White Men Not Invited

I arrived just before the meeting was about to begin. Stopping to catch my breath, I opened the doors and entered Room 201 of Harvard Hall. I scanned the assembled crowd to survey those who had, like me, come in search of summer jobs on Wall Street. Something about the mass of people immediately struck me as notable but my frenzied state clouded my reason. I noticed that most of the people were looking over an application, and I immediately sought to find one.

I turned to the closest student, a man sitting on the aisle, and asked where he had gotten his application. He seemed surprised by my question but politely directed me to the windowsill at the front of the room. Walking towards the stack of handouts, I felt a disproportionate number of eyes following my progress. As I lifted a packet off the top of the pile, I understood why.

"Corporate Summer Internships for Undergraduate Students of Color," the booklet's cover read. I hesitated in shock and embarrassment before quietly exiting the room and thus relieving it of its only Caucasian presence. My first reaction as I returned to my dorm was one of simple amusement. In fact, I still find the whole episode to be extremely funny. However, as I have given the experience some more thought, my entertainment has become polluted by a deep sense of disturbance.

Most superficially, I am disappointed that my first exploration of the summer job market can only be described as an unmitigated disaster. My trip to Harvard Hall that night was in response to an ad that appeared the day before in The Crimson. It read, "SEO Wall Street Program Information Meeting: Hear about the program that places Harvard Students in Investment Banks, Consulting Firms, and Corporate Law Firms on Wall Street for the Summer." That banner was followed simply by a date, location and time.

Returning to my room after my ill-fated trip to Harvard Hall, I assumed that I had made an idiotic mistake. I grabbed the ad off of my bulletin board and searched for any mention of the program's special nature. I had assumed that SEO stood for Student Employment Office (it actually refers to Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, an organization based in New York), and upon re-examination saw no reason to blame myself for the evening's embarrassment.

I then remembered that the ad had also been run in that day's Crimson. I flipped to its page and noticed that, oddly, the ad was not quite the same. In the corrected version of the Wall Street Program's announcement, the word student is preceded by the important qualifier, "minority." Held side by side, the two nearly identical ads raise some incisive questions.

The issue of racial preferences has been a hot topic in the news lately. Contentious debates have arisen all over the country surrounding policies of affirmative action and quotas. Activists have been forced to defend many long-standing programs against a rising backlash against what some dub as reverse-racism.

I have always felt a kinship with those who questioned any system that is based on anything other than individual merit. Beyond the injustice to those without special status, even the beneficiaries of such systems seemed to be selling themselves short. After my experience in Harvard Hall, I can safely say that my opinion was confirmed.

I do not deny that racial barriers still exist and must somehow be combated. However, I do not believe that the way to combat such barriers is to initiate exclusive venues of promotion. The SEO Wall Street Program and others that stem from a similar philosophy are fundamentally discriminatory.

These programs are defended because their mode of discrimination is meant to counteract a supposed greater evil. It is argued that anti-minority prejudice will never realistically be eliminated and so, from a pragmatic standpoint, the equally inequitable remedy should be tolerated. Even from a detached perspective, the logic of this reasoning seems questionable. Why should we sanction one injustice to fight another?

At Harvard Hall I was personally informed that my desire to work on Wall Street and my qualifications to do so were irrelevant. I was not a "student of color" and, therefore, I was out of luck. I imagine that in the minds of those who support programs like SEO, I simply went home, called up my uncle on the stock exchange, got a job and retired to a posh country club for the evening. Unfortunately, the truth is that I must search through volumes of binders at OCS and actually perform the pedestrian task of sending out resumes.

I find it especially ironic that my first direct encounter with reverse racism occurred at Harvard. The minority students in Harvard Hall that night are not exactly battling to claim a stake in society. Much to their credit and due to their abilities, they are well on their way to becoming prosperous citizens. I wonder if there is a special program for white, Kansas farm boys who want to work on Wall Street but don't have the advantage of a Harvard diploma?

As I resume the toil of the summer job search, I do so with a sense of disillusionment and, admittedly, some resentment. On my desk sit two clippings from the Crimson. One is an ad that offers opportunity to all. The other tells me that a mistake has been made. In fact, due to my skin color, I am not invited. Thankfully, we have come a long way since the days of legal segregation. So why I do I feel like I accidentally sat at the wrong lunch counter?