1982 XJ550 Maxim Possible manufacturing flaw?

I was having a difficult time installing a new start push button on my 1982 XJ550 right handlebar. So a simple job which should take a half-hour turned into two days of tracing the schematics from my Clymer manual.

On p. 164, the black wire on the Start Switch is clearly grounded. I traced the black wire down to the connector and to my surprise, there is no mating black wire on the other connector! I've attached a photo to make it clearer.

Does your Maxim have the same configuration -- no black wire? Does my bike have a manufacturing flaw? Or is this a design flaw that everyone has? Or is it supposed to be missing for some reason?

When I use some clips to ground out the black wire, the push button works beautifully, much much better than when the grounding happened weakly thru the handlebar.

 

Some of our XJs get ground from the unpainted part of the handle bars under the control assemblies.
So people who paint or swap for painted bars run into problems.
Beyond that I'm not sure about your bike.
If it is getting ground from the control assembly to bar surface, it wouldn't need the extra black ground connections. Perhaps they used off the shelf switch/connectors and the missing ground didn't really matter for the XJ

 

Thanks Bob. Since it is OK to get ground from the handlebars, I'll go ahead and clean up that circuit path, making sure no one has painted over it.

 

I just did that on the exact same bike last week, the new yamaha button actually gives you 2 new connectors. No black wire indeed lol. I dont now how you are tracing wires for days??? even with splicing the new connectors the whole job took me 20 mins. I am pretty shure it grounds in the handle bar more or less.