Jamie Dimon fashions himself the “least woke person you will ever meet,” his colleagues say.
Unlike so many other CEOs, the JPMorgan boss will tell anyone who listens he is immune from the woke proselytizing from advocacy groups like the Human Rights Campaign, stuff that is forcing much of corporate America to cave to the progressive left on boardroom policy.
I want to believe Dimon because I’ve known him for years.
He’s also an amazing executive running the nation’s largest bank, churning out huge profits and keeping major scandals at bay.
But on closer inspection, Dimon and by extension JPMorgan does have a woke blind spot.
Some of it I lay out in my new book “Go Woke Go Broke; The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America.”
Recall, he was photographed taking a knee while visiting a JPM branch during the Black Lives Matter riots.
(Now that BLM’s halo has dimmed, his flacks swear he was kneeling so he wouldn’t block the people behind him.)
In 2020, he set up a $30 billion “Racial Equity Commitment” fund when people regardless of race were hurting during the COVID lockdowns.
It was under Dimon’s leadership that the powerful Business Roundtable adopted the “stakeholder capitalism” model of corporate governance, opening the door for groups like the aforementioned Human Rights Campaign (aka HRC) to having a say in corporate decision making.
Stakeholder capitalism allowed HRC to foist on major companies something known as DEI, or “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” a controversial management philosophy that employs heavy-handed metrics to produce racial and gender-based employment.
DEI is why Bud Light opted for a trans political activist to hawk its beer.
It’s why Disney has something that resembles quotas in much of its hiring.
And it’s why people I spoke to for my book told me that when interviewing at Goldman Sachs, applicants are asked about their sexuality, a not-so-subtle suggestion that being part of an “intersectional” group will add to your chances of getting a job.
Constitutionally dubious
Yes, DEI is controversial — people hate it so much, Bud Light is no longer the nation’s top-selling beer after the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco.
It’s also potentially illegal. Many companies are now ditching their DEI departments, not just because it robs employees of their individual merit, but because of its dubious constitutionality.
Not apparently JPMorgan, I recently discovered.
Despite an increasing anti-woke reckoning in many corporate boardrooms, JPM’s continued fealty to wokeness and DEI is proudly displayed on its website and elsewhere.
Sure, much of it is the usual pablum about how providing preferences is great for society and JPMorgan is on the cutting edge of this stuff.
Some of it seems to go further.
Example: In its celebration of DEI, JPMorgan‘s website advertises that “58 percent of new US hires are racially or ethnically diverse.”
Who’s against diversity in a country that’s increasingly diverse?
No one.
The issue is how the firm is achieving that level of so-called diversity, given the racial makeup of the US population.
Where does merit come in?
How about using economic status as opposed to race when making those decisions?
Using a non-racial metric would likely comply with the recent SCOTUS ruling on affirmative action.
The answer to these questions might be found in another piece of information I discovered.
Amid the ruckus over DEI, other companies have stopped dealing with HRC, but not JPMorgan, The Post has learned.
The bank confirmed it is a willing participant when the group compiles its so-called “Corporate Equality Index,” which critics say is used by the activist group to impose strict racialized-DEI hiring standards at major employers.
‘Platinum partner’
In fact, JPM is a so-called “platinum partner” of HRC, according to the group’s website, suggesting some sort of corporate relationship with an organization that is avowedly political and progressive.
Its website literally touts its plan to defeat conservative political candidates across the country, including Donald Trump in the presidential election.
When I ran all this by JPMorgan management, people there offered a different, more benign interpretation of the bank’s DEI policies.
They pointed to Dimon’s annual letter to shareholders a few months ago that stated: “JPMorgan Chase will conform as the laws evolve. . . . We are often asked in particular about ‘equity’ and what that word means. To us, it means equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal access . . . not equal outcomes.”
The bank’s recruiting reflects the diversity of its various hiring pools from tellers to investment bankers.
“We have no quotas,” a spokesman tells me.
“Being diverse and inclusive is good for business — leading to much broader choice of talent.”
Meanwhile, JPM execs contend their dealings with HRC are prosaic, centering on its DEI survey.
OK, but they also declined to provide specifics on their “platinum” status with the group or whether than means HRC receives bank donations.
HRC didn’t return an email seeking comment.
Again, Jamie Dimon is a great CEO and JPMorgan is very profitable.
But allowing his bank to play footsie with the political left sullies this image.
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