By Joel When I look at the "banking platform" today—that open area where personal bankers and managers sit—I don’t just see desks and computers; I see a battlefield of institutional history. In the 1970s and '80s, for many Black and Latino employees in New York, that platform was a space of restricted entry. I worked with colleagues who had been at their branches for 25 years who shared stories of a time when they were physically prohibited from stepping onto the platform in front of white customers. Even as those physical barriers fell, they were replaced by "paper ceilings" that kept veteran minority staff from the one thing they had earned: the title of Bank Officer. The "Preferred" Degree: A Credentialing Double Standard By the late 1980s, a new tactic emerged in job postings. The phrase "Bachelor’s Degree Preferred" began appearing for Officer roles. On the surface, it looked like a push for professional standards...