We haven’t yet reached the spectacle in which woke workplace zealots demand that NBA teams suit up at least one black, one white, one Asian, and one Hispanic player in their starting line-ups, but some private workplaces are coming close. The human resources protocols of one of the world’s largest financial investment firms are taking woke quotas to a surreal new level.
According to the Times of London, hiring managers at State Street Global Advisors will need to seek permission before hiring additional white males. State Street aims to triple the number of black, Asian, and other minority staff as part of a drive to improve diversity within its management by 2023.
Failure to meet the target will result in a drop in executives’ bonuses. Woke-ism seems to outweigh capitalism. Instead of serving their clients’ interests by hiring the best financial advisors, State Street’s clients have been taken hostage by woke-ism.
State Street is headquartered in the United States, with offices in dozens of other countries. Unfortunately, State Street and many other Fortune 100 companies with diversity hiring initiatives will have severe difficulty meeting their targets regarding black representation in the United States, and at least partly because of leftist politics.
Too Few Qualified Black Candidates
That’s because the current talent pool of qualified black candidates is likely not large enough to meet these goals of “equal representation.” The reason for this is not the “systemic racism” we are consistently told about. Ironically, the same left-leaning organizations pointing their fingers at capitalism and crying “racism” are responsible for the underrepresentation of black people in nearly every facet of society except prisons and professional sports.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a federal agency that tracks academic performance, says that 80 percent of black students graduated from high school in 2019. However, in order to achieve the impressive 80 percent, school boards in at-risk areas lowered academic standards. If the standards were consistent with the 1990 or 2000 standards, the graduation rates would be much lower.
For example, in 2015, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board voted unanimously to deem a 1.0 grade point average as passing rather than deny such students a diploma. In Baltimore earlier this year, a student who passed only three classes in four years ranked near the top half of his class with a 0.13 grade point average, according to Forbes. The district ran on a $1.4 billion budget for only 78,000 students – a cost of $18,000 per year per pupil, according to the magazine.
College graduation rates for black students are not much better. Based on a 2019 report from the NCES, only about 40 percent of black students who enter college graduate with a degree in six years. For black males, graduation rates are 34 percent, smaller than any other demographic tracked.
Policy Not Privilege Created Today’s Disparities
The woke left built a Ponzi scheme in public education that has bankrupted the black community financially, morally, and academically. Now the left is trying to infect the private sector with the same failing philosophies. It is easier to blame rich white suburbanites and brand them with “white privilege” than to admit that decades of misguided leadership, social welfare programs, and failed policies have decimated the two-parent black family, creating the academic, financial, and boardroom disparities we see today.
What we have seen in the black community in the past 50 years is nothing short of cultural genocide. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, nearly 80 percent of black children were born into two-parent families. Today, nearly 80 percent of black children are born into fatherless homes.
Stacks of credible research conclude that children raised without a father are more likely to exhibit behavioral problems, face abuse and neglect, abuse drugs and alcohol, commit crimes, go to prison, and drop out of high school, taking them out of the running for the corporate boardroom. Fatherless homes generate disparities that range from health care to economic liberty.
Lack of representation in corporate boardrooms, corporate leadership, and many other sectors of society is not because of mythical white privilege. It is due to the breakdown of the black family, which prohibits children from learning behaviors required to achieve success academically and beyond.
Left Has Long Controlled Failing Schools
The left has for decades controlled school boards and administrations in nearly every American city. Their stewardship has not produced stellar outcomes and innovative new programs. The only visible gains are seen in increased budgets and career advancement for progressives, all while producing a long list of excuses for student failure and blocking school choice for parents desperately wanting to move their children from failing and dangerous schools.
State Street’s bow to woke-ism is good news for savvy, honest, and scrappy entrepreneurs who care more about their clients than worshipping woke gods. The lurch to the left by global corporations creates new market opportunities for companies that serve customers’ interests in lieu of popular ideology and suit up the best financial advisors, regardless of race or ethnicity.
