

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