Today I received an e-mail forwarded from J.P. Morgan telling me that if I am White, Asian (and sub-continent Asian) or Arab among others, I shouldn't even bother applying for an internship with them as a freshman or sophomore in college.
Granted, as a white person I really haven't had it too bad, and I recognize that what anger I personally have here is only the faintest scent of what others have gone through. However, the language of this e-mail is so blatant that anyone can see it's in direct violation of federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws (EEO). And personally, I don't think you correct wrongs by using the same machinery that made those wrongs possible in the first place.
And this is with our taxpayer help of TARP and the Bear Stearns acquisition/bailout.
(NOTE: I am not looking for sympathy as a victimized white person. 1) I am not a sophomore/freshman, and I luckily have a job, for now. I just wanted to point this out to show how efforts like these can become counter productive, self-defeating and illegal.)
I don't think anyone can argue that Wall Street has been walled off from women and certain minorities for a long time, and it still is in many respects. If you take a look at any trading floor or watch CNBC for five minutes, you start getting the picture.
Wall St. is dominated by men, specifically white men, and it used to be much worse than it is now. For whatever the reason, Asians now have established a firm position in finance, as evidenced by the e-mail. It's clearly important that all these firms reach out to underrepresented minorities in whatever way they can that does not contradict the original intent of a diverse workplace that provides equal opportunity and access for all.
See the e-mail I received below (emphasis mine):
J.P. Morgan Diversity Networking Event
Heard about our "Launching Leaders" program? J.P. Morgan is teaming up
with the Fields Center to take the next step in our diversity
partnership with Princeton. We're hosting an exclusive event with the
J.P. Morgan team to get to know one another better.
Have questions? Ask. Be our guest - literally. We'd love to see you there.
Date: Wednesday January 7th, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Carl A. Fields Center
Details: Brief introduction / "Big Picture" of J.P. Morgan followed by
a networking reception. Light refreshments will be served.
Dress Code: Business Causal
This event is for internship eligible Black, Hispanic and Native
American students interested in summer opportunities in Investment
Banking, Sales, Trading or Research.
Traditionally, most banks get around the EEO laws by calling the program a "scholarship" which happens to issue your "scholarship" money every two weeks at the same rate as other interns and employees at the analyst level and at the same time they get their "paychecks." And this concept is not unique to J.P. Morgan, as I have seen e-mails advertising similar programs from Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Lehman (oops).
Reading this e-mail, you can see the target audience, and that for JP Morgan, diversity comes with certain restrictions. But, my overall point: this is illegal.
From the EEO Commission (EEOC) website (the e-mail's violations are bolded):
Discriminatory Practices
II. What Discriminatory Practices Are Prohibited by These Laws?
Under Title VII, the ADA, and the ADEA, it is illegal to discriminate in any aspect of employment, including:
* hiring and firing;
* compensation, assignment, or classification of employees;
* transfer, promotion, layoff, or recall;
* job advertisements;
* recruitment;
* testing;
* use of company facilities;
* training and apprenticeship programs;
* fringe benefits;
* pay, retirement plans, and disability leave; or
* other terms and conditions of employment.
Discriminatory practices under these laws also include:
* harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age;
* retaliation against an individual for filing a charge of discrimination, participating in an investigation, or opposing discriminatory practices;
* employment decisions based on stereotypes or assumptions about the abilities, traits, or performance of individuals of a certain sex, race, age, religion, or ethnic group, or individuals with disabilities; and
* denying employment opportunities to a person because of marriage to, or association with, an individual of a particular race, religion, national origin, or an individual with a disability. Title VII also prohibits discrimination because of participation in schools or places of worship associated with a particular racial, ethnic, or religious group.
So the Human Resources coordinator who sent this e-mail obviously was not too careful in making sure that at least the language complied with the EEO laws. J.P. Morgan has at least violated two sections of the EEO laws with this e-mail. The question remains, and one that I can't answer without the help of an EEOC investigation, is whether or not they follow up these advertisements in how they hire applicants. While my suspicion is that they do, I simply don't know that factually.
To J.P. Morgan's credit, the company's official posting on the career services website (not included in the advertisement above) at the university contains the necessary boilerplate language to at least verbally comply with the law (again, emphasis mine):
J.P. Morgan's investment bank offers a ten-week summer internship opportunity in New York designed for exceptional students of diverse backgrounds (including but not limited to students of color, female students and students with disabilities) who are currently in their freshman or sophomore year. Internships are available in Investment Banking, Sales & Trading, and Research.
So, from the e-mail sent by the recruiting coordinator at J.P. Morgan, we see that the company's actual intent is for only those particular minorities to be "eligible" for the position, while the career services posting pays lip-service to the law. To be fully clear, J.P. Morgan begins to recruit Asians and Whites once they become juniors or have contacts inside the firm who can land them a cushy position.
I'd love to hear what people think. I definitely believe there are better, more legal ways of accomplishing diversity apart from excluding certain groups from the process. I don't believe anyone would consider these firms to be doing wrong if they simply reached out to underrepresented groups and gave them more focus in a broader hiring process to counteract the conditions of nepotism, etc, that so often stifle a diverse workplace.