Cody
Williams
Black Managers, White Employees
An excerpt from the
book “Brothas at the Gate”
Mexican president Vicente Fox spoke the truth about race in the American work place and the response only called for him to apologize. His people, seeking opportunity, sneak into the United States illegally to do work, “that not even blacks want to do,” he opined to a group of business leaders.
In Fox’s words it is the 'space between the bars that holds the caged tiger.' The underlying belief that fueled Fox’s sentiments is widely held in most of the Americas, from San Francisco to Saul Palo. Race plays a major factor in what jobs we expect (and allow) people to perform.
We would do society a service if we allowed everyone to speak honestly about race in the workplace with impunity. Without communicating openly about a problem how can its solutions adequately be addressed? The initial road to recovery for AA members is to announce their name then admit to being alcoholic. They do so without fear of condemnation. Whites should be allowed to share honestly their feelings about blacks in the work place in the same manner.
“Hi, my name is John. I’m a director in a Fortune 400, and I’m a racist.”
However, to admit publicly to being prejudice open whites up to scorn and retribution from the thought police, the political correctness monitors who want to govern our morality. Racism is an evil wrong they preach. Publicly. So while many whites are honestly afraid of blacks, or simply just don’t like us, (a right they have) they work hard to keep those feelings private. They articulate these feelings only to their closest confidants, if at all, or by the slip of the tongue.
With that, let’s get back to Mr. Fox’s tongue slippage.
Despite some who are ‘enlightened’ (a term used to during slavery describing white abolitionists), many whites today still view blacks as inferior, if not individually, as a member of a pathological segment of our socially stratified society. Images beamed into their homes via the media as news and entertainment substantiates these negative perceptions. After all, it is mostly whites that produce what news we are allowed to consume. Neighborhoods where there are blacks are considered bad neighborhoods, less desirable places to live. Unsafe. Schools where blacks attend are considered inferior schools. Haunts where blacks frequent are dangerous, edgy, degraded. They fail to associate these pathogens with income, or the lack of, but with skin color. The millions of middle class law abiding capable and accomplished blacks in America are virtually invisible to many whites who chose not to see them. When these whites think of quality, wealth and aristocracy they see theses things as being absent of black people; a Kennedy family wedding portrait, a NASA training lab, a Wall Street boardroom. To introduce blacks into the mix cheapens a thing, diminishes its quality they assume. A lowering of standards we are told.
So a neighborhood where blacks have 'infiltrated' must be abandoned. Declining property values are sure to follow. A school system where blacks are allowed is in deterioration. Crime and drugs are not far behind. Entire American cities like Detroit, Newark and Gary lay in waste, as if devastated by war because of attitudes whites have regarding being in proximity to blacks. Most just would rather not live near us. Many would rather not work with us either.
Yet, because of public policy and governmental insistence, in some companies, on some jobs, the existence of blacks is seen as a necessary evil -- but only in certain jobs. Whites expect blacks to perform those jobs Mexicans cross the boarder to do – in mail rooms or as maids, cooks, lawn service, cabana boys. Their servants. But not those jobs that wield power and influence – corporate department heads, board room executives, managers, policy makers, officers and directors.
Their personal perception is, to work where blacks qualify means your job is not as good as your neighbor’s job who has no blacks in his office. And culturally, social-economically, to work for someone black, to be managed by someone black, to have to answer to someone black is viewed by many whites as being a personal worst, a sign of degrading failure, no matter how accomplished and capable that black person is. In the long history of this country, whites have been the overseers of blacks, the foremen, the stewards, the managers, the captains, the coaches, the vision setters and the policy makers. To have that trend reversed upsets their natural order of things. Personally they are compelled to reject it. Blacks are simply not supposed to tell whites what to do, not suppose to supervise whites. Other blacks, yes -- but not whites.
White rejection of blacks in management is not simply based on a person’s dislike or private racist feelings. This rejection of entire race as managers plays into their sense of accomplishment, their self-esteem, their self-worth. They think how other whites will look at them, judge them, and feel about them if they are managed by someone black. Surely they are not living up to their true potential having been out jobbed by someone black.
Again, I repeat, not all whites think and act like this. However, a substantial amount of them do outside of careers where intellectual and artistic ascent allows one to transcend this thinking. In the vast majority of workplaces across America this thinking exists, evidenced by the lack of blacks in upper management and executive roles in industries far and wide. Evidenced by the lack of opportunity for black men who are quite capable of doing the same or a much better job than their white counterparts. Evidenced by the grossly disproportionate number of black and white mangers.
Often it is argued that qualified blacks simply can not be found for these positions, or that it takes years to train for these roles and there simply are not enough blacks in the pipeline. This is nonsense. The myth of meritocracy in corporate America is debunked each day we read of corporate malfeasance, boardroom mis-accountability, corporate scandals and colossal industrial mismanagement.
In business the ‘relationship’ is king, not ingenuity, creativity or merit. Management promotes whom they like and whom they trust. The Old-boy network has only given up ground in inches, and that to a New-Girl network, which is almost exclusively white too, and the wives and mistresses of the former cadre that once denied them opportunity. Genius in corporate America is rarely rewarded. Loyalty is. Friends are. (IBM allowed Bill Gates to walk out its corporate doors with his ideas that became Microsoft.) And those rewarded friendships have yet to cross the color line in large droves. Outside of Blue State city centers whites and blacks seldom intermingle after the five-o’clock whistle has blown. When decisions to advance someone’s career are made on 9 AM conference calls memories are short and fail to breach that 15-hour span.
Many whites see blacks who are in management positions as having gotten there through affirmative action, part of a diversity program, not based on capability or merit.
After being allowed in as a consultant to many of American’s most respected companies for over twenty-seven years I have never seen a black man promoted solely because of his color. I have seen literally hundreds of whites promoted for no other reason than the color of their skin. I have seen white management in concerted efforts make conscience decisions costing companies money and opportunity to deny a promotion, opportunity and inclusion to competent black workers rather than direct those same energies to shore up the company’s bottom line. Race loyalties are stronger than fiscal responsibility. Imagine that.
Today’s calls for diversity in the workplace are just echoes of past petitions for integration and antidiscrimination generations old. Blacks marching for the right to vote or staging lunch counter sits-ins just to be served the same coffee cup whites were are the same as a black employee fighting to breach corporate glass ceilings. The same arguments segregationists used in the 1930s and 40s are being used now to deride diversity: lowering of standards, they claim, unmerited promotions and reverse discrimination. I had a 47 year-old white male manager tell me recently that he too should be considered part of a protected employee class as are blacks and women because he is divorced and paying child support and alimony, a ‘minority’ he claimed. Cognitive impairment did not stop his corporate advancement. He neither had a college degree or the requisite knowledge needed to understand the work done by the people he managed. His job was given to him solely because he is a white man and had a good ‘relationship’ with other whites who made promotion decisions.
We live in a society where everything we say and do is filtered through a color sieve: choosing a mate, finding a home, educating our children, hiring an employee, honoring a hero, even burying our dead. (Some suburban Detroit residents began re-interning the bodies of their ancestors once a whites only cemetery starting allowing blacks to purchase burial plots).
Having an open and honest discussion about how our race filters function may aid us in removing them.
But first, we must be allowed to be honest with each other about race in the workplace.
© 2005 Cody Williams
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