A recent report highlighted a huge earnings gap between blacks and whites in Bermuda. Matthew Taylorcontinues his look at the causes and today talks Bermuda Telephone Company CEO Edgar Dill who made it to the top, despite a humble background and lingering racism. He fears Bermuda's education system, rather than lack of opportunity, is now holding back others hoping to follow in his footsteps.

Raised in a large family by a single mom in St. Monica's Mission, nobody could accuse BTC boss Edgar Dill of not making the most of what life has to offer.

And he says opportunities abound in 21st century Bermuda, but only for those willing and equipped to take them.

Now 55, Mr. Dill entered the telecommunications industry as a 16-year-old engineer and is now one of the few blacks to make it to the executive management level.

But while he encountered race barriers in his early years Mr. Dill said education was the key to those wanting to follow in his footsteps <\!m> whether it's going away to college or getting in-house training from a firm.

At BTC for the last five years, Mr. Dill spent most of his career at Cable and Wireless after graduating from the Bermuda Technical Institute in the early 1970s, a time when scholarships were thin on the ground.

[JUMP]So he went looking for an employer who would provide educational opportunities in engineering.

He started at C&W as a trainee technician and spent three years training in the UK getting a City and Guilds.

"Now I have two degrees. I got a MBA from MIT, all courtesy of C&W. But I had to work pretty hard to accomplish that, extra work on your own.

"It's not 8 to 5 then you knock off and you are finished." It meant developing at work and then developing academically at home, said Mr. Dill.

"But if you put in the time and effort you could progress upwards. You have to be flexible and willing."

Asked about why Bermuda still had a lingering wealth gap, he said: "I think it would be unfair to say we are still being held back.

"There was overt discrimination in Bermuda but the opportunities are there for blacks now. The overt discrimination is pretty much dead.

"But some of the challenge is you don't undo 20 to 30 years of discriminatory behaviour in ten years."

The educational differential worked its way through to career differentials argued Mr. Dill who said the higher paying jobs required higher qualifications.

"I recognised that in my career, so I made the commitment to self improvement."

Asked about discrimination he suffered he replied: "In my early years I faced my fair share of it.

"I had to put in a little bit more effort than some of my white friends when I was new but we are talking 30 years ago now, the times have changed.

"In my five years at BTC I haven't seen anything remotely like that."

He said BTC has been predominately black during most of its existence although initially its upper level was mostly white. "That has certainly changed in the past ten to 12 years."

And Cable and Wireless, being an international company, was for a time dominated by expats at the top but it has Bermudianised over time.

"Now the number one challenge for blacks is we have to close the educational gap, there are opportunities out there but they are not going to come knocking on your door.

"You have to be looking for it and willing to take the challenge and run with it.

"But education is paramount. There are an abundance of school scholarships.

"I am amazed about the opportunities floating around in Bermuda. For kids who are financially challenged there are ways to get financial support."

Education starts early, said Mr. Dill. "The key to my success was my mother. My dad died when I was young leaving me, my four younger brothers and my mom all alone.

"But she drove us. Parents don't do that enough with children. It's the age of 'give me, give me, give me'.

"She worked days and evenings and ruled us with a heavy hand. She told us education is the key to success.

"We are losing a lot of the educational drive in our kids in middle school.

"As a parent I sometimes think we are guilty of giving them too much too quickly. That inner desire to succeed, to be the best you can be probably isn't being developed as strongly as it needs to be because they got it all handed to them."

Mr. Dill said he was not satisfied with how the school system got people work-ready.

"They are coming out of high school and my sense is they are not prepared to go straight into the workforce."

He recalls one applicant from a public school struggling to fill in the application form.

But getting rid of the middle school system would be too complicated and would take too long, said Mr. Dill.

"We need to fix the middle schools. We need to give them some real shape and purpose."

He welcomed CedarBridge turning away entrants not up to standard, although that stance has now been reversed.

Asked about the large numbers of black middle managers but scarcity of blacks at a higher level Mr. Dill said often who got appointed to top jobs hinged on the make-up of the board.

"If you have still got a predominately white board there is the possibility that some of that could be trickling down from the board."

>But he said Bermudians were sometimes not mentally prepared for life at the top.

"My mother told me there were two kinds of people in life <\!m> those who follow and those who lead.

"I have seen people go into management and struggle with it. The problem they have is separating friendship on the job from friendship outside.

"In management you look at your friend but you can't see a friend, you just see an employee. I think a lot of Bermudians have challenges with that.

"I remember a very good friend, we'd known each other for years, but I had to give him a very bad appraisal. That is not easy, tell him 'you are not doing your job'."

While only 27 percent of executive management are black, Mr. Dill believes the picture will improve over the next decade but only the educated stand to profit.

And he believes the wealth gap will be eradicated over time.

"There are still some elements of the playing field that need to be levelled. That's gradually starting to happen.

"We are going to have more young people turning up and pressing to progress but we will have to get them to understand that they don't graduate from school and get the keys to the CEO's office the next day.

"The infusion of youth into the workforce will force some change. So I see a slightly different picture in ten years. I think we will see more some levelling out, some closing of the gap."

Tomorrow: Government has long been seen as a safe job for black Bermudians. But is it time to get out of the comfort zone and seek great far greater fortunes in international business?