The Paradox of the Black Professional: Whitewashing Blackness through Professionalism

Discrimination against Black workers in the United States workplace is an ongoing problem. This study explores one understudied type of discrimination—the paradoxes and contradictions that create untenable situations for Black professionals who work in largely white-dominant organizations. Through in-depth interviews with self-identified Black professionals, we developed a novel theoretical concept we term the paradox of the Black professional. The participants uniformly identified white assumptions underlying the meaning of professionalism and were forced to navigate the impossible expectations of needing to be white while inhabiting a Black body. The findings suggest that organizations expressing a commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity need to rethink the meaning systems and expectations that drive the professional and organizational discourses around which work is organized.

Auditing While Black: Revealing Microaggressions Faced by Black Professionals in Public Accounting

Despite efforts of the AICPA and public accounting firms, Black professionals remain underrepresented in public accounting. To better understand the experiences of Black accountants, we interviewed current and former auditors and collected their personal stories of inequality and microaggressions. We also collected the interviewees’ suggestions about how to improve the retention of Black professionals. We hope these stories and suggestions help advance the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives of public accounting firms. They can also be used by academics to stimulate discussions about DEI issues and motivate research.

ESTAMOS DISTANCIADOS

A Black middle class has emerged in many Latin American countries. Yet given the fluidity of Black identity, it is unclear if socioeconomic gains will result in the consolidation of a Black middle-class group identity with a sense of political responsibility or purpose. In this article, we use qualitative interviews with twenty-two Black professionals in Cali, Colombia, plus a small convenience survey, to explore the following research questions: Does the intersection of being Black and middle class cohere into a group identity? If so, does it translate into a Black political consciousness? And if not, what are the obstacles? We find that while respondents individually identify with a Black middle-class label, they do not experience it as a group that feels symbolic bonds of attachment or acts in a coordinated or mutually cognizant manner. It is a category without shape or coherence. It is amorphous. There are four primary explanations for Black middle class amorphism: the absence of shared or positive markers of collective Black identity; a lack of organizational infrastructure; taboos against organizing along racial lines in the workplace; and a strong individualist ethos towards protecting opportunities and enhancing personal status. We situate our findings within the field of Black politics to discuss what might be lost or gained by this amorphism.

Atypical Black Leader Emergence: South African Self-Perceptions

The research aimed to gain understanding of the self-perceptions of black professionals in relation to business leadership, and how these self-perceptions influenced their behaviors, aspirations and self-perceived abilities in leadership positions. The study was specifically focused on black South African professionals. Black professionals were found to exhibit signs of deep-rooted pain, anger and general emotional fatigue stemming from workplace-, socio-economic- and political triggers that evoked generational trauma and overall negative black lived experiences. The negative lived experiences could have led to racial identity dissonance and, in extreme cases, complete racial identity disassociation. Moreover, black professionals were found to display symptoms of ‘survivor guilt,’ stemming from the shared history of oppression amongst black people in South Africa. The ‘survivor guilt’ contributed toward a profound sense of shared responsibility and purpose to change the circumstances, experiences and overall perceptions about the capabilities of black professionals. Results showed that upbringing, determination, resilience, black support networks, and black leadership representation within organizational structures were important ingredients that positively contributed to the leadership aspirations and success of black professionals. The research discovered that, in some cases, black professionals leveraged white relationships to propel their careers forward, however, this practice reportedly resulted in the black professionals experiencing feelings of self-doubt in their own abilities. Self-doubt, also found to be a result of historical oppression, could have and have been shown to eventually lead to self-deselection, negatively impacting the aspirations and career advancement prospects of black professionals in organizational leadership. Furthermore, the research found that black leaders believed that their blackness, specifically, its unique texture of experiences and history in South Africa, provided them with superior empathetic leadership abilities toward other black employees. Black leaders frequently highlighted the distinctive values of ubuntu as the cornerstone of their leadership approach. In addition, it was found that black professionals also considered their blackness, particularly the shade of their skin, to detract from their leadership opportunities, as it reduced the odds of being authorized as natural leaders, thus fortifying a skewed self-perception of their own leadership capabilities.

Race-Conscious Career Development: Exploring Self-Preservation and Coping Strategies of Black Professionals in Corporate America

The Problem Corporations have maintained a history of operating as racialized social systems that contribute to racial divisions and inequities in the workplace. Despite this reality, there have been high-achieving Black men and women who have overcome limitations and unfavorable circumstances. In this study, resilience to racial bias in corporate America is explored through the lived experience of Black professionals by using a phenomenological research method. The Solution Race, racism, and workplace incivility are discussed in a conceptual framework to examine how racial bias still exists in the workplace and to contextualize the participants’ experiences. As a result of the findings, self-preservation and coping strategies are identified to provide insight into how the participants overcame social and racial barriers that influence their professional identities and career development in corporate America. The Stakeholders This research is intended to inform organizational leaders and career development researchers and specialists who are invested in the advancement of Black professionals and the communities they represent. This study also has implications for human resource developers and researchers who seek to minimize racial bias against Black professionals through racial discourse and race-conscious research.

Winning and losing at the same time

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to summarize the author’s negative experiences with police. The author seeks to enlighten readers to the differential experiences of blacks and whites in police interactions.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is an essay that details the author’s negative experiences with police, while living in a mid-sized Midwestern city.Research limitations/implicationsThe key research implication of the paper is that whites and blacks often have qualitatively different experiences with the police in local communities. While black professionals may be experiencing professional success at work, they may also grapple with racial slights and harassment that undermine their overall physical and psychological wellbeing.Practical implicationsPractically, this paper highlights the needs for police departments to train police on unconscious biases that lead to potential violence against black people. Prospective police officers should be screened on their racial attitudes and ideology to ensure they are equipped to police a broad array of citizens.Social implicationsSocially, the paper underscores the unique experiences of black people with police compared to their white counterparts. To reduce cultural mistrust among blacks against whites, the latter must show empathy and understanding when blacks report instances of racial harassment and mistreatment. Also, whites who witness racial harassment perpetrated by their families, friends, and people in general, should speak out against such practices.Originality/valueThe author thinks the paper is original in that it chronicles his unique, negative experiences with police as a black man in America. The author provides a theoretical background to understand the recent uptick in police violence against blacks and provide helpful tips for moving forward to improve intergroup relations.

On the Shoulders of Little Giants: A Testimonial of Otherfathering and Social Capital in PETE

In this autoethnography, I utilized the concepts of otherfathering, social capital, and testimonio (i.e., testimonial) to explicate the need for and value of Black male mentors in physical education teacher education (PETE). To do so, I describe how three of my mentors operated as otherfathers by imbuing me with the social capital needed to be successful in academia. I conclude by arguing for specific intersectional efforts to support Black men and Black women in PETE, along with the establishment of organizational efforts, to meet the needs of Black professionals in PETE.

Teaching Reading Strategically to Black Academic Underachievers

In response to the academic achievement gap of black American students’ vis-à-vis whites and Asians, Paul C. Mocombe developed his Mocombeian Strategy and Reading Room Curriculum, which posit a comprehensive mentoring program of educated black professionals and the restructuring of the linguistic structure of black American inner-city students via phonetic and language arts instructions, as the solutions to resolving the gap. The two approaches are based on Mocombe’s hypothesis that the academic underachievement of black American students, vis-à-vis their white and Asian counterparts, on standardized tests is grounded in what he refers to as “a mismatch of linguistic structure and social class function.” This work explores the theoretical, practical, and pedagogical relationships between Mocombe’s “mismatch of linguistic structure and social class function hypothesis,” The Mocombeian Strategy, and Reading Room Curriculum (published as Mocombe’s Reading Room Series).

Black Huntington

This book studies the multi-generational transition of rural and semi-rural southern black migrants to life in the embryonic urban-industrial town of Huntington, West Virginia, between 1871 and 1929. Strategically located adjacent to the Ohio River in the Tri-state region of southwestern West Virginia, southeastern Ohio, and eastern Kentucky, and founded as a transshipment station by financier Collis P. Huntington for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in 1871, Huntington grew from a non-descript village to the state’s most populated city by 1930. Huntington’s black population grew in concert: by 1930, the city’s black population comprised the second largest in the state, behind Charleston, the state capital. The urbanization process posed different challenges, burdens, and opportunities to the black migrant than those migrating to the rural-industrial southern West Virginia coal mines. Direct and intensive supervision marked the urban industrial workplace, unlike the autonomy black coal miners’ experienced in the mines. Forced to navigate the socioeconomic and political constraints and dynamics of Jim Crow Era dictates, what state officials euphemistically termed, “benevolent segregation,” Huntington’s black migrants made remarkable strides. In the quest to transition from slave to worker to professional, Huntington’s black migrants forged lives, raised families, build black institutions, purchased property, and become black professionals. This study centers the criticality of their efforts to Huntington’s growth as a commercial, manufacturing, industrial, and cultural center.