American Express Diversity Policies are Un-American

A New Meaning for The Black Card

By Kenny Xu

In corporate America today, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs have become part and parcel of the work experience. Stories abound of privilege trainings, oppression pyramid workshops, and inclusion seminars.  And beyond headlines, who hasn’t been required to take part in some sort of diversity sensitivity training at work or school?  So ubiquitous are these trainings that they’ve been spoofed multiple times by shows like The Office.

Yet, good humor aside, there is a more serious issue when these DEI programs begin to rub up on explicit racism.  In fact, many of these policies, while purporting to foster “inclusion,” instead foster cultures of division and racial resentment instead.  One of the worst offenders in this regard is American Express, who recently released their 2021 inaugural Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion report which goes through in vivid detail all the ways their company plans on inspiring racial hatred in 2022. 

The inaugural report was commissioned as a component of the company’s “$1 Billion Action Plan to Promote Racial, Ethnic and Gender Equity for Colleagues, Customers and Communities,” which was announced in 2020 in response to the death of George Floyd. The company committed significant financial and human resources towards advancing DEI in both their workplace, and society as a whole.

After reading through it myself, it is clear that we can only call American Express’s diversity policies one thing: quite Un-American.

Some of the goals in the initiative included doubling American Express’s spend with minority suppliers to $750 million per year by 2024, providing capital and education to at least 250,000 Black-owned businesses, creating marketing initiatives to “amplify the voices of the Black and Latinx community” and drive revenue to minority businesses, and increasing the proportion of non-white participants in the American Express Leadership Academy from 50% to 75%. The 2021 report outlines the company’s progress on these items so far.

On face these initiatives seem like typical pandering to the woke crowd - with the exception of the Leadership Academy, which seems like a genuinely good idea to assist with employee education.  But the other policies’ effects on the company culture are extremely insidious.

Currently, two in five AMEX employees are involved in at least one “Colleague Network,” which are internal networking groups based primarily upon race, religion, and sexual orientation. Examples include their Women’s Network, Black Network, Latinx Network, AAPI Network, and LGBTQ+ Network. There is no network for male or white employees.  There is also no network that pledges work for interracial harmony and colorblindness.  AmEx’s focus for company culture is clearly on racial separation, not fraternization.

AmEx’s new Self-ID initiative is similarly chilling.  AmEx asks employees to “voluntarily and confidentially” self-identify on four variables: gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and disability status.  Why?  So, they can reward people who mark the correct victimhood category and boost their own “equity” numbers going on their reports. 

Multiple employee sources from within the company tell me that AmEx recruitment and promotion policies heavily emphasize hiring and promoting by race, rather than merit.  In fact, one public lawsuit against AmEx asserts that the company ties executive bonuses to “equity,” meaning hiring for a certain racial composition.  This means that preferred races will get preferential treatment, and non-preferred races will find it artificially more difficult to get promoted, because they are the wrong race. 

Further compounding this terrible policy is the obvious loophole that many employees will be tempted to lie about their race to get victim points for the sake of promotion and hiring.  One survey found that more than one-third of white students lie about their race on college admissions, most commonly putting “Latino” or “Native American” to score victimhood points.  Why wouldn’t AmEx employees do the same?  What are AmEx managers going to do, force them to take a DNA test?  In all likelihood, this policy would just reinforce a culture of dishonesty and pandering to get ahead. 

AmEx’s “supply-chain diversity” policy is similarly destructive.  Let’s clarify what it means for American Express to commit to spending millions of dollars with specifically Black-owned businesses: it is blatant racial tokenization. This policy turns Black business owners into a commodity that American Express can simply channel money towards to signal how progressive they are. It is highly gameable as well. The only requirement for being a Black-owned business is being at least 51% owned by a Black person.  This means a company can have 99 percent white people, but if the CEO or majority shareholder is Black, the company qualifies as a “Black-owned business.”  This also opens the door for numerous loopholes, including non-Black people claiming African ancestry to gain funding and faux “Black-owned” businesses being operated fully by non-Black teams.

But what is truly Un-American about this policy is the way it invalidates meritocracy by dispensing resources based on race. Rather than upholding the traditional market idea that the best products ought to win in the long run, AMEX plays racial politics at the expense of the consumer and better qualified suppliers.  Now, the consumer will not get the best product, but rather the product that AmEx believes is representative of a certain race. 

The consumer will no longer get the best service either.  Under the “Recruitment” heading, AmEx emphasizes their commitment to recruiting from diverse backgrounds: women, people of color (“POC”), and LGBTQ+ individuals.  What about hiring based on merit?  What about only caring about what the individual must bring to the table?  On page 18, they commit to “enhancing colleague representation” via a “comprehensive strategy that encompasses recruitment, hiring, and promotion practices to attract, develop, and retain underrepresented colleagues.”  What about developing and attracting the most meritorious colleagues?  These are basic company principles AmEx is ignoring, to the detriment of their products and of their future as a profitable company. 

Finally, the most Un-American aspect of American Express’s policies is their race-based hiring and promotion practices. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously dreamt that one day his children would be judged for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Hiring and promoting employees based on race is by definition judging people for the color of their skin.

In their report, American Express states that “Explicit consideration of equity is integrated in everything we do to embody inclusion.” Forcing racial equity upon its own employees is not just misguided, it betrays common principles of judgment based on merit, rather than race or gender or any other characteristic.  Until they eliminate this consideration in favor of colorblind meritocracy, they will remain a company that is decidedly Un-American.

Kenny Xu, is author of the book, An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy. He is the President of Color Us United, which advocates for a color blind society.