Anti-Discrimination Advocate Challenges Corporate "Wokeness" in America

| Photo by Tim Trad on Unsplash

The King’s College invited guest speaker Kenny Xu, a notable author and anti-discrimination advocate, to speak about the consequences of forcing ‘wokeness’ into corporate America on Sep. 20. Xu is President of Color Us United, an organization devoted to fighting against racial discrimination — advocating for a merit-based and race-blind standard.

Xu began his speech by explaining the rapid changes corporations have made from faceless, money-making entities to champions of social justice. 

“The current trends in the social justice corporation are tying money with political influence in a way that has never been done before,” said Xu.

When profits are on the line and a company’s reputation, like Bank of America, is dependent on good standing in social media circles, many CEOs push for seemingly progressive policies, yet rarely achieve the desired result. In actuality, these policies do not provide help in an effective and long-lasting way, according to Xu.

“Most of the time, social justice corporations do not help the minorities they claim to serve… Bank of America created a new housing proposal,” said Xu. “They were going to offer zero down payments and zero closing costs for Black and Hispanic families. And their reason is these families don’t own homes at the rate that white families do. It is a way to build wealth. But this is actually a really bad policy for Black and Hispanic Americans. There is a reason why we have down payments. It's a way to ensure you are creditworthy and can pay off your mortgage. So Bank of America was actually encouraging these families to take on more debt.”

Xu makes the case that “woke” policies help corporations, like American Express, hide exploitation or “illegal activities.” The CEO of American Express attempted to increase diversity within the company.

“The hiring of minorities and women by having a 15% bonus added to [a hiring manager’s] paycheck,” said Xu. “By the way, that meant firing many white males. He created a leadership program in 2019 that fast-tracked people from the lowest tiers of American Express into one of the top tiers of American Express. But only African Americans were allowed to apply.” 

At the same time they were marketing their incredible efforts towards equality, Xu explained that “American Express is currently under investigation by the IRS for tax fraud. They are being investigated for misleading their customers into thinking they could get a tax break when they can’t. Their solution was to fire the lower guys. Not the leaders who should be taking responsibility.” 

The King’s students in attendance varied in opinion on the arguments Xu perpetuated.

“I appreciated Xu’s argument as showing the slippery slope of eliminating merit and destroying employee’s character,” said Julia Jensen, a sophomore of the House of Corrie ten Boom.

“Inasmuch as it rejected corporate America's encroachment into personal affairs, the lecture was salient,” said Macy Farr, a junior of the House of Sojourner Truth. “Its denouncement of drastic affirmative action measures in the workplace elicited the pressing question: if not there, where should social injustices be confronted? I hope students walk away from Xu's lecture considering this matter with the prudence and urgency it necessitates.”

According to Xu, the solution to eliminating the “wokeness” in the corporate world is to “take race out of the equation of our lives and…shift to meritocracy, where people are judged solely by the quality of their work and not by their gender, race, background or nationality.”

Bella Rush is a junior at The King’s College majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She is also part of The King’s College volleyball team.