Race in the elite workplace

Racial discomfort refers to the general unease that many Black professionals experience when working in predominantly white work settings. It can affect them in conjunction with racial bias, but it can also undermine their careers in the absence of racial bias.

In my book The Black Ceiling: How Race Still Matters in the Elite Workplace, I focus on two types of racial discomfort. There’s stigma anxiety, the discomfort people experience due to their concerns about possibly being discriminated against in the future. And there’s social alienation, the unease that comes when they feel isolated and marginalized because their interests and background are very different than those of their colleagues.

These disadvantages are so impactful for Black professionals because relationships with your colleagues are incredibly important at elite firms. They determine your access to certain types of high-quality opportunities and whether anyone’s going to bat for you when it comes time for promotions or allocating bonuses. They also shape access to the advice and guidance that can determine whether you’re able to perform well on your assignments.

There is an incredibly important distinction between developmental work assignments and what you might consider grudge work or paperwork. The developmental work allows people to develop career capital, which includes bigger bonuses, relationships with the right senior colleagues and clients, and reputational capital. So it’s important that as a junior professional you get as much of this work as possible.

When you receive those premium assignments and you do a good job on them, you’ve actually become more qualified than your peers for future assignments. So at that point, it becomes rational for a senior professional to say, “I want this person on my case.” There are people who leave these firms voluntarily to try to get a fresh start somewhere else where they think they’ll have better access to those opportunities.

Not receiving those opportunities can undermine your self-confidence. It can lead to frustration, stress, and anxiety. It can affect people in ways that are not obvious to people who haven’t experienced it themselves.

There are a number of approaches that firms can take that would at least offer marginal progress. They need to adjust their training practices to raise awareness about some of these subtle issues. It’s easy to misinterpret racial discomfort as something else. And in this legal climate where race-based policies are under increased scrutiny, I think that some initiative has to come from individual senior professionals. There need to be people reaching out to their junior Black colleagues to make sure they’re not falling through the cracks, that they’re getting the opportunities and support that they need to thrive. It’s important they address perceived discrimination, as [it] can have a broad effect on Black professionals because the word spreads. Firms can also be more conscientious about where they hold work events and activities. These are all things that firms can do better.