Government's legal initiatives for narrowing the gap between white and black attainment in Bermuda are well intentioned, but poorly thought out.

Premier Ewart Brown's "Goodwill Plus" initiative has probably been criticised more because he did such a poor job of explaining it in a speech in Washington, DC, than because it is unheard of, or because understudying or apprenticeships are not occurring already.

And the draft Workplace Empowerment Act, which aims to increase the proportion of black Bermudians in the workplace and contains punitive measures for companies that fails to do so, is so poorly drafted and contains so many loopholes and contradictions that whatever legislation finally makes it to Parliament will almost certainly look quite different.

But this is a debate that is worth having. It is a fact that blacks lag behind whites in most income and career areas, as well as in general wealth. The gap narrows when black and white Bermudians are compared, but it is still there, and the progress that was made over the first 40 yeas after desegregation has certainly slowed.

It is also true that many Bermudians are frustrated that they are not sharing in the Island's economic success as fully as they would like, at the same time that they are having to compete harder than ever for everything from housing to school places to enduring rush hour congestion and the like.

There a number of reasons for this, not least the Island's move from a tourism-dependent economy to a "two pillar" economy and subsequently to an economy which is largely dependent on international business, all in the space of a quarter century, a period which is much shorter than the average working life. The demand for highly specialised employees in the rapidly expanding international business sector would be difficult for any small population to meet, and is harder still for a population which has enjoyed full employment for decades

Secondly, the train wreck of public education in the last 15 years or so, now finally acknowledged, has made it exceptionally difficult for public school students, who are largely black, to compete in the workforce.

And it must also be said that while some employers have worked hard to diversify their workforces, others have not.

Still, will the proposed legislation change anything? The quick answer is probably not, at least not in the short term. Most companies outside of financial services are already well integrated and have a proportion of black employees who already exceed the population ratio. The big problem comes not in the overall employee pool, or even in middle management, but in the senior ranks of companies. Given the length of time it takes for senior managers to develop, coupled with the explosion in the reinsurance sector of the economy, it is difficult to see how the proportion of Bermudians in senior management, let alone black Bermudians, could have kept pace, let alone improved.

With regard to the legislation itself, there is the inevitable question of whether black Bermudians wish to be perceived as having reached a senior position by virtue of their abilities, or because of some form of affirmative action, which this is.

That is not to say that there are not people who feel, often with justice, that they have been held back from reaching their full potential. But rigorous enforcement of Immigration policies and human rights laws, along with the genuine desire of most businesses to hire and promote Bermudians should be sufficient to ensure that black and white Bermudians advance. New legislation will not necessarily change that.

It has been discussed at some length that the real problem for Bermuda lies in an education system that does not produce adequate numbers of Bermudians who are ready to take their place in an economy that has changed dramatically in the last 25 years.

This is a fair point, but fixing education will not be enough, partly because even if education improved dramatically tomorrow, that would only solve the problem for people just entering the workforce, not for those people who have already been in it for a decade or more.

Instead, there is a desperate need for training and retraining for older people already in the workforce if Bermudians are going to be able to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities that are available - right now.