Our Separate Ways

Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity

Ella L. J. Bell Smith, Stella M. Nkomo

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9781591391890
• eBook ISBN:
  9781633697560
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

In Our Separate Ways, authors Ella Bell and Stella Nkomo take an unflinching look at the surprising differences between black and white women's trials and triumphs on their way up the corporate ladder. Based on groundbreaking research that spanned eight years, Our Separate Ways compares and contrasts the experiences of 120 black and white female managers in the American business arena. In-depth histories bring to life the women's powerful and often difficult journeys from childhood to professional success, highlighting the roles that gender, race, and class played in their development.

Although successful professional women come from widely diverse family backgrounds, educational experiences, and community values, they share a common assumption upon entering the workforce: "I have a chance." Along the way, however, they discover that people question their authority, challenge their intelligence, and discount their ideas. And while gender is a common denominator among these women, race and class are often wedges between them.

In Our Separate Ways, you will find candid discussions about stereotypes, learn how black women's early experiences affect their attitudes in the business world, become aware of how white women have--perhaps unwittingly--aligned themselves more often with white men than with black women, and see ways that our country continues to come to terms with diversity in all of its dimensions.

Whether you are a human resources director wondering why you're having trouble retaining black women, a white female manager considering the role of race in your office, or a black female manager searching for perspectives, you will find fresh insights about how black and white women's struggles differ and encounter provocative ideas for creating a better workplace environment for everyone.

PART I

Flashbacks

WHEN WE CONSIDER the subjects of this book—women managers and executives in corporate America—we are likely to make many assumptions about them. Whether they are black or white, we assume that successful professional women share not just impressive curricula vitae, but also formative life experiences. We assume that they are products of middle- or upper-class families and that they benefited from average American privileges: a solid education, financial security, and professional opportunity. But the life stories of the women we interviewed for this study upend all such assumptions.

Women whose lives defy stereotypes are often invisible, so in our account of their experiences we would like to start by making them clearly visible. We will let them tell their distinctly personal stories in their own words. We will let them shed light on the many different early-life experiences that shaped them: poverty as well as privilege, isolation as well as support, domineering as well as doting fathers, the clamoring of social movements, and the armoring provided to some by their families.

Out of the 120 professional women we interviewed, we have selected fourteen women—seven of them black, seven of them white—whose stories best illustrate the themes we found surfacing again and again among their contemporaries. We have grouped them in such a way as to highlight these important themes, and we follow their stories with an analysis of those themes. In the first chapter of this “Flashbacks” section, we focus on women who suffered lost childhoods—either because they were raised in what are today called “families at risk” or because they suffered traumatic losses as young girls that shaped their growing-up experiences. In the second chapter, “Their Fathers’ Daughters,” we have chosen women whose stories best illustrate the developmental role played by fathers—whether they were positive models or motivating adversaries for their daughters. In “Comfortable Families, Uncomfortable Times,” we try to show how geographic and social location influenced a woman’s future, whether that location was the community in which a girl was raised or the social upheaval she saw around her. Finally, in “Executives in Training,” we show how some black families “armored” their daughters, raising them with a strong awareness of how to survive a racist society, how to surmount the obstacles it poses, and how to thrive in the corporate world.

Here, then, are their flashbacks—the poignant memories and salient stories they told us about their early years.

1

LOST CHILDHOODS

Ruthie Mae White

Ruthie Mae White has always been a survivor. The eldest of eight children born to Johnnie Mae and Jonathan White, she grew up in the Carolinas in the 1950s in one of the poorest counties in the United States. Johnnie Mae tried to support her family by sharecropping and cooking and cleaning for whites. But in the rural South, black people trying to scrape out a living by sharecropping lived a mission impossible. Poverty that defied description was an everyday reality for Ruthie Mae and her family. The house the family rented was no larger than a small shed, with floors made of uneven plywood planks perched atop concrete cinder blocks. The roof was a combination of rusty tin and tarpaper. Ruthie Mae does not remember having indoor plumbing until she was in high school, but she does recall the fun she used to have chasing chickens out from underneath the house through the cracks between the worn-out floorboards.

Today, Ruthie Mae White is vice-president of mortgage originations for a vast metropolitan area in one of the country’s largest financial institutions. Ruthie Mae’s skin is the color of rich, dark chocolate, and she wears a short-cropped natural hairstyle that illuminates her chiseled African facial features. She is a spunky, petite woman who does not hide her humble beginnings and is always dressed as if she were ready to attend a church service.

Ruthie Mae manages a team of fifteen loan officers. Her unit is responsible for generating new business, identifying new products, and providing a high level of service to customers. “The key to success in my role is balancing my time in the office with the need to be out in the field,” she said. “I cover a pretty large area. Clients like to see you if they are going to give you their business. Then, of course, there’s working with the back-office folks.”

Ruthie Mae’s parents, both of whom came from very poor backgrounds, separated when she was a baby. Having to leave school to work the tobacco fields as children, neither parent had completed elementary school. After the separation, her father lived with another woman in the community. However, her mother continued to have his children, even though he was fathering children with the other woman at the same time. Between the two women, Jonathan White fathered sixteen children. Ruthie Mae does not remember her father being around very much. Nor does she think her father provided any financial support to help raise her siblings and herself.

What does stand out in her mind, however, are the times her father would pile all eight of them in his car and take them for a joyride. Along the way he would always stop at the local dry goods store. Mr. White would go inside after telling his children to wait in the car. But Ruthie Mae, a child with a mind of her own, never listened. Instead, she would wait for a few minutes before following him into the store. Once inside, she would walk around the store, pick up bright red apples from a basket, grab a fistful of penny candies, and snatch up as many licorice sticks as her small hand could hold. She would then quietly put her bounty on the store’s counter. The storekeeper would tally the price of her goodies on a brown bag. While he was adding things up, Ruthie Mae made sure to avoid eye contact with her father. Of course, she knew he would pay. He did not want people thinking he was not taking care of all his children. When the storekeeper would tell them the total cost of her pluckiness, Ruthie Mae would bolt through the store’s door. Her father would come marching out of the store, holding the bounty, yelling and screaming all the way. Ruthie Mae, along with her brothers and sisters, did not mind hearing their father’s rants, because they got to eat all the goodies on the way back home.

Ruthie Mae employed a number of tricks to get money out of her father; whatever small amounts he gave her she would always turn over to her mother. Lack of money was a big problem for the family. As a result, all the White children were working by the time they reached their eighth birthday. They toiled in tobacco fields, did yard work, cleaned white people’s houses—whatever they could do to keep a roof over their heads. On occasion Ruthie Mae’s paternal grandmother and uncle would help the family out, but they did not have much family stability either. Also, there seemed to be some estrangement between her mother and her father’s family. Because of this tension, Ruthie Mae could not depend on her father’s kinfolk for emotional or financial support.

Ruthie Mae often found herself in charge of her siblings, trying to take control of the chaos that surrounded them and the uncertainty life brought. When she was feeling overwhelmed by the circumstances, she would always sing the lyrics to her favorite gospel tune. That kept her going, especially the refrain, “and on thyself rely.” At a young age she knew what it meant to rely on herself, and to have her six brothers and one sister depend on her as well. “I always thought of myself as the mother of my family, because I was the one who hugged and kissed them when they were sick or they got hurt or cried.” Her own childhood, she remembers, was snuffed out by this added responsibility.

The elementary school Ruthie Mae attended was a one-room building with a stove in the middle. Pupils would sit on either side of it. There were no books, only a chalkboard that the teacher used infrequently. Most of the school day the children spent playing outside on a wooden swing set. Ruthie Mae recalled, “We didn’t learn anything. I was in fourth grade when we transferred to a school in a building with rest rooms inside, and I was fascinated by that.” In the new school the other students were reading. It was then that Ruthie Mae discovered she could not read. She did not master books until seventh grade, but by then her education faced a new impediment.

Rather than having Ruthie Mae attend classes when she was in junior high school, Mrs. White insisted that Ruthie stay home to take care of her three-year old brother. At the time, she did not believe her mother valued education. “Mama’s priority was to make sure we ate regularly.” This was increasingly upsetting to Ruthie Mae. Fortunately, though, Ruthie Mae’s seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Garrett, came to her rescue. She made a home visit to find out why Ruthie Mae’s attendance was so irregular and found Ruthie Mae home babysitting. In order to get Ruthie Mae to come to class every day, Mrs. Garrett told her to bring her younger brother with her. “He disrupted the whole class, but Mrs. Garrett never said anything about it,” Ruthie Mae said in a tone softened by admiration and appreciation.

High school was a turning point in Ruthie Mae’s life. The principal, a real taskmaster, took a special interest in her. “I worked harder in all four grades in high school than I have ever done in my life,” Ruthie Mae declared. Thrilled at the discovery of her own intelligence, Ruthie Mae carried books home every evening, devouring them late into the night. She also became a leader, and was selected as senior class president. But despite such success, Ruthie Mae was conscious of being excluded from the more popular students in school. Skin color and economic status split the students into two “tribes”: one made up of the working-class kids who happened to be light-skinned; and the other made up of the kids who were poor and dark-skinned. Ruthie Mae’s story is a real-life manifestation of the social dynamic portrayed in Spike Lee’s School Daze, with its light-skinned, straight-haired Wannabes and dark-skinned, nappy-headed Jigaboos. Ruthie Mae wore a tam everyday to hide her “kinky and natty” hair.

In the twelfth grade, however, the social order shifted. “It was the year where the poor, black, kinky-haired, dark-skinned people took charge of the school,” she recalled with evident pride. Ruthie Mae was elected class president. She realized you didn’t have to be light-skinned with long hair to do well. “We could make it without all that.… We were smart too,” she added. “We had the highest scores on all the standardized tests because we studied hard.” The principal broached the subject of college with Ruthie Mae. He talked her mother into letting her apply to colleges and paid the application fees.

By this time, Ruthie Mae had acquired another guardian angel. In ninth grade she began working as a babysitter for the family of Mr. Nelson, a white lawyer in town. The Nelson family lived in an impressive two-story brick house, and Mr. Nelson drove a Cadillac, a rare extravagance in those parts. He first approached Ruthie Mae about part-time baby-sitting; over time, he increased his requests until she was able to stop cleaning the houses of other white families.

But whenever she went to baby-sit, there was little for her to do. “Most of the time I would get over there, and everybody would be sitting around watching TV, including him and his wife,” she said. For her services, he paid her fifty cents more than the two dollars a week she had earned cleaning. On some weekends Ruthie Mae was allowed to stay over at the Nelson’s to take care of the children. Occasionally, she accompanied them on family excursions. Instead of tiring household duties, Ruthie Mae was encouraged to do her homework.

At Ruthie Mae’s house, her mother would turn off all the electric lights by eight o’clock in the evening to save on the electric bill. If Ruthie Mae had to study in the evening, Mr. Nelson would come to get Ruthie Mae so she could study at his house. Mr. Nelson would even help her with school assignments. The Nelson’s home had a library filled with books. Ruthie Mae had never seen such a display of literature. Her mother was neither able to buy books, nor to read them. Ruthie Mae avidly devoured as many books as she could during her afternoons at the Nelsons. Her newly acquired knowledge was put to good use, as she began to get A’s on all her assignments in school. Teachers commented in class about how she was blossoming intellectually.

Ruthie Mae’s good grades enabled her to win full scholarships at four different colleges. She chose to attend a historically black college that also happened to be the college farthest away from her hometown. “I would have ended up being asked to come home to work on Saturdays picking tobacco to help out my family,” she explained. Her initial plan was to major in education, so she could return to her rural community and teach. “I wanted to teach more than anything,” she sadly admitted. However, family responsibilities took a toll on her college dream. Unable to student teach because she had to work part-time to help her mother provide for her younger siblings, Ruthie Mae changed her major to business. Attending classes and working, she still was on the honor roll all four years through college. Ruthie Mae married her college sweetheart the latter part of her sophomore year. But she divorced before graduating. A single parent at the age of twenty-two, she managed to graduate with honors that same year.

Immediately following graduation, she began her career in the financial industry as a bank teller.

Linda Butler

By the time Linda Butler turned sixteen, she was out on her own making a living. Linda’s petite, fragile appearance is exaggerated by the high leather chair she sits in behind a massive dark mahogany desk. Her wood-paneled, classic but utilitarian office features a wall of windowpanes with a view of the other tall downtown buildings. Linda’s pale, almost translucent white skin masks the resolve and perseverance it took to rise from a very poor and traumatic childhood to be the only woman at the senior executive level in a large utility company. She speaks with a strong and confident voice. She is finishing her first year as vice president of corporate affairs, a position held previously only by men; she is responsible for public information, public relations, and employee communications. “We’re charged with reviewing everything that goes outside the company on a mass basis,” she said, “to ensure employees adhere to company policy and company image.”

Linda, an only child, was born in 1947 in rural Mississippi to poor working-class parents. Linda never knew her father. Her parents were divorced before she was born and her mother later remarried. Linda spent her childhood traveling from one small town to another with her mother and stepfather, an itinerant worker who found work where he could. They always lived in the poorest part of town, sometimes in a trailer. She has vivid memories of one of the small towns they lived in. “We stayed in a small cinder block house on the outskirts of town. We had no transportation. We had no telephone. We were poor. I remember the house because the floorboards had large cracks between them. If you dropped something, it would be gone forever. I lost a little five-and-dime bracelet in that house.”

The rural communities in which Linda spent her early childhood were once part of the Cotton Belt that ran from Texas and southern Oklahoma to the Carolinas and northern Florida. Its hot weather was well suited to the growth of the cotton plant. But by the 1950s many rural whites were leaving farming to become industrial workers. Many with small farms had abandoned low-income farm life to work in local textile plants or other factories in the surrounding small towns. Mills offered an avenue of escape from the land that had failed them or that had been taken over by large-scale commercial companies. The textile industry became the bedrock of the Southern economy of the fifties and sixties.¹ Families of the factory workers often lived in mill houses or mill villages built by the companies. These villages were worlds unto themselves, with four-room cookie-cutter houses featuring sand-plastered interior walls and white exteriors.² But even this level of comfort was not available to Linda’s family, as her stepfather could only find short-time jobs. Linda recalled one place where she lived: “There was a steel mill, a cotton plant, and a rubber plant. If you lived in that little town, that was all there was. It was a big union town and the workers would go on strike at the drop of hat.”

Linda learned at an early age to take care of herself. “We moved a lot because of my stepfather’s work. I like to refer to him as a ‘tinker man.’ I can remember one time moving over the Christmas holiday. When it came time to go to school on the first day after the holiday, my mother and stepfather were both working. So I stood outside our little house by myself and took the bus to school. I went into school and registered myself. I could read and I knew my numbers so they put me in first grade. I was five years old but told them I was six.”

After her mother’s death, seven-year-old Linda was left with her stepfather. Unable to care for her, he sent her off to live with relatives. She never saw him again. Linda grew up being shuttled between her grandparents and aunts and uncles. When she lived with her relatives, she did a lot of the household work: “I did ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Part I: Flashbacks
• Part II: Flashpoints
• Part III: The Self and The Other
• Epilogue
• Appendix A: The Women
• Appendix B: Life History Interviews
• Appendix C: National Survey
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors