In 2004, I sat in a ballroom filled with members of the US Hispanic Leadership Institute for a luncheon with a little known Illinois state senator named Barack Obama.  I had no idea who he was at the time (I was visiting from my home in Los Angeles), so I turned to the person sitting next to me, who happened to be one of the conference organizers.  A Chicago native, she was all excited about him and said something to me that at the time I honestly didn’t believe: “they’re even talking about him running for President in 2008.”

Despite the progress that has been made in most areas of workforce diversity throughout the US, discrimination, in all of its ugly forms, unfortunately persists. And as the population of older workers who choose to remain in the workforce beyond the traditional age of retirement increases over the coming years, age discrimination in the workplace will likely increase as well.

New data released by the US Census Bureau indicates that the US workforce will become increasingly more diverse over the next thirty years. This continuous increase in workplace diversity will come primarily as a result of the large number of retiring baby boomers (eventually they will all retire) and the growing population of minorities.

Most organizations are well aware of the simple truths about workplace diversity. But when it comes to creating a diverse, inclusive and fair workforce, most companies are challenged to the point that their good intentions are all they can offer their current and prospective diversity employees.

Eighteen years ago, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was designed to help prevent job discrimination against qualified disabled individuals. Yet almost two decades later, more than 60 percent of the nation’s working-age disabled individuals are unemployed.

Though many companies have been progressively refining and improving their diversity recruiting efforts, employers are still challenged by the process of retaining and nurturing workplace diversity, according to Carmen Van Kerckhove, president of New Demographic, a firm that specializes in workplace diversity.

In response to critics complaints that a new ad campaign promoting basketball shoes was insensitive to gay men and African Americans, sporting goods behemoth Nike, Inc. pulled the ads, which were displayed primarily outdoors in New York, Atlanta and Philadelphia.

As more and more older workers choose to remain in the workforce rather than retire, the incidences of age discrimination have increased to the point that age bias is now the number one form of discrimination in the workplace.

It seems obvious that race relations in the 21^st century are much better than they were during the majority of the 20^th century. Despite this apparent reality, when it comes to race relations, Black and White Americans don’t exactly agree on how much things have changed over the years.

Even though there currently is an African American running for president, an Indian American serving as governor of Louisiana, an African American woman as Secretary of State, and several other minorities serving in high positions in both business and government, workplace diversity still has a long way to go.