Race and Gender in Economics
By Scott and Will
| Race has long since plagued the higher echelons of the economic community of the United States. We have noticed that the number of CEO's (Chief Executive Officers) in the top firms in the companies. The number of Black CEO's and Women CEO's is significantly lower than the number of White CEO's. While one could justify that the Civil Rights Movement has made significant progress, there is still a lot of territory to cover. There are several very prominent black and women figures in the economic community. For example, Oprah Winfrey, the talkshow host and female entrepreneur has established herself as arguably the most powerful women in the world. However, she is an exception and does not reflect the majority of women or minority citizens currently working in the United States. The higher levels of the economic community still are closed to many people of minority races. While reviewing data, we discovered that 2.4% of the top 500 Companies (According to Fortune 500) are run by Women CEO's. Meanwhile a minute .8% of all fortune CEOS are black. (4)
Shown here is American Express CEO, Kenneth I. Chenault, one of the four black CEO's who currently manages one of the elite Fortune 500 companies. While many other areas have opened up fully to people of all different races and nationalities, the higher economic community still greatly favors white males and is shown by the 96% percent of Fortune 500 CEO's who are white. This reflects the lack of diversity in Wall Street today. Troy Shaw talks about minority involvement in the economics of the state of Wisconsin. |
