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Originally Posted by 1blackman1
Can’t say honestly. Likely would still have done well (self confidence speaking) but clearly along some other path. Most definitely would have been excluded from the opportunities afforded me working at a blue blood law firm or the US Attorney’s Office or especially representing clients like Harrahs, Exxon, Dow or FedEx among others. Those would have been excluded altogether. So my path would have been different for me as a black man but would have existed for some white male who may have been less qualified simply based on race.
The landscape today is better than when I graduated. But we’re talking over a quarter century difference. There are more people like me in a position to push for opportunities for black applicants that would simply be ignore or moved to the bottom of the pile. That’s where the irritating whining of the Aces and Wacos and Charlies comes in. They see that as unfair to the white kid because he’s losing the inherent advantage that is afforded him for being white by the people doing the hiring.
As for continued barriers, it’s complicated. It’s like the whole, there can’t be racism because some blacks have been successful. And more have been successful this year than last. Or we had a black president so clearly there can’t be racism. But those are false equivalencies. It’s like saying there can’t be poverty because we have the most millionaires and billionaires. Both things can be true. We can have racists and still have blacks succeed. We have racism exist in the administration of justice and still have people treated fairly. That’s when we get into complex discussions of disparate effect. I guess I’ll say the tendrils of racist behaviors by a few can reach far, so it doesn’t take most whites to take racist actions for them to have a farther reaching effect than might be obvious on the surface. If you think racism stops at person A calling person B a racist epithet then sure racism in the US is less prevalent. If person A has any authority in hiring or writing tickets or making arrests, or screening calls, etc, their impact could more far reaching.
Even with me and several others be watchful of the hiring and recruiting partners my current firm has nearly 80 lawyers over 4 states and we’ve hired 3 black attorneys in the past 8 - 9 years out of around 20 associates, and maybe made offers to 2 more out of nearly 30 total offers over that time. And the funny thing about it is my partners, though mainly conservatives and republicans, aren’t racist, at least not intentionally. They just sit down in interviews and when they see someone that reminds them of younger versions of themselves or have similar backgrounds to themselves feel that kindred spirit and it affects their hiring practices (it differs from the old man in my experience who just didn’t really want a black in his firm).
institutional racism is likely misnamed. Maybe I can say it like this. Incongruent access to opportunities across the board may not be instituted intentionally but exist but because of the norm of hiring people you like for some subjective reason (he’d make a great golf buddy, he reminds me of a young me) rather than people who are most qualified for the work tends to promote the hiring of sameness. So as long as the people doing the hiring are mainly white that hiring will skew white (which in turn does hamper some opportunities).
We’ve come a long way in the legal field in my little over a quarter century but I wouldn’t call it a meritocracy or anything close. Check the roster for say Liskow Lewis (based outta Houston - nice blood blood firm). They have around 160 attorneys in Louisiana and Texas. They do the primary work for Exxon and Shell. They’ve been around since the 40s. See how many black partners they have and how many black associates. That might give you some idea of whether opportunities are now even without roadblocks.
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Very good post.
I get a chuckle when some posters try to argue with Lusty Lad or Texas Contrarian about economics. Or for that matter when you argue with Lusty and me about taxes. (Just kidding. Kind of.) LL and TC most likely work with economics and finance every day, so VitaMan, WTF and adav8s28, for example, don't stand a chance when they step into the ring with them.
Similarly, no one on the board has the insider's view that you do with regard to racism and hiring.
Instead of looking at the Liskow Lewis web site, I pulled the ABA's 2021 Model Diversity Survey, here
https://www.americanbar.org/content/...nd-edition.pdf
Take a look at page 77 of the .pdf. You'll see that "African-American/Blacks" represented only about 1.7% of the equity partners among law firms with greater than 20 attorneys. This is for the entire USA. I'm sure the number is much higher in, say, Washington D.C., and probably lower in Louisiana, making your advancement all the more impressive.
Now look at page 83. The percentage of black associates in firms with over 20 attorneys is around 5.3%, much higher than the % of equity partners. So perhaps that's an omen of a brighter future.
A couple of anecdotes. In my first job as a professional, I had an Indian colleague. His name was something like Ramesh Bootwala, but he went by the name "Boots." Boots actually wore cowboy boots to work every day, along with a suit, which was pretty standard in that day and age where we were. Boots had come to the USA to study at either Texas A & M or the University of Texas. I don't remember which, but he was pretty bright, so probably UT. Boots had picked up a Texas accent. He liked to hunt and he liked golf. He ended up leaving after about a year to go to work for a renowned boutique consulting firm. It was kind of like a small McKinsey, that specialized in our industry.
Anyway, Boots, if he'd stuck around, would have been on the fast track. He had learned to play the game. The brass in our office, all old white men, would likely have picked Boots over me in an interview, for the reasons you explain above. It was easier for them to relate to someone with a drawl who liked to hunt, fish and play golf than to someone like me who liked to sport fuck and rock climb.
Second anecdote - my first job after graduate school was working for a company a lot like the two you mention, Exxon and Dow. (I'm coy about where I worked because I don't want to out myself on a hooker board. It would seriously affect my ability to pull poontang from Sunday School in the church where I go.)
Anyway, a commodity bust came along and so people had to get fired. And who did they fire? Well, a black, a Korean, a really dikey Lesbian, and one white guy. The workforce was overwhelmingly white and Hispanic. I don't think the people fired were necessarily less competent than those who stayed. They just looked different, and particularly in the case of the Korean and the lesbian, who insulted our boss of bosses, they didn't know how to play the game.
