Workplace racial discrimination and the professionals at the center of corporate hierarchies

• Date: 19 May 2009
• Published date: 19 May 2009
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0193-5895(2009)0000024014
• Pages: 271-306
• Author: Cheryl L. Wade

WORKPLACE RACIAL

DISCRIMINATION AND THE

PROFESSIONALS AT THE CENTER

OF CORPORATE HIERARCHIES

Cheryl L. Wade

ABSTRACT

Why do so many African Americans get stuck near the bottom or at the

middle of the corporate ladder? Why do so many continue to complain

about discriminatory pay and promotion decisions many decades after the

enactment of anti-discrimination laws? Law and economics commentators

who have written about the issue of employment discrimination have failed

to address the complexity of the problem of implicit bias and the effects of

the frequently inaccurate heuristics used by some white workers when

making judgments about their black colleagues. Economic theory without

context is useless. But with context, law and economic analysis can help

us understand and address specific problems like workplace discrimination

that persist within corporate cultures because of an overestimation of the

cost of anti-discrimination efforts and an underestimation of the gravity

and likelihood of workplace discrimination.

In this chapter, I explore the economic and socioeconomic reality of

African American low and mid-level corporate managers in order to

capture a more complete picture of the costs of discrimination in the

Law & Economics: Toward Social Justice

Research in Law and Economics: A Journal of Policy, Volume 24, 271–306

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ISSN: 0193-5895/doi:10.1108/S0193-5895(2009)0000024014

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corporate workplace. I also explore the heuristic assumptions that are

made about African American professionals and the effects those

assumptions have on the black community. Finally, to understand the

gravity of the harm to individuals, their families and the communities to

which they belong, narratives about the economic and psychological harm

caused by discrimination are essential. I offer the narratives of six middle

managers and low-level professionals who faced discrimination in the

corporate workplace to provide an important context about discrimina-

tion’s real costs.

1. INTRODUCTION

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, I spent some time in the Central Park

Conservatory Garden. The garden was closing and I waited with about 20

others for the park attendant to let us out of the locked gate. A well-dressed,

seemingly affluent white woman asked me if I worked in the garden.

Volunteers who work in the park wear knee-pads or gardening gloves and

carry gardening tools. I carried a Nike tote bag in which I had books and a

compact disc player. All park attendants wear uniforms. Their shirts are a

pale green, and their khaki pants a deeper shade of green. The only aspect of

my appearance that was similar to the Central Park attendants and workers

was my brown skin. Other than the fact that I am African American,

I looked like the others who toured and enjoyed the park that spring day

dressed in jogging or hiking shoes, exercise clothes, and carrying tote bags.

As I walked home from the park, I thought about going out to buy newer,

more expensive-looking exercise clothes. Maybe then I would not be

mistaken for ‘‘the help.’’

1

Then I remembered my experience at Bliss Day

Spa in Manhattan the year before. While in the locker room, one of the

white patrons had assumed that I was the locker room attendant who was

also a black woman. When she made this assumption, I was dressed in the

thick white terry-cloth robe and slippers that all clients wear on their way to

their massages and facials.

Another incident occurred when, after seeing a movie, I stood and waited

for my friend to come out of the women’s bathroom. Without excusing

himself, a white man brusquely asked me where the men’s room was. I was

annoyed and responded with a question, ‘‘why would I know where the

men’s room is?’’ He responded, ‘‘well, I asked because you’re standing there

looking as though you work here.’’

CHERYL L. WADE272

Similar interactions occurred with regularity in the professional work-

place. When I worked as a lawyer in a large New York City law firm,

colleagues and clients who did not know me, or who did not know me well,

frequently assumed that I was a messenger, or a secretary. One particular

example makes the point graphically: while I waited in the reception area,

dressed in a navy blue business suit, the white receptionist received a call

from the person for whom I was waiting, asking her to let me know that he

was running late. I later found out that he asked whether there was an

associate waiting in the reception area. I recall that while on the phone, the

receptionist looked over at me and said to the person with whom she was

speaking, ‘‘no, she’s not here.’’ (I did not know at that time that she was

talking with the person for whom I waited.)

I call these incidents professional misidentifications, and the accumulation

of these types of interactions has made me intolerant ofthem. These personal

stories about my experiences in New York City are not unique.

2

African

Americans suffer daily indignities, mild annoyances, and micro-inequities

that accumulate day after day and rob us of our individuality and inner

peace.

3

I describe these experiences because they offer insight into the

assumptions some whites make about the type of work that African

Americans do.

4

Clearly, working as park or locker room attendants are

honorable ways to make a living. It is true that manyif not most of these jobs

are filled by black Americans, at least in some urban areas. But not all black

Americans work at such jobs. These stories reveal the inability of some

whites to see much of anything beyond brown or black skin. In anonymous

interactions such as the ones I describe in the preceding paragraphs,

socioeconomic differences and educational attainment are irrelevant.

So many black Americans can tell personal stories similar to the ones I tell

in the immediately preceding paragraphs.

5

I have heard many black lawyers

mistaken for mail room workers, or defendants; black doctors mistaken for

nurses or orderlies; black business executives mistaken for secretaries. The

common thread throughout all of these interracial misunderstandings is that

although the lawyers, executives and doctors were dressed like, and

behaving like, members of their profession when the misidentifications

occurred, they did not look like lawyers, executives or doctors to the whites

who misidentified them because they looked like African Americans. My

point here is not that these professional misidentifications are actionable

discrimination, or even that they are morally blameworthy. If they say

anything at all about race, the messages are indirect, unconsciously

transmitted, almost imperceptible, and perhaps innocuous. The incidents

are mere annoyances in the daily lives of African Americans.

Workplace Racial Discrimination 273