Colorblindness In The Workplace

Relationships on the Campus, in the Workplace, and Beyond
I used to envy the “colorblindness” which some liberal, enlightened, white people were supposed to possess . . . But I no longer believe that “colorblindness”—if it even exists -—- is the opposite of racism; I think it is, in this world, a form of naiveté and mere stupidity. It implies that I would look at a black woman and see her as white, thus engaging in white solipsism to the utter erasure of her particular reality.
—Adrienne Rich, ‘Disloyal to Civilization,” Lies, Secrets, and Silences, 1979
White women are beginning to examine their relationships to Black women, yet often I hear them wanting only to deal with little colored children across the roads of childhood, the beloved
nursemaid, the occasional second-grade classmate -- those tender memories of what was once mysterious and intriguing or neutral. —Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Sister Outsider, 1984
For African American and White women who never interacted as children, attending college and sharing dormitory rooms may provide a crash course in getting to know women of the other race.
For women who didn’t go to college or who attended schools where students were predominantly of the same racial background, the workplace may be the site of their first cross-race female relations. For still other women, sustained interracial relations may not develop until they meet as neighbors or as members of a political, religious, or social organization. But wherever it is that White and Black women first come into regular contact, some will be able to form lasting friendships, while others will run into conflict, hampered in their ability to get along by swirling undercurrents of racial in-equality and societal
segregation.
Higher Education, Past and Present
During the nineteenth century, the majority of institutions of higher learning were carefully segregated, not only by race, but also by sex. With the exception of a small number of students attending coeducational land grant universities in the West, and progressive, private liberal arts colleges such as Oberlin, in Ohio, most White male students received their higher education at one institution, and the women and Blacks fortunate enough even to go to college got their education at another. For working- and middle-class White women, there were private and state colleges, where most were trained to become teachers, nurses, or secretaries. Wealthier White women attended expensive private women’s schools, such as Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and Smith, where many received training in the arts in preparation for their future roles as wives to successful men. Middle-class Black women attended historically Black private and public colleges and universities, the most prestigious of which was Spelman College, in Atlanta.
As the twentieth century unfolded, educational opportunities for women of both races expanded dramatically. With the country’s engagement in two major world wars, and many of its young men serving in the armed forces, many all-male institutions were forced to admit women in order to survive financially. Other prestigious private universities, like Harvard and Yale, and even some of the more exclusive state schools, like the University of Virginia, which never suffered from shortages of qualified male applicants, were finally forced by new legislation, Supreme Court rulings, and the changing mores in the sixties and seventies to admit women. The most important bill passed by Congress at that time was the 1972 Equal Education Act, which made it illegal for any institution of higher learning that received federal funding to discriminate on the basis of sex. Today, nearly all public and private colleges and universities in this country are coeducational.
It was after World War II that previously all-White colleges and universities began to desegregate by race. The initial push to do so came from the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned Jim Crow laws and racial segregation in education. The Court held that compulsory segregation in public education denied Black children equal protection under the law, and all schools were directed to desegregate immediately. Subsequent Court decisions further instructed all public educational facilities, state colleges and universities as well as private institutions that received federal funding, to comply with this mandate. The Civil Rights Movement, too, did much to change attitudes about race. By the late nineteen-fifties and early sixties, many private and state-run all-White colleges and universities, even without the Court rulings, were beginning aggressively to recruit qualified African American students and faculty.
The actual process of desegregation was painfully slow, however, so it was not until the early seventies that significant numbers of college students were first faced with the prospect of sharing living space with someone of a different race.
Before then, at those predominantly White colleges and universities that had already begun to desegregate, African American students were typically placed in dorm rooms by themselves. During the sixties, college housing officials surveyed all incoming White students on their racial attitudes so that only the most progressive among them would be assigned rooms with Black students. Ironically, at the same time, in the wake of the more militant Black Power movement, a growing number of Black college students, both male and female, began demanding separate housing on predominantly White college campuses. Today, it is illegal to make dormitory or room assignments by race, and all incoming freshmen and transfer students are informed on housing application materials that the school does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religious affiliation, and, in most places, sexual orientation. To avoid even the suspicion that race is a factor in room placement, questions about racial identification are carefully omitted on survey forms, while matters like smoking, drinking, and study habits are assessed in great detail. Although some housing applications may still include such vague questions as “What do you want in a roommate?” as a way to tap
potential racial prejudices, in general the concern has shifted away from White students who might he uncomfortable in having to live with someone who is Black, and toward African American students who would suffer from being forced to live with someone who is racist. Also, some colleges and universities continue to offer separate living quarters for African American students who desire them, in the guise of “special interest housing.” That is, those students, including White students, who wish to live with others interested in, for example, African American studies, can check an appropriate box. In general, though, most schools simply take the position that an important part of a student’s total educational experience is learning to get along with persons from different backgrounds, and therefore most room assignments are made randomly. While this makes for an interesting mix of students suddenly thrown together for the first time, it also creates the potential for intense racial conflict.
To help diffuse racial tensions before they begin, first-year students at all colleges today are required to attend lectures on multiculturalism and respect for human diversity. Brought together in huge auditoriums, or divided into small focus groups, White and Black students from rural to urban America are encouraged to get along. With some, the message seems to take, but others greet the lectures with skepticism. In theory, colleges and universities are supposed to be models of tolerance, but lately they have become spawning grounds for racial tensions. White students see varying admission standards for White and Black students, and cry “reverse discrimination,” and, increasingly, African American students, tired of defending often lower test scores on what they see as culturally biased admission tests, step up demands to segregate from White-dominated campus culture. Such volatile issues are usually omitted from multicultural orientation lectures, however, where the emphasis is placed on togetherness rather than on the issues that divide Black and White students.
Ironically, another topic typically left out of human diversity talks is gender —- specifically, how gender and race interact. The unspoken assumption on campuses seems to be that men and women respond in the same way to racial conflict. While in some cases this assumption may hold true, in many others it does not. Research suggests that men and women often have different interpersonal communication styles, especially during same-sex interactions. In general, men tend to be more direct with each other, to the point of making what may seem to be rude or even hostile comments regarding issues of race. But at least, through such communication, they have a chance to clear the air. Women, however, seem to avoid as long as possible mentioning that there is “an elephant in the room.” That is, most will make the polite effort of pretending everyone is racially the same and that the interactions between racially mixed groups of women are perfectly fine. But unspoken racial differences have a way of festering, sometimes erupting into major conflict with seemingly little provocation.
Men, through sports and other competitive activities, such as playing pool and computer games, have an outlet for releasing pent-up racial tensions. During a pickup game of basketball, for example, a White man may yell at a Black roommate, who has just missed an important shot, “You shoot like a White boy.” Such a comment serves not only to acknowledge their racial differences but also to defuse them. The African American roommate may, in turn, save face by responding with something like, “Yeah, well, at least I can dunk, White boy.” While certainly not all men successfully work out their racial differences in this way, the strategy seems to work quite well for those who do. In comparison, women have fewer activities together in which to release racial tensions. Many women still narrowly judge both themselves and others according to how pretty and popular they are. College years, especially, are a time of intense courtship for many. Even a woman who excels in the classroom, or is a star athlete, may not, unless she is also physically attractive, garner much admiration from other women, whatever her race. The one place where women expect to address their looks in privacy is in the sanctity of their own dorm room, the very place where they are suddenly thrown together with women from different cultural backgrounds. Here they are forced to witness for the first time each other’s intimate daily grooming rituals. Most women look at dorm life as a chance to relax and enjoy life outside the stress of the classroom. But in a racially mixed environment, differences in grooming habits can create unwelcome tension. As Ladonna M. Sanders, a former residence hall director on a racially mixed urban campus, says of the reactions of some African American female students, “After dealing with issues of race all day, the last thing you want to hear when you come back to your dorm room -— your new home -- is ‘Why do you do this and that to your hair?’ When I’m home, I want to be on vacation from race.
As we saw in the chapter on beauty, a continuing area of misunderstanding among African American and European American women has to do with the textural differences in their hair. Hair is, by and large, a uniquely feminine preoccupation. Along with skin color, hair texture is one of the more obvious physical manifestations of race. But unlike skin color, hair can be altered by special grooming techniques —- heat and chemicals -- to conform with our culture’s generally White standards of beauty.
According to Sanders, questions and complaints about hair are among the earliest raised by women sharing dormitory space. African American women are frequently barraged with questions about their grooming, as if the way they groom their hair is not the norm. Tensions over grooming habits are further compounded by the fact that many African American women first begin to confront and grapple with their minority status during their college years, when they actively reject European standards of beauty. The following comment by an African American woman student named Tara reflects the resentment that can develop:
White girls are always tripping on Black hair. I used to have to tell my White roommate to butt out. She was so fascinated by my hair and al-ways wondering how I could go two weeks without washing it. I re-member one time hearing her on the phone telling her mom how Black people can go two whole weeks without washing their hair. I wasn’t on the phone telling my mom how when White people wash their hair it smells like a wet dog.
African American women are particularly sensitive about, and offended by, White women’s complaints about their use of the hot comb. During the first few weeks of college an African American student named LaRay assumed that she and her White roommate were getting along well. But unknown to LaRay, her White roommate despised the smell of “burned hair” from LaRay’s daily use of the hot comb. One night things reached a boiling point when LaRay innocently plugged in her electric hot comb, only to find herself the target of a sudden, malicious verbal assault. Another Black student, Brigette, who attends a small suburban university in the Midwest, had a similar run-in with her White roommate, who asked, “Why do you have to burn your hair every two weeks?” Later she griped that Brigette’s hot comb was making the suite smell like an “incinerator.” “She would make me so mad,” recalled Brigette. “I can’t help that she grew up in ‘Honkeyville’ Iowa and her mamma never took her around Black folks. We had more arguments about my hair.”
Both White and Black college women benefit from being educated about cultural differences, and sensitized to the concerns and values of each other. Of course, not every question can be answered in a public forum, and there will be times when racial issues will need to be privately discussed. Sanders feels that roommates should open discussion of racial issues by first getting permission to ask some things that might “move the other beyond her usual comfort zone.” And if the time is not good for a sensitive discussion of race, roommates must learn to indicate that, and to respect each other’s wishes to wait.
Many African American women hold a part of themselves in abeyance when sharing a room with a White woman, fearful of the day their roommate may say or do something racist. One African American woman, for example, invited her brother, who was a doctor and of whom she was quite proud, up to her dorm room to show him around. Her White roommate saw the brother’s beeper, and after he left she asked, “Is he a drug dealer?” -- which understandably infuriated the African American student.
Of course not all White women are so naive or insensitive. But ironically it is often those White women trying their hardest to be friendly who inadvertently cause the greatest friction. After all, how do you tell someone who is well-meaning that she is acting out of ignorance? It was exactly this dilemma that faced Mokita, an African American college student, when she found herself the only Black woman assigned to live in a town house dormi-tory suite with seven White women during their year of college. It took about four months for Mokita and her roommates to move beyond the stage of “let’s avoid talking about race.” Then they went through an awkward phase during which some of the women made inevitable blunders in their efforts to connect with Mokita. One woman began greeting Mokita with “Hey, homegirl, what’s up?” Another confided to Mokita that she had been told by friends that “she had a body like a Black girl.” As time went on, the White woman began to repeat the comment in a giggling way as justification for borrowing Mokita’s clothes. A third woman brought Mokita a newspaper article on male rap artists, which at first Mokita appreciated, until her suitemate pointed to the picture accompanying the article and asked, “Why do Black men wear their hair like that?” To lump all Black men into one sweeping category infuriated Mokita. “Not all Black men do wear their hair that way,” she replied. Yet Mokita realized that her White roommates were trying to understand her and Black culture, and she learned to forgive their sometimes rude or woefully naive questions and comments. Unfortunately, African American women are more often the victims of such racial ignorance than their White roommates are. Since they grow up in a society that is predominantly White, they are more familiar with White culture, fashions, and mores than White women are of Black culture.
Another source of tension between the women is the very fact that proportionately more White women than Black women grow up assuming that they will attend college. Money is less often an obstacle to White female students; the financial means to pursue higher education through savings, loans, and other sources are more frequently found for middle-class White women. And if such women decide not to attend college, there is a greater expectation that they will either get married to men who can support them financially, or that they will be able to find paying jobs that don’t require a college degree. But the chance for many African American women to go to college is still considered special, not something to be taken for granted. This difference in opportunity and attitude toward college makes some African American women angry. In response to a general question about women and issues of race, feminist scholar Barbara Smith commented:
An example I can think of and which drives me crazy is the arrogance that some white women display about “choosing” not to finish school, you know, “downward mobility.” But what they think is that they don’t have to worry about being asked, “Do you have a degree,” and then being completely cut out of whole range of jobs and opportunity if they don’t. Race is a concept of having to be twice as qualified, twice as good to go half as fast.
In Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, bell hooks notes other differences in attitudes between White and Black women on the college campus. For hooks, White women are more used to ignoring or brushing aside the academic humiliations that some professors seem to inflict on students. African American women, who have had to resist and challenge all their lives those who would deny their academic potential, are more apt to take such humiliations personally. For example, a White woman may casually warn a Black woman that even though a certain male professor claims his class is too hard for women, she should just ignore him and take the course anyhow. To the White woman, the professor seems sexist and unfair. But to the Black woman, the professor seems to be directly attacking her competence because she is female and Black. As hooks puts it, “Those of us who were coming from underprivileged class backgrounds, who were black, often were able to attend college only because we had consistently defied those who attempted to make us believe we were smart but not smart enough.’”
Unfortunately, some students arrive on college campuses less academically prepared than others, and this is more often true of students who have attended underfunded public, inner-city high schools. Also, some of the best and brightest Black high school graduates today are choosing to attend historically Black colleges and universities. As a result, fewer qualified Black students are left in the recruitment pool to meet minority goals at many predominantly White colleges and universities, with the result that such schools sometimes accept Black students whose grade-point averages and standardized test scores are lower than those of White students. This difference in qualifications is one factor responsible for the disparity in graduation rates. Recent figures show that 66 percent of White students graduate within five years, but only 27 percent of Black students do. This difference also means that, in order to “catch up” to the other students, some African American women have to devote more time to studying than their White female counterparts do, another factor that can breed racial hostility.
It was this kind of tension that dissolved the potential for friendship between Elaine, a White New York Italian American woman who attended the University of North Carolina in the mid-eighties, and Wendy, her first-year roommate, a Black woman who was the best musician from her eastern North Carolina high school. Wendy had come to Chapel Hill to play in the university band. Both women were proud to be attending one of the South’s best universities. Initially the two got along well; at one point Wendy told Elaine, “Oh, you’re Italian. I don’t even think of Italians as White people. They’re more like us!” Elaine realized the comment was a genuine attempt to bridge the cultural gap between them. But as the school year progressed and differences in their academic abilities became apparent, the relationship began to deteriorate. Elaine thrived at Chapel Hill, winning a competitive scholarship to study abroad, while Wendy found her classes intimidating, and started to stay away from them. She decided against trying out for the marching band because the other musicians seemed so much better than she was. More and more, Wendy just sat in their room, watching soap operas. Elaine found herself bouncing back and forth between trying to figure out what she could do to help Wendy and being angry at her for giving up. Wendy went from academic probation to eventual dismissal, and the two never spoke again.
Nowhere is the tension greater between Black and White college women than when it comes to the age-old college tradition of “partying.” While the media sometimes leave the impression that Blacks drink more alcohol and do more drugs than Whites, research confirms that the opposite is true, especially for women. Many African American college women come to resent White women for getting away with socializing activities that are stereotypically and negatively associated with them. An accountant named Lynda, an African American who graduated from college in the eighties, remembered one White coed who lived across the dormitory hall from her.
GiGi was her name and gin was her game. This White girl drank so much, or “partied,” as she would call it, that I’m surprised she made it to her junior year. Nearly every night she had a flurry of activity going on in her apartment. Music, booze, and men, many of them Black. All night you could hear music going. Eventually she had to drop out, but even then I recall thinking how unfair it was that the Black girls were always seen as acting irresponsibly, and how much trouble they would have gotten in had it been any of us acting like that.
Mokita, whom we introduced earlier, was similarly taken aback by the amount of drinking and partying that her seven White suitemates did. “Even on week nights, these women always seemed up for a party.”
College sports, too, can be a source of conflict between Black and White women. In general, a woman’s sense of identity is less centered on her athletic abilities than a man’s is. However, for those women who do play varsity sports, an athletic identity is very important, and certain racial assumptions, like the one that Black women are stronger or faster than White women, can cause conflict. According to a White student named Lyn, who plays both volleyball and basketball, some Black female athletes have a hard time accepting athletically gifted White women. “The Black women don’t think we are as tough as they are, and that’s just ridiculous.” Lyn found that the Black women who are on athletic scholarships look down on White women who are not, making such comments as, “You White girls are here only because your Daddy supports you.” Yet in team sports, Lyn says, when a team wins, racial tensions all but fade away. Indeed, at the annually televised NCAA women’s basketball tournament, White and Black mem-bers of the winning teams often hug and cry on each other’s shoulders.
How well Black and White athletes get along depends to a degree on which sport they are playing. Sports like basketball, and track are more “Black identified,” and even at predominantly White colleges it is not uncommon to find more Black women than White women participating in them. These are also the very sports in which Black women are seen as having innate superiority, sometimes to the annoyance of White teammates. But in more “White identified” sports, like tennis, gymnastics, golf, and swimming, in which more White women than Black women usually participate, race is not seen as a factor in the White women’s dominance, and perhaps for that reason there appear to be fewer overt racial tensions. Tina S., the only African American woman on her school’s tennis team, could recall only one racial incident in the four years during which she played. And that incident took place after their team lost in a tournament against an all-Black school. All day long the matches were heated, and at one point the Black male coach of the other school even referred to one of Tina’s teammates as a “bitch.” Later, in the van on the way home, his comment triggered a fight between Tina and one of her teammates, who claimed, “Blacks just use more profanity than Whites.” The sweeping generalization angered Tina, and when she challenged her teammate, the White woman defensively replied, “I’m not racist and I’m tired of being told that I am.
Such conflicts are not uncommon. Inside and outside athletics, some White women complain that it is impossible to be friendly with Black women on campus because they are so ready to call Whites racist. Others claim that it is the Black women, not the White women, who want to keep their distance. And it is true that African American women do sometimes face peer pressure from other African Americans —- especially from men —- to avoid befriending White women.
Despite such pressures, a surprising number of White and Black women do become friends during their college years. Mokita, even with the ups and downs of having seven White women suitemates, now says of the experience, “I loved it. It wasn’t all roses, peaches, and cream. There were times when we were angry at each other, but in the end it was a sisterlike thing. None of us would trade it, and for the most part, we did get along well.” Another African American college student commented, “Such relationships definitely help to break down racial stereotypes. When you get older, it is harder to do that.” Many White women who miss out on developing cross-race friendships during their college years may come to regret it. One such student is Page A., who graduated from Virginia Tech in 1994.
During the summer before my freshmen year, I worried myself sick about who my college roommate was going to be, convinced that she was not White because her name sounded suspiciously Black. Well, “Shona” turned out to be White, but we still didn’t get along, and by the end of the first semester, I had to request another roommate. It’s funny -- some of my high school friends with the same prejudices as me were assigned Black roommates, and they ended up getting along really well, even staying together all four years. I bet they’ll even keep in touch in the future. Now, I’m really sorry that I never got to know even one Black woman the entire time I was in school. I finally realized that skin color is less important than sharing values and fundamental attitudes about the important things in life.
And cross-race college relationships can be lasting friendships. African American writer Audrey Edwards has been “tracking birthdays” with her White college girlfriend Jo for twenty-five years. The two first met at the University of Washington during the sixties, and were quick to realize that they had a lot in common. In an article entitled “Sisters Under the Skin” for the New York Times Magazine, Audrey described their friendship:
Race, in some ways, has mattered the least in our friendship. And then, of course, in other ways, it has mattered most. Being black on big white college campuses in the mid-6o’s was not without cachet, even as it isolated those of us in the first wave of integration. I always knew Jo thought it was “cool” to have black friends. In those days it was. But what I would continue to love about Jo is that she never stopped thinking it was cool to have black friends.
More than just a meeting place for students, the campus is also a place where women of different races come together as students and professors, as administrators and colleagues, within the same departments as well as across larger academic fields. Cross-race work relationships that develop at universities are shaped by different forces from those of society at large, perhaps because the academy is the only institution where the seeking of truth and knowledge is valued over the making of money. Within the rarefied atmosphere of academia, the uncomfortable and unmentionable truths often are spoken in the name of academic freedom, and unacceptably racist or intolerant remarks are censored in the name of political correctness. And some-where in the middle of those competing high ideals, African American and European American women try to “work it out.”
Two departments where emotions tend to run particularly strong are women’s studies and African American studies, both of which grew out of the political activism of the sixties and early seventies. These two interdisciplinary areas have breathed new life into many campuses in the form of innovative course offerings and scholarship. Yet they are also easy targets for criticism. African American women enrolled in women’s studies classes often feel that the course material is too Eurocentric, while White women taking African American studies classes sometimes feel that they are blatantly ignored in class, or are graded more harshly, simply because they are not Black.
Despite such complaints, White women and Black women brought to-gether in the two departments may come to appreciate for the first time each other’s cultural strengths and differences. In recent years, women’s studies programs, in particular, have done much to meet the goals of multiculturalism in the curriculum and racial diversity among the faculty. One African American student in her thirties, Lynn R., discussed the fondness she developed for her White women’s studies instructor:
My first semester back in school, I fell in love with this White woman who taught me psychology of women. I ended up taking every other course she offered, and even switched my major to women’s studies largely because of her influence. So many things started to come to-gether for me in her classes. I began to realize how much of what I had been taught to believe was true by members of my own community was not necessarily so, and in some cases, also not good for me as a woman. Even now, whenever I see this fortysomething White woman walking across campus, I give her a big bear hug, which I think both pleases and embarrasses her.
There are also those White female students who become intensely attached to their African American female professors. Even here, however, experiences differ. Some young White women, who see their own lives as too privileged, turn to older African American women for their authenticity of experience, thereby romanticizing the instructors. Other White female college students confess to feeling nervous around their Black female professors, afraid of saying something that might smack of political incorrectness. A White woman named Sandi commented:
I learned so much from this African American woman who taught a course on race and families. She helped me better than anyone else to really understand the subtleties of racism. But I always felt so tongue-tied in her presence. I never got over the feeling that she was going to pounce on me —- you know, just waiting for me to say something ignorant about Blacks -— I mean African Americans -— so that she could correct me.
Another former student stated:
I once had this really radical Black woman for a teacher, and she was always making examples of the White women in class about how racist we all were. For example, once I made the mistake of referring to this White girlfriend of mine “as a real American beauty with girl-next-door-kind of looks.” Well, the words were barely out of my mouth when my teacher accused me of being racist because that kind of description always precludes women who are Black. Maybe so, but it’s just an expression. I don’t think that I deserved to be chewed out in the front of the whole class for saying something like that.
Some White faculty members, too, admit to having an unsettled feeling in their stomachs whenever they interact with powerful African American women on campus, especially administrators. In one instance, a White female associate professor, at a midsize university on the West Coast, served as the acting dean of her college before an African American woman was brought in to replace her. At first the White professor was thrilled that a woman of color was hired as the dean. But gradually her feelings began to change. “I came to realize that our new dean was using the fact that she was female and Black to control and intimidate the other, mostly White, faculty members,” she said. She elaborated on her growing discontent:
I can’t tell you how many times this Black woman works into the conversation her own personal history of growing up poor, and all the racial obstacles she had to overcome to get where she is today. Now, I don’t doubt for a moment that everything she says is true; it’s just that she then uses all that stuff as some sort of license to do only what she wants to, without input from others. Anyone who dares to challenge her gets interrupted and basically shot down, and that’s just not the way things are done at our school. While I do still appreciate what this feisty woman has done to shake up the White male establishment, she is unfortunately such a tyrant that I seriously doubt that her contract will be renewed.
The traditional White male hierarchy is noticeably intact at most universities today, making it especially difficult for African American women faculty and administrators to assert themselves. With both race and gender working to their disadvantage, African American women often feel they cannot rely on a low-key approach and at the same time command respect. For example, a tenured White male professor can readily grant permission to students wanting to turn in term papers late without incurring any loss of respect, but an African American female faculty member, especially a young, untenured one, may not feel free to do the same. She may fear that if she relaxes her standards for even a moment, her authority in the classroom will be challenged. The same holds true for many African American female administrators; sometimes they feel they have to bellow just to be heard. The resulting difference in interpersonal style can strain relations, especially for African American and European American women functioning at different levels in the university hierarchy.
Within the politically charged atmosphere of the university today, relations between White and Black women at all levels can suffer. One example is in course material. Because for so long the history and experiences of Blacks were all but ignored in research and course material, some African American women on college campuses have become territorial regarding which areas of study “belong” to them. White woman professors who dare to venture into those areas designated as “Black” can expect resistance. In her book Segregated Sisterhood, White feminist Nancie Caraway is critical of the way in which some Afrocentric female scholars dismiss their White female colleagues, even to the point of rendering “invisible a White woman who comes to a public lecture on a major campus to hear a Black professor speak about ‘African Goddess Myths.’ Caraway claims that it is grossly unfair when more radical African American women professors characterize White women as “cultureless, parasitic on the literature, customs, food, and music of Third World people.” Co-author Midge Wilson of this book ran up against the cultural private property issue when she first began work on The Color Complex. One day, an African American female colleague pulled Midge aside and told her in no uncertain terms to get off the book, because “the topic of intraracial skin color discrimination belonged to African Americans.” The words stung, not only because Midge had long been conducting scholarly research on colorism and was well versed in the field, but also because she was but one of the three authors, along with Kathy Russell and Ronald Hall, both of whom are Black.
Of course the majority of African American women on campus do not hold such territorial views about research, but the strident attitudes of a few can wreak havoc on a faculty. An African American female director for Northwestern University’s Center on African American Studies recently discovered this when she made the “mistake” of inviting a White female professor from another university to speak. Although the White professor was doing research in an area of interest to many Blacks, the other African American faculty and students, on learning that the intended speaker was a White woman, balked, leaving the director in the embarrassing and awkward position of having to withdraw the invitation.
This political gerrymandering of courses and research topics may leave White female professors with the feeling that they can do no right. They are lambasted by Black faculty and students on campus for not doing enough research and not including enough course material on African American women, but when they do, they are criticized because they themselves are not Black. As Audre Lorde has observed, no one would dare question the appropriateness of a female professor teaching Moliere when she is neither male nor French. Why, then, are women criticized when they teach courses and do research not derived from their own personal experiences?
Yet across the country there are also thousands of White and Black women who are warm and supportive colleagues. African American women are often heartened to discover that when it comes time for tenure and promotion, it is often White female colleagues who are among their staunchest supporters. As bell hooks herself once observed, “Racism and sexism do not always shape all experiences” on the college campus today.
The Workplace
Outside the university, tensions between African American and European American women are often shaped by different concerns. As in the university, though, only fairly recently have large numbers of White women and Black women worked side by side. Except for a brief time during World War II, when women of all races and classes joined together to support the war effort, most White women who worked either did so in large segregated work settings, whether offices and factories, or helped their husbands run small family-owned businesses, such as restaurants and farms. Before the 1970s, though, most middle-class White women did not expect to work their entire lives. Their ambitions were to marry and raise children, ultimately withdrawing from the paid workforce. In contrast, most Black women did expect to have to earn a living, even after marriage. They were not likely to be cushioned by the financial success of a husband. As far back as 1920, for example, 45 percent of single White women worked, compared with 58.8 percent of single Black women; a mere 6.5 percent of married European American women worked, while 32.5 percent of married African American did. To some extent, this trend continues, even at a time when most women want and expect paid employment. According to 1988 U.S. Bureau of the Census statistics, 55.3 percent of married White women are in the paid labor force, compared with 65.8 percent of married Black women.
Historically, poor White women, especially those who were married, felt stigmatized by having to work. The only group left between them and the absolute bottom social stratum were Black women. Thus, perhaps to preserve what little status they had, many refused to work beside Black women or to perform the same chores they did. This meant that when Black women went looking for employment, frequently the only jobs left for them were domestic service and the most unpleasant and numbing of factory jobs, jobs that working-class White women refused to take. While Black women stripped the tobacco from plants in hot and poorly ventilated rooms, White women packaged it elsewhere; while Black women pulled the candy out of hot ovens, White women wrapped it when cooled; while Black women greased and lifted the heavy pans in bakeries, White women made the batter and decorated the cakes; and while Black women washed soiled linens in damp basements, White women folded and counted the sheets upstairs. As African American author Zora Neale Hurston wrote, in her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, “De nigger women is de mule un de world.’
Even Black women who were well educated and able to enter the two primary professional occupations generally open to all college-trained women, nursing and teaching, rarely worked side by side with Whites. Until recently, most hospitals and schools were racially segregated, which also made it easier for management to pay White and Black teachers and nurses different salaries. For example, in the 1920s, Darlene Clark Hines reveals in her 1989 book, Black Women in White, the Commonwealth of Virginia paid its White nurses $125 per month at public hospitals, and paid its similarly trained Black nurses only $100.
Passage of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination in hiring, firing, promotion, and benefits “on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex,” as well as both the women’s and the civil rights movements, did much to open up employment opportunities for women. Now, at least in theory, all women, regardless of color, have legal access to some of the better-paying and more prestigious jobs previously unavailable to them. Sadly, however, more than thirty years after passage of this important legislation, widespread occupational sex segregation persists. An estimated 77 percent of women employed today still work as teachers, nurses, social workers, hairdressers, saleselerks, secretaries, receptionists, or in the food industry as waitresses, handlers, processors, and cafeteria workers. Because these jobs are held mostly by women and so often low-paying, they have been labeled “pink collar.” More than anything else, it is this skewed distribution of women in the workforce that explains why women still earn only seventy cents to each dollar that men earn. For African American women, the employment picture is even grimmer. According to 1989 U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, White women earn an average of $318 a week compared with Black women’s $238. While women of both races have experienced occupational gains in recent decades, for many Black women the shift has been only from low-status domestic or factory work to minimum-wage clerical work, while for many White women the shift has been from clerical work to more administrative and middle management positions. This persistent race difference in women’s employment is reflected in a saying within the African American community: “Careers are what White women have; jobs are what Black women do.”
As a result, Black women have not been as enthusiastic as White women in crediting the women’s movement for recent career advancements. In fact, among those stuck in the lowest paying and most dead-end positions, real liberation would mean the economic freedom to quit working altogether and stay home to raise their children. There is a perception among many Black women that feminists’ demands to be treated like a minority in the workplace have hurt the Black community. Plum positions that were once designated for African Americans, including many in the corporate sector, are now being filled by women who are White. To some Black women, it seems as though White women are eager to advance their own careers at the expense of women who are Black.
The truth is that Black women and White women are both deserving of greater occupational gains, and the career opportunities of one group should not be gained through the losses of the other. This “either or” stance serves to divide and conquer women, and ultimately deny them the right to work together and attain their full potential. But in a country where every major institution, financial, military, religious, educational, or political, is top heavy with men, particularly White men, it is difficult for women not to feel that they are competing against each other for advancement.
Corporate America is among the worse offenders in terms of promoting women into top positions. The wealthier the company, the less likely it is to have a woman in top management. A recent Korn/Ferry International survey found that among Fortune 1000 companies, less than 5 percent of the top executives and board members are female. Even in the nineties, the majority of women of either race who enter white-collar careers traditionally held by men will advance no further than middle management. Most will encounter the “glass ceiling” —- the invisible and impenetrable barrier through which the successes of others can be viewed but not realized.
It is on this uneven playing field that many of today’s best and brightest White and Black women meet and compete. Given their limited opportunities for promotion, it is no surprise that they conflict with one another. One clear example of the potential for conflict can be seen in the experiences of an African American lawyer named Sandrya and a White lawyer named Rebecca. As the only women hired one year at a midsize L.A. law firm, the two at first became friends, setting their sights on making partnership within the standard six-year review period. Whenever one was feeling low about her prospects, the other was always there to offer just the right words encouragement. But as the time for review grew near, Rebecca and Sandrya found their words of support coming less easily. Each had come to worry that only one of them would make it, and each feared it would not be she. Sandrya was convinced that the firm was racist and would hold some perceived shortcoming against her as justification for letting her go; Rebecca was certain that the firm wanted to become more racially diverse and, given two women of roughly equal qualifications, would decide to keep the Black woman. Fortunately, both Sandrya and Rebecca were granted partnership. It was only then that they were able to resume their friendship.
Bebe Moore Campbell explored the tension between race and sex in the corporate sphere as part of the plot of her 1994 best-selling novel, Brothers and Sisters. Two women in middle management at two different depart-ments in an L.A. bank, a White named Mallory and an African American named Esther, initially come together when a White male regional branch manager ogles and calls them both “honey.” Esther teaches the more timid Mallory how to use her anger to confront men who dare to treat her in such demeaning fashion. Things get considerably more complicated, however, when a new Black male senior vice president sexually harasses Mallory. Esther, who develops an attraction for the new man, finds herself torn between wanting to protect someone of her race and wanting to support her friend Mallory.
Through the characters of Esther and Mallory, Campbell tackles a number of racial issues affecting women in the corporate workplace. Esther, who has an M.B.A., challenges Mallory, who does not, to think about the fact that African American women have to be twice as qualified to go half as far as White women. At one point, she tells her friend, “Mallory, there are white women with high school degrees who make more money than I do.” In fact, statistics compiled by the Women’s Action Coalition show that the average salary of a Black female college graduate in a full-time position is even less than that of a White male high school dropout.
African American scholar Letha A. Lee unearthed evidence of similar racial tension in her interviews with professional African American women. Several of the women complained that their higher education provided less job mobility and fewer salary raises than it did for White women. Others expressed distrust of White women’s career ambitions, claiming that when rare positions in upper management do open up, White women always seemed to grab them first. As one Black woman put it, “There is no such thing as ‘togetherness’ with white women. The agendas they set and the jungle behavior they exhibit is strictly for their advantage.” Another woman compared White women’s management style with that of White men’s:
When white women are placed in top-level management positions, they imitate white men. They make an all-out effort to expel the myth that women feel and men think. In top management, white women have no role models except men, so they become “unfeeling.”
In fact, some White female managers think it necessary to be especially hard-nosed to offset male notions that they are too sensitive, weak, and passive to be effective leaders. Black women, long seen through racial stereo-types as stronger, tougher, and more assertive, would seem, at first glance, to have an advantage in the business world, where such attributes are valued. But such is not the case. African American women in corporate America are often penalized for being too aggressive, a view reflected by yet another African American woman interviewed by Lee.
Once we had a black woman in top management, but she was labeled “rigid,” “aggressive,” “strong.” While employed here, this woman eliminated favoritism, equalized the staff, rewrote job descriptions, cast out the “old boy” network, and raised the caliber of the organization. If a woman is black, strong, and assertive, she is a threat to both white men and white women. This woman did not last long. She was fired, and white women assisted in the process.
In a 1993 paper entitled “Quadruple Jeopardy: Black, Female, Professional, and in Charge,” African American psychologists Janet R. Brice-Baker and Beverly Greene claim that African American professionals in management positions continue to be hampered by stereotypes. If they act tough and assertive, they risk being labeled a Sapphire, the cantankerous character of “Amos ‘n’ Andy”; if they are nice and nurturing, they invoke images of Mammy. If they are not mammy-like, others act disappointed; if they are attractive, they become Jezebel and are blamed for inciting sexual harassment. Brice-Baker and Greene further claim that White women still balk at being supervised by women who are Black; they stated, “White women are more used to relating to Black women as members of the house-keeping staff, or as secretaries, than they are as bosses.”
One of the most frustrating issues for many African American women in the corporate workplace remains White women’s misconception that Black women have an advantage in their “two for one” status. Rebecca, the White lawyer mentioned above, held exactly this belief when she thought she wouldn’t be granted partnership because Sandrya was both Black and female. Yet according to the results of a recent study, conducted by Audrey Murrell of the University of Pittsburgh School of Business, Black women, far from having an advantage in a “double minority” status, are less likely to get ahead than either Black men or White women. African American women trying to make it in White corporate America face not only the glass ceiling, but in many cases a “glass wall” in getting hired. Despite the popu-lar belief that affirmative action policies give unfair advantages to Blacks in general, as of 1991 only 7.2 percent of Black women (and Black men) were executives, administrators, or managers in corporate America. This figure compares to 12 percent of White women in such jobs, and 14.7 percent of White men.
The reality remains that few women of either race experience great success in traditionally male White-collar jobs, and those who do are viewed as exceptional. Oddly, even being thought of as exceptional can be a source of conflict between European and African American women. While many White women in high power occupations take secret pleasure in being told that they are different from (that is, better than) most other women, Black women, as a group, despise being told that they are different from (better than) most other Blacks. One apparent reason for this difference is that Whites, in general, are raised with more sense of individuality; as a result, being told that they are better than others reinforces their feeling of personal achievement. African Americans, however, are generally raised with more of a collective identity, one reflecting their larger community; as a result, being told that they are better than other Blacks is insulting to other Blacks. Ellis Cose, an African American journalist and author, touched on the anger that this generates in many middle-class Blacks in corporate America today in The Rage of a Privileged Class, published in 1993. Cose described an incident in which an African American female scientist, who had been working for a year and a half at the National Research Council, mentioned to a White colleague who was also a friend that it was a shame there were so few other Blacks on staff. The White woman agreed wholeheartedly, adding, “Yes, it’s too bad that therearen’t more blacks like you.” While the statement was meant as a compliment, to the African American scientist her White colleague really seemed to be saying that Blacks as a group lacked the intellect that she was lucky enough to possess. Unfortunately, in a country with a long history of racial inequality, what is viewed as complimentary by one group may be laden with racist implications for the other. African American women also question why the onus always seems to always be on them to educate not only White men but also White women about racism. They feel it is exhausting and even risky always to be the bearer of such bad news in the workplace, and no professional Black woman wants to develop a reputation for being “overly sensitive” about issues of race. Bebe Moore Campbell touches on this issue in Brothers and Sisters when Mallory expresses her surprise on learning that Esther is so angry about racism. “But why do you sound so bitter? ... Look at you. You’ve done so well.” In response, Esther attempts to explain to Mallory why she remains angry and why affirmative action is still necessary:
You think America is a meritocracy? You’ve had affirmative action for white folks ever since this country got started. Every time a black person couldn’t get the job because he was black, that was affirmative actions for white people . . . So hell, yeah, I want some affirmative action for black people. I want some jobs reserved for me. I want some prime real estate reserved for me. I want spots in the best schools set aside for me. I want the Justice Department to bend the law my way.
To survive in traditional White male work climates, African American women must learn to pick and choose their battles. For example, when a White female supervisor told Raquel, an African American medical sales representative, that her dialect was better than that of other Blacks, Raquel informed her boss that dialect does not necessarily relate to intelligence, and to assume that it does unfairly dismisses those Blacks who don’t necessarily speak like her. But Raquel has thus far kept to herself the seething resentment she feels over the way her boss solicits her opinion about new job applicants only when they are Black, and never when they are White.
Yet White women in the corporate ranks say that it is exhausting for them to be constantly on guard in front of Black female colleagues for fear of being called a racist. A White woman named Karen, who is a manager at a major computer firm, began hearing complaints from customers about the communication skills of an African American woman colleague named Alice. Karen decided to try to help Alice by discussing what she had heard so that Alice wouldn’t get fired. After their talk, however, Alice went to someone higher up in the company, claiming that Karen was racist because she didn’t like the way Black people spoke. Another White woman, Maureen, an editor at a video production house, similarly found herself being accused of racism by one of her Black female co-workers after taking a White male client on a tour of the company’s facilities. When Maureen opened the door to an editing room, she discovered a Black female colleague eating lunch there. This was common practice; many employees took lunch and coffee breaks in unused editing rooms. When the client expressed concern about disturbing someone, Maureen casually commented, “Oh, it’s okay. She’s just having lunch.” What Maureen didn’t know, however, was that the remark triggered deep feelings about the assumed invisibility of Black domestic workers. The next thing Maureen knew, she was being told to develop more racial sensitivity -— ironically, by a White female supervisor.
While there is no question that some White women in the corporate workplace are, consciously or unconsciously, prejudiced, there are also Black female employees who hide behind allegations of racism to insulate themselves from criticism. In social psychology, this behavioral strategy is re-ferred to as self-protective, and its use is not limited to African Americans. Research shows that members of stigmatized groups, whether they are Black, Latino, gay, or persons with physical disabilities and facial disfigurements, often learn to hold on to a sense of self-esteem by continually attributing life’s setbacks to the prejudices of others. In fact, not to adopt such a strategy could be devastating for such individuals. However, overreliance on the self-protective strategy is not healthy, either. In one study demonstrating its effect, Black students received negative criticism from a White evaluator about a paper they had written. The criticism lowered self-esteem only when the students were led to believe that the evaluator did not know their race. In other words, when the students thought that the White evaluator knew they were Black, they attributed the criticism to prejudice, and not to their own inadequacies as writers. Unfortunately, in relying on self-protec-tive strategies, stigmatized individuals may miss opportunities to learn what it is that they are failing to do correctly, and what it is that they could do to improve themselves.
These are but some of the problems faced by women of different races in corporate America. Actually, many White and Black women in blue-collar jobs face similar concerns. Both are often distinct minorities in the work-place, and remain clustered in the least prestigious and lowest-paying positions of their chosen field. And whether they work in a factory or pour cement at a construction site, they know that only a limited number of women will be able to rise above the low-paying jobs. Even women who own their own businesses can run into conflict with other businesswomen over the issue of race, especially in the awarding of government contracts to minority- and women-owned firms. While most Whites believe that African Americans unfairly benefit from programs that set aside certain percentages of government business to minority-owned firms, statistics show in fact that it is White women who have benefited the most from these programs. For example, in 1994 the Illinois Minority and Female Business Enterprise Program awarded $140 million to White busi-nesswomen and only $21.6 million to Black businesswomen. Of course, there are many more White women than Black women in the population, and thus the argument can be made that disproportionately more Black women than White women are getting these state funds. Yet few African American women see it that way. Many believe that White women are unfairly claiming minority status and “stealing” business away from discriminated-against racial groups.
For the majority of women who work with other women in pink-collar jobs, issues of race are often somewhat different. Unlike entrepreneurs, or women engaged in white- or blue-collar employment, pink-collar women are often supervised by other women. And, predictably, more White women than Black women become supervisors, occupying proportionately more of the better paying and higher status pink-collar positions.
The color gap persists in large part because proportionately more Black women continue to enter the workplace with less education and fewer skills than White women. It is primarily difference in educational back-ground that creates the often two-tiered pink-collar work environment for White and Black women. For example, approximately 9 percent of clerical workers are African American, yet they represent a full 25 percent of file clerks, the lowest paying and most routine of secretarial work; only 7 per-cent of all registered nurses are African American, but Black women represent a full 31 percent of hospital aides, the most custodial and least presti-gious of all nursing responsibilities. In such environments, race problems are bound to develop.
Many White women report difficulties in supervising Black women. Ann a White nurse practitioner, is director of a nursing home in Chicago,where she finds herself constantly struggling with this issue. Some of the Black women Ann L. oversees are nurses’ aides who are attempting to get off welfare for the first time in their lives. Although Ann L. is supportive of these women in their efforts to improve their lot in life, she feels compromised by their frequent requests that she lie when called by the public aid office. The Black women typically want Ann L. to say that they are working fewer hours than they actually are, because if they work too many hours they will lose their family coverage. Ann L. finds herself vacillating between sympathy with the women’s financial plight and anger at their not working harder to get off government aid altogether.
These women need jobs, but they are being told, in effect, “What you dois nor worth being paid a decent wage.” So I give them slack, but on the other hand, isn’t it racist not to hold other people to the same standards that you hold yourself? Sometimes I think I’m not as good a supervisor as I could be because of my own fear of being racist. And, of course, I suffer from that incurable disease of needing to be loved all the time. I just try to keep some justice in the situation, but it’s always a struggle.
Another White nurse, Anne Z., discussed her mixture of sympathy and embarrassment in regard to an African American woman she supervised at a large, predominantly White hospital in Minneapolis. Like Anne Z. herself, her colleague had a master’s degree in nursing, but still made many spelling and grammatical errors when writing up patient reports; for example, writing chicken pox as “chicken pops.” Anne Z. knew enough about this woman’s poverty-stricken, dysfunctional family background to respect the drive and effort it had taken her to get where she was, but she also believed that the nurse’s poor language skills were hurting the professional image of other nurses, especially among the doctors. Yet the one time Anne Z. tried to correct something that her colleague had written, she was rebuked. In the end, she had to decide to let gross spelling mistakes slide, and to focus instead on the good her colleague did in her interactions with the hospital’s Black patients.
Unfortunately for African American women trying to get ahead in pink-collar employment, strong language skills are often a prerequisite. Unlike most blue-collar work, where the skills and labor required are more manual and craft oriented, jobs as teachers, librarians, nurses, secretaries, word processors, receptionists, and bank tellers require the ability to write and speak well. Many African American women have these skills, yet proportionately more Black women than White women grow up in homes where learning to speak and write the King’s English is not encouraged, and is sometimes even ridiculed. Regardless of the cultural value of nonstandard Black English, or ethnic differences in dialect, phrasing, intonation, and enunciation, the reality in the workplace is that employees are often judged by how well they communicate in standard English. For some African American women, the pressure to use standard English in the workplace and Black English at home has led them, in effect, to speak two different languages. Some predominantly Black high schools and community colleges offer classes specifically designed to help African Americans improve their oral communication skills. As Darlene, a Black computer technician, explains, “When I talk to my boss or my customers, I sound like a White girl, but when I talk to my friends or someone who pisses me off, I talk Black. Basically, I’m bilingual.”
In addition to having differences in language in the workplace, Black women and White women also employ different terms of emotional expression at work. According to the book Black and White Styles in Conflict, by White author Thomas Kochman, Blacks tend to engage in louder and more intense language when trying to resolve differences, while Whites are more solicitous and collegial. Kochman maintains that the “Black mode” of negotiating conflict is “high-keyed: animated, interpersonal, and confrontational,” while the “White mode” is “relatively low-keyed: dispassionate, impersonal, and nonchallenging.” Thus, in arguments, Blacks are more likely to engage both their mind and body in ways that are emotionally and even spiritually invigorating, while Whites tend to value self-restraint and calm discourse as the means to demonstrate their rationality. This difference in communication style can make some White women in the workplace fear the intensity of Black women, and can make some Black women think of White women as timid and less committed to something that is supposed to be of great importance to them. Kochman’s book has been heavily criticized for its class bias, however; he drew comparisons in his study between the communication styles of Blacks who were from the inner city, and were more frequently lower-class, and Whites who were more middle class. To minimize this bias, African American communications scholar Stella Ting-Toomey surveyed the styles of Whites and Blacks from similar socio-economic backgrounds. She found that middle-class White and Black men did not significantly differ in their patterns of speech, hut that White and Black women did. Her research suggests that middle-class White women use “more compromising strategies to dispel disagreements,” and middle-class Black women are “slightly more verbose and emotionally expressive.
Cultural differences in communication skill and style are especially likely to cause conflict among women employed in public and private schools, perhaps because it is these women’s responsibility to teach others to speak properly and to conduct themselves appropriately. Again, it is not very long that White and Black women have taught together in the same schools. Before the nineteen sixties, most public schools were racially segregated, as were the majority of universities and workplaces. That situation has been rectified legally, but it is hardly the case today that all public schools show perfect racial balance. Most of them continue to reflect the racial makeup of their surrounding communities, and since most neighborhoods in this coun-try are still racially segregated, most schools are predominantly one race or another. Although some schools are predominantly Hispanic or Asian, for the most part White teachers and Black teachers end up working at schools that are either mostly White or mostly Black.
Race relations among the White and Black female faculty and staff at any one school often depend on the larger racial makeup of the school. At many mainly White suburban schools, African American women feel discriminated against when it comes time for promotion, and resentful of the way White women treat them. Sharon A., for example, who has been working since the late eighties as a circulation librarian at a racially mixed but predominantly White high school on Chicago’s North Shore, complains that the White librarians always ask her to reprimand a noisy Black student. Sharon notes, “Some of those White women have been there for fifteen to twenty years. They should know what to do better than I.” Sharon also resents that the other librarians always ask her whether she knows the Black students’ names, as if she should just because she is Black. “I know the names of as many White students as Black students, but the White librarians only learn the names of White students. Is that fair?”
White women who work in inner-city, predominantly Black schools run into a different set of problems. One such woman, Nancy B., who until recently was an administrator at a predominantly Black inner-city elementary school, had this to say about her experience:
It seemed to me that the White and Black teachers would always start off the school year getting along fine, but then after the parents came around on Parents’ Day, racial tensions would start to flare. The Black parents do not believe that a White teacher knows enough about the Black community to help “their babies.” To allay such fears, the Black teachers would put their arms around the Black mothers and say things like, “Don’t you worry, I’ll take good care of your baby.” Unfortunately, that too often translated into them not teaching a child anything, just providing them with nurturing. This was frustrating to the White teachers who wanted to push the Black children more academically.
Another White teacher, Trish, who taught fourth grade at the Sojourner Truth Elementary School near Chicago’s infamous Cabrini Green public housing project, was shocked by what she termed “the total lack of nurturing within Black culture.” Trish said that she was constantly ridiculed for her attempts to reason with misbehaving children, rather than slapping them. According to Trish, the African American teachers would tell her, “The only thing these kids understand is a good whack.” She was taken aback by the way the Black teachers seemed to threaten the children with violence, saying things like, “If you don’t stay in line, I’m gonna knock your teeth down your throat.” To Trish, the use of such threats only perpetuated the violence she observed among the Black children. She couldn’t help comparing her own childhood educational experiences at a predominantly White school, where none of the kids seemed to fight, to her experiences at the school where she currently taught, in which the students were constantly fighting.
Other White women who teach at mainly Black, poor, inner-city schools say that they have received clear and hostile messages from Black teachers that they are not wanted. Such was the case with a White teacher named Karen P., who joined the Teach for America Program after college graduation. At first Karen was excited to be placed at a school near South Central L.A., where she thought she could make a difference. Instead, she encountered enormous resistance and even hostility from the Black teachers working there:
They were ready to interpret everything that I did in the most negative light. They constantly questioned my motives for being there, believing that I surely had wanted a teaching position in a White school but had been placed there instead. They didn’t understand or want to believe that I wanted to help, and they totally mocked my idealism.
Karen felt ostracized throughout the school year, and no more so than during Black History Month. She remembered one incident in which she was supposed to lead her class in singing the inspiring song “We Shall Overcome.” Karen didn’t know all the words, but when she admitted this before the other Black teachers, one of them, disgusted with her, yelled, “Don’t even get me started.”
For their part, African American women teaching in predominantly Black inner-city schools do get angry at White teachers who act as though they deserve a medal for being there. African American women feel as though they must pay dues every day in this country just for being Black. That may be why they are generally not receptive to suggestions made by White teachers to do things differently. The very notion that an inexperienced White teacher knows better than members of the Black community what is best for Black students is insulting. Those White and Black women who teach at the same schools only seldom become close. Jackie R., a White woman teaching high school science at a racially mixed school in Hampton, Virginia, said, “The White and Black teachers are cordial enough when we pass in the hallways, but at lunch we never sit together, and after school we never do anything together socially. It’s as though we live in two different worlds.” Her comment was echoed by nearly every White and Black teacher interviewed for this book. The one exception was an African American woman named Frieda, who once taught at a racially mixed school in Chicago’s Hyde Park, one of those rare successfully integrated neighborhoods. In that school, according to Frieda, “the White and Black teachers got along extremely well, and we often did things together after work.”
Ironically, in other predominantly Black employment environments, White women report more positive workplace experiences and peer relationships. Being the only White person in an otherwise all-Black work environment used to he practically unheard of, but the incidence is on the rise, a fact reflected in the new phrase “the only marshmallow in the hot chocolate,” to balance the longer standing and more common experience of a Black’s being “the only chip in the cookie.” A recent article in Ebony entitled “Reverse Integration” discusses the “marshmallow” experiences of several White women, including Louise Lindbolm, who was hired to be the media director at the National Urban Coalition. Lindbolm said, “There’s a sense of community -— a sense that everyone is pulling together for something —- that seems to be more prevalent in a Black workplace than a White workplace.” She also discovered an unexpected benefit in her minority status. “If I do something silly, I’m automatically excused for it. My colleagues just shake their heads and say, ‘What does she know? She’s White.’” A second White woman featured in the Ebony article, Carole Borgreen, is an administrative coordinator of special projects at Howard University. Being hired in a Black-dominated workplace made Borgreen better appreciate what it means to live in a world in which you must constantly disprove racial stereotypes. Thinking back on when she was first hired, she noted:
I didn’t know what to expect. And as I was going over the possibilities in my mind, imagining the hostility I might face, I developed a real sensitivity for what it must be like to have to deal with that question all the time.
A White woman named Robin P., interviewed for Divided Sisters, was once the only White woman in Ebony’s fashion show; she now works in London as the only White marketing representative for the Johnson Company’s Fashion Fair cosmetic line. “I’ve never tried to relate to my colleagues in racial terms,” says Robin. “People are people. There is always competition in the workplace, and maybe more questions are asked when race differ-ences are present. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to competence in the job. Overall, my work experience has been positive.”
The issue of race is more frequently stressed when the only White woman present is also the one in charge, as was the case with Shirley, a White registered nurse hired to supervise an all-Black staff on the psychiatric ward of a Michigan state hospital. It is difficult enough for anyone to walk into a new work situation and manage those who have been there longer, but it is especially hard when the situation recreates the standard hierarchy of race in the larger society. Shirley described her experience this way:
I tend to have a blunt interpersonal style of management, and I don’t care if you are White or Black; if you’re not doing your job right, You're going to hear from me about it But because I was White and they were all Black, some of the nurses mistook my no-nonsense way of speaking to them as racist. Believe me, that made for a long and difficult adjustment. Now that things are settling down, my main complaint is that no one I’ve met at work can give me a good recommendation for where I can get my hair done in this town!
Too often, perhaps, this chapter has drawn relations between Black women and White women in the workplace as negative. For that reason alone, it is an incomplete portrait. There are many positive relationships that develop among White and Black women colleagues. In fact, the workplace remains the one place where adults are most likely to make new friends, and this holds true for African American and White women. Even at the strife-ridden bank portrayed in Bebe Moore Campbell’s novel Brothers and Sisters, by the end, Mallory and Esther triumph over their differences, and their friendship survives. In the real world, women on both sides of the racial line are discovering their similarities. A White secretary named Lucy said, “In our office, we recently hired this Black woman who is a real joy to work with. She’s totally competent and comes to work every day in a great mood. Her easy laugh and quick wit have improved the mood of everyone else working here, most especially me. We’re starting to have lunch together and I would be really sad if she left.”
Many African American women, too, display a willingness to befriend White women at work. A television production assistant named Keisha sees her situation this way:
I think I must send out some sort of signal to White women that I am available to be their friend because they just flock to me. I grew up with a lot of Whites, so maybe they can tell I am very comfortable with them. For whatever reason, it has been my experience that if you just give White women half a chance, most do want to be nice to you.
An African American woman who works at a huge accounting firm observed that “from the onset, the White women I met at work went out of their way to be accommodating. I was glad that they did, especially since the only person in the office who wasn’t nice to me was another Black woman. It was like I had dethroned her queen bee status, or something like that. Whatever, it really made me mad.” Finally, other African American women, like Raquel, the medical sales representative mentioned earlier, admit to one advantage in being “the only chip in the cookie”:
Racism is a funny thing. I mean it can even help you in a weird sort of way. White women try so hard not to come across as racist that I’m often treated better because of it. They won’t be mean to me because they don’t want to be accused of being racist. I think I even sell more for that reason. And White women also seem to feel better about themselves in being nice to me. Then they can then say to themselves, “I knew I wasn’t racist,” and that’s fine with me.
Sometimes, of course, when White women at work try to get too friendly too fast, it can make African American women uncomfortable. In The Black Women’s Health Book, African American therapist and author Julia Boyd touches on this issue, drawing on an incident from her own life. Boyd was doing volunteer work at a women’s center when another therapist, a White woman named Beth, confided that Julia was her best friend. Julia did not feel the same way about her. “How do you tell a white woman that it’s still politically dangerous to have white folks for best friends, even if it is the 1990s?” Thus, while Boyd realized that Beth was trying hard to bridge the gap between them, she was still trying to gauge her emotional reactions to Beth’s overture. “What she doesn’t understand is that it may take me longer to come over the water, because bridges have a way of not being stable when the winds blow too strong.”
Friendships
For those White and Black women who do first meet in the workplace, a big step in developing a true friendship is getting together after work. Unfortunately, many of women’s cross-race friendships that thrive during lunch breaks and daytime shopping trips don’t extend after hours. Because so many neighborhoods are in fact racially segregated, to come together at night and on weekends means White women have to travel into a predominantly Black setting to visit, or, more typically, Black women have to travel into a predominantly White setting to visit. Either way, one is a fish out of water and the other may be conscious of violating the norms in her community by inviting someone of another race to her home.
When White women visit Black girlfriends, several concerns can arise. African American women claim that if they bring a White girlfriend, especially a pretty blond one, to an all-Black private party or club, the Black men fall all over themselves trying to impress her, and the other Black women end up getting mad. The issue of perceived safety is also a factor. A thirtysomething African American woman sighed and explained, “Whenever my White girlfriend comes over to my place, she makes me walk her down the street. She claims that I protect her from street harassment and worse. Whether that’s true or not I do not know, but it’s a strain to have to be someone’s escort all the time.” And then there is plain old racial hatred. A White artist named Jill recalls the extreme discomfort she felt when a Black girlfriend, with whom she was traveling, took her to the home of another Black friend, in the projects in Baltimore:
I am sure that I was the only White woman for blocks around, and it was clear my girlfriend’s friend's family did not like me being there. At first, they just did their best to ignore me, like playing pinochle and not inviting me into the game. That was fine; I sat in the corner and did some sketching. But then, this older Black woman came into the room and I guess I turned into some sort of lightning rod for every hostile pent-up feeling she ever had toward Whites. She started taunting me, at one point even demanding that I dance for her so that the others could all laugh at me.
And when African American women visit the homes of White girlfriends, there are other issues to contend with. While a Black woman in a White neighborhood doesn’t arouse the same degree of paranoia that a Black man might, there is still the embarrassing possibility that a White neighbor may question her motives for being there, or mistake her for somebody’s housekeeper. A White girlfriend may also fret about inviting a Black friend to a party at which she will likely be the only Black person. In an effort to make her party more racially integrated, a White woman may even compound the problem by inviting other African Americans whom she doesn’t know very well. However well meaning that strategy may be, it is usually obvious and can backfire. Cheryl, who worked at a large, predominantly White advertising agency in Chicago, remembers a party thrown by another White woman in their office. The only African American woman employed at the agency was also invited. As Cheryl described it:
It was a summer evening and the party spilled out onto the back porch, attracting the attention of a Black man in the alley below. He was probably homeless, saw people drinking and started coming up-stairs. Well, the White hostess, plagued by a terminal case of White liberal guilt and not wanting to make a scene in front of her Black colleague, actually invited the guy in to have a beer. But the Black woman who witnessed this became furious, as if this White woman was somehow equating her status with that of this down-and-out Black man simply because they shared the same race. Long after he was finally asked to leave, racial tension remained in the room.
There are other stumbling blocks, as well, that cross-race friendships must overcome before they can thrive. White women’s behavior with a Black girlfriend too often seems to fall into one of two extreme categories: either they try to relate to her solely terms of her race, or they try to deny completely race as a factor between them. Crystal, a Black woman from Ohio, claims that her White friend Ann is always telling her that she, Ann, knows a lot about Black music and culture. Whenever Ann sees a Black actress or model in a magazine or on TV, she makes a big deal of stating how beautiful that actress or model is. Not surprisingly, Crystal gets annoyed by such obsequious behavior. LaTisha, a Black woman from L.A. who works in television, has had similar experiences. “My friendships with White women have always been a bit trying. They always seem to want to prove to me that they understand Black culture.”
Too many White women act as if they expect their Black girlfriends to be experts on every topic relating to race. While some African American women enjoy serving as consciousness-raising vehicles for White women, most Black women do not relish the role. They especially don’t like being asked a lot of questions about how to handle so-called Black-identified social problems. Lois, a Black woman in her late thirties who works at the Mars candy factory, remembers an incident that nearly destroyed her budding friendship with a White woman whom she had met at work:
I’ll never forget the first time I called this White woman and said to her on the phone, “Hey, what’s going on Nigger?” That was my way of saying we were friends, but it threw her off. She got used to that, though, and we were getting along real fine until the time she called me up in a big panic to ask what she should do about her teenage daughter who had gotten pregnant. I definitely got the feeling that just because I was Black, she thought that I was supposed to be some kind of expert on unwed pregnancy. So I asked her, real angry like, “Well, why should I know?”
In an article for Ms. magazine entitled “Friendship in Black & White,” Bebe Moore Campbell describes a similar incident between a Black woman named Betty Ann and a White one named Peggy. The two journalists first met during the mid-seventies at the Associated Press office. Asked to reflect on the early days of their relationship, Betty Ann said, “When I got to AP, I was very inexperienced. There were very few other black women there. I really appreciated Peggy’s concern, her sisterliness.” Eventually, the two women began talking on the phone in the evening and getting together socially. But one night Peggy made the mistake of calling Betty Ann in the middle of the night to ask her how to handle some Black neighbors who were fighting and being loud. Betty Ann’s response was chilly. “She gave me a very clear message,” recalled Peggy. “Don’t expect me to help you solve your problems with your rowdy black neighbors, because I wouldn’t know what to do with those folks either.” While Betty Ann denies that there was anything Peggy has done to realiy test their friendship, she nonetheless admitted that there was probably a part of her racial identity that she didn’t reveal to Peggy. Still, Betty Ann says, “I think black women and white women should be friends. It helps to have bridges. It’s a start if women can get along; they can make men get along.” And Peggy added, “I think our friendship transcends race, though we’re never unaware of it.”
While African American women do not appreciate being related to only in terms of their race, neither do they like being “whitefaced” and having their racial identity ignored. It is no compliment for a Black woman to have a White friend tell her, “I don’t even think of you as Black.” When Deana, a White woman, said something along these lines to her new Black girlfriend, Temple, Temple cautiously asked Deana what she meant. Deana replied, “Your blackness doesn’t faze me. I see you as my best friend, as a person with no color.” Temple became angry. “A major part of who I am is that I’m a Black woman. For you not to see me as Black really hurts.”
White girlfriends similarly make the mistake at times of denying the existence of societal racism. A twentysomething middle-class Black woman named Carla experienced this sort of thing when she recently ran into a former White childhood friend, Tyler. As Carla explains it:
I hadn’t seen Tyler in about two years, and as we were catching up on what we had been doing lately, we discovered that we had both made a stab at modeling. She talked of her successes in Europe -— she was tall, beautiful and blond -— and I spoke of my failures because of racism in the modeling industry. “Oh, I can’t see how that could be. You are so gorgeous,” she kept saying. I kept reiterating that my beauty had nothing to do with it. Some advertisers just don’t want to use Black women. Still, Tyler couldn’t seem to understand. I swear White women like her think that just because they aren’t racist, then no other White person is, either.
Of course, White women, too, have their grievances. A surprising number are bothered by Black girlfriends’ tendency to be late, and for failing to return phone calls promptly. Many of the White women we interviewed also reported that African American women don’t seem to think it as necessary to apologize for these lapses as a White girlfriend might. Although it is risky to make generalizations of any sort about either race, it is interesting to note that the African American psychologist James M. Jones has posited a model of cultural differences that may help to explain such behavior. Jones uses the acronym TRIOS to identify the themes of time perception, rhythm, improvisation, oral tradition, and spirituality to differentiate Black culture from White. With respect to time, he feels those of European descent have, for various reasons, a more linear and rigid relationship with the clock than those of African descent, who, he claims, have a more spatial and casual relationship with the fourth dimension. This difference in relating to time is reflected in the popular African American expression “being on CPT, or Colored People’s Time,” as a handy excuse for tardiness in the Black community. Confessed one White woman named Heather, “I’ve simply gotten in the habit of telling my Black girlfriend that something starts about an hour earlier than it actually does so we have some chance of being on time. Even then, I still get so mad at her for being so incredibly slow. To me, it’s like our friendship doesn’t mean that much to her, if she can’t try even a little to accommodate my needs to be on time.”
On the whole, Black women seem more circumspect regarding the value of an interracial friendship than White women, reflecting perhaps the habits of those more powerful and less powerful in the world at large. For example, women living in a male-dominated world, must study the behavior and habits of men, so that their coming to know any one man well will yield fewer revelations about men in general. In the same vein, African American women feel as though they know plenty about White women from having to pay more attention to them in a White-dominated society -— certainly more attention than most White women have paid to Black women. In other words, White women stand to gain more from relationships with Blacks than African American women do from friendships with Whites.
This difference in the perceived value of cross-race relationships sheds light on why African Americans become so irked by the cliche “Some of my best friends are Black.” Whites tend to use the statement as a way to defend themselves and to verify that they are not prejudiced. Karla, an African American woman who owns a bicoastal entertainment production company, recalls the night her White girlfriend Annette announced in Karla’s presence, at a dinner party with all of Annette’s White friends present, that she was proud to have a friend who was Black. To Karla, what Annette really seemed to be announcing was that she was an “expert on Black love, Black sensibilities, the plight of the Black race, and now all her White friends can look up to her for being such a rebel.” African Americans resent that some Whites think having a friend who is Black is “cool.” As African American Tina put it, “White people don’t say it’s cool having White friends, or that some of their best friends are White. It’s as if Black people are abnormal and to have one as a friend is something that needs to be announced.”
Sociologists Mary Jackman and Marie Crane, using an interview sample of nearly two thousand adults, 70 percent of whom were White, studied whether interpersonal contacts with Blacks actually changed a White person’s racial attitudes. The survey asked questions about the racial makeup of the respondents’ friends and acquaintances, along with questions assessing racial prejudice, such as beliefs about personality trait differences between Blacks and Whites. Jackman and Crane found that only 9.4 percent of Whites could even name one “good friend” who was Black, although 21.4 percent said that they had at least one Black “acquaintance.” The authors’ primary discovery, though, was that for Whites, having a Black friend did little to change their racial prejudices. That is, the good Black friend was simply subtyped as “exceptional,” and traditional racial prejudices remained intact. However, when the Whites respondents who claimed to have Black friends were divided into three groups -— those whose Black friend had relatively lower socioeconomic status, those whose Black friend had similar socioeconomic status, and those whose Black friend had relatively higher socioeconomic status -— the picture changed. When a Black friend is of equal or higher socioeconomic status, overall racial attitudes of Whites do begin to move in a more favorable direction. Jackman and Crane’s research seems to imply that if significant progress in women’s race relations is to be achieved, White women must begin to deal with Black women as equals — and not as beloved nursemaids or domestic servants.
In a paper on women’s interracial friendships, presented by African American psychologist Althea Smith and White psychologist Stephanie Nickerson at a recent meeting of the Association of Women in Psychology, the authors asked, “How pervasive is racism in interracial friendships to-day?” Their short answer was “very.” For Smith and Nickerson, though, the solution was not in trying to teach women to be nonracist -— in today’s culture, that seemed to them impossible. Instead, they advocated that cross-race friends admit to each other their racial stereotypes. In that way, the air can at least be cleared. For example, many African American women believe that White women are “exploitative, condescending, incompetent, silly, or untrustworthy,” while many White women believe, at some level, that Blacks as a group are intellectually inferior to Whites. Nickerson and Smith concluded that for women’s cross-race relations to be lasting, both partners must have “good intentions about race relations and a commitment to improving race relations in society.”
While we’ve covered a lot of issues pertaining to interracial friendships in this chapter, we have unfortunately barely scratched the surface. There are simply too many variables to consider them all, too many circumstances under which European American and African American women can run into conflict or come together. As America changes, so too does the nature of both men’s and women’s cross-race relationships. Yet, historically, little attention has been paid to the many ways in which interracial relations differ by gender. Over shared cups of coffee in the workplace, while doing laundry, or making baby-sitting arrangements, women often connect in ways that are at once intimate and mundane. As the less empowered members of society, and therefore those with more to gain and less to lose, the women, rather than the more politically entrenched men, may well be the ones to find the keys to future racial harmony.