Wage disparity between whites and blacks

The Sun-Times has an article this morning regarding a report that came out talking about the anemic wage growth in Illinois over the past few years. I won't go into why this is occurring here (besides, it's dreadfully boring), but the last part of the article really shows how PC thinking and a lack of reasoning skills poison the national debate about race. Here's the money quote, set up by some statistics:

The report found education does not eliminate disparities between whites and minorities. Among whites with a college degree, 51.4 percent earn more than $100,000 per year, compared with 27.7 percent of blacks and 38.2 percent of Hispanics.

...

"The most disturbing trends you see are the continuing disparity between white and African-American wages, employment levels and the fact that those disparities continue on through all levels of education," said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. "I think it clearly indicates there's still discrimination."

This is completely laughable. Let me pose a question: who is going to earn a higher income, someone with a degree in social work or someone with a degree in electrical engineering? The answer is obvious, and that's what is at the heart of the so-called disparities.

I can't find supporting numbers after a brief Google search, but we all know (both anecdotally and from things we've read) that whites, compared to blacks, have disproportionately higher representation among those with college degrees in engineering and the hard sciences, which obviously are going to pay very well. Meanwhile, blacks are much more likely to get a degree is something that's basically easy and useless like education and social work. Those are the areas where there are huge differences; other majors in between those extremes have lesser, though identifiable, differences.

I am not saying blacks are inherently too stupid to major in higher-paying areas (it's mostly due to the terrible public education system that too many of them are trapped in up through grade 12). What I am saying is that anyone, regardless of race, who has a social work degree has virtually no chance to make as much money as someone with a degree in electrical engineering. That explains the disparity, not racism or discrimination. Since this study doesn't control for area of study and experience, the statistics cited above are useless.

Let me pose an additional thought experiment that I alluded to in a clumsy way in a previous post. Suppose there is still rampant discrimination, and all kinds of black engineers and lawyers and actuaries are being paid less money due to it. Wouldn't it make perfect sense for someone to start an engineering firm and hire only blacks? Just think: they could be paid much less and then the company would make craploads of money due to their low labor costs.

So why isn't this happening?