The Myth of the Black Executive

By Alexander L. Taylor III

Affirmative action collides with reality on the way to the top

Ever since affirmative-action programs were first launched in the 1960s, the absence of significant numbers of blacks in managerial ranks has been a source of frustration and embarrassment to U.S. business. Many companies make strenuous efforts to recruit, hire and nurture black men and women. So too have blacks striven to meet the demands and pressures of corporate life. Yet there is a growing debate over how well business has done its job, how well blacks are doing their jobs, and how many invisible barriers keep blacks from important jobs that carry big responsibilities and big salaries.

The conflict is sharply limned in Black Life in Corporate America, a book that says integration in the upper levels of the white-collar work force is a sham. The coauthors, George Davis, a novelist, and Glegg Watson, who helps direct educational grants at Xerox Corp., explain that they might have paraphrased an old Jamaican-sect expression as a theme: "How can African man live at IBM without losing himself?" The answer: he cannot. They conclude that even where overt discrimination does not exist, black managers feel they must not only outperform their white competitors to get ahead, but also hide their racial identity behind the mask of the organization man. As a result, less accommodating or more outspoken blacks do not get promoted, and companies are deprived of their particular viewpoints and skills.

The appearance of the Davis and Watson book preceded a rosy report on black employment issued by the New York City office of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In it, Commissioner Samuel Ehrenhalt contends that the ranks of black professionals, technicians and managers more than doubled during the 1970s, to 2.3 million. For example, Ehrenhalt claims that the number of black men with jobs like computer specialists or bank managers rose by 156%, "or roughly quadruple the 40% rise for white men."

The Ehrenhalt report was quickly challenged last week by the Washington office of his own agency for faulty methodology that produced grossly misleading results. Officials asserted that he ignored a classification change made during the decade that significantly raised the number of blacks counted as managers and administrators, and hence made their progress seem more dramatic. Ehrenhalt later admitted that his figures "have a little bit of a problem," but he insists that his conclusion is accurate.

A more authoritative, and considerably more downbeat, analysis came in a comprehensive article published in June in the Government's Monthly Labor Review. Its author, Diane Nilsen Westcott, a BLS economist, asserts that blacks have actually made smaller gains in the workplace during the past ten years than they did during the 1960s. In 1972, she says, black men filled 2.6% of all management and administrative jobs and only slightly more, 3.2%, in 1980; even that rise, notes Westcott, could be wiped out by statistical error. Moreover, blacks commonly fill positions, like restaurant managers or school administrators, that pay relatively poorly and provide little status. Concludes Westcott: "Blacks were still much less likely to be employed as managers or administrators than their white counterparts during the decade."

Even blacks in public affairs, personnel and affirmative-action positions that pay well and sound important complain they have been placed in high-visibility jobs that are dead ends. Such posts frequently provide little experience in managing subordinates or critical decision making. Says Professor Frank Cassell of Northwestern University's Graduate School of Management: "In the '70s there was a push to get black managers in the public-display jobs. Even if they are not fired because of the recession, they still find their promotions at a standstill."

Blacks in jobs with more responsibility also find their way to the top blocked by what they consider lingering prejudice. In 1970 Milton Johnson was promoted to senior buyer of a $35 million line of children's sportswear at J.C. Penney Co., one of five blacks with such a job. Twelve years later, there are still five black senior buyers. Johnson, 43, who makes more than $50,000 a year, is disenchanted. He wishes he had started his own business rather than worked for a big corporation.

Just as frustrating is the inability of blacks to be accepted as professional equals. Van Johnson, 43, a Ph.D. in chemistry, joined Du Pont in 1968, and is now responsible for divisional sales of about $15 million. He observes, "In a company like this, sophisticated and genteel society that it is, it is difficult to define manifest prejudice. But no matter how long I have been here, there is always the suspicion when I negotiate a contract that maybe I didn't bring home as much as I might have if I were white."

Unable to surmount long-held biases in the workplace, blacks feel that they have been equally cut off from the social circles that revolve around every company. Even those who would like to fraternize with fellow workers away from the office complain that they are seldom included. That hurts their day-to-day relations with peers and subordinates, and keeps them out of the old-boy network so useful to the careers of whites.

Some experts take a longer view of progress in the workplace. Richard F. America, co-author of Moving Ahead: Black Managers in American Business, says that since blacks began to get low-level management jobs only 15 years ago, better results will not be seen until they have climbed the corporate ladder, a process that could take another ten years. By the year 2000, he believes, a black will be chief executive of a FORTUNE 500 company. Many of today's black managers are not nearly as optimistic. Looking back on the progress they have made, they feel they have not been treated well by U.S. corporations.

--By Alexander L. Taylor III.

Reported by Jack E. White/New York and Roger Witherspoon/Atlanta

With reporting by Jack E. White/New York, Roger Witherspoon/Atlanta

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