For Black Professional Men, It’s Who You Are, Not Who You Know

President Obama last week announced a new public-private initiative aimed at giving young minority men better opportunities — as long as they “work hard” and “take responsibility.”

Indeed, those qualities tend to be more critical to the success of African American men than they are for other groups, who appear better able to leverage social and professional contacts to get ahead. Studies have shown that social capital — defined as one’s professional network — is a big factor in career advancement. But those studies focused largely on Caucasians.

As a recent study shows, networking seems to be less of a factor in Black men’s career accomplishments than are education and motivation.

A few years ago, a pair of researchers at the University of Georgia set out to examine the factors that helped college-educated African American men succeed in their careers. C. Douglas Johnson, then a UGA graduate student and now a management professor at Georgia Gwinnett College, and psychology professor Lillian Eby surveyed 247 African American men who were alumni of an international fraternity that focused on leadership development and community service. They asked the participants about their socioeconomic background, educational attainment, salary, job promotions, and managerial status.

Importantly, the men were asked about professional contacts (mentors, bosses) who had helped their careers.

The participants were also asked questions designed to measure their personal ambition, career motivation, conscientiousness, and perceptions about their performance.

In examining the results, Johnson and Eby found that the men who had achieved the most success — as measured by compensation, number of promotions, and managerial level — were older and had higher levels of experience, training, work tenure, geographic mobility, motivation, and self-rated achievement.

But most social capital indicators — such as support from managers, memberships in professional associations and civic clubs, and degrees from prestigious institutions — had little to do with those measures of success.

The researchers surmise that, compared to Caucasians, these African American men had less access to mentors and sponsors with sufficient power and influence to help them with their careers. People are naturally drawn to others who are similar to themselves, they note, but African Americans remain underrepresented in the high-level positions.

“If African American men are picking mentors who are like them, then they’re more likely to be networking with people who have less power and influence within an organization,” Eby said when the study was released, “which may be why mentoring is not predicting career success for them.”

The results showed the error in assuming that the factors that help Caucasians and other minorities succeed professionally will yield the same career benefits for African Americans, Johnson and Eby wrote.

“For African American males,” they wrote in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, “it seems that who you know and what you’re made of may not have the same impact on career success as it does for the dominant culture.”

Comments

In 2010, I completed my dissertation from UGA, COE, Adult Education/HROD. My topic was the impact of racism on the career development of African American Professional men in corporate America. I too found that although networks and social capital provide psychosocial support, they do not advantage the career attainment of African American men in the same manner as their White counterparts for all the reasons you mention. I also found their career success was largely determined by their degree of self-efficacy and personal agency, education and continuous learning, spirituality and sense of purpose, – factors that make them who they are. I did find that the men in my study did leverage relationships, but that their networks, mentors and sponsors provided support but did not extend as high in the corporate hierarchy so only enabled their careers to a certain extent. Lastly, their ability to employ bicultural strategies was also beneficial.
Thank you for this research and this article. It’s an area of scholarship that is needed greatly.

As an older African American engineer, I truly identify with the results achieved by the study and mentioned in the article. Having worked for some major defense contractors, I have experienced a high degree of resistance by the mainly Caucasian higher managers to be willing to mentor Black professionals. In addition, as also stated in the article, the number of African American professionals with enough pull who are able to mentor other African American professionals is insufficient to fill the gap. In other words, there is a high disparity between the number of African American professionals and Caucasian professionals willing and able to support and mentor other Black professionals.

The result is that most Black professionals, especially males, face a more rigorous path to achieving their career goals. As long as this social status is not disrupted, African Americans will continue to be discriminated in the workplace.

What is the name of the iniative you mention at the top of the article!
I wanted to share this with a young Black adult who can not find mentors that will help him elivate his career

I find it, at least for me, that it is very difficult to translate my military experience to the civilian world to entice attention if my prowess. As I finish my degree in business management it does seem like uncharted territory. On one end it is difficult to find black mentors, and once you may find one, if it actually coalesced with their program or organizations. Another, is opportunities given by dominant professionals that may not even want to mentor you. So I may infer that in my situation is that the fiven opportunities are entry level, albeit, you having substantial evidence that you are resilient and have both knowledge and experience. I have conjecture as to how things may be, it’s been my life from graduation as valedictorian, national honors society, excellent performance in military specialty that is tantamount to that of a civilian. It’s as starting over and over is just the norm. Organizations will infer that your military prowess is null and void. Im sure there may be a simpler way, not easy for possible guided hierarchy development. All I can do is push forward as best I know, wherever that may be.


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