“We Hire People Like You”

As we continue to navigate these strange times of COVID-19, of demonstrations and riots in the streets due to exposing systemic racism, and of failed leadership that seems hell-bent on creating divisiveness instead of unity and collaboration, let’s keep listening to each other and try to reach common ground.

Let me be clear, I believe that discrimination based on race, sex, or someone’s socio-economic background is wrong. And I believe that until we collectively acknowledge that systemic racism still exists, we cannot correct it.

I have a dear friend who is a self-described bleeding liberal, and although he and I do not agree on everything, Joe is a great listener and his thought process is always lucid and fair. I respect Joe a great deal and I am an avid follower of his blog. I also have conservative friends that I love dearly, who are good people, and do much good in the world. So, I apologize in advance if some of what I convey hurts. It’s not truth. It’s just my opinion.

I think we would all agree that four more years of Trump is not acceptable. If, for no other reason, he is not a good person – a narcissistic strong man, who uses divisiveness to hide his failings as a leader.  However, we would be kidding ourselves if we believe that having the Democrats control the White House and both chambers will fix these problems. Throwing money at problems do not fix them. The Romans demonstrated that two thousand years ago, as did our most recent legislation that provided billions of dollars to help small businesses – which, by the way, failed miserably. 

I am not a conservative, and I am not a liberal. I am a compassionate realist. Having grown up in poverty with a single mom with four kids on welfare, I can speak authentically on the subject of what it is like to try to climb out of the underclass. It is hard.  I hope the following story gives you, the reader, a good idea of where I stand on the subject of racism. 

“We Hire People Like You”

Growing up as part of the underclass, it was hard escaping that world – on many levels.  And here is the kicker. I am white. I have the benefit of white privilege. Once I had a college degree and an MBA from one of the finest public universities in the United States, there was nothing, at least on the surface (I had even managed to lose my country accent in college), that would indicate that I grew up as “poor white trash.” I am just being blunt.  I believe that if the color of my skin had been different, it would have been even more difficult – not impossible, just even harder.

Three true and related stories follow to illustrate systemic socio-economic, sex, and race discrimination. The first focuses especially on the difficulty of climbing out of the underclass.

We all know that getting a job as an investment banker is a moon shot out of poverty. These are the privileged elite who, although they work very long hours, are paid way more than they are worth. Those jobs are a ticket to financial success and security.  When I graduated from business school, I interviewed for one of those jobs. Although I did not attend an Ivy League school, I was fortunate that my resume ended up at a firm who’s Head of Investment Banking had gone to the same school where I obtained my MBA. During my interview with the head of the department he asked me the following question, “What does your dad do?” I was immediately taken aback. What in the hell does that have to do with me? I gave him an honest answer. His response was, “We hire people like you.” Wow! They really did not hire people like me. I was not “one of them.” Needless to say, I was not offered the job.  Two years later, I ended up getting a job as an investment banker at the same firm working for someone else!

A few weeks after I started working at this firm, I was asked to show up in front of the CEO’s office the following Friday at noon. You see, this was a boutique investment firm with less than 3,000 employees and less than 250 people in its Capital Markets division. Every few weeks or so the CEO would take all new employees in the Capital Markets division out to lunch. That’s a great thing, right?

So, I dutifully show up outside our CEO’s door. Waiting outside of his office were six others, including an equity trader who had moved down from New York, and who also happened to be female. Our CEO walks out, looks at her and says, “I am sorry honey, but the establishment where we are having lunch today does not allow women, so I will take you out to lunch another day.” I was mortified and embarrassed. I was embarrassed by our CEO, by our firm, by being a southerner, but most of all, I was embarrassed at myself for not having the guts to refuse lunch so that she did not have to take that remark alone.  She was extremely gracious about it and the rest of us joined our CEO for a very subdued lunch. I hated every minute of it.  Because of my silence or “neutrality” on that day, I believe I contributed to systemic discrimination.

I began to wonder what kind of messed up company I now worked for? First, two years ago I was the victim of socio-economic discrimination from someone in a leadership position at this firm. And then the CEO blatantly excludes a woman and is not embarrassed by his behavior. It was just “accepted.”  It was a classic case of institutionalized discrimination or what some describe as systemic discrimination. Systemic racism or any other kind of systemic discrimination is, in some ways, more dangerous and pernicious than overt or individual racism because it can be more subtle and can be more difficult to identify and detect. Systemic racism exists because society adopts certain attitudes and norms, thinking that for example, the underclass are poor and uneducated because they are lazy, not because they are not given the same opportunities as others. And because many whites accept that characterization, they do not hire minorities, thus institutionalizing an attitude and creating a norm.

Although I had my doubts about some of the leadership at the company, I remained and did well. And as the company grew, it continued to hire more and more people from Wall Street, creating a more diverse workforce, but the workforce still consisted mostly of white males and systemic discrimination remained.  Several years after the “lunch incident,” I became head of the Healthcare Public Finance Group at a relatively young age.  In our associate pool, we had a black investment banker who was very good. Each Group Head wanted this banker in their respective groups, including me. I also knew that this banker wanted to work for me. I approached my boss, who had become my mentor, and who I admire to this day, and asked if this banker could be put into my group. He said a decision had already been made to assign him to the municipal group because many municipalities that we dealt with had decision makers who were black. In addition, my boss pointed out that all of my clients were white, and they may not feel comfortable dealing with a black investment banker. 

My former boss is a good man and has as much integrity as anyone I have ever known, and I do believe he was looking out for this associate’s best interest as well as the department’s. I made the case that we should not dictate this associate’s future based on the color of his skin and we should let him choose. After some thought, my boss agreed. As I guessed he would, the associate chose to come work with me. For a short period, I wondered if maybe I had made a mistake. This associate would be working exclusively with white clients. And maybe my desire to obtain the most talented banker regardless of race had limited this young black man’s future. Although we occasionally had to deal with subtle racism with a few of my clients, I am happy to say that the associate became a protege, remained in the healthcare sector, and is now a very successful investment banker.

Those three stories illustrate systemic discrimination. And it remains. I see it all the time. And it may be subtle or nuanced, and may even appear innocent, like the situation with my boss. But in our desire to protect people, we sometimes limit them. Welfare had that impact on my mom. With an eighth-grade education, there was no way my mom could earn as much as she was getting paid by being on welfare. In fact, she was incentivized to have more kids by the system. However, her choice came with a stigma attached – lots of shame. And if the government had thrown more money into the system, it would have been worse because the government would have eliminated any incentive to get off of welfare, even with the shame attached. 

I believe three things are needed by all who are in the underclass who wish to escape. They are initiative, a social support structure, and education. Angela Duckworth, in her NYT best-selling book, talks about her work as an educator in the Philadelphia inner city school system. She identifies Grit or perseverance, not intelligence, as the primary driver for some kids getting out.  She has not figured out why some kids have it and some do not. I have my own theories about that, and it goes back to the importance of household. 

I am not going to belabor education. We all know how important that is. I will talk about social support structure. Mine came from two places – the Church and my peer group. Although no one in my immediate family or even extended family attended church, I began attending a local small Baptist church due to its “Bus Ministry.” Starting in the seventh grade I began attending church, and soon thereafter, joined the youth group, and eventually the youth choir. My moral character began to change drastically – for the good. As a result, I began to hang around peers who were good people. This caused me to seek those same type of people in school, who happened to make good grades, and most of which, wanted to attend college. As a benchmark, at most, only 15 percent of the graduates from my high school at the time attended a four-year college. Consequently, I had the desire and perseverance and the social support structure through church and peers to make education a priority, thus giving me a fighting chance. 

As much as we like to criticize our churches for being too conservative, they did provide a stable social support system that is not being replaced as they become less and less relevant. I was on a sixteen-mile bike ride this past Sunday when I took my first water break six miles into the ride – under a tree located next to St. Thomas Church.  Evidently, despite COVID-19, the congregation, exclusively African American, was finishing up their outdoor service.  As I stood near my bike listening to a testimonial being delivered by one of the congregants, I was motioned by a woman to come closer so I could hear better. So, I did. 

After a few minutes, one of the other women standing nearby asked if I wanted to say something to the crowd.  I froze for a few seconds, not knowing what to say.  Not only was I the only white person in the crowd, I was the only one wearing a ridiculous looking biking outfit.  I was even walking strangely because I was wearing my clip biking shoes.  What were they thinking of me?  However, before I knew it, I responded with “Sister, I have one hell of a story to tell?” What in the hell was I thinking?  Somehow, I do not know where it came from, but I was moved by the Holy Spirit.  It was a God Moment.  And before I knew it, I had the microphone in my hand laying out my soul to these strangers, who just happened to be all black.  But there was so much love and acceptance. 

So, I told them very quickly about growing up in Louisa County without a father, about growing up with no indoor plumbing, and about Mineral Baptist Church – the church that helped save me.  I told them that churches are the backbone of many communities and provide the social support structure than many of us need.  And I thanked them for letting me speak and to be a part of their gathering.  Again, I do not know what came over me, but I began singing “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” a song that speaks about universal brotherhood and that it starts with you.  It was my go-to song when I sang solos in the youth choir at Mineral Baptist Church.  I cried as I sang it to these wonderful, gracious people, who let me in to their intimate space.  Not once did I mention the racial tension that our society is currently experiencing.  I did not need to.  It was understood by them and by me that the only way we are going to fix this is by one experience at a time, by one encounter at a time, and by each of us calling out discrimination when we see it.

After I was finished, I was handed a few tissues to wipe my eyes.  I wished we could have hugged, but instead I gave a few of them elbow taps.  And I got back on my bike and rode off, back to my life of white privilege. I say that not to feel guilty, but to acknowledge what I believe to be a truth.

Somehow, we have to find ways to give the underclass a sense of being valued and an opportunity to contribute, and to hold them and the communities in which they live accountable. But unless we also address systemic racism and social-economic discrimination, holding people of color and their communities accountable alone will not fix the problem.  And if the democrats decide to throw more money at this problem, I will borrow my friend Joe’s phrase:

God help us.