by Jon Meacham
Several years ago, Edward Irons and Gilbert Moore, professors of finance and economics, respectively, conducted a pioneering study of black professionals in banking. The scholars interviewed 125 black bankers in ten different states, distributed one thousand questionnaires (of which nearly one-third were completed and returned) to black bankers in twenty-two states, and reviewed sixteen years’ worth of relevant Equal Employment Opportunity Commission statistics. The result was Black Managers: The Case of the Banking Industry, published in 1985. Despite the authors’ dry prose, their findings were compelling, painting a poignant and depressing picture of the plight of blacks in banking.
Like every other researcher I know of who has asked any large number of black professionals how they are faring, Irons and Moore found a cornucopia of discontent. Interviewees repeatedly complained of being left out of the informal communications network, of “not being in on things.” Few reported having “mentors” or anyone high within their organizations who took a supportive interest in their careers. By and large, they judged themselves less likely to be promoted than their white peers and felt they had to expend an inordinate amount of effort trying to make whites “comfortable” with them. They admitted to being under great stress, and many (particularly among the black men in the sample) seemed to be fleeing the field—which led the authors to observe that “black males who have the same high self-image . . . and aggressive personality as white males must either ‘walk softly’ or face the prospect of being driven out of the industry, out of frustration.” Irons and Moore, who had been prepared to find some measure of unhappiness, expressed shock at the magnitude and pervasiveness of the problems they uncovered.
Phyllis Wallace, professor emeritus at Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported equally dismal results after systematically examining the experiences of her former students. For five years (from 1980 through 1984), she tracked recent Sloan graduates, trying to compare the progress of blacks and whites who were “similar . . . in every way.” She found that virtually from the outset the blacks began to fall behind the whites in terms of income and status in their companies. In part that had to do with the professions they entered. Numerous whites, for instance, went into financial services and management consulting—fields that tended to pay young people extremely well and to promote rapidly during the years of her study. Yet “not a single one of our black students went into the management consulting industry,” perhaps, she speculates, because those companies sought employees they thought had potential to attract big-spending clients. Blacks, who “were not seen as able to bring in million-dollar contracts,” generally gravitated to Fortune 500 firms.
Once there, said Wallace, they tended to get “stuck in a staff job,” and they progressed significantly more slowly than whites. “It was just more difficult for them to be promoted,” she observed. “They had to demonstrate over and over again that they were worthy of promotion.” Wallace was so concerned by the discrepancies in mobility that she kept in touch with many of the black graduates beyond the period of her research. Eventually, after six or seven years, she found that some received a “double promotion.” After initially being held back, they were “finally given the stamp of approval.” The result, said Wallace, if not exactly parity with their white classmates, was at least a partial closing of the gap.
Ella Bell, a visiting associate professor at Sloan who has also taught at Yale’s school of organization and management, agrees with many of Wallace’s findings, but she believes that more recent graduates (unlike those studied by Wallace) have learned to avoid the sinkhole of corporate staff jobs. “The ones that I know of are in bottom-line positions. They are not going into staff positions. . . . They are savvy enough to know you do not do that.” What they have not learned, however, is how to stay on the same track as similarly credentialed whites.
“Once they get into these companies, they’re astounded,” said Bell, “because they feel, ‘I went to Yale. I went to Harvard, Sloan, or Stanford. Somehow that’s supposed to polish the floor for me so I can just slide on through.’ And that does not happen, for a lot of different reasons—race being a factor in that. What usually happens is that blacks will get in with these credentials. They’ll make it one or two years, and then all of a sudden they start getting this real fuzzy kind of feedback—what I call static feedback—from their supervisors. Somehow they’re ‘not good team players.’ They’re ‘too outspoken, too aggressive.’ Another favorite one is that they ‘just don’t know how to develop people.’ All of this is subjective, nothing that you can fix. . . . And when you ask for examples it gets even flimsier.”
As a result, blacks find that “they’re not where they want to be. . . . They knew—some of them knew—it was going to be tough.” But they also assumed that they would be okay. “Then reality sets in, that they’re not going to be okay. They’re not getting the positions. They’re not getting what was promised . . . a chance to really do some cutting-edge work. So there’s a lot of disappointment, and a lot of turnover. . . . A lot of my students, particularly from Yale, [change jobs] within the first two years. One was a brilliant guy from Ghana. He’s now gone back to Ghana. . . . I know two others who are looking for jobs right now. It has not turned out the way they thought it would be.”
Bell acknowledges that some do “cross over and make it,” but they seem to be exceptions to the general rule. And though she believes that white uneasiness with blacks may play some role in black disappointments, the reality is “more complicated.” Once upon a time, she recalls, many whites seemed painfully uncomfortable with blacks, “and there are still signs of that. But I’ve spoken to managers, white males, who are very high up . . . and they talk about having their black colleagues to their homes, to Christmas parties. . . . It’s not comfort that’s the issue.” The issue, as she sees it, is whether those managers are able to see blacks as capable of carrying the company forward, of representing to the company’s myriad constituencies the same things white senior executives would represent.
Black women, she believes, face especially daunting challenges, for even as white men are wondering, “Can I really mentor a black female?” black female managers are trying to deflect any suggestion that they may be sleeping with the white boss. For the most part, the women’s efforts—at least in that area—seem to be successful. “When I go into companies,” said Bell, “I will often hear that white women worked their way up sexually. . . . Very rarely do I hear that about black women.” Not that she presumes it to be true when said of white women, but with black women it’s rarely even suggested as a possibility: “That’s not one of the mythologies you hear.”
Sharon Collins, a sociologist with the University of Illinois in Chicago, is no more upbeat than Bell and the others. Collins’s professional interest in black managers began in 1980, following Ronald Reagan’s election as president, when she noticed a new anxiety among many black professionals she knew. Blacks who had been doing nicely, “who were driving Mercedes and going to Oak Street and buying suits, . . . were scared—simply because of this change in political administrations.” The reason, she concluded after reflection and research, was that for blacks, middle-class status was largely a “politically dependent condition.” A disproportionate number of blacks worked for the government, often in “black-related” agencies. Others owed their jobs to “legislation that forced employers to hire blacks.” Still others were in positions that “depended on money being funneled from the government into the private sector in all sorts of ways,” from job-training programs to minority set asides. If the government had not been looming in the background, “these people would not have been hired for the most part.” And with Reagan coming into power, many understandably worried that they would soon lose their tenuous grip on middle-class status.
A few years later (in 1986 and 1987), Collins interviewed seventy-six black senior executives with Fortune 500 companies. She intentionally picked those near the
top of the corporate pyramid to see whether blacks at that rarefied level also feared losing their status, and whether they had managed to gain recognition for reasons unrelated to race. “So, essentially, I went to people who actually looked like their white counterparts from all external criteria,” said Collins. They had good educations, impressive titles, and huge salaries. But they were also largely pigeonholed by race she discovered. Two-thirds of them had progressed through what she defined as race-related jobs (meaning positions in such areas as affirmative action, community relations, and minority affairs), and half of that number were still in those jobs—even though their titles, in many instances, gave little indication of that.
“There was a constant issue in their careers,” said Collins. They were either trying to avoid “black” jobs or trying to get out of them or being penalized for being in them—“because those jobs are going nowhere,” and many of those seemingly successful people “won’t go one step further than they are now.” Indeed, when she returned to interview the executives in 1992, she found that a number had left their companies, a circumstance she attributed largely to the fact that with corporate restructuring proceeding apace, many in minority-related fields were seen as expendable and were let go.
Even among those who were not trapped in race work, Collins found a large measure of discontent. “Very few of them felt really satisfied,” she said. “These are ambitious guys, very ambitious, and their eyes are on the prize,” yet many were concluding that they were simply not regarded in the same way as their white peers.
Collins recalled one manager who made an especially strong impression on her. “If ever there was a company man, this man is it,” she said. He “can hardly say anything without putting it in terms of what’s good for the company.” Through a long and distinguished career, he had endeavored to earn that company’s unconditional respect, clearing every hurdle placed in his path and making every sacrifice required. And he had positioned himself, finally, to reap the rewards of his exertions. But now, despite all his labors, people were passing him by as they moved into jobs he thought he should have. Like many blacks in the same situation, he was having a hard time sorting out whether and to what extent his race was holding him back, but he had reluctantly admitted that racial discrimination was the only explanation that made sense to him.
What did he really want? wondered Collins. “Is it to be seen as if he is white? Or for race not to matter?” If so, “think of how much a black person has to sell of himself to try to get race not to matter. . . . You have to ignore the insults. You have to ignore the natural loyalties. You have to ignore your past. In a sense, you have to just about deny yourself.” Collins kept thinking about his pain, she added, and about the price of his denial. “He knows the final threshold is there, and he’s losing hope that he can cross it.”
Results of a 1991 survey by the Executive Leadership Council were somewhat more upbeat than the bleak portrait painted by Collins and her fellow academics. The council, a Washington-based organization of black executives (most vice presidents or higher at Fortune 500 companies), polled fifty of its fifty-five members and found a bare majority—52 percent—agreeing that their companies created a “comfortable and supportive work environment for African Americans.” But even members of this relatively contented group were far from sanguine. Asked to identify the “major restraining force” on their careers, most responded “racism.”
“Most executives agreed that the racism they face is covert, elusive, and heavily masked,” wrote Jeffalyn Johnson, who analyzed the data for ELC. The survey also found that the executives felt at particular risk of having their careers derailed or of being labeled “troublemakers” if they aggressively promoted the hiring of women and minorities. Johnson concluded that in order to rise, “African-American executives might have to make difficult value decisions between their ‘black identity’ and orientation and corporate acculturation.”
Francine Soliunas, legal counsel for Illinois Bell, has seen black executives cut themselves off from other blacks in their quest to be more acceptable to management. Yet “even those among us who have achieved the ultimate power . . . [are] at some point . . . let know, in some way, shape, or form, that they are [considered] ‘nigger[s].’ ” The message, she says, is transmitted in any number of ways. People quietly make you aware at meetings that they doubt you know what you’re talking about. Executives totally outside your area of expertise endeavor to prove that they are more expert than you. The message, as she sees it, is unmistakable, and translates as: “You think you have power? You don’t really have power, because I can take away that power anytime I want.” As a consequence, even those blacks who are not initially inclined to align themselves with other blacks often end up doing so: “They get religion, if you will. They become part of the networking effort. They speak out more. They are less concerned about the impact in terms of it affecting their positions because their positions have already been affected.”
Despite the harshness of her observations, Soliunas is not dissatisfied with her own life. As counsel, her rank is equal to assistant vice president. “I’m comfortable with my level of achievement and my rate of achievement in corporate America,” she says. “I’ve had three promotions in the twelve years I’ve been here. That’s two more than the average lawyer.” Nonetheless, she believes that corporate America has violated a morally binding contract, “the contract being if you work, study hard, and excel in your education, and if you work hard and excel on your job, you will have the opportunities—even if you’re only that very small fraction that they allow to slip through the gates. I think even those of us who are that small fraction . . . have to recognize that we still confront major, major barriers, even after we’ve slipped through.”
For Soliunas to complain of racism in corporate America even as she expresses satisfaction with her personal achievements is not as contradictory as it may seem. Like other black executives I interviewed, she does not judge her progress in relation to an ideal (and color-blind) standard but in relation to other opportunities in the corporate world. And by that measure she feels she is doing well, particularly in a profession dominated by white males to a greater extent than much of the corporate world.
“Typically corporate lawyers . . . are the white-haired, three-piece black-pin-striped-suit gentlemen,” says Soliunas. “They are not little chubby black women who have white-haired, three-piece-suit-wearing gentlemen as their clients. And so, on any number of occasions in working for Illinois Bell, I’ve walked into court with my clients and the judge immediately starts directing his questions to my clients on the assumption that they’re the lawyer and I’m the client.”
Gender, race, and raiment incongruities notwithstanding, Soliunas is confident that many of her white colleagues recognize her talents and give her credit for her accomplishments. But she also senses from some of them an attitude of “ ‘How dare you to put yourself on the same plane with me! How dare you to challenge me! How dare you to think that you have the option to question my power and my authority!’ And I think it’s very subtle . . . It’s communicated . . . when there’s a meeting and there are discussions going on and you express a dissenting opinion. Or you challenge someone who is deemed to be the authority on the issue. . . . I see a very different reaction from my challenging them than I’ve seen with white females. . . . I don’t see it with a lot of white men. It’s not a pervasive attitude. But it is an attitude and it is present in white males of power who can influence your career.”
Soliunas, who came to Illinois Bell after working as a litigator in county, state, and federal government, acknowledges that her career in the private sector did not get off to the most auspicious start. Before her first promotion, two white males were moved up. A white female and two other white males advanced along with her. All the males were promoted to higher positions, all had been at the company for less time than she, and all had less experience as lawyers. She is not certain that race accounts for he
r slower start. A number of plausible reasons could be offered, including the fact that at the time her area of specialization was not sufficiently broad. But “no one took me by the hand and said, ‘You know, you’ve got to move out of labor now if you want to move into a [higher] position.’ ”
Soliunas finds fulfillment not only in having risen in the company, but in helping others. “My satisfaction comes from knowing that I have positioned myself in a way that allows me to have a tremendous amount of power in terms of being able to impact policy in a number of ways, but specifically with respect to minorities in the corporation. . . . If there is a decision to terminate, a decision that may negatively impact a minority or a female, a decision that has to do with money, particularly compensation that may have some negative impacts, I’m the one that they talk to.” But getting there wasn’t easy, and “when it happened for me, it happened very late in the game.”
Basil Paterson, the former deputy mayor of New York, makes a similar point more poignantly. “Every day I realize that I’m further ahead than I ever thought I would be in my life,” yet “by any standard that is uniquely American, I’m not successful. It’s too late for me to get rich because I spent too much time preparing for what I’ve got. . . . Most of us are ten years behind what we should have been. We couldn’t get credentials until we were older than other folks.” And he is not at all sure that the next generation will have it much better. He recently received a résumé from a black graduate of a prestigious law school who claimed she wanted experience in international commerce. “She can’t get international commerce working for me,” Paterson pointed out, speculating that she had come to him because she saw few opportunities elsewhere.