Is Woke to Blame for Banks that Go Broke?
Silicon Valley Bank's collapse is being blamed on wokery. In fact both are symptoms of a deeper problem: corporate groupthink that rewards compliance even with the dumbest ideas.
No sooner had Silicon Valley Bank had to close on Friday than critics of all things rainbow-coloured were on the hunt for evidence that an obsession with wokey-ness had triggered…the 16th biggest bank in America’s brokey-ness.
They soon found it in the person of Jay Ersapah, head of Financial Risk Management at SVB’s UK branch who as a “queer person of colour” organized a month-long Pride campaign, "safe space" catch-ups for staff and a Lesbian Visibility Day. Truth is woke played no significant role in the collapse of the bank.
Don’t get me wrong, I loathe today’s corporate virtue-signalling as much as the next err…mature…white man. It’s all in sharp contrast to the low-key but valuable charity work companies used to do. I remember one financial firm I filmed for the BBC years ago which engaged with local schools in Hackney, barely a mile or so from their offices in the City. They invited kids in and sent execs to speak in the schools, as well as donating towards facilities and prizes to encourage excellence. I suggested maybe we mention their charity work in our show but the CEO was adamantly against. He didn’t want to risk giving any impression to the kids that good publicity was the reason they did what they did. Can you imagine a company exec saying anything like that today? Now their performative, look at me stances often suggest charity work is done as much to distract attention from real problems.
Take Hershey’s recent use of a transwoman in its publicity for International Woman’s Day; a move bound to cause a stir. Progressives duly weighed in to celebrate. What they didn’t do was remind themselves that this is a company that has for years been promising it will audit fully the sources of all its cocoa to ensure no child slave labour is involved. But never has.
Or take Deliveroo which in 2021 launched a campaign based around the alphabet soup. Literally. Yep, they created their very own alphabet soup with only the letters LGBTQQIAAP. To which the only sensible response surely, is what a load of QQIAAPP.