Offer Pulled Due To Lies About Race

Student at IU Kelley got his offer rescinded by Perella today since he got reported by multiple peers that he lied about being black. 

Honestly think its hilarious that a kid would be dumb enough to tell people that he lied about his race.

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Saw this kid at a diversity program and he was obviously not black

 

He was Indian or some sort of Middle Eastern it looked like. Thought maybe he was gay or something. Not to dox him (although he did a pretty shitty thing), but he had an Indian name, too.

 

Has anyone else ever seen this happen before? I’ve always wondered how kids who you would obviously think are white claim they’re diversity with distant relatives or some BS

 

This topic brings up an interesting question as to what counts in the diversity programs. A large number of people of Indian descent settled in Kenya long ago. There's even a Wikipedia article on it: Indians in Kenya. Certainly there was some intermingling of the gene pool over the 100s of years. 

Does having (mostly) Indian (genetically speaking) ancestors from Kenya count as being African? 

 
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This is honestly no surprise what so ever. I'm currently a student at IU involved in the IB program and this kid lying about diversity for PWP isn't even close to the only one...

I can think of 9-10 kids from IU Kelley this past year alone who either straight up lied about race or at the very least greatly exaggerate it. Off the top of my head there's an Indian kid who claims that he's black (1) and another kid that's white as snow who claims that he's Hispanic (2) and both of them are interning at Moelis; another Indian kid who claims he's African interning at Guggenheim (3); another brown kid who is a senior going to BAML that claims he's Hispanic (4); also a kid who is a senior going to Goldman who also claims that he's black even though he is super white (5). Keep in mind, these people are likely going to continue lying about diversity in the future which will help them with return offers, promotions, MBA admission, later career recruiting, fund raising, etc. 

The professor who runs the banking program at Kelley and the Dean are obviously well aware that candidates are completely lying about diversity, but the goal of the program is to achieve 100% placement as a statistic to increase IU Kelley's name equity. It's likely much easier to achieve this statistic of 80/80 placements when you have less straight Asian men to worry about on paper.   

Personally, I don't think there's anything morally wrong with lying about diversity. Diversity programs don't achieve what they're meant to and when these firms started these programs ~8 years ago or so they completely opened up a can of worms that have no limit. It's gotten to the point where even if you go to HYSWP and are well connected an average diversity candidate will beat you out for a spot with ease even while being underqualified. If you don't have family in the industry and decided at age 16 / 17 years old to go to school at TCU or some above average state-school that happens to not have an IB presence the only way for you to even get interview is to lie about diversity. The only reason someone hasn't publicly spoken out against these programs is because of cancel culture and having to worry about being doxed and falsely labelled racist / sexist. 

I think it's hilarious that lying that your ancestors used to live in Africa 100+ years ago or that you're dad is 25% black can make such a profound difference in your recruiting prospects. Again, I don't think lying about diversity isn't fundamentally wrong if that's what you need to do to break in, but obviously if you get caught like this idiot at PWP it can be a complete career wrecker that sticks with you. 

 

Have some insight into the result of this after some of the initial blowback. 

  • The kid didn't lose his offer. In fact, he's doing a diversity program at RBC as a sophomore this summer.
  • The kid changed recently changed his race from Asian to black within the university registrar
  • The IBW professor, Steven Sibley, knows that he lied about his race, but is not taking any action in order to protect IU's placement numbers

reply to this comment if you want me to PM you with the email he used to defend himself to Perella's HR. Honestly pathetic. Claiming that his Indian ancestry included African heritage...

 

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