Calling Time on Two Long-Standing Employment Hurdles Facing the Black Community in America
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Tomorrow will be Juneteenth, our nation’s most recent federal holiday. It commemorates the events of June 19, 1865, when General Gordon Granger’s enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas effectively ended slavery in the United States.
Juneteenth celebrations began the following year among the African American community and over time, they grew in size and importance across the country. In 1979, the State of Texas was the first to recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday and growing momentum led to President Biden officially declaring it a federal holiday in 2021.
As we look back on the abolition of slavery, today’s newsletter is an ideal opportunity to focus on workplace inequalities still facing the Black community, by continuing our series on the main employment hurdles facing marginalized groups.
CALL TO ACTION:
Throughout this article series, we want to engage with you, our community, to learn more about organizations that are tackling these hurdles. Our goal is to amplify the good work they are doing to dismantle major employment obstacles and increase diversity and retention.
Let’s begin with a few statistics. There are currently over 20 million employees who identify as Black in the US, and they experience workplace discrimination due to race or ethnicity much more frequently than people from other racial or ethnic groups. The employment–population ratio is the lowest of any racial group and this has persisted for many years.
These statistics may sound all too familiar to us as diversity recruiters, but what can be done to improve the situation and drive real change?
In trying to answer that question here at Team JTC, we realized how important it is to identify the main employment obstacles facing Black workers in 2024. This enables us to prioritize solutions that will make a real difference.
Our research uncovered two key hurdles I would like to consider today: first, a predominantly White-centered understanding of “professionalism,” and second, the historically rooted systemic bias that continues to underpin discrimination against the Black community.
Hurdle #1: Code-Switching and “Professionalism”
Many Black employees say they “can’t be themselves” at work. For Black professionals, code-switching to conform to workplace expectations is “as routine or familiar as breathing” and they are around three times as likely to code-switch as White employees.
For instance, Black lawyers may code-switch in dress or appearance because some have been found in contempt of court for wearing “unprofessional” clothing. But continual efforts to conform to “professional” standards take a toll, including negative health impacts such as stress and burnout.
In particular, much recent debate has surrounded Black hairstyles. While this applies to all Black employees, black women are disproportionately affected and 20% say they have experienced being sent home from work because of their hair. Women who identify as Black should not have to chemically straighten their hair or make other changes to conform to “Eurocentric” beauty standards, and besides, traditional Black hairstyles have important social and political significance, connecting people to their ancestry and heritage.
Persistent hair discrimination inspired the CROWN Act in 2019, which stands for “creating a respectful and open world for natural hair” and gives protections against race-based hair bias. To date, more than 30 states have either adopted this legislation or are in the process of doing so.
In the wider picture, lawyer Leah Goodridge recently authored an influential and award-winning essay, Professionalism as a Racial Construct, which has prompted many important conversations since its publication in 2022. It was motivated by her own experiences as an attorney that led her to question “what the purpose of professionalism was for and for who.” She argued that professionalism is used as a tool for marginalization to “subjugate people of color in the legal field.”
But what about employees in other professions?
Well, while Goodridge’s story is far too common among people in professional roles identifying as Black, I suspect this marginalization is unintended in a growing number of workplaces. It likely reflects the unconscious assumption that “traditional standards and values are objective and unbiased.” As one writer from Stanford’s Center for Racial Justice has put it, historically rooted understandings of what it means to be “professional” are “too often taken for granted and unchallenged.”
Academic researchers have described the consequences of this as “Whitewashing Blackness through professionalism,” summing up the implications for Black professionals as “impossible expectations of needing to be White while inhabiting a Black body.”
To be accepted and successful at work, professionals who identify as Black feel pressure to be as “White” as possible, illustrated by how often they engage in code-switching. Writing recently for The Executive Leadership Council Journal, I explained how this stems from traditional White-centric notions of professionalism that underpin persistent Black underrepresentation in senior roles.
This clearly needs to change. Encouragingly, the academic researchers I quoted just above responded by prompting individual organizations to initiate discussions that can “better construct clear professionalism guidelines” and leave historical assumptions behind.
Hurdle #2: Historical Racial Discrimination
Let’s start with the good news. Since 2020, many workplaces have become more inclusive and diversity has increased, and these are vital steps forward. However, systemic historical bias continues to create persistent obstacles for Black employees so there is still much to be done.
Earlier this year, we published a two-part article on the origins of workplace underrepresentation and looked at how some of those historical biases continue to affect African Americans. Undoubtedly, the legacy of slavery fostered deeply rooted discrimination against all Black employees and the consequences are still with us today. If you’d like to read or revisit that short series, you can find part I here and part II at this link.
Back in April, economists from UC Berkeley published the latest in a line of studies showing hiring bias against candidates who identify as Black. They sent 80,000 resumes with Black-sounding or White-sounding names to 10,000 jobs from 2019–2021. On average, companies contacted the presumed-White applicants 9.5% more often but this varied widely. Some firms showed no bias by presumed race, while the largest difference was 43%, highlighting how some employers are doing well but others are failing to create equitable recruitment processes.
Additionally, several other statistics paint a picture of enduring systemic bias.
The Black unemployment rate is double that of White workers (6.4% vs. 3.4% in March 2024), a trend which has stayed virtually constant since records began in 1972. There is also a significant wage gap, since Black Americans earn on average only 64% of the income of their White counterparts. This has barely changed in over 20 years. In addition, Black employees continue to be overrepresented in lower-paid jobs and significantly underrepresented in leadership roles.
These findings are nothing new but it is worrying how they seem to be so unyielding. It is no wonder that the Center for American Progress recognizes “systematic obstacles to getting good jobs” for the Black community in America.
How Should We Respond?
In our own workplaces, we think the suggestion to discuss and redefine what “professionalism” really means could be a great starting point. Also, practices that redress historical discrimination (such as pay transparency) are vital to rebuild a sense of trust for Black employees.
Meanwhile, many advocacy organizations are actively representing the Black community in America, in the workplace and beyond. We encourage you to share any organizations you know of or work with directly, either locally or nationally, that are tackling the specific hurdles we have highlighted in this newsletter.
Our hope is that such initiatives will remove the persistent obstacles facing the Black community to create equitable opportunities and workplaces, overcoming long-standing injustices to realize the vision for equality in General Granger’s order on the very first Juneteenth.
JOIN US IN THE COMMENTS: Be sure to let us know of any Black advocacy organizations you are aware of that aim to dismantle traditional notions of “professionalism” or historical racial discrimination. And as always, we would value your feedback and comments on today’s article.
