Kimberly L. Bailey had a few butterflies, but the light conversation that the smiling woman made as she escorted her to the conference room made her feel a little less nervous. By the time the twentysomething Bailey sat facing the panel of three a White man, a White woman and a Black woman--she was ready for her interview with the large, highly regarded insurance company. What she didn't expect, however, was the icy reception she got from the sister.
"The two Whites were very pleasant, smiled as we talked, and looked at me," says Bailey, now a pension-program representative for the California State Teachers' Retirement System in Sacramento. "But the Black woman never smiled, only looked at me once, and read from a paper any questions she had for me. She was never rude or disrespectful, but it was almost as if she were intentionally trying not to connect with me. I was told she would be my immediate supervisor if I were hired. I didn't get the job. I thought I had interviewed well, and I know I was qualified, but I remember walking away from the interview wondering if the Black woman was jealous or insecure and just didn't want to work with me. I've Bailey's experience is one that's often repeated, not only in conference rooms across America but also in dorm rooms and classrooms. As far back as childhood, most of us have known sister-haters, or have done our own share of hating. Whether it was that girl in high school with the long hair and the big legs who got all the attention, or the trophy diva who snagged the great catch, or the sister with the M.B.A. who landed a job that put her in the six-figure league, women who seem to have more or to have it better--better education, better man, better looks, better opportunities--have always been targets of our collective jealousies and resentments. But now that we're settling in the corporate workplace in greater numbers than ever before, we have a new stage on which to play out our dramas. There the stakes are even higher because the rewards can be so lucrative, involving as they do money, privilege and perks. To get ahead, we're acting out with behaviors such as not speaking, withholding promotions or information, backstabbing and finger-pointing.
That kind of behavior isn't surprising when it comes from Whites--in fact, we almost expect it.
Think bullied girl Stacie J. from The Apprentice. But when Black women in a predominantly White environment dish it out to one another, we're surprised and doubly hurt. We expect, maybe unrealistically, that because we have the common bond of race and gender, we will automatically have each other's back.
"We've moved away from the mythology of Black women's supporting one another at work because we're now in these corporate environments where it's much more competitive and individualistic," says ESSENCE career columnist Ella Edmondson Bell, an associate professor of business in the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. "There is literally room for only one [Black female] at the top, and we've all gotten caught up in deciding that 'I'm going to be that one.'" Companies may talk about teamwork, says Bell, but the reality is that it's the individual who gets ahead, sometimes at the expense of other individuals she is working with.
FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE WORKPLACE
Given that we spend a huge chunk of our waking lives at work, it's no wonder the office becomes an arena for some of our most intense personal dramas. "There are so few places where Black women feel affirmed and supported," says Bell. "We're competing for men and for the job, and we often feel unloved and alone. And when you're feeling alienated and wounded, guess what? You may go after that sister on the job who looks better than you, who's got that man or that professional title." That animus can be directed toward peers, superiors or subordinates.
Take the case of Frances Ruffin, a copywriter who was working at a small publishing company in the Northeast that had merged with a larger one. "I was very supportive of a Black female manager in the company who was worried about losing her job with the merger," Ruffin says.
"As a result of the company's downsizing, I had revised a brochure that this woman took with
her to a sales meeting. She made a point of phoning me from the meeting to say the sales staff hated it. This turned out to be a lie. I later learned that the staff actually loved it, and soon realized that this manager often gave me misinformation about things and lied a lot." That kind of behavior, whether caused by insecurity over their own positions or feeling threatened by another sister's skills, is increasingly showing up among Black women in the workplace.
"My Black female boss did less to promote me than any of the White bosses I ever worked with," says Tracy Samms (not her real name), a producer at a national radio news station. "She [the boss] was a senior producer who came up the hard way, when there were few Blacks in the newsroom. She didn't want anyone to think she was giving me special privileges because we were both Black. The thing is, once I got out from under her I was promoted twice in one year by a White woman who had no fear of giving me an opportunity."
No comments:
Post a Comment