Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Bullshit. The process of retaining segregation takes enormous effort. Knocking minorities down at work, focusing on the good neighborhood, good family or good school the unqualified white boy went to in the hiring committee meeting, making someone moving in to the neighborhood feel a little uncomfortable , finding ways to not give a minority a loan or letting them into a school, keeping some recent immigrant from getting too comfortable attending the same churches, having police who stop anyone with dark skin from driving across the town line.... these are all efforts white people take constantly.
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When we started my firm (and you all know me I just realized so this shit is QT), we were tiny. And we needed a 401k company, and hardly any wanted someplace so small. We had two candidates.
One was a black college friend. At school we were close, I moved away and was gone for a while, so a bit of drift. Still, our young families got together 3 or 4 times a year. He will (I will?) attend a funeral.
Great sales pitch, who knows what competence means in that field, but he sounded good.
The other group was white people who sounded like computer programs.
I brought him in and my wonk partner brought the white guys in. See, i was clients and he was wonking structure. So he was the one who did the deep dive into what makes sense here. He was making dozens of decisions each week at first, and I simply did not disagree, as to do so would require me getting up to speed.
And he told me that he wanted to go with the white guys. I asked why. They were cheaper in some respect (I later asked my friend who said that is all a shell game). I thought about saying, "fuck that, it's my work bringing in the $$, why did you even bring in someone else." But. I. Didn't. Instead I called my friend and told him. And he really didn't care (I'm sure he was pissed at the insult, but substantively) because we were small. But right now we'd be a good account. Sill, he is doing fine. We would be a good smallish account, at best.
We stayed friends (until divorce, so I see him now less frequently).
I later came to realize the reasons probably had a lot to do with
perceived
competence, I can only assume because of race. My partner has never done anything else that looked like that. And 4 years ago, the two of us, together we fired a partner because of racist shit on his FB. But you guys are right, everyone deals with the outward racism, but it is the "who gets the 401K work" that is this year's challenge.
As to hiring, that is a tough one in patents. The realities are such that we do not see black engineers going to law school in large enough numbers. My former biggest client had a black gc, he was big on hiring POC. The assistant patent position opened up and he insisted it be filled with a black attorney. A year later they had not filled it and he hired a Greek guy. There are upstream problems. Plus, at least around here, diversity drives from auto companies are such that black engineers get good job offers, so why go to ls?
And I was grooming one of my basketball guys to get into patent. But he just went to Australia to play pro ball (happy for him, but I did try).
EDIT- I didn't say it, but i feel like a complete shit about the 401k stuff, completely no excuse, shit.
