Uneven patterns of employment in the workforce suggest that discrimination exists. But we cannot ascribe it entirely to employers’ hiring decisions. Employment is the last stage of the workforce development process, and discrimination can occur at any stage.

Discrimination can begin with the personal choices of individuals or their parents and advisers. It may occur at school or in the community. And it can happen in the workplace. We should not look for it in only one place, even though it shows up most clearly in the workplace. Wherever it happens, discrimination is harmful to the individual affected and to Indianapolis and Central Indiana.

Elsewhere in this report, we find that certain groups – black men, particularly – graduate from high school and attend college less often than other groups. And detailed information from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education confirms that black males are underrepresented in most courses of college study that will lead to careers in management and the medical and legal professions. Of 1,695 students from Central Indiana in the final year of a bachelor’s degree program in business in the 2005-06 academic year, only 81 (4.8 percent) were black males. Among 1,676 fourth-year students in education, 42 (2.5 percent) were black males.⁴ With numbers this small in the educational pipeline, it is unlikely that black male participation in these high-demand jobs will improve even if there were no workplace discrimination at all.

4 Of those fourth-year students, 449 (26.8 percent) were white males, dispelling the notion that small number of black men was solely the result of their reluctance to enter a female-dominated field.