for Black people.
And let's not forget, these cultural inequities have real-world economic consequences. Marcia Chatelain discusses the concept of racial capitalism. It can be summarized as a level of respect and value afforded people in business based on their race:
Racial capitalism shows ways that we think about how people are racialized. How their racial identities determine their possibilities in the world and determine the ways that they're treated.
So, when we're talking about racial capitalism, we're talking about ways that value or devalue is placed on specific people and their personhood. Racial capitalism has been a healthy way for people to understand the history of slavery and the continued abuse of African Americans even after the end of slavery.
It's also important in racial capitalism to understand how people are treated in other kinds of labor forces in which certain racial and ethnic groups tend to dominate and can also explain other types of exploitation. This includes when we look at Latinx people in agriculture even with certain types of women in domestic work. It helps us understand how value is assigned.31
Historically, Blacks laid the foundation for the wealth that successful business owners were able to enjoy in the early industrial days up until now, yet they were devalued at every turn. There were approximately 3 million enslaved people in the United States by the time slavery was abolished. These were not paid employees, and they were not willing volunteer workers. They were, what we call in modern days, forced labor.
These humans survived an ongoing intercontinental trafficking scheme that continued for centuries. Herded up and chained, they endured abhorrent overcrowding in the trafficking process, experienced humiliating physical and sanitary conditions, and suffered complete displacement from their culture and kin. They were not lavishly transported by patrons who sought to support their art or craft. They were not “immigrants” looking for “a land of dreams and opportunity,” as was controversially claimed by Dr. Ben Carson in his first speech as Housing and Urban Development Secretary.32 They were brutalized, maimed, and killed at owners' and supervisors' whims. There was no labor union to help them. There was no regulatory agency to protect them. Aside from emerging and established abolitionists, there were neither international relief organizations nor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) pouring in massive amounts of money and volunteers to save them.
Although that may sound like ancient history to Whites, it's important to understand that many Black people don't view it that way at all. When I took my first job at a Wall Street firm, elder mentors from church and extended family cautioned me to be mindful that industry “doesn't care a thing about us.” That observation sprang from a number of experiences that are all too common among people of color in the workplace. For example, the experience of training a series of (White) managers who were less qualified and yet, somehow, climbed the ladder significantly faster. The experience of seeing their ideas adopted by and credited to others. False assumptions about their intellect and education when they walked through the door. My elders wanted me to successfully avoid these pitfalls—or at least successfully navigate around them—while keeping my composure and compassion no matter the circumstance.
Unfair, unleveled business playing fields are a primary aspect of the old corporate culture that leaders must address. It is not enough to talk about them—what's needed is concrete action. If businesses want to benefit from top talent, these practices have got to go.
Right now you may be thinking, “Okay, sure. But how?” One step is to educate ourselves as corporate leaders about the history of how businesspeople have created heinous work conditions, exploited inequality, and ultimately benefitted long term from our lopsided system. Consider these observations author Ta-Nehisi Coates made in The Atlantic:
By 1860, there were more millionaires (slaveholders all) living in the lower Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the United States. In the same year, the nearly 4 million American slaves were worth some $3.5 billion, making them the largest single financial asset in the entire U.S. economy, worth more than all manufacturing and railroads combined.33
Those benefits still pay business dividends today. Although no monetary value can adequately compensate for historical abuses, Blacks have yet to see any sort of reparations, be they social, economic, or professional. What's more, lack of pay parity, psychologically abusive discrimination, and large-scale exclusion from higher levels of the economic system are still taking place.
We are dealing with a different type of playing field in modern times; for instance, there is an entire body of law related to the physical protection to workers. However, it's difficult to legislate unethical, uncompassionate workplace behaviors, especially ones that don't yield physical damage. Today's behaviors attack employee psyche and often challenge their ability to work effectively and bring their most innovative selves due to equivocal tones and language used.
The common term for these subtler types of workplace abuses is microaggressions. Kevin Nadal, professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, describes the term this way: “Microaggressions are defined as the everyday, subtle, intentional—and oftentimes unintentional—interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups. The difference between microaggressions and overt discrimination—or macroaggressions—is that people who commit microaggressions might not even be aware of them.”34
A prevalent example is when underrepresented people are left out of relevant meetings or electronic communications or they aren't included on inside knowledge that other colleagues share at virtual watercoolers. These are all tactics that keep them ill-informed for key decision-making, resulting in poor positioning when it's time to discuss succession planning and promotion.
Following are other examples that destroy trust between colleagues and stoke hostility and distrust, all of which affect performance:
Isolating a colleague or having unspoken agreements to not address and acknowledge that person inside and outside of meetings
Ignoring her comments in meetings
Talking over her in meetings
Refusing to share critical information
Refusing to include him in meetings critical to job functions
Discrediting her feedback and performance, including doing so in front of peers and management
Participating in misplaced conversation about physical attributes
Making condescending remarks about origin or pronunciation of his name
Selfish, thoughtless behavior isn't solely the experience of people of color, of course. But these behaviors are used successfully and pervasively to create an uncomfortable, sometimes toxic environment for people of color. Further, when microaggressions go unchecked, they are an opportunity to circumvent protections against workplace racism.
When aggressors are called on the carpet for their behavior, a common response is to say, “It was just a little joke.” Or that the person of color is being “too sensitive.” If people of color challenge low performance ratings with clear evidence of outperforming consistently, an intimidating response meant to shut the employee down is “I can get someone very senior (translation = old friend) to back me up.”
The
