Woke corporations signal virtue with "no whites allowed" programs

Asian-Americans aren't welcome, either

Not content with discriminating against whites and Asian-Americans by tilting the scales against them when they compete for employment opportunities, some major corporations are excluding them from competing for certain opportunities at all. Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, is an example.

The Washington Free Beacon reports that Pfizer runs a prestigious program called its "Breakthrough Fellowship." It offers college students multiple internships, a fully funded master's degree, and several years of employment at the pharmaceutical giant.

Sweet.

What’s not sweet is that eligibility for the program is limited to "Black/African American, Latino/Hispanic and Native American" students. Whites and Asian-Americans need not apply.

Pfizer’s program is blatantly illegal. The company doesn’t claim that it’s restricting applicants to members of certain minority groups because it has discriminated against members of these groups in the past. But even if Pfizer had discriminated, a program that excludes whites and Asian-Americans would still be unlawful. Such exclusionary policies are not a lawful remedy for past discrimination.

Gail Heriot, a law professor and member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, is undoubtedly correct in her assessment of the program. She describes the Fellowship as presenting a "clear case of liability" under federal law: a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans racial discrimination in contracting, and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination in employment.

Professor Heriot is also correct in this:

Major corporations seem to have forgotten that there’s such a thing as law. They seem to think that as long as they’re woke, they’re bulletproof.

Such is the bubble in which major corporations float these days.

What are some of the other corporations that are ignoring the clear dictates of anti-discrimination law in their quest to out-woke one another? The Free Beacon cites Uber, NASDAQ, JPMorgan Chase, and Google. Thus, from our most traditionally staid corporate giants to some of our major cutting edge ones, corporate America is tripping over itself in a rush to signal virtue to BLM, woke investors, and lefty employees.

It is also tripping over the law.

The American Civil Rights Project, on whose board of directors I sit, is leading the charge to counter these policies. It has successfully challenged one such policy announced by Coca-Cola (a policy I discussed here). The Free Beacon describes the policy and the outcome:

Last year. . .the American Civil Rights Project sent Coca-Cola a letter demanding that it drop a requirement that law firms working with the company staff at least 30 percent of their teams with "diverse lawyers." In a memo to shareholders in February, Coca-Cola announced it was backing away from the policy.

Unfortunately, other major corporations are sticking to their discriminatory guns. They probably will be hearing from the American Civil Rights Project soon.