NewsVine_Mariyam
Platinum Member
This is definitely worth the read particularly if you are one of those individuals who believes that racism no longer exists in the United States of America going into year 2020. This type of racism is woven into the very fabric of our society. I'm not sure how it can ever be completely eradicated.
A JPMorgan employee and a customer secretly recorded their conversations with bank employees
Jimmy Kennedy earned $13 million during his nine-year career as a player in the National Football League. He was the kind of person most banks would be happy to have as a client.
But when Mr. Kennedy tried to become a āprivate clientā at JPMorgan Chase, an elite designation that would earn him travel discounts, exclusive event invitations and better deals on loans, he kept getting the runaround.
At first, he didnāt understand why. Then, last fall, he showed up at his local JPMorgan branch in Arizona, and an employee offered an explanation.
āYouāre bigger than the average person, period. And youāre also an African-American,ā the employee, Charles Belton, who is black, told Mr. Kennedy. āWeāre in Arizona. I donāt have to tell you about what the demographics are in Arizona. They donāt see people like you a lot.ā Mr. Kennedy recorded the conversation and shared it with The New York Times.
āThey Donāt See People Like You a Lotā
Listen to a conversation between a JPMorgan customer and his financial adviser.
Itās no secret that racism has been baked into the American banking system. There are few black executives in the upper echelons of most financial institutions. Leading banks have recently paid restitution to black employees for isolating them from white peers, placing them in the poorest branches and cutting them off from career opportunities. Black customers are sometimes profiled, viewed with suspicion just for entering a bank and questioned over the most basic transactions.
This year, researchers for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that black mortgage borrowers were charged higher interest rates than white borrowers and were denied mortgages that would have been approved for white applicants.
Banks, including JPMorgan, say they are committed to eradicating the legacy of racism. And they insist that any lingering side effects simply reflect stubborn socioeconomic imbalances in society as a whole, not racial bias among their employees.
What recently transpired inside a cluster of JPMorgan branches in the Phoenix area suggests that is not true.
Mr. Kennedy was told he was essentially too black. His financial adviser, Ricardo Peters, complained that he, too, was a victim of racial discrimination. What makes their cases extraordinary is not that the two men say they faced discrimination. It is that they recorded their interactions with bank employees, preserving a record of what white executives otherwise might have dismissed as figments of the aggrieved partiesā imaginations.
Patricia Wexler, a JPMorgan spokeswoman, defended the bankās overall treatment of Mr. Peters and Mr. Kennedy. She said that the bank hadnāt been aware of all of the audio recordings and that āin light of some new information brought to us by The New York Times,ā the company put one of its executive directors on administrative leave while the bank investigates his conduct.
The Back of the Branch
Mr. Peters started his career at JPMorgan as a salesman in the bankās credit cards division. After about eight years in various roles, he was promoted to a financial adviser position in Phoenix in 2016. His job was to help bank customers prudently invest their money.
Mr. Peters had won numerous performance awards at the bank, but things soon started going wrong for him....
This Is What Racism Sounds Like in the Banking Industry
Jimmy Kennedy earned $13 million during his nine-year career as a player in the National Football League. He was the kind of person most banks would be happy to have as a client.
But when Mr. Kennedy tried to become a āprivate clientā at JPMorgan Chase, an elite designation that would earn him travel discounts, exclusive event invitations and better deals on loans, he kept getting the runaround.
At first, he didnāt understand why. Then, last fall, he showed up at his local JPMorgan branch in Arizona, and an employee offered an explanation.
āYouāre bigger than the average person, period. And youāre also an African-American,ā the employee, Charles Belton, who is black, told Mr. Kennedy. āWeāre in Arizona. I donāt have to tell you about what the demographics are in Arizona. They donāt see people like you a lot.ā Mr. Kennedy recorded the conversation and shared it with The New York Times.
āThey Donāt See People Like You a Lotā
Listen to a conversation between a JPMorgan customer and his financial adviser.
Itās no secret that racism has been baked into the American banking system. There are few black executives in the upper echelons of most financial institutions. Leading banks have recently paid restitution to black employees for isolating them from white peers, placing them in the poorest branches and cutting them off from career opportunities. Black customers are sometimes profiled, viewed with suspicion just for entering a bank and questioned over the most basic transactions.
This year, researchers for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that black mortgage borrowers were charged higher interest rates than white borrowers and were denied mortgages that would have been approved for white applicants.
Banks, including JPMorgan, say they are committed to eradicating the legacy of racism. And they insist that any lingering side effects simply reflect stubborn socioeconomic imbalances in society as a whole, not racial bias among their employees.
What recently transpired inside a cluster of JPMorgan branches in the Phoenix area suggests that is not true.
Mr. Kennedy was told he was essentially too black. His financial adviser, Ricardo Peters, complained that he, too, was a victim of racial discrimination. What makes their cases extraordinary is not that the two men say they faced discrimination. It is that they recorded their interactions with bank employees, preserving a record of what white executives otherwise might have dismissed as figments of the aggrieved partiesā imaginations.
Patricia Wexler, a JPMorgan spokeswoman, defended the bankās overall treatment of Mr. Peters and Mr. Kennedy. She said that the bank hadnāt been aware of all of the audio recordings and that āin light of some new information brought to us by The New York Times,ā the company put one of its executive directors on administrative leave while the bank investigates his conduct.
The Back of the Branch
Mr. Peters started his career at JPMorgan as a salesman in the bankās credit cards division. After about eight years in various roles, he was promoted to a financial adviser position in Phoenix in 2016. His job was to help bank customers prudently invest their money.
Mr. Peters had won numerous performance awards at the bank, but things soon started going wrong for him....
This Is What Racism Sounds Like in the Banking Industry
