And I’m such like yeah after MO so let me let me get get us d good evening hello um I I think most of you know this but I’m Michael Hunter Schwarz and I’m dean of the law school um and I wanted to welcome you here tonight to the
Fourth event of our centennial celebration um I I do see that there are some folks who’ never missed a centennial event so special thanks to to those who are four for four um in in the great tradition of our Centennial speaker series we have our second
Speaker and I get the great honor of introducing her um I want you to be ready this is an amazing bio and I’m doing all of it that’s I already clear on my ground rules was we deserve to hear what a great speaker that we have
Uh before us today and I do want to also say that her being here is a statement of Larry lavine’s perseverance because basically I think she decided it was better to finally say yes than to St to continue to have Larry LaVine bu her so the principle on which she has chosen to
Join us um may be the that that really no one can ultimately including me say no to Larry LaVine so with that I will introduce her Cheryl lway is the dean Harold F MCN professor of law at St John’s University School of Law she teaches business organizations corporate governance and accountability black
Culture and American law and race law and business I hope if she has time she can tell you about the cool field trip project that is part of black culture and American law that I heard about while she and I were chatting her book predatory lending and the destruction of
The African-American dream was published by Cambridge University press in July 2020 and was coauthored with Dr Janice Sara professor of laah University of British Columbia she’s a member of the American law Institute a National Organization prominent judges lawyers and academics who work to clarify modernize and reform the law professor
Wade has written several book chapters and volumes published by both Oxford University press and Cambridge University press along with more than 40 law review articles on and essays on key issues that lie at the intersection of race gender and business she’s a frequent speaker at University conferences workshops and professional
Organizations she has appeared on podcasts and radio and television programs discussing issues related to corporate law and human rights Professor Wade was inv invited by the warden of Burton college to serve as a visiting scholar at Oxford University in March 2023 she was a visiting professor of law at Washington and Lee
University School of Law in Fall 2020 fall 2003 and in 2001 she taught law and race at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia I hope that you starting to hear she’s of international Acclaim prior to joining The Faculty at St John she served on the faculty of Hoster law
School before joining the HRA faculty she was an associate uh in the corporate Department of the New York City uh law firm uh most people know as Paul Weiss uh but it’s Paul Weiss riffkin whorton and Garrison uh before attending law school she received a master’s degree in
Spanish and of course she was installed in Sigma Deli and honorary Society for the study of foreign languages I had a little time to spend with her and I’ll conclude with this um I I think you are in in for a great talk um she is a joy
Just to hang out with um and um has a lot to teach us so please join me in welcome I’m so glad this is being recorded because that was one of the best introductions I ever received so thank you very much I um it is just a joy to be here uh
Thank you Dean Schwarz for that introduction thank you Dean leine um for inviting me to participate in this centennial celebration it’s very important to stop and think back about the place from which you’ve come and that’s what this centennial celebration is all about it’s just wonderful to be
Here from New York city so it’s nice to be in a friendly place and certainly um that’s what I’m experiencing I just got here yesterday um I was saying that I got up for a flight that left at 6:00 a.m I had to get up at 3:00 a.m and I thought I’d
Sleep really well last night but I woke up my usual time my New York time so I woke up at 3 o’clock this morning so forgive me I’m a little jet lagged um and so any mistakes I make are due to that um I’m here today to offer some thoughts
About the important diversity equity and inclusion work that Deans uh people like Dean LaVine do and the kind of work others provide but I’m not going to talk about diversity equity and inclusion which is known as you all know as Dei I’m not going to talk about it in the
Law school setting I’m going to talk about it in the for-profit Pro uh Corporation so the private sector not government but private corporations and primarily I’ll be focusing on public corporations as you all know Dei is under attack in our nation and what I’ll do this evening is
I’ll describe some of those attacks and I will lob a few attacks of my own on some of the corporate Dei programs I’ve attended as part of my research on this issue so I’ll talk about what I think is wrong with corporate DVI programs I’ll talk about how they can be better or
What I think would improve them and I’ll do this by considering the difference between Dei work on the one hand and anti-racism work on the other and I will also look at how some companies have responded to recent attacks on Dei now it may not surprise you looking
At me but my focus is going to be on well it should Sur because it’s in the title but my focus is going to be on um attacks on Dei and what they mean for black people in the United States and the reason why I use that very clumsy
Statement black people living in the United States I’m including African-Americans I’m including uh black people from Caribbean descent black people who recently immigrated to the United States from Africa and my question is whether we need to Grace ourselves for an acceleration of the ever widening racial wealth Gap and
Racial income gap as a result of these attacks on Dei what impact is are these attacks going to have on individuals on families and in communities that are predominantly African-American and I think important for all of us today is what the impact will be on our entire
Nation now I’m clear that attacks on will impact other people of color members of the lgbtq plus Community the disabled there’s so many marginalized groups who will be impacted by these attacks on Dei but I focus on black people not because our issues are more important than the
Issues other people of color face or other marginalized groups face but I think that we need I focus on African-Americans because we need to talk about these issues one issue at a time when we lump together all people of color when we lump together all marginalized groups we emphasize
Similarities but the differences get lost and the analysis is not going to be deep enough it’s extremely important I think to consider the relationships of nonblack people of color with public companies um but I like to do it as I said one group at a time I also focus on African-Americans in
This recent project that I’m doing because the attacks on Dei are based on the same statutes that were enacted decades ago that were intended to protect black people in the United States another reason for my focus on black people living in the United States is that corporate statements as you all
Know proliferated after George Floyd’s murder and after the Advent of the black lives matter movement now the statements that corporations issued after George Floyd’s murder were very different from the corporate discourse on Race before his murder um historically corporate leaders said nothing about race absolutely nothing they started to talk
About it a little bit more but there the statements were very different in 2020 us corporations made more an announcements about diversity and anti-racism in the months following George Floyd’s murder than in the many decades and even centuries before his murder another reason for my focus relates to the stop woke act that’s
Another reason for my focus on African-Americans just two days ago a federal appeals court upheld a lower court that blocked Florida from enforcing its stop woke act that act would restrict how private corporations teach diversity and inclusion and their workplaces now according to Wikipedia and don’t worry the rest of my sources
Are from more reliable places the word woke derives from African-American vernacular English and it means being alert to racism so clearly black people are on the minds of Dei attackers Governor DeSantis and the rest of the anti- wokeness folks now things have changed in Corporate America after Business Leaders made these Grand
Pronouncements about diversity but black people are still dramatically underrepresented at all levels of corporate hierarchies other than the very bottom of these corporate hierarchies and my question this evening is Will progress be reversed in the face of present day attacks on Dei and will corporate America fight for de Dei um in
The way they made these pronouncements they said it was important well they still consider it important did they mean what they said in 2020 now 20 years ago I wrote an article called diversity double speak and it’s based on a very old book by William Lutz where he defined double speak not diversity
Double speak that’s my idea but he defined double speak and he said it’s language that makes the bad seem good good and unfortunately I’ve concluded that much of corporate discourse about diversity equity and inclusion is double speak the three words diversity Equity inclusion they’re happy words that opusc
That obscure the real problem racism racism that still infects corporate cultures workplaces boardrooms and sea Suites these happy words obscure the reality of racially hostile corporate spaces talking about diversity alone obscures bad things like racism by talking about good things like diversity equity and inclusion and I think that superficial
And obis skating discourse like diversity double speak makes for ineffective Dei programs and efforts uh let’s see do I remember how to do this here it is so let’s look at the first word diversity um here are some examples of diversity uh double spe these statements that you see from City
Bank and Morgan Stanley um like most corporate statements about diversity they don’t mention race at all even though the corporate diversity statements in 2020 were inspired by antiblack bias and by George Floyd’s murder uh so according to its statement City Bank Embraces the richness of diverse teenss that doesn’t say very
Much Morgan Stanley wants everyone to feel as though they belong um I don’t think that says very much and in this slide um you see some more diversity double spe US bank statement mentions uh the value of different experiences and perspectives nothing about race meta statement is about hiring people with
Different backgrounds and experiences and bringing the world closer together but what about the e in Dei Equity achieving Equity this shouldn’t be a difficult task just look for the inequities install a program a compliance program that investigates and monitors ask the right questions is there pay Equity is there promotion
Equity is there General opportunity Equity corporate boards and officers if they look they will find inequities why because corporations and microcosms of the society in which we live because we haven’t ridden ourselves of the races and problem in our country so they’re going to be in our corporations so they all find the
Inequities and when they find them they should acknowledge them they should address them they should record the inequities and the action that was taken so everyone knows this is something The Firm does not tolerate but too often companies talk about Equity they do very little to attain Equity companies simply
Cannot create Equity without finding where inequity exists just look for the unfairness and you will know it when you see it it’s very easy to spot I’m not used to working with so final experiment that I want to mention to you is our fairness study and
So this this became a very famous study and there’s now many more because after we did this about 10 years ago it became very well known and we did that originally was kuch I’m going to show you the first experiment that we did it has now been done with dogs and with
Birds and with chip so what we did is we put two capuchin monkeys side by side again these animals they live in a group they know each other we take them out of the group put them in a test chamber and there’s a very simple task that they
Need to do and if you give both of them cucumber for the task the two monkeys side by side they’re perfectly willing to do this 25 times in a row so cucumber even though it’s really only water in my opinion but cucumber is perfectly fine for that now if you give the partner
Grapes the food prefer my monkeys correspond exactly with the prices in the supermarket and so if you give them grapes as a far better food then you create inequity between them so that’s the experiment we did recently we videotaped it there new monkeys who never done the task thinking that maybe
They would have stronger reaction and that turned out to be right the one on the left is the monkey who gets cucumber the one on the right is the one who gets grapes the one who gets cucumber not that the first piece of cucumber is perfectly fine the first piece he eats
And then see she’s the other one getting gra and you will see what happens so she gives a rock to us that’s the task and we give her a piece of cuc and she eats it the other one needs to give a rock to us and that’s what she
Does and she gets a gra and she the other one sees that she gives a rock to us now gets again cucumber she tests a rock now against the wall she needs to give it to us and she gets so this is basically the Wall Street protest that you see
Here the concept of inclusion I don’t know why it’s not advancing so glad you’re here it’s not advancing um but I’ll keep on the concept of inclusion I have some uh examp one example of discussion about inclusion um it can be overly simplified and I’ll give you one glaring example
While my friend helps me with this um as I said I’m studying Dei programs right now um and I attended the diversity equity and inclusion training program at a corporation I they let me attend because I promis not to reveal um I see that that that one let’s see great thank
You so much um and so I attended this program at this very reputable large publicly held Corporation and the person who did the training was from outside of the corporation and she started that session by reciting the lyrics to Rudolph the rednose reindeer he had a
Very shiny nose and she was using this as a metaphor for people of color that we look different and she was trying to make the point about inclusion what happened with Rudolph and the fact that all of the other reindeer I can’t remember the lyrics now they never let
Poor Rudolph playing any reindeer games I had to run through the whole song in my head to get to that line um and then when Santa comes he includes Rudolph everything is okay and so her message to people of color in Dei program was just hang in there you’ll be included
Eventually and I think that says illustrates everything that’s wrong with some diversity training meetings um as you can see this slide about inclusion from Charles swab says next to nothing but it sounds good it’s inclusion double speak uh and here I don’t know if you can read the words there I think it
Reflects what many people feel or at least some people when they hear the words inclusion um we’ve concluded that an alarming percentage of the population are experiencing involuntary eye rolling at the word inclusion so even though I criticize some of the Dei programs I’ve researched I do not want companies to stop their
Eff efforts I just want them to get better at it so at this point for me the question becomes what needs to happen to make Dei work meaningful and effective and here are my thoughts on this we should never talk about diversity equity and inclusion without talking about
Anti-racism and the fact that racism is still a problem diversity gets people of color into corporate workplaces into corporate boardrooms into sea suets but racism chases us away racism is the source of the need for Dei many corporations celebrate diversity while their nonwhite Executives and managers and employees
And board members uh deal with disparities stemming from racism and at this point I need to emphasize that Dei and anti-racism are not the same Dei is a type of corporate social responsibility it’s one of many social issues on which a corporate board may choose to focus Dei is voluntary work it
Doesn’t have to be done there are no requirements that a company create and Implement a Dei program but lack of diversity in corporate workplaces and boardrooms and sea sues that is a manifestation of racism an anti-racism efforts that address discrimination are mandatory all companies must comply with law including the law that prohibits
Discrimination compliance involves and I’m quoting now the processes by which an organization seeks to ensure that employees and other constituents conform to applicable norms and those Norms may be internal they may Simply Be corporate policy but for the most part when we talk about compliance we’re talking about external law and
Regulation so installing effective processes and systems that measure compliance with law including the law that prohibits discrimination that’s mandator mandatory now at this point I need to acknowledge that even though compliance is mandatory the quality of that compliance is completely within the discretion of corporate officers officers May simply choose to do the
Bare Min minimum when it comes to compliance and corporate boards may look the other way and fail to require more than the bare minimum sometimes compliance programs are mere window dressing just cosmetic as one commentator wrote many compliance metrics track activity rather than impact thereby demonstrating that
Compliance may be busy you’re busy going to this meeting and that meeting and looking at this training program they may be busy but not necessarily affected Frank and I had a great lunch today and we talked about how compliance wasn’t taken seriously decades ago and
Now now it has become a growing area of the practice um of law for corporate lawyers there’s another distinction between Dei and compliance that comes to mind based on the programs I’ve attended Dei programs often seem to involve attempts to make people more introspective and in my
Research I felt as though one of the goals of Dei was to change hearts and minds and quite frankly I don’t care about hearts and Minds I don’t care whether racism is implicit or explicit the reason why I don’t care about hearts and minds think about the Montgomery Bus boyot
Boycott black people before the boycott had to get out on the front of the bus pay their faar get off the bus go to the back sit in the back the boycott was successful and after the boycott black people could sit at the front of the bus
I don’t think that the white person next to sitting next to the black person I don’t think that person’s heart or mind change all I care about is changing behavior and I think that’s what matters to most people the mandatory nature of compliance doesn’t encourage the attempt to form
What to perform what I think is the impossible task of changing hearts and Minds compliance changes Behavior now with the recent calls to dismantle Dei I realize that including anti-racism as part of Dei programming makes both anti-racism work and Dei work even more vulnerable to attack and
Here’s I mean some of the recent attacks on Dei were brought by shareholders uh who sent letters or filed litigation against at least 25 companies Starbucks was one of those companies um they were sued by a conservative think tank that owns 56 shares of Starbucks so this Starbucks shareholder SL conservative
Think tank accused Starbucks of violating uh title seven of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and section 1981 the think tat alleged that Starbucks officers breach their fiduciary duty to shareholders by embracing policies that violate anti-discrimination and what had Starbucks done it had announced that it
Wants to see at least 30% of its us Workforce at all levels um with black indigenous or people of color by next year actually by 2025 the company also planned to use Workforce diversity measures to help set the pay of its Executives some companies backtracked on their Dei commitments when shareholders
Threatened to sue them Starbucks didn’t but Coca-Cola did in 2021 Coca-Cola’s General councel wrote to its outside Law Firm saying that 30% of any new legal work for the for Coca-Cola should be performed by la lawyers who are women lgbtq plus disabled or racialized individuals and the suit against Coke
Was brought by the same nonprofit Law Firm that represented Starbucks in its lawsuit so the next year that general counsel was replaced by a general counsel who then wrote the law firm that was representing the plaintiff saying well she had already contact Ed the law firms who received the letter about
Having 30% of the work being formed by marginalized groups and she said that while the company remained fully committed to advancing Dei in the legal profession she had contacted those firms telling them that these guidelines were never company policy so you see this back sliding backtracking by the way
Both Starbucks and um k cola have had trouble with respect to the relationship of African-Americans to the corporation in the past Texico and Coca-Cola in the 1990s um those were companies against which huge class actions brought by over a thousand African-Americans were filed because of blatant overt racism in the
Workplace the use of the nword um all sorts of racial slurs um and discrimination and promotion and pay that was Texico and Co and we don’t see those kinds of class actions anymore because of procedural issues not because black employees do not still face these kinds of issues in some corporate
Workplaces and you all remember the more recent incident with respect to Starbucks and one of Starbucks employees calling the police to escort out two black men who were had not purchased anything in Starbucks but were waiting for a meeting and other groups have requested not for shareholders to go
After companies but but they’ve asked the EEOC to to investigate diversity practices at several high-profile corporations this is very unusual without a formal complaint having been filed um and companies who faced the EOC investigations are Amazon IBM American Airlines JP Morgan Chase black Black Rob Macy’s also um by the way in
2019 before black lives matter before George Floyd Macy’s announced that it had a goal of having 30% so-called ethnic diversity among its leadership um and they wanted to do this to serve its customer base which is 50 more than 50% nonwhite it too had a leadership training program for selected managers
Of color and Macy’s announced that it was sticking with its Dei strategy but a spokesperson also said well we might Express that strategy differently in the future Amazon they also stuck to their guns after being investigated by EOC the EEOC because of a program that it offered to assist black and brown
Contractors the response of most companies was to modify programs that were initially created for people of color by removing any references to racial groups by removing any language about numerical diversity targets and then last year 13 Attorneys General sent a letter to Fortune 100 companies to stop Dei programs at their
Companies and I just want to read you the language from the AG’s letter we write to remind you of your obligations as an employer under federal and state law to refrain from discriminating on the basis of race whether under the label of diversity equity and inclusion or otherwise treating people differently
Because of the color of their skin even for benign purposes is unlawful and wrong companies that engage in racial discrimination should and will face serious legal consequences the Attorneys General in their letter they quoted the recent Supreme Court affirmative action case saying that eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of
It and then the AGS ask the corporations to comply with race neutral principles in their employment policies and in their Contracting policies these attacks on Dei these kinds of attacks are recycled iterations of a disingenuous conversation we’ve seen before these activists use legislation that was designed to protect black Americans to destroy de
Dei their challenging diversity programs for contractors for example also by using a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which prohibits race discrimination in contract agreements the law was originally intended to protect formally enslaved people but some conservative activists are citing it to challenge programs designed to benefit the descendants of those
People but title seven the Civil Rights Act of 1866 they were not passed in the vacuum they were initially and express expressly designed to remedy centuries of exploitation to which black Americans were subjected these Attorneys General as one commentator noted seemed to want to redefine the very definition definition of racial
Discrimination and this particular commentator wrote that the Republican Attorneys General suggests that our current environment differs so substantially from where the country was in 1964 when Title 7 was enacted that our definition of what constitutes discrimination must change the Attorneys General suggest that America has solved
Racism so in the 21st century laws that protected black people should now be used by agreed non-blacks in order to support race neutrality now I’m going to use a term of art to describe what I think adequately depicts race neutrality in 2024 it’s absurd I don’t have any other
Word for it look at the persistent racial disparities in wealth and income between black Americans and white Americans and black people don’t experience race neutrality in our everyday lives um this reminds me of a book written by uh Randall Robinson who was the uh founder of Trans America
He wrote a book a while ago called the debt and in his book he has a story about Jesse Jackson who was visiting New York after uh for a meeting with some uh world leaders and he comes back to the lobby of his hotel dressed in his suit
And he sees an elderly white woman struggling with her AG there were there was no one around to help her and so he helped her with her luggage and he went ahead with what he had to do and she came over to him and he thought she was
Going to thank him maybe he recognized her she extended her hand he thought he was going to shake her hand and she put $2 in his hand and said I couldn’t find a Bellman anywhere I call these kinds of interactions professional misidentifications and they’re more than insulting and annoying and inconvenient
For for black Americans they represent perceptions and presumptions that some people have about Black Americans Dean Schwarz mentioned that I co-authored a book on predatory lending and the destruction of the African-American dream in that book we describe a study about negative stereotypes that were held by the study participants about African-Americans in
Both the 20th and the 21st centuries and one of the most prevalent adjectives that were that was used USS by 20 20th century study participants was that African-Americans were lazy and the other one was that African-Americans lacked mental acuity uh they didn’t use the term mental acuity they just said
Unintelligent and while not explicitly held in the 21st century these stereotypes still infect perceptions about African-Americans in the 21st centuy study participants they Ed different adjectives aggressive was what they used to describe African-Americans materialistic was an adjective they use and this reminds me back in 2015 when
Jeb Bush was attempting to get the nomination for the from the Republican party as uh to be his candidate for president someone asked Bush how he would attract black voter voters and he said our message is one of Hope and aspiration it’s not one of division and
Get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff our message is one that is uplifting that says you can achieve earned success and when I heard this I remember thinking where’s my free stuff I mean this is the 21st century perception that some powerful nonblack
Americans have about black about Black Americans and as Bush suggested many think that black people want to get in line and White America just take care of us with free stuff we want free stuff like Dei Bush’s message to us was that we can achieve earned success suggesting that
Success that some of us have earned was or some of us that some of us enjoy that it wasn’t earned it was given to us it was the free stuff not only do black people not get free stuff we pay more for the stuff we get so in the book about predatory
Lending we were describing a context in which hardworking African-American home buyers were paid were paying more for mortgages than similarly situated white borrowers with the same credit history predatory lenders venerable financial institutions Wells Fargo City Bank Chase all all of them targeted African-Americans to steer them into costly highin subprime mortgages even
When those African-Americans had good credit histories excellent credit histories even when white customers received lower cost Prime loans with inferior credit histories and this happened to working class middle class and even affluent black people they were steered into these high high cost predatory loans and because they didn’t receive the lower
Cost Prime loans for which they qualified millions of African-Americans have lost homes and millions of others today in 2024 are struggling to keep homes attempting to navigate a mortgage modification process with their banks that is also predatory we found a a victim blaming narrative when we did the research for
That book that black borrowers took out and continue to enter into mortgages for homes they can’t afford uh it really does reflect the adjectives used by the study participants aggressive black borrowers materialistic black borrowers was seeking the success of home ownership that they simply hadn’t earned I want to
EMP emphasize that the steering of black borrowers into predatory mortgages was in intentional it’s clear that much of the predatory conduct was motivated by explicit and conscious anti-black bias Wells Fargo was sued by almost everyone shareholders who had invested in securitized mortgages that were pulled and packaged they sued Wills
Fargo cities where homes had been foreclosed on and um and and abandoned they sued Wells Fargo because of the deterioration of the neighborhoods and the city had to pay for firefighters to come in um and of course the borrower sued Wells Fargo so there were many suits and former loan officers testify in
Depositions and they said that it was pervasive not just in one Wells Fargo branch but in but throughout the company that black people were just not Savvy enough to know when they were not getting a loan for which they qualify that was an explicit statement in some Wells Fargo uh
Branches we don’t know whether white Americans are more Savvy about mortgages because white Americans weren’t targeted in the way black Americans were systematically targeted and then when they wanted to refer to black people in code they called black people mud people another former Wells Far laan officer
Said that the um subprime loans were called ghetto loans well a little bit of Dei at Wills Fargo along with some anti-racism work would have helped a lot the disingenuous argument that enough has been done for black people is cyclical we’ve seen it before it’s an argument that’s roed in bigotry and the
Idea that white people have wealth because they deserve it and black people who do not climb as high in corporate hierarchies are where where they are supposed to be we’ve seen this cycle many times after the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans there was a Reconstruction Era there was huge success for black Americans politically
Socially economically and the success of that Reconstruction Era was followed by lynching followed by the growth of the KKK and also by sanctioned State sanctioned segregation and then in the Civil Rights era from 1954 to 1968 we’ve seen the diminishing of those that progress um on with attacks on voting rights and access
To home ownership failing uh school systems and then there’s the election of President Barack Obama remember what happened after his election all of a sudden we were in a postracial nation sounds familiar so what should be happening in Dei Prov Larry I’m not sure how long I
Should be speaking am I going too long you can keep going um if you sp so much time you want to leave for questions okay I think you’re scheduled to and THS so it’s up to you okay just give me a couple more minutes this is your show
Thank you okay great I like that um I think this is what Dei facilitators have to ask why there are disparities between white and black Americans with respect to climbing corporate hierarchies either the disparities stem from racism implicit or explicit maybe it’s just the kind of bias that
Makes one person higher another person because that other person reminds the decision maker of themselves but that’s still problematic for people of color either it’s racism or that kind of bias or something’s wrong with black people it seems to me there are only two choices and we know that too many
Americans believe there is something wrong with black people we see that in this study I think Dei program facilitators should discuss the study they should discuss the racial income gap that black Americans take home just 70 cents for every dollar white Americans take home facilitators should discuss the racial wealth Gap in 2022
The typical African-American family held 16 cents for every dollar the typical white had and another useful thing that Dei facilitators can do is to make the point that not all black people live in poverty and existential pathology but in our national discourse being black and being poor seem to be
Synonymous when we talk about predatory lending we’re talking about the black middle class when we talk about diversity equity and inclusion we’re talking about the middle class the black middle class people who live live in poverty they don’t buy homes working in Middle Class people do predatory lending
Harmed the black middle class black individuals who navigate corporate workplaces or black people who do business with corporations as consumers as suppliers they’re workingclass people middle class people but economic exploitation drains wealth from the black middle class and black Americans make up 12% of this nation’s black middle
Class I was surprised when I did some research and I found out that 61.2% of black people living in the US are middle class I thought it was much lower than that based on the conversations we have about being black in this country and 12% of black adults live in Upper inome
Households so a tax on the wellbeing of the black middle class impacts a lot of people and it will impact the nation I just have uh two more slides that are um uh photos I think I’m going the wrong way photos that I took just about a month ago on 57th
Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City so you can see in the middle of this photo in fading yellow letters the word black I don’t know if you remember that in 2020 black lives matter was written on the street 57th and 5th in New York
City and so this is what the word black looks like now and when I took a photo of where lives matter was was once it’s not there anymore now black lives matter the words have been vandalized and the words were restored but this is not vandalism this is just erosion this is
Just neglect now that’s not a great place on which to end so I’ll try to end on in a somewhat more positive note I happen to think that corporations are a promising Locus for cultural transformation when it comes to race and racism and it’s for very odd
Reason that I had this thought it’s because Norms are homogeneous in corporate cultures now in US culture it’s all about individualism but individualism does not work in the corporate context individuals have to conform to the norms and the priorities that are established that are established by the CEO and
Senior Executives corporations are not democracies so if those at the top promote diversity Equity inclusion and anti-racism the millions who work for these corporations and the millions who deal with these corporations must conform and I think that would be truly transformative so MC George congratulations on on 100 years and
Thank you for inviting me to share in your celebration any questions for Professor Wayne can I can I throw one question I I have a lot can I throw one one thing I took away there was a lot to take away I’m glad it’s more than one but but
There’s um what I’m not one of the things I was struck by is how um useless benign so benign that they were useless the diversity statements of a lot of corporate America and it’s fair to assume that under the current environment the direction is going to be for them to
Become even more watered down there’s this effort not to offend anyone and therefore by not offending anyone you’re saying nothing and and I don’t know where the pressure would come from and so maybe that would be my question if would there be a source that could pressure corporate entities to be more
Bold and direct in their statements when there’s all these counter pressures right now where you Dei wokeism all that has become they become bad words right when when a little while ago we we thought being aware of racism was a good thing now it’s it’s considered a bad thing right
They it it’s been amazing how the other side has managed to take these terms and made them into evil evil terms so what’s going to be the the I I think that those who think that Dei is important and I agree with you I mean I I don’t think that the statements will
Be more watered down I think that they’re going to disappear and it’s not that corporations will be concerned about offending anyone it’s that corporations don’t want the hassle of having a demand letter coming from a shareholder who’s threatening to sue they don’t want to be sued they don’t
Want to have an EC investigation so I think they’ll disappear um but how can those of us who care about anti-racism still encourage them to do what we think should be done in terms of fairness and Equity um I think we should do what what some of the
Conservative activists are doing um it’s they’re not doing anything new it’s been done before but I think it’s even more imperative for Progressive activists to buy shares in stock and to become shareholders and we can file our own demand letters to the corporate board and say this is what we think you should
Be doing you should and not only should you make these statements but you should do what you’re saying there shouldn’t be a huge gap between what you say and what you do I don’t think that activism um would be well served in actually suing I don’t think any of these suits would be
Successful the suits that are brought by conservative activists because there’s something called the business judgment rule which presumes that corporate officers and directors are exercising valid business judgment they always win unless they’re grossly negligent unless they’ve done no due diligence corporate officers and directors always win unless
There’s a conflict of interest I think arguably there is a conflict of interest when we talk about Dei and we talk about who gets privileged but who is privileged but I think activ should include this kind of focus on companies through share home ownership you don’t
Have to hold a lot of shares in order to file a demand letter I think that’s something the NAACP legal defense fund should do the Urban League should do it um sororities and fraternities should do it um so yes hi um thanks so much for your presentation I uh was interested in
The very last comment that you made about the potential for corporations to serve as a Locus for transformation and the skepticism that you articulated earlier about the extent to which um discourse about diversity equity and inclusion um of the kind that might happen in trainings that’s what I’m guessing that you’re referring to
There um can be useful I um and I’m sympathetic to your view that discourse is not a replacement for Action nor should it be but I um wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about whether you think that it is completely incapable of affecting the kind of
Transformation you see or whether you think it has a role to play I think it really has a role to play and it’s connected to Larry’s question I don’t think there’s any corporate leader who will say we don’t care about diversity we don’t care about uh fairness we don’t want to include
Traditionally historically marginalized group they’re not going to say we are racist they don’t acknowledge their racism I want them to not not the racis not individual racism but systemic racism they always say the right things is asked and who will ask the shareholders who are activists who buy shares in the
Company um and so the the the ask is the ask of Business Leaders is to do what you say here’s our question look you know do some due diligence comply with anti-discrimination law the dean and I earlier were talking about metrics look at the dir of people of
Color at the top of your corporate hierarchies and investigate it so that’s the ask and it’s an ask that can come from shareholders who care about these issues um many people say shareholders just care about dividends and and and money but obviously um you can become a shareholder in order
To um have some sort of impact on the way corporate governance decisions are made so I think the discourse is useful but you have to connect the discourse to action this is what you said are you lying you know the they say no then we’ll see what happens thank you thank
You hi hi uh let me ask you Frank you a followup question in terms of shareholders the biggest shareholders now I think are actually like public Pension funds yes uh Cal’s a huge shareholder New York uh whatever and so investigated what they’re doing they obviously have far
More impact in terms of the sort of thing that thanks for that no I haven’t investigated what they’re doing and I I that’s a good point and something that I’ll take a look at um but I doubt that they’ll engage in the kind of activism that I talked about in the
Answer to Larry’s question but they can ask the right questions uh but the question is do those fund managers uh you know where are they on this issue I don’t know but this this is something that that I’ll look into thank you for that hi I just want to say hi uh that
I’m a employee of the State of California and we just got a little blurb from calper saying we’re we’re raising those issues with our Corporation excellent I’ll see if I thank you I really would appreciate that and I’m looking forward to your emails I can site to you in
My hi thank you so much U for this presentation you know one of one of the things I really like when you building the case and um and laying it out and and then getting to the end and talking about what could potentially happen you know because most people get stuck and
Well this isn’t working and so we should do away with X Y or Z or this is not genous or hypocrisy which you clearly have proven the case but then you know getting to this issue of the power of governance entities so I have always believed that any institution that is
Worth its worth anything around anything has to do with de whatever they call it has to begin with the governance um and really what do the people that are the trustees the directors or in our case the regions at uh the University of the Pacific what is it that they say and
What is that they’re willing to do and how does it show up in policy and then how’s that policy then become some form of organizational structure embedded in governance uh perhaps even um looking at the charters or some of the um U kind of U governing documents and seeing how do
You put Equity language in from the charter embed it into a policy and then create the policy and so such that it it becomes structure of how they govern so um outside of that I think you’re absolutely right outside of governance you’re depending upon Good Will of
Leaders who are impacted by a diverse stakeholdership and in a university context it could be alumni obviously as well as uh philantropist and fundraisers um one of the things I think that I think your work is doing Cheryl is really I think explicitly laying out the issues but not leaving it there because
What happens is that a lot of people just throw up their hands and they said there’s nothing that we can do because of the disingenuous and the lack of lack of accountability but I do think that we have to continue to find ways to look at the governance structures um and really
Focus in on that and stop focusing on the CEO only and the CEO suite and those people but really focusing on on the governance structure so thank you so much for for saying that because I have believed that from from the from the get-go that people say what is your work
Say my work is really working with the governance structure um and making sure trying to hold the governance structure accountable and yes you do other work but the management and and the other stakeholders but there is no other more important group of people um than the people that are have the fiduciary
Responsibility of an organization absolutely and again I would say with respect to your very on point observation is that in for-profit corporations that governance issue is already there because you have to comply with the laws that discrimination you have to comply and you know sometimes that compliance program could
As I said looks to be cosmetic but we already have it built in in a way that should impact people at all levels of the corporate hierarchy it’s going to start at the top but the people who serve in corporate boards have to say to their executive officers we the board care
About this and you need to get your mid L managers and your lower level managers to implement these compliance programs and take them seriously and you’ve got to have information flow that goes both ways from the board to people as KARK said deep within the interior of the
Organization you got to get that message from the board throughout the corporation and then the people at the top Senior Management they need to get information about what’s happening at the the company so everything is already there it’s just not being done codes of conduct are written policies are written
They’re written and they’re put on a shelf but they’re not implemented so there it’s not a big step that has to be taken it’s not a big step and the affirmative action plans have to be like you had said the compliant plan has to be a real one and not a window
Dress right so I spend the time on the on the affirmative action plans University of the Pacific has three campuses and each campus has an affirmative action plan and what goes into that affirmative action plan is one of the things that then we say we’re being held accountable to so spending
Time on the compliance mechanisms that we have available to us are is really important people only focus on culture and there’s only so much you can do with culture the culture has to be at the government’s level yeah yeah but I think the CEO sets the culture absolutely
Absolutely look at Sam Walton he had a culture he he he created a culture of consumerism you know the consumers come first Sam did that look at uh uh Jack Welch look at I mean I’m not saying he’s a good cult but um look what he did at
Gei absolutely look at what Henry Ford did a huge anti-semite but he created a I mean when he did it it was a privately held I mean it was a it was a closely held Corporation he held more than 50% of the shares of Fort Motor Company but
It’s a culture that he created that exists even in 2024 absolutely so I think culture is important too absolutely thank you so much thank you so I do see that our our time is I I don’t want to abuse the privilege because then she won’t come
Back anytime um so on behalf of the law school to thank you for being our second Centennial speaker um for living up to the promise of your introduction um on behalf of the law school this is U uh sort of like mostly things that that Taste of Sacramento kinds of things nice
So thank you thank you so much then we are going to also give her a taste of Sacramento so we’re going to take her out to dinner thank you we
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