Anyone gone from Middle office to front?

You're right about the diversity programs but that usually serves black kids at HYP and other top schools like Brown or LSE/Oxford/Cambridge etc, I went to a school that has been described as semi target at best by alumni and we mostly place into back office roles. Not to mention they are exclusively for people still in school, I had already graduated so did not qualify for any and like I said networking works when your background is already solid. Mine wasn't so few people would want to vouch for me. 

As you go down further away from top schools it is very hard to break in without knowing anyone despite the diversity programs I have seen very few black or any race for that matter break in from community college or no name schools without rich parents. 

And I don't know if you are a minority but there is a lot of issues within many minority communities in the professional world where people of the same race try to derail your career as a way to not look soft like I mentioned, I have seen Indians and South Americans say the same thing when dealing with people from the same countries, as a matter of fact whenever I interviewed with a black person I always got the worst feedback and networking invites usually never got a response, the black people who did respond made it very clear that they were pro black and had BLM and so on in their titles and wore dreadlocks and beads in their profile pictures. 

I did not grow up in America but my black friends who did say that black police officers were often worse and more aggressive than white police officers and since I moved here I have seen this in dealing with police as well as in the professional world as I have only ever been handcuffed by black officers before. 

Also some black people are just scared, if they are the only black person in a bank or team and have been for a while they know that there is a target on their back and any thing that pisses of their boss they would be out of the door.