‘Affirmative action has led to reverse racism’, says Scott Galloway

Diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives are ineffective and create reverse racism, according to business guru and marketing professor Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

New York University marketing professor, best-selling author and business podcaster Scott Galloway has told an audience of Australian business professionals that affirmative action policies have failed and given rise to reverse racism.

Speaking in Sydney at the ADMA Global Forum on Tuesday, Professor Galloway said diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives, such as affirmative action in the US, had created a situation where policies are advantaging 76 per cent of the population and discriminating against 24 per cent.

“I think any race-based affirmative action in the corporate world, or in universities, causes more problems than it solves at this point,” he told the room via video link from the US.

Professor Galloway, a professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, argued that the policies, introduced in the US by president Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, began with the right intentions but were no longer effective in contributing to equality.

“In 1960 there were only 12 blacks at Princeton, Harvard and Yale combined. That was a problem, race-based affirmative action and DE&I made a lot of sense. This year 51 per cent of Harvard’s freshman class is non-white. The problem is 70 per cent of those come from dual-income, upper-income homes.

“We advantage women. Women have taken a tremendous amount of shit, they have made less, they deserve some advantage. Well, what about non-whites, right? They’ve consistently gotten a raw deal. What about the gay people? We persecuted gay people. What about Japanese? We interned them in camps.

“Where it’s gotten to is now DE&I offices in affirmative action roles at corporations and universities are now advantaging 76 per cent of the populace and we are damaging 76 per cent of the populace. You’re not advantaging anybody, you’re discriminating against the 24 per cent.

“We’ve ended up in a weird spot where the snake is eating its own tail, and we have a certain amount of reverse racism, and these departments can’t be questioned or you’re called a racist.”

Professor Galloway said the systems created around affirmative action and DE&I policies and initiatives had become self-serving and were supported by “fake metrics”, which are tolerated but ignored by CEOs who “continue to make choices around shareholder value”.

He believes affirmative action is still needed in universities but should be based on income level, rather than gender, race or sexuality. And he said businesses should be responsible for making more diverse hires. “Corporations should do a better job of hiring non-certification, not-elite-college graduates, and creating on-ramps for people from lower-middle income backgrounds.”

The serial entrepreneur, who has served on the board of directors of The New York Times Company, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Panera Bread and Ledger, also talked about the crisis of masculinity, a subject he is writing a book about, and the need for more action.

“People can feel something is going on with young men and at the same time no one is doing anything about it. So into that void of concern slipped some really unproductive voices in ‘the manosphere’ with this thinly veiled misogyny … whenever anyone was advocating for young men … there was a gag reflex that this is just another thinly veiled misogynist.”

He juxtaposed his comments by highlighting the “march upward” young women were making. “I want to be clear that we should do absolutely nothing to get in the way of women’s march upward, the problem is we need to have an honest conversation around the nadir, with women horizontally and up, men horizontally and down.”