Editor’s Note: I’m posting this hastily, so it still needs a cold proofread. You may notice a few little changes after I cold proofread it tonight. <\/strike> Ok, it should be fixed.<\/p>\n
My partner and I were having a discussion the other day with a mutual friend of ours. Our friend is a middle to upper middle class professional black man, and he has recently experienced some trouble in his workplace, in particular being passed over by a coworker who failed a qualifying exam three times ((If I remember correctly this coworker is Latino, and race is likely one of the factors in the background of our friend being passed over, but he thinks the greater problem is cronyism.)) We were joking about racism, like we often do, and we got into a discussion of some of the more subtle ways that whites are advantaged in the workforce.<\/p>\n
He made a joke that was funny, but unfortunately this joke is indicative of some serious problems in the labor force. in this conversation, we were discussing a Latino friend who is woefully underemployed. He was trained at a fairly good private university in a applied technology field, but in spite of having a degree from a good school, he’s struggled to get a good job in the 10 years he’s been out college. Given the rapid changes in his field since his graduation, his likelihood of getting a job in that area today are slim. The nature of his field, like many, is such that a person goes into a job with basic knowledge, but much of the training comes when the person actually gets the job. My partner said, “Yeah, you only know 50% of what you need to know for a job before you start it.” Our friend had a great come back in the form of a joke ((Yeah, it doesn’t read like a joke, but he was laughing and talking goofy when he said it.)) –“The problem is Carlos is the 50% brother. Nobody wants to hire the 50% brother.” ((I’m changing his name here.)) The two black men (my partner and his friend) in the conversation were high fiving and laughing hysterically, “That’s minorities in the workforce.” I got in a few laughs myself, but the sad thing is that their joke reveals a truth that most people of color know–you need to be more than just a qualified person of color to get a job.<\/p>\n
They were arguing that it is much harder for people of color (and white women) who have the 50% knowledge to get their foot in the door for jobs that require more on the job training. Moreover, they felt that even though it would be expected that a person would not know everything required for one of these jobs, lack of knowledge is often held against people of color as a sign that they are unqualified or less qualified, whereas whites without that knowledge are viewed as trainable. In fact, they both felt that an overqualified or very highly qualified person of color (or white woman) stood a better chance of getting a job than even their white counterparts, in part because employers would be surprised and would be more likely to see this as an opportunity to diversify. ((I don’t think they are right about this, and I’m not sure what exact comparison they were using. I’m not sure if they meant to compare the overqualified black candidate to overqualified whites, qualified whites, or whites at all levels of qualifications, but it was interesting argument. I have seem a few cases where this has happened, but I’m quite reluctant to say it’s a trend unless I see some data.)) I’m not a sociologist in the field of work and occupations, so I don’t know much of the research emanating out of that field, but I have heard the 50% Brother\/Sister Argument before from many people of color, and I tend to think it is true.<\/p>\n
The first issue that many people of color (and white women) face in 50% jobs, is the fact that their lack of knowledge is held against them more than it is for whites. Part of this problem relates to camaraderie, which I discuss below, but the other issue is that there is a common stereotype that people of color are less qualified than whites in the first place. Some people of color worry about acknowledging that they do not have a particular skill, fearing that their lack of knowledge of this particular skill will be viewed as a sign of being unqualified. On the other hand, there is also a fear of saying that they know everything because it can come off as bragging. ((I’m going to do a second post on race and bragging in the workplace because this was the second part of the conversation we had that day.)) When a person feels close to an interviewee or a co-worker, their lack of knowledge fades more into the background and their trainability is more evident.<\/p>\n
These 50% jobs require that the person hired work closely with the others around him or her, so the extent to which potential coworkers feel a degree of camaraderie with this person will make a much greater difference in evaluations during a job interview. Carlos has spent most of his life in NYC, and he’s spent very little of his time in predominantly white environments. He doesn’t necessarily know the insider jokes and norms that middle income whites have, and most middle incomes whites are probably unfamiliar with the same insider norms and jokes the he grew up with in his predominantly black and Latino neighborhood. My partner and his friend were arguing that this was one of the key problems Carlos was having.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest barriers, when it comes to race, is the level of interactional comfort and camaraderie that people feel when they are in the presence of people of other races. I think this is one of the primary manifestations of contemporary racism. Many people have a discomfort that is conscious or unconscious, and this hurts people of color in the job market because it profoundly affects how they are evaluated by higher ups and co-workers ((Here is an example of a study<\/a> that found whites experience increased stress when they are around people of color. This finding does not appear to be an anomaly.)) I think this is really hurting Carlos and many other people of color like him, who don’t have extensive interpersonal interactions with the middle class whites who will be hiring them.<\/p>\n I think camaraderie is always going to be a factor in job hiring and promotions, but we can work on the two other problems. We can make sure that race doesn’t affect people’s perceptions of qualifications. ((I’m reminded here of a recent discussion we had at Alas about Barack Obama’s qualifications<\/a>. In that discussion Amp, linked to a post by Dave Schraub, where he notes that Obama has more experience in elected office than Clinton, Giulinani, Romney, Thompson, and Edwards. But somehow, Obama is viewed as inexperienced and less qualified.)) This may mean making parts of the hiring process more race blind and other parts more race conscious. We also need to address the issue of comfort and camaraderie. Until the discomfort many people feel in the presence of people of other races subsides, people of color are routinely going to be passed over for hires and promotion when they are definitely qualified. I understand that racial discomfort is often a two way street with both whites and people of color feeling discomfort at times, but if we are talking about this in relation to institutional power, people of color are significantly more likely to be negatively impacted by whites discomfort than the reverse. There is no way in a short blog post I can detail all of the ways we can work to stop the interactional uneasiness created by racism and racial prejudice, but the workplace and most other social institutions will never be equal until this problem is addressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Editor’s Note: I’m posting this hastily, so it still needs a cold proofread. You may notice a few little changes after I cold proofread it tonight. Ok, it should be fixed. My partner and I were having a discussion the … Continue reading