Community and Cultural Affairs Minister Wayne Perinchief has urged educators to do more to get marginalised black males ready to progress up the corporate ladder.

His comments come after the latest statistics show black males have slightly improved their lot while black females are forging ahead in the workplace.

The Commission for Unity and Racial Equality workforce survey shows representation for black executives increased from 20 percent in 2000 to 27 in 2004. However white males are still the largest group with 76 percent of executive positions while black males represented 18 percent.

And whites make up 73 percent of those earning $96,000 or more a year.

Mr. Perinchief said: “Workforce inequities and systems of discrimination, regardless of intent, are indefensible and demonstrate a total disregard for corporate social responsibility.”

He said a task force comprising all the major groups of employers was working at addressing the issue. White Bermudians held the majority of executive positions at 34 percent while black Bermudians had 60 percent of the non-professional positions.

Mr. Perinchief said there was still room for improvement by companies to ensure their workforce was diverse and representative.

Announcing the tabling of the CURE annual review of the workforce survey for 2004 and 2005 report in Parliament Mr. Perinchief said: “There has been some improvement in the workforce data.

“Notable is the movement of black employees into senior executive positions.

“However these gains for blacks have had no impact on the levels of white executives and additionally have resulted in a loss of representation for ethnic minorities.”

He added: “Proportions for black males decline as wages increase and the opposite occurs for white males.”

[<]*p(0,12,0,9.8,0,0,g)[>]But Mr. Perinchief is encouraged by the progress made by black females who are making inroads at the $60-95,000 income level. “At 25 percent their proportional representation is just one percent less than white males who represent the majority of earners at this level.“I think black women take advantage of the education system and they also have skill sets to participate at the corporate level — good communication skills and a work ethic.”He said they were prepared to start at the bottom rung doing clerical work and work their way up an organisation.“Thus race alone as a factor is not significant in these figures.”Mr. Perinchief said it was time to zero in on why black males with the right skill sets were not doing so well.He said there might be some resistance to black males that wasn’t levelled against black females. He told [<]I[>]The Royal Gazette[<]$[>]: “Why does one get ahead and not the other? We have to look at how educationalists are approaching our boys. “There’s obviously a disconnect there. It’s showing up here in these trends. Our males are not being pushed towards participating in the corporate world, by educators, by school counsellors, even by parents. I don’t believe parents are pushing their boys to look at accounting and bookkeeping.”He said boys who did hanker after professional careers were looking more at being doctors, lawyers and IT specialists.And he said the lack of black male role models in the corporate world helped perpetuate the stereotype which was being fuelled in all quarters.