In Corporate America, "Privilege" Isn't So Black and White

DEI has made anti-white discrimination the new permissible racism.

I receive my fair share of emails from various agency insiders who shall remain nameless. The theme of these missives, as of late, is often the same: being white - in corporations and ad agencies - is increasingly perceived to be an impediment to one’s career. 

I’ll offer a few recent anecdotal examples. 

A successful white male executive - at the height of his career - is quietly shown the door at a national ad agency. He suspects it’s because he’s a white male and, gasp, leans conservative although that’s never stated as the reason for the termination. Now jobless and in search of work, he speaks to recruiters. They tell him agencies are simply not looking for white males. He is worried. He has a family to support, after all. 

Yet it’s not just personal notes that I receive that indicate anti-white bias is growing in corporations. I see these same stories pop up in chat forums and on social sites like LinkedIn. 

An exchange on Fishbowl.

For example, on Fishbowl, an anonymous online industry forum for professionals, an ad industry writer sheepishly asks what he should do when he is uninvited to a presentation because the client “doesn’t want white men in presentations”. The individual adds that they understand about the need for “diversity and inclusion”, but also wonders how he will grow in his career if his skin color stops him from attending client meetings. He is then quickly rebuked by another Fishbowl member, a Senior Copywriter, who reminds him all non-whites have had to “struggle to get where you did” and that he needs to remember that POC (people of color) don’t share in his “white privilege”. 

This anonymous person is just pointing out the reality in Corporate America: anti-white bias is the new permissible racism.

The anti-white discrimination is done quite publicly, too. Lately, I see posts on Linkedin in which managers - ironically, often white themselves - say they’re looking to hire, but just not white people. 

For instance, a Design Director (below) at a well-known Big Tech firm recently posted, “I’m excited to share product design role we opened yesterday for a strong mid-level designer, virtual-first win the US and Canada. Details in the thread.” A few days later, this manager added a comment to her original post that reads, “First up, I care deeply about building teams that represent the communities we work in and the people we serve. I also deeply care about equity in hiring. Therefore, I choose to prioritize folks in our BIPOC and UM communities. My DMs are open for you!” 

Dropbox is apparently an equal opportunity employer, so long as you’re not white.

Posts such as these are one part virtue-signaling, of course. This person clearly sees it as advantageous to declare her devotion to diversity for all the world to see. Yet at the same time this manager is clearly saying her DMs are apparently not “open” to white applicants - not equally anyway. Often I find these kinds of posts are later taken down. Most likely, someone in their HR or legal department realized it’s the kind of statement that could get a company sued because, well, it’s illegal. Yet obviously such Linkedin posts are indicative of what’s going on behind the scenes: employees are being instructed to outright discriminate and, occasionally, via a Freudian slip, they say so publicly. 

I recently ran across a tweet that read, “Just spoke with a guy who worked at a major corporation in recruiting. He said that the algorithms now exclude all White male candidates. And during layoffs, White males are targeted first. Another Twitter user responded to that tweet by saying, “My team has been hiring and we are seeing 80% female or non-Asian-minority candidates in a competitive field that is 80%+ white men and Asian men. I have to assume HR is screening out all the white guys before we even get to interview them.” 

Again, admittedly I can’t confirm these anecdotal stories shared on Twitter, but it fits a disturbing pattern.

The irony of all this is that in mandatory Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) meetings white employees are then fully gaslit and told they possess “white privilege”, which supposedly magically opens career doors for them. In fact, one contact told me his former ad agency recently gave all their employees a white privilege score. How this agency acts on this scoring system is not clear. But there’s no doubt the higher one’s “white privilege score”, the further back they sit in the new DEI privilege line; a line where privileges are doled out based on race and gender.

Of course, a system of corporate-sanctioned discrimination like this produces strange, unintended consequences (or are they intended?). For instance, employees learn there are ways to pay indulgences for their sin of being born white. Like carbon offsets that allow one emit carbon, one can also purchase white offsets to compensate for being white. Of course, these actions usually involve a good deal of self-loathing, as well as sycophantic acts like declaring one’s total devotion to every last progressive platitude.

What might some examples be? 

One way to compensate for one’s “whiteness” in corporate America is to adopt a victim identity. I’ve been noticing an odd trend developing in which people on LinkedIn are posting about their once-private bouts with mental illness, physical challenges and other traumas they’ve suffered. Of course, I’m not suggesting there’s never a place for openly talking about one’s struggles, but on LinkedIn? With potential employers watching? In front of the whole world?

I suspect what’s behind this trend is that some people fear they might appear too “privileged”. Being labeled “privileged”, of course, puts you in the back of the DEI line, as recompense for your supposed preferred status. Hence, the adoption of a victim identity helps a cisgendered, heteronormative white individual appear “oppressed”, which helps ameliorate the perception that they might possess “privilege” by virtue of their skin color. 

Another tactic I see is people pulling an Elizabeth Warren by highlighting that they’re 1/1000th American Indian or Hispanic, for example. The goal here is to bring the person’s formerly unacknowledged - and mostly non-existent marginalized heritage - conveniently to the fore. Why? Because everyone knows that’s where the real privilege lies today. Two former co-workers of mine suddenly have decided to add their middle names to their LinkedIn profiles, which makes them appear to be members of a “marginalized” group. Clearly, the idea that one should “try to be less white”, as Coca-Cola once admonished its employees, is increasingly being seen as a prudent thing to do. 

Finally, another common ploy for those seeking to overcome their cursed “whiteness” is to simply go full woke. In fact, to survive in today’s corporate environment, it’s obvious many white employees feel they must. Going full woke means embracing preferred pronouns, adopting the persona of a non-toxic beta male, kneeling to radical gender theory and talking incessantly about DEI. In other words, white employees must performatively show off their wokeafides or be possibly designated as problematic. Of course, these folks who go full woke are still white, but at least they’re useful to the woke revolutionaries and therefore safe - for now. 

“Uh, did we really call Larry an “old white guy” before we fired him?”

The elephant in the room, of course, is that DEI programs are blatantly breaking discrimination laws by taking race and gender into consideration in hiring, firing and promotions. One case to watch on this issue is playing out at AT&T, in which a 58 year-old man was fired, according to the plaintiff, for the crime of being “Old and white”. A judge in the case just ruled the case could move forward. The Reuters article notes that,

“Employees who have historically been entrenched in the majority are also entitled to protection under laws that were intended to assure equal treatment for women and racial minorities.”

Companies would do well to remember this, but I suspect it will take multi-million dollar judgements to convince them to change course.

Surely, many will say that a new system of bias against white applicants and employees is just the price we must pay for America’s racist past. In other words, take your medicine. Turnabout is fair play.

The fact is, installing a new system of discrimination via DEI can’t move us forward on racial matters. Sadly, it can only take us backwards.