content: I'm going to guess that, for most companies, this disparity is a result of social, economic, and cultural issues that are outside of a business' control. There may be some people inside a business that have the ability to enact discriminatory practices (and I'm sure this does happen), but it would be something that would be difficult to prove. Lets look at the Duke Power Company example they used in the article:  DPC wants to maximize its revenue. In order to do that, someone decides that the hiring process should have restrictions. Businesses do this all the time so that they can easily sort through the pile of applications that they get for new job openings. Everyone agrees that requiring a high school education and getting a specific score on a test is a good metric. Again, this is something other businesses do this all the time and there is little controversy over it. Once this practice is in place, everything would seem perfectly normal until you take the time to scrutinize the results with respect to the hiring of minorities ("People of color" in this case.). As it turns out, black people in that hiring area were more likely to drop out of high school, and because of this, have a lower level of education. This was not the intention of the hiring practice, but it was the result of much larger social and economic issues. This is all guess work of course. It may be that someone at DPC came in one day and said "What can I do to keep the niggers outa here". Although, even if this was intentional, it still points out that social, economic, and cultural issues, which are outside the control of any individual business' control, are being leveraged to create discriminatory hiring practices.