But she was also interested in how the most prestigious banks, consultancies, and law firms were responding to pressures to make their companies more racially and culturally diverse. Rivera embedded with corporate recruiters working élite campuses, interviewed the partners, canvassed the applicants. She found that even when the members of firm’s leadership were looking for diversity, they were drawn to candidates whose experiences mostly matched their own. Investment banks were thrilled to find an African-American candidate they wanted to hire, but she was more likely to be a Princeton midfielder than the valedictorian at Spelman.
.. Recruiters, Rivera found, tended to have an exceptionally narrow idea of what qualified a candidate as élite. One partner told her, “Someone will show up and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t go to HBS [Harvard Business School], but I am an engineer at MIT and I heard about this fair, and I wanted to come and meet you in New York.’ God bless him for the effort, but it’s just not going to work.” When recruiters considered a candidate beyond an exceptionally small group of élite schools, it was often because the candidate had a personal connection with someone at the firm, and those candidates “were almost exclusively white and from the highest socioeconomic backgrounds.” One of Rivera’s conclusions was that the system of selection in these firms was not what we would call a meritocracy but rather something more confined and particular: a system of individual sponsorship, in which the élites hand-pick their successors.
.. Kasich told a voter that the response to inequality was not to raise taxes but to encourage workers to develop more skills. A middle-aged woman stood up in the crowd, sounding astonished, and asked if Kasich was “seriously suggesting” that; even for people she knew with master’s degrees, she said, it could be hard to find work. Kasich suggested that maybe their degrees were of the wrong kind, or simply wrong for the region. Maybe they needed to move.
Trumpism has triumphed, whoever wins the Republican nomination
Donald Trump’s invective has disrupted the character of US politics. It will be hard to change.. Meanwhile, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, and ultimate insider, last week said that the US should set up a federal agency to promote Judeo-Christian values. Until Mr Trump, most Republicans rejected the “clash of civilisations” view of the world. Now it is normal.
.. Father Charles Coughlin, the Trump of 1930s America, said: “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” Mr Trump talks of Syria’s huddled refugees as “Trojan horses” for Isis.
John Kasich Balances His Blue-Collar Roots and Ties to Wall Street
“I came away thinking: interesting guy, not like a major door-opener,” recalled Gary Weinstein, who interviewed him and became his boss. As to what the congressman knew about banking, Mr. Weinstein said, “Zero. It was shocking to me.”
.. Today, as Mr. Kasich’s campaign seems to be gaining some traction in the early primary state of New Hampshire, Democrats — especially here in Ohio — are working hard to remind voters of his Lehman past. When Mr. Kasich vowed to reform Social Security by giving younger Americans “an opportunity to earn money through the strength of our American economy,” the Ohio Democratic Party accused him of trying to hand “Social Security funds over to the same Wall Street banks that caused the Great Recession — and coincidentally turned Kasich into a millionaire.”