racism in banks
With all that has been going on in the world with the death of George Floyd, it has made me curious about racism in banks. I am a freshman in college so I have never truly worked in a bank so out of curiosity have any of you guys who have work in banks ever experience racism or know someone who has ever experienced racism?
racism is everywhere. everywhere. do not be silent when you see it and denounce it. fuck racists
blacklivesmatter
...how does this get MS?
lot of right wing shitheels on this forum
Cause there's loads of edgy high school and college 8channers here.
Conservatives who don't agree with you, but too scared to tell you why, hence the MS. Some might even call them.....triggered.
Conservatives on the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that racism doesn't exit
I've worked at 3 different banks over the past decade. I have noticed that they don't care what your race is. As long as you perform well and produce, you will get paid and do very well.
That assumes you already have a job at a bank
And how many black folks do you see working alongside you?
The racism isn't of the kind where everyone is dropping N bombs and working to keep minorities from equal advancement opportunities, it's the fact that high level executives and people making hiring decisions are pre-selecting from a group of people that doesn't really include minorities. I said this on another thread but it bears repeating - people who get hired in the first place get that opportunity, by and large, through channels which are fundamentally geared towards hiring white people. Plenty of people in banking get their job because they have an in at the bank that developed from having their parents/social circle hobnobbing with the people who make decisions at financial institutions - golf courses, private schools, etc. Everyone knows that you need something more than just good grades to get into banking, just like getting into an elite university. When it comes to finding a job, that often means connections that just aren't available for people of color. Which is why in the short term, solving for equality of placement and not just equality of opportunity is crucial. In the long run, more minorities getting in the door means more representation at mid and higher levels of financial institutions, which means minorities have the ability to develop those connections which right now are all but nonexistent.
I 100% respectfully disagree with you. I am a republican and have hired many people of color. I DO NOT CARE what you skin color is as long as you are a great person, bring a great attitude, and want to learn.
About me without getting into details: My dad came to this country from Eastern Europe with $20 dirt poor. We had nothing growing up. Imagine getting your apartment robbed every week at 2am. With hard work and dedication my family created a real estate business in this country. We lived the American Dream, hence why i love this country. I didn't know anyone prior to finance nor any connections. I worked as my ass off and did whatever it took to network. I was a VP by the time I was 25 working in credit.
Sorry if this long winded but in summary, I DO NOT CARE what your background or skin color is. Those that want it will always outwork the rest. I have seen tons of gay, lesbo, yellow, green, blue whatever the fuck the color of skin is succeed on the street. Put your head down and work.
If this were true, why is there minimal diversity amongst MDs and other senior people? And don't give me that "less black, etc. apply for the job" crap. It's because they can't break in because all the MDs from CT/NJ/Long Island and others are using nepotism to get their (predominantly white) children jobs and whatnot. Nepotism isn't afforded to people when the system is designed for certain people to succeed.
Waiting for the MS from all the asians who think they should count as diverse. The system isn't structually designed to screw you via racial profiling. People don't assume you're going to steal shit or kill them, they just assume you're good at math.
I do notthink there is a lot of overt racism but I can that I've seen this on the PE & VC side. I think it's "unconscious" but also systemic at the same time. I have never once heard anyone make a racist comment or derogatory comments however, I have seen some bias in recruiting and IC. Looks like it will be up to the younger generation to make the changes needed
what’s the bias look like for recruiting / IC?
I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s just because people can be senior and are used to the world their own way (don’t go out of their way to pander or include maybe). Most senior partners / even on operating side fit certain type but its not like their unreceptive to people (juniors are insanely diverse, less as it goes up) who enter the company. it’s just like that because it’s like that, lot is changing though.
There is racism and prejudice everywhere in society. The only difference in banks and other professional settings is it tends to be subtle, underhand and mostly a cheap shot, because of the sayers inferiority complex, rather than malicious in nature. Nonetheless don’t stand for it and call it out every time. They will soon get the msg.
As a white person I will tread carefully regarding this topic, yet, I feel like I should comment on a decade of management experience:
I believe, like the posters before me, that there is subtle and not so subtle racism, xenophobia and micro-aggressions on many levels of society. Different countries have different ways of showing this in different scenarios.
Like all layers of society, the professional world does have various forms of racism. It can be a candidate who wasn't interviewed due to a foreign-sounding name on a resume. It could be a promotion given to a colleague that could/should/would have gone to a minority candidate. It is hard to show or explain how these decisions are made, but there is almost never a 100% objective way of handling it, IMO.
Recently there was a report online that only 4 out of 500 US companies had a black CEO, I didn't fact check that report. If true, I would be surprised how low that number is. Thought it was higher. What are the reasons for this? Should this number be higher?
I am in PE/VC currently and I can see that most people around me (in startups, within our firm, within the ecosystem we are in) pretty much all look and act the same.
Should i change my name to avoid getting dinged? It's an ethnic name that alumni can hardly pronounce and i notice that they show visible discomfort with the additional 15 seconds at the start of every convo to go through the pronunciation. I'm scared that it will be a problem for junior year recruiting , working with other bankers in the summer and PE in the future.
Nobody should tell you what feels right or wrong in your life.
However, here are a few examples what a few of my ethnic friends are doing: - A Chinese colleague has an Anglosaxon name that he uses in everyday business situations instead of his Chinese name. His last name is easy to pronounce or write. - A friend from Sri Lanka uses a shortened last name, she told me it is now easier to spell or write and she even has a new email address with it. She said it won't deny her heritage or culture and still has an advantage in the West. - Another black friend from Africa was recently naturalized and he wanted a new name, picked a new first and last name after the ceremony.
So it is really up to you!
Long story short....yes I would.
different take: your name likely makes you more memorable, which is arguably what you want in that context
This is an important topic and hope it gets more attention.
At the battle of Magnesia in 190 BC, Lucius Cornelius Scipio with his Greek Ally Eumenes of Pergamum, faced Antiochus III The Great, ruler of the Seleucid Empire.
The main bulk of Scipio's army was his 20k legion of Italics. Eumenes provided light auxiliary and cavalry from Pergamum and the Greek mainland. Some elephants from North Africa were also present, but kept in defense as their size was smaller than the Indian counterpart present in the Seleucid army, and the beasts were scared.
Antiochus III fielded a majestic 70k army. It included a 16k strong Macedonian style phalanx at its core. Then Gauls who had migrated from their home region, ransacked Greece and finally established themselves in Galatia, central Anatolia. Additionally, cataphracts from Cappadocia and Central Asia. Dahae horse archers also from Central Asia. Dromedary units from Arabia. Ranged foot soldiers from inner Persia, Mesopotamia and Syria, but also chariots from the same region and various groups of auxiliaries from Anatolia, such as Pysidians, Lydians, Cilicians and Mysia. Finally, gigantic Indian elephants.
The battle started with Seleucus, Antiochus' son, charging with his cavalry the Roman counterpart on the right. The latter were routed. On the Seleucid left, chariots charged against Eumenes, but were pushed back and their retreat heavily disrupted the Seleucid cavalry, which was in turn charged by Eumenes and routed.
After initially pushing back the line of hastati, the Seleucid phalanx found its flanks undefended. They formed square formations to protect themselves and the Indian elephants in the center. Eumenes auxiliaries fired all their arrows at the elephants, who then lost control and started trampling the phalangists. Communications lines broke, chaos ensued, the Roman legionaries charged and routed the Seleucid army. Antiochus casualties between dead and prisoners were around 50k.
Cool story brother tell me more
What's the point your making here? That you don't understand the biases of how ancient sources report numbers? Or was it the misspelling of "Phalangist" which presumably is meant to tie them to the modern "falangist," the Spanish fascist part of the Franco?
Or some other dumb, bad take on a historical event? You've proven several times over that I can recall that your knowledge of Roman history doesn't extend much beyond reading Wikipedia.
Your posts are a mix of entitlement, arrogance and ignorance at the same time. It's not just that you know very little. The little you kow is widely disconnected to its roots, mixed with extreme ideological bias and utter lies.
the history stuff is cool and I’ll check it out but I don’t get what it has to do with racism in finance
I don't see what this has to do with racism.
Does the Selucid army being 'diverse" has anything to do with your point?
Massive kudos for getting it. Both armies were pretty diverse, but there is such thing as too much diversity as it's bad for cohesion.
I think there's a decent amount of racism against Asian and Indians. Banks don't do a great job of bringing them into 'the boys club' AKA grooming them for senior positions while they are juniors. Most of them deserve it because they are straight up savage analyst/associate worker bees and deserve better IMO.
Just look at how few black group heads there are at investment banks
Let alone black women...
Racism goes more than black people, even though that's where the spotlight is now. You have to think - how many black women KNOW about IB and with that, how many WANT IB and how many SUCCEED in regards to IB? Each step, less and less there are. I think there is a bigger dilemma here than racism. The black community needs to know about the avenues of high finance for them to be well-represented. That's one of the biggest problems facing them, not overt racism.
You again with the sweeping generalizations. There are black owned PE firms which would negate the total lack of knowledge about high finance among the community (which internally, is very diverse). The problem, as Robert Smith (black PE billionaire that paid off the student loan debt of an entire graduating class at Morehouse) has said before, is winning over the money of people who don’t look like him.
Most people know about IB because of a friend or family member's parents/connections, or caddying at some golf club (review a stack of resumes, I beg you).
If you grow up going to an underfunded public school in the Bronx, who the hell are you going to meet that is going to be able to spark an initial interest in IB?
This is how understated racial inequalities can play out in really unexpected ways.
Tons of racism in banks. Asian male candidates get zero access to diversity talent programs (which have demonstrably easier interview processes, i.e. less technicals). Does not matter if they were a poor asian male growing up - their race alone disqualifies them.
As a white guy, I don’t have too much I can say about this, but I’ll share a friend’s story for discussion’s sake.
One of my closest friends (who happens to be black) works in wealth management. When he chose finance as his major at our university, many of his family and (black) friends criticized him for choosing a “white” career path.
The “systemic” problem, if you will, is a problem because of both “sides” of the issue. Since there are hardly any black finance professionals in any field in our area of the US, there is a lack of role models and lack of normalization of black people in the field.
I firmly believe that this will improve as time goes on and the younger generations spend more time on fighting racism, but stereotypes definitely exist and it takes strong-willed people like my friend to fight against them on all sides.
Hard to address all of the points right now that I could make.
However, I will say that banks are very, very sincere with respect to their diversity recruiting efforts, and the pipeline issue is absolutely real. There are far too few black candidates interested in IB out there, and since I'm in a regional office, even being at a BB, the issue is even worse since we don't have very broad outreach to many schools. As a result, we receive very few black applicants (often literally zero for both SA and Summer Associate).
If you're black and reading this, PM me and I will review your resume and give you some coaching advice for free.
And you wouldn't do it for someone who comes from a poor background and is not black?
I’ve seen more diversity over the past 15 years in commercial real estate, including more (but still few) at the top of organizations.
My theory/observation is the more institutionalized the industry/company gets, the more of a meritocracy it becomes (meaning focused on talent, skill set, education vs nepotism or other factors that don’t attribute directly to performance).
However that is part of the transition. The other part is the globalization of capital which we’ve seen a lot of. This is where the advantage is / was currently going towards Asians, as capital comes from places other than New York/London/etc. I believe how capital “looks” has some impact on the downstream players, especially if the capital is more hands on.
So yes, there has been more diversification, but a lot of the progress has been via the low hanging fruit variety. If more capital to invest in the US came from Africa, there would be a higher likelihood there would be more African or African American workers on Wall Street and in high positions. If you are in a less institutional financial organization with very low diversity of capital, the chances of employee and leadership diversity will be lower. What is “more institutionalized”? My shortest definition would be similar processes and relationships with the largest capital providers (Which often is rooted in large cities with higher education as being important and also diverse populations). Others’ definition could differ.
So, I think striving for greater institutionalization, and encouraging investment companies to seek diverse capital (capital is everywhere, how it’s allocated differs) would go a longer way than just diversity hire programs. Therefore, examine the “walk the walk” of the company and business reasons why diversity is important than just their “talk.” Results will vary.
The downsides of institutionalization includes getting away with a two page IC memo compared to a 60 pager. But that’s another rant.
Absolutely. And the reason for this is really understated but simple to understand.
So much of how upward mobility in banking works is based on networking and finding common connections with people. This doesn't mean racism is a given, but it opens the door to it.
Assume being black only gives you a 15% disadvantage at each level of promotion, just being hyper-conservative on that %. Lets also start calculating the % disadvantage once people make it to a first round interview, ignoring the under-representation at top schools and in the applicant pool itself.
15% less likely to make it past interview, 15% less likely to make it through the super day, 15% less likely to get FT offer, 15% less likely to get associate.
Associate is a fairly low level in banking, but just to get here, we are multiplying .85 by itself 4 times. At this point, if we assume the 15% is real and holds true at all levels, a random black interviewee is 48% less likely to make associate than a random white interviewee.
You can mess with the % all you want, but to suggest that % is 0 or even close to 0 is clearly just being in denial of the facts.
Fuck diversity and inclusion. Those who enter—enter, those who stay out are out for a reason. They blame racism, but what about the numerous blacks at the highest levels? They got in, you didn’t. They made it to the top and you didn’t.
Those who complain about racism are most often hiding a flaw that dinged them either on the way in or on their way up. The effort for diversity and inclusion is a huge waste of time and brain space. Leave that shit with the the PR jockeys.
Just because they can’t connect personally during interviews, doesn’t mean it’s racism. Sometimes just don’t wanna work with you. Which is very different from active hostility towards you.
Numerous black executives? Keep in mind that black people make up 13% of the population and the % in executive roles is far below that.
Must be suffocating to have the world only exists of the United States for you. At what point did I confine my statements to the US?
i've worked with a couple black interest rates traders...in my experience they were treated and paid just like everybody else. The old head of the treasury desk at citi was black (Ty Smith)...he got hired to run the treasury desk at credit suisse a few years back. The CEO of credit suisse for 8 years was black...and he ran prudential before that. He was removed for poor performance...but i'm sure he got paid millions.
He was not removed for poor performance. Tidjane Thiam did very well for CS until he was snagged in spy scandal that his underling was secretly running. “Net new assets in wealth management in all territories have been growing at about 5% a year, and profits at 15%.” https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/08/22/tidjane-thia…
I think it’s definitely there, but not in the way that people might be thinking. You’re never going to hear a banker drop the N-word (in public at least), or walk around saying openly derogatory things about non-white people in the office. That’s so far beyond the pale in 2020 that they’d be fired almost on the spot. What you’re going to see is a constellation of more subtle behaviors, for example declining to interview someone with a foreign-sounding name because you assume they will need visa sponsorship.
Or consider this hypothetical: You’re a senior coverage MD at a BB who happens to be white. You have the best relationships in your group (if not the firm), and working for you is considered a rite of passage for rising mid-level bankers in your group. Whenever you need a VP to come with you to client meetings, you always happen to pick the white guy who grew up in the town next to yours. He reminds you of yourself at a younger age, and he gets your obscure hometown references. You also have a black VP who works for you; he comes from a less traditional IB background, but nonetheless has proved himself to be quite sharp and personable. The black guy’s tried to build rapport with you and does a ton of solid work on your deals, yet you just can’t bring yourself to see him in your seat one day. You don’t think badly of the black guy (they’re equally solid bankers), but the white guy just feels like more of a “right hand man” to you. In the end, when it comes time for promotion convos, the white guy has you to advocate for him, and he ends up getting the tap for MD. The black guy, frustrated with being stuck at VP for yet another year, ends up having to lateral out of the firm.
Should have stopped reading after the first two posts in this thread. Folks. Wake up. If you’re not part of the solution you ARE the problem. JFC.
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I don’t even know what counts as white these days. I have a Middle Eastern Arab friend who thinks she is white because her skin colour is fair / white. I always thought white meant WASP.
what goes on in professional settings eg banks is micro aggressive racism. I found this link very useful to understand it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression
Whatever man. If the SJWs take over then we'll be learning about Micro and Macroaggression more carefully than micro and macroeconomics.
Point being, personal or systematic, racism is racism.
Never. SJWs are too distracted with social justice to even bother with taking over things. Artificial solutions suffice for them. And that’s how seriously they should be taken: artificially.
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