WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL, I DID NOT SIT AT THE BLACK TABLE IN the cafeteria because there were not enough Black kids in my high school to fill one. Though I was naive about many things, I knew enough about social isolation to know that I needed to get out of town. As the child of college-educated parents and an honor student myself, it was expected that I would go on to college. My mother suggested Howard University, my parents’ alma mater, but although it was a good suggestion, I had my own ideas. I picked Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. It was two hours from home, an excellent school, and of particular interest to me was that it had a critical mass of Black and Latinx students, most of whom were male. Wesleyan had just gone coed, and the ratio of Black male students to Black female students was seven to one. I thought it would improve my social life, and it did.
I thrived socially and academically. Since I had decided in high school to be a psychologist, I was a psychology major, but I took a lot of African American studies courses—history, literature, religion, even Black child development. I studied Swahili in hopes of traveling to Tanzania, although I never went. I stopped straightening my hair and had a large Afro à la Angela Davis circa 1970. I happily sat at the Black table in the dining hall every day. I look back on my days at Wesleyan with great pleasure. I maintain many of the friendships I formed there, and I can’t remember the name of one White classmate. I don’t say that with pride or malice. It is just a fact.1
I was having what William Cross might call an “immersion experience.” I had my racial encounters in high school, so when I got to college I was ready to explore my Black identity, and I did so wholeheartedly. Typically this process of active exploration of REC identity is characterized by a strong desire to surround oneself with symbols of one’s racial-ethnic identity and actively seek out opportunities to learn about one’s own history and culture with the support of same-REC peers. While anger toward Whites is often characteristic of the adolescent phase, particularly in response to encounters with racism, during the immersion phase of active exploration, the developing Black person is likely to see White people as simply irrelevant. This is not to say that anger is totally absent, but the focus of attention is on self-discovery rather than on White people. If I had spent a lot of time being angry with the White men and women I encountered at Wesleyan, I would remember them. The truth is, I wasn’t paying much attention to them. My focus was almost exclusively on exploring my own cultural connections.
The Black person in this identity phase of active exploration is energized by the new information he or she is learning—angry perhaps that it wasn’t available sooner, but excited to find out that there is more to Africa than Tarzan movies and that there is more to Black history than victimization. In many ways, the person is unlearning the internalized stereotypes about his or her own group and is redefining a positive sense of self based on an affirmation of one’s racial group identity. Feeling good about one’s group (sometimes referred to as positive “private regard” or “group esteem”) is an important outcome of the REC-identity development process. “The positive affect that individuals feel toward their ethnic-racial group is a critical component of ethnic-racial identity (ERI) and has been demonstrated to be associated with positive adjustment across different developmental periods.”2
Ideally, one emerges from this process of active exploration with an achieved sense of security about and commitment to one’s REC identity. As positive group esteem rises, the individual finds ways to translate a personal sense of REC identity into ongoing action, the tangible result of understanding that sense of shared destiny or common fate with one’s REC group.3 The rallying of Black students behind the “Black Lives Matter” slogan on campuses across the country is a contemporary example of that sense of commitment in action. Though during the period of active exploration the young adult’s focus may have been turned inward, away from members of the dominant group, the result of the process often includes a willingness to establish meaningful relationships across group boundaries with others, including Whites, who are respectful of this new self-definition.
In my own life, I see this growth process clearly. I left Wesleyan anchored in my empowered sense of Blackness. I went off to graduate school at the University of Michigan and quickly became part of an extensive network of Black graduate students, but I did have a few White friends, too. I even remember their names. But there were also White people that I chose not to associate with, people who weren’t ready to deal with me in terms of my self-definition. Throughout my adult life I have had a racially mixed group of friends, and I am glad to model that inclusivity for my children. My choice of research topics throughout my career reflects my concerns about my racial group. I like to think that I both perceive and transcend race, but I am still a work in progress. I know that from time to time I have revisited this process of development in response to new racial incidents in my life or in the lives of my children.
Sometimes I find it helpful to compare this growth process to learning another language. The best way to learn a second language is to travel to a place where it is spoken and experience complete immersion. Once you have achieved the level of proficiency you need, you can leave. If you worked hard to become conversant, you will of course take pride in your accomplishment and will not want to spend time with people who disparage your commitment to this endeavor. You may choose not to speak this new language all the time, but if you want to maintain your skill, you will need to speak it often with others who understand it.
Though the cultural symbols for the current generation of young adults may not be the same as for mine, the process of REC-identity exploration is quite similar. Black students practice their “language” in Black student unions and cultural centers and at college dining halls on predominantly White campuses all over the United States. And they should not be discouraged from doing so. Like the Black middle school students from Boston, they need safe spaces to retreat to and regroup in the process of dealing with the daily stress of campus racism.
That life is stressful for Black students and other students of color on predominantly White campuses should not come as a surprise, but it often does. White students and faculty frequently underestimate the power and presence of the overt and covert manifestations of racism on campus, and students of color often come to predominantly White campuses expecting more civility than they find. Whether it is the loneliness of being routinely overlooked as a lab partner in science courses, the irritation of being continually asked by curious classmates about Black hairstyles, the discomfort of being singled out by a professor to give the “Black perspective” in class discussion, the pain of racist graffiti scrawled on dormitory room doors, the insult of racist jokes circulated through campus e-mail, or the injury inflicted by racial epithets (and sometimes beer bottles) hurled from a passing car, Black students on predominantly White college campuses must cope with ongoing affronts to their racial identity. The desire to retreat to safe space is understandable. Sometimes that means leaving the campus altogether.
For example, one young woman I interviewed at Howard University explained why she had transferred from a predominantly White college to a historically Black one. Assigned to share a dormitory room with two White girls, both of whom were from rural White communities, she was insulted by the assumptions her White roommates made about her. Conflict erupted between them when she was visited by her boyfriend, a young Black man. “They put padlocks on their doors and their dressers. And they accused me of drinking all their beers. And I was like, ‘We don’t drink. This doesn’t make any sense.’ So what really brought me to move out of that room was when he left, I came back, they were scrubbing things down with Pine Sol. I was like, ‘I couldn’t live here with you. You think we have germs or something?’”
She moved into a room with another Black woman, the first Black roommate pair in the dormitory. The administration had discouraged Black pairings because they didn’t want Black students to separate themselves. She and her new roommate got along well, but they became targets of racial harassment.
All of a sudden we started getting racial slurs like “South Africa will strike. Africans go home.” And all this other stuff. I knew the girls who were doing it. They lived all the way down the hall. And I don’t understand why they were doing it. We didn’t do anything to them. But when we confronted them they acted like they didn’t know anything. And my friends, their rooms were getting trashed.… One day I was asleep and somebody was trying to jiggle the lock trying to get in. And I opened the door and chased this girl down the hallway.
Though she said the college administration handled the situation and the harassers were eventually asked to leave, the stress of these events had taken its toll. At the end of her first year, she transferred to Howard.
While stressful experiences can happen at any college, and social conflicts can and do erupt among Black students at Black colleges as well, there is considerable evidence that Black students at historically Black colleges and universities achieve higher academic performance, enjoy greater social involvement, and aspire to higher occupational goals than their peers do at predominantly White institutions.4 For example, according to data from the National Science Foundation, Spelman College, a historically Black college for women, sends more Black women on to earn PhDs in the sciences than any other undergraduate institution.5
In 1992, drawing on his analysis of data from the National Study on Black College Students, Walter Allen offered this explanation of the difference in student outcomes.
On predominantly White campuses, Black students emphasize feelings of alienation, sensed hostility, racial discrimination, and lack of integration. On historically Black campuses, Black students emphasize feelings of engagement, connection, acceptance, and extensive support and encouragement. Consistent with accumulated evidence on human development, these students, like most human beings, develop best in environments where they feel valued, protected, accepted, and socially connected. The supportive environments of historically Black colleges communicate to Black students that it is safe to take the risks associated with intellectual growth and development. Such environments also have more people who provide Black students with positive feedback, support, and understanding, and who communicate that they care about the students’ welfare.6
Nearly twenty-five years later, a national study of fifty thousand Black college alumni reported very similar findings. Black graduates of historically Black colleges were much more likely to have felt supported by a faculty member or mentor while in college and were more likely to be thriving financially and in terms of overall well-being than their Black peers who graduated from predominantly White institutions, according to a Gallup / Purdue University study. The researchers wrote, “The profoundly different experiences that black graduates of HBCUs and black graduates of non-HBCUs are having in college leave the HBCU graduates feeling better prepared for life after graduation, potentially leading them to live vastly different lives outside of college.”7
While these and Allen’s earlier findings make a compelling case for Black student enrollment at historically Black colleges, the proportion of Black students entering predominantly White institutions (PWI) continues to increase.8 It is certainly possible to have a great learning experience at a PWI, as I did. Yet as negative campus interactions increase, as they did dramatically after the 2016 presidential election, predominantly White colleges concerned about attracting and retaining Black students must take seriously the psychological toll extracted from students of color in inhospitable environments and the critical role that cultural space can play. Having a place to be rejuvenated and to feel anchored in one’s cultural community increases the possibility that one will have the energy to achieve academically as well as participate in the cross-group dialogue and interaction many colleges want to encourage. If White students or faculty do not understand why Black or Latinx or Asian cultural centers are necessary, then they can be helped to understand.9
Once when I described the process of racial identity development at a workshop session, a young Black man stood up and said, “You make it sound like if you don’t go to college you have to stay stuck [in your development].” It was a good observation. Though the college years are likely to provide consciousness-raising experiences in classrooms or through cocurricular interactions with a new set of peers,10 identity development does not have to happen in college. The Autobiography of Malcolm X provides a classic example of consciousness-raising that occurred while he was in prison. As he began to read books about Black history and was encouraged by older Black inmates, Malcolm X began to redefine for himself what it meant to be a Black man. As he said in his autobiography,
The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been “whitened”—when white men had written history books, the black man had simply been left out. Mr. Muhammad couldn’t have said anything that would have struck me much harder. I had never forgotten how when my class, me and all of those whites, had studied seventh-grade United States history back in Mason, the history of the Negro had been covered in one paragraph.…
This is one reason why Mr. Muhammad’s teachings spread so swiftly all over the United States, among all Negroes, whether or not they became followers of Mr. Muhammad. The teachings ring true.… You can hardly show me a black adult in America—or a white one, for that matter—who knows from the history books anything like the truth about the black man’s role. In my own case, once I heard of the “glorious history of the black man,” I took special pains to hunt in the library for books that would inform me on details about black history.11
Malcolm’s period of immersion included embracing the teachings of the Nation of Islam. Though Malcolm X later rejected the Nation’s teachings in favor of the more racially inclusive message of orthodox Islam, his initial response to the Nation’s message of Black empowerment and self-reliance was very enthusiastic.
One reason the Nation of Islam continues to appeal to some urban Black youth, many of whom are not in college, is that it offers another expanded, positive definition of what it means to be Black. In particular, the clean-shaven, well-groomed representatives of the Nation who can be seen on city streets in Black neighborhoods emphasizing personal responsibility and Black community development offer a compelling contrast to the pervasive stereotypes of Black men.
The hunger for positive expressions of identity can be seen in the response of many Black men to the Nation of Islam’s organization of the Million Man March in October of 1995. The march can be understood as a major immersion event for every Black man who was there, and vicariously for those who were not. Author Michael Eric Dyson expressed this significance quite clearly: “As I stood at the Million Man March, I felt the powerful waves of history wash over me. There’s no denying that this march connected many of the men—more than a million, I believe—to a sense of racial solidarity that has largely been absent since the ’60s. I took my son to Washington so that he could feel and see, drown in, even, an ocean of beautiful black brothers.”12 It was an affirming and definition-expanding event for Black men. And despite the White commentators who offered their opinions about the march on television, it seemed to me that, for the participants, White people were that day irrelevant.
Twenty years later, in October of 2015, thousands of people, most of whom were Black men, gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC, again in hopes of recapturing that empowering sense of solidarity. Among them was Reverend Ronald Bell Jr., a thirty-four-year-old pastor from Wilmington, Delaware, who at fourteen had attended the 1995 march with his father, Reverend Ronald Bell Sr. It made a significant impression on him then. “Just to see all those strong black men in one spot does something to you,” said Bell, who heads Wilmington’s Arise congregation. Holding his four-year-old son’s hand, he said, “I hope he gets the experience I did 20 years ago with just the visual that we are strong. That we may not be where we thought we’d be 20 years later but we’re still strong.”13
The need for space in which those who are subject to societal stigmatization—“low public regard”—can come together to construct a positive self-definition is, of course, also important for Black women. In her book Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins identifies various ways that Black women have found to create such space in or out of the academy. “One location,” she writes, “involves Black women’s relationships with one another. In some cases, such as friendships and family interactions, these relationships are informal, private dealings among individuals. In others,… more formal organizational ties have nurtured powerful Black women’s communities.”14 Whether in the context of mother-daughter relationships, small social networks, Black churches, or Black women’s clubs and sororities, space is created for resisting stereotypes and creating positive identities.
Though Black churches can sometimes be criticized as purveyors of the dominant ideology, as evidenced in Eurocentric depictions of Jesus and sexist assumptions about the appropriate role of women, it is also true that historically Black churches have been the site for organized resistance against oppression and a place of affirmation for African American adults as well as for children. The National Survey of Black Americans, the largest collection of survey data on Black Americans to date, found very high rates of religious participation among Blacks in general and among women in particular.15 The survey respondents clearly indicated the positive role that the churches had played in both community development and psychological and social support.16 Many Black churches with an Afrocentric perspective are providing the culturally relevant information for which Black adults hunger. For example, in some congregations an informational African American history moment is part of the worship service and Bible study includes a discussion of the Black presence in the Bible. As these examples suggest, there are sources of information within Black communities that speak to the identity development needs of both young and older adults, but there is still a need for more.
The process of REC-identity development, often emerging in adolescence and continuing into adulthood, is not so much linear as circular. It’s like moving up a spiral staircase: as you proceed up each level, you have a sense that you have passed this way before, but you are not in exactly the same spot. Moving through the immersion phase of intense and focused exploration to the internalization of an affirmed and secure sense of group identity does not mean there won’t be new and unsettling encounters with racism or the recurring desire to retreat to the safety of one’s same-race peer group, or that identity questions that supposedly were resolved won’t need to be revisited as life circumstances change.
It is also important to note that not every Black person experiences every aspect of the REC-identity process described here. Some people may find that other dimensions of their identity are simply more salient for them, and their REC-group membership may remain relatively unexplored.17 People of any educational background can get “stuck” without engaging in the active exploration that leads to more growth. In the language of James Marcia (discussed in Chapter 4), some may enter adulthood with a diffuse REC identity (little active exploration and no real psychological commitment to one’s REC group) or a foreclosed REC identity (accepting what others, such as parents, have defined without any active exploration of one’s own). For some, perhaps other dimensions of identity have been more salient (e.g., gender, religion, sexual orientation), becoming the focus of their psychological energy. In a longitudinal study of a diverse group of college students, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that the ability to make connections across multiple domains of personal and social identity grew over time. “Typically during their first year, participants discussed the domains of personal and social identity… in relative isolation even when prompted by interview questions to discuss the connections between them. Such was not the case in senior interviews, when most spontaneously made these connections.”18
In his classic article “Cycles of Psychological Nigrescence,” counseling psychologist Thomas Parham expanded on Cross’ original model of racial identity development to explore the kind of changes in REC identity that a Black person might experience throughout the life cycle, not just in adolescence or early adulthood.19 For example, during middle adulthood, that broad span of time between the midthirties and the midfifties, individuals regardless of race come to terms with new physical, psychological, and social challenges. This period in the life span is characterized by changing bodies (gaining weight, thinning or graying hair, waning energy), increasing responsibilities (including rearing children and grandchildren and caring for aging parents), continuing employment concerns, and, often, increasing community involvement. In addition, Levinson argues that adults at midlife fluctuate between periods of stability and transition as they reexamine previous life decisions and commitments and choose to make minor or major changes in their lives.20 What role does REC identity play for Black adults at midlife?
Parham argues that “the middle-adulthood period of life may be the most difficult time to struggle with racial identity because of one’s increased responsibilities and increased potential for opportunities.”21 Those whose work or lifestyle places them in frequent contact with Whites are aware that their ability to “make it” depends in large part on their ability and willingness to conform to those values and behaviors that have been legitimated by White culture. While it is unlikely that the lack of racial awareness that characterizes a young adolescent who has yet to have identity-triggering experiences would be found in a Black adult at midlife, some Black adults may have consciously chosen to retreat from actively identifying with other Blacks. These adults may have adopted a “raceless” persona as a way of winning the approval of White friends and coworkers.
In terms of child-rearing, adults who have distanced themselves from their REC group are likely to de-emphasize their children’s racial group membership as well. This attitude is captured in the comment of one father I interviewed who said that his children’s peer group was “basically non-Black.” Unlike other parents, who told me that they felt it was important that their children have Black friends and were regretful when they did not, this father said, “I think it’s more important that they have a socioeconomic group than a racial peer group.”22 In this case, class identification seemed more salient than racial identification.
Those adults who have adopted a strategy of racelessness may experience racial encounters in middle adulthood with particular emotional intensity. Because of the increased family responsibilities and financial obligations associated with this stage of life, the stakes are higher and the frustration particularly intense when a promotion is denied, a dream house is unattainable, or a child is racially harassed at school. Parham distinguishes between these “achievement-oriented” stresses of the upwardly mobile middle class and the “survival-related” stresses experienced by poor and working-class Blacks. However, he concludes that, regardless of a person’s social status, “if an individual’s sense of affirmation is sought through contact with and validation from Whites, then the struggle with one’s racial identity is eminent.”23
Survival stress is described by another father I interviewed who was worried not about promotions but about simply holding on to what he had already achieved:
Just being Black makes it hard, because people look at you like you’re not as good as they are, like you’re a second-class citizen, something like that. You got to always look over your shoulder like somebody’s always watching you. At my job, I’m the only Black in my department and it seems like they’re always watching me, the pressure’s always on to perform. You feel like if you miss a day, you might not have a job. So there’s that constant awareness on my part, they can snatch what little you have, so that’s a constant fear, you know, especially when you have a family to support.… So I’m always aware of what can happen.24
The chronically high rates of Black unemployment form the backdrop for this man’s fear. Under such circumstances, he is unlikely to speak up against the discrimination or racial hostility he feels.
While some adults struggle (perhaps in vain) to hold on to a “raceless” persona, other midlife adults express their racial identity through race-conscious, REC-group-affirming attitudes. On the job, they may be open advocates of institutional change, or because of survival concerns, they may feel constrained in how they express their anger. One male interviewee, working in a human service agency, fluctuated between being silent and speaking up:
It’s very difficult, and dealing with all the negative problems, and then going back and fighting the administration of the department that you’re working in, and fighting the racism, and squabbling of White males as well as White females, it’s really difficult, and one becomes programmed to be a little bit hard, but then in order to survive, you’ve got to control it, and generally I stay pretty much out of trouble. It’s just like playing a game in order to survive.25
This man’s experience was echoed in a study of Black professional workers in a variety of different occupations conducted by sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield. She found that these adults had to manage their emotions carefully in order to be successful in the workplace. “In particular, black professionals had to be very careful to show conviviality and pleasantness, even—especially—in response to racial issues.”26 Though they may work in predominantly White settings, not unlike Black college students sitting together in the cafeteria, African American adults who are again actively exploring what it means to be Black in the context of a stressful work environment, for example, are likely to choose to spend most of their nonwork time in the company of other Black people.
Adults who have achieved a positive sense of REC identity are likely to be proactively race-conscious about their children’s socialization experiences, often choosing to live in a Black community. If the demographics of their geographic area do not permit such a choice, they will, in contrast to “raceless” parents, actively seek out Black playmates for their children wherever they can find them. One mother explained, “I’m not opposed to my child interacting with White children or kids of any other race, but I want them to have a Black peer group just for the sense of commonality, and sharing some of the same experiences, and just not losing that identity of themselves.”27
Individuals who have achieved resolution and have internalized their REC-group identity may also take a race-conscious perspective on child-rearing, but they may also have a multiracial social network. Yet, anchored in an empowered sense of racial identity, they make clear to others that their racial identity is important to them and that they expect it to be acknowledged. The White person who makes the mistake of saying, “Gee, I don’t think of you as Black” will undoubtedly be corrected. However, the inner security experienced by adults at this stage often translates into a style of interaction that allows them to bridge racial differences more easily than those adults still struggling with the REC-identity-related challenge.
Summarizing Parham’s concept of “identity recycling,” Cross and Cross write, “With age and experience it is inevitable for a new challenge to arise that exposes the limits of one’s foundational identity.… One must effectively process the challenge to resolution.”28 Some of the recycling that occurs in midlife is precipitated by observing the REC-identity processes of one’s children. Parham suggests that “parents may begin to interpret the consequences of their lifestyle choices (i.e., sending their children to predominantly White schools, living in predominantly White neighborhoods) through their children’s attitudes and behaviors and become distressed at what they see and hear from [them].”29 For example, a Black professor struggling with guilt over his choice to live in a predominantly White community suggested to his daughter that she should have more Black friends. She replied, “Why do I have to have Black friends? Just because I’m Black?” He admitted to himself that he was more concerned about her peer group than she was. When he told her that she could “pay a price” for having a White social life, she replied, “Well, Daddy, as you always like to say, nothing is free.”30
The process of reexamining racial identity can continue even into late adulthood. According to Erikson, the challenge of one’s later years is to be able to reflect on one’s life with a sense of integrity rather than despair.31 Although racism continues to impact the lives of the elderly—affecting access to quality health care and adequate pension funds, for example—Black retirees have fairly high levels of morale.32 Those who approach the end of their lives with a positive, well-internalized sense of REC identity are likely to reflect on life with that sense of integrity intact.
Just as group identity for people of color unfolds over the life span, so do gender, sexual, and religious identities, to name a few. Cross reminds us that “the work of internalization does not stop with the resolution of conflicts surrounding racial/cultural identity.” Referring to the work of his colleague Bailey Jackson, he adds that racial identity development should be viewed as “a process during which a single dimension of a person’s complex, layered identity is first isolated, for purposes of revitalization and transformation, and then, at Internalization, reintegrated into the person’s total identity matrix.”33 Unraveling and reweaving the identity strands of our experience is a never-ending task in a society where important dimensions of our lives are shaped by the simultaneous forces of subordination and domination. We continue to be works in progress for a lifetime.
When I told my sister I was writing a book called Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? she said, “Good, then maybe people will stop asking me about it.” My sister spends her time not at a high school or college campus but in a corporate office. Even in corporate cafeterias, Black men and women are sitting together, and for the same reason. As we have seen, even mature adults sometimes need to connect with someone who looks like them and who shares the same experiences.
It might be worth considering here why the question is asked at all. In A Tale of “O,” psychologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter offers some insight. She highlights what happens to the O, the token, in a world of Xs.34 In corporate America, Black people are still in the O position. One consequence of being an O, Kanter points out, is heightened visibility. When an O walks in the room, the Xs notice. Whatever the O does, positive or negative, stands out because of this increased visibility. It is hard for an O to blend in. When several Os are together, the attention of the Xs is really captured. Without the tokens present in the room, the Xs go about their business, perhaps not even noticing that they are all Xs. But when the O walks in, the Xs are suddenly self-conscious about their X-ness. In the context of race relations, when the Black people are sitting together, the White people notice and become self-conscious about being White in a way that they were not before. In part, the question reflects that self-consciousness. What does it say about the White people if the Black people are all sitting together? A White person may wonder, “Am I being excluded? Are they talking about me? Are my own racial stereotypes and perhaps racial fears being stimulated?”
Particularly in work settings, where people of color are isolated and often in the extreme minority, the opportunities to connect with peers of color are few and far between. White people are often unaware of how stressful such a situation can be. There are many situations where White people may say and do things that are upsetting to people of color. For example, a Black woman working in a school district where she was one of few Black teachers—and the only one in her building—was often distressed by the comments she heard her White colleagues making about Black students. As a novice, untenured teacher, she needed support and mentoring from her colleagues but felt alienated from them because of their casually expressed prejudices. When participating in a workshop for educators, she had the chance to talk in a small group made up entirely of Black educators and was able to vent her feelings and ask for help from her more-experienced colleagues about how to cope with this situation. Though such opportunities may not occur daily, as in a cafeteria, they are important for psychological survival in such situations.
In fact, more and more organizations are creating opportunities for these meetings to take place, providing time, space, and refreshments for people of color and other underrepresented groups (e.g., women, people with disabilities, those who identify as LGBTQ) to get together for networking and support. Some corporate leaders have found that such interventions (sometimes called “affinity groups” or “employee resource groups”), particularly when championed by a senior executive, support the recruitment, retention, and heightened productivity of their employees.35 Like the SET program described in Chapter 4, a company-sponsored resource group can be an institutional affirmation of the unique challenges facing historically marginalized employees of color.
I was invited once to give a speech at the annual meeting of a national organization committed to social justice. All the managers from around the country were there. Just before I was introduced, a Black man made an announcement that there would be a breakfast meeting the next day for all interested people of color in the organization. Though this national organization had a long history, this was the first time that the people of color were going to have a “caucus” meeting. Following the announcement, I was introduced and I gave my talk, entitled “Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression.” After a warm round of applause, I asked if there were any questions. Immediately a visibly agitated White woman stood up and asked, “How would you feel if just before you began speaking a White person had stood up and said there would be a breakfast meeting of all the White people tomorrow?” I replied, “I would say it was a good idea.” What I meant by my response is the subject of the next chapter.