The 36-Hour Day
with Amy Urquhart
I’m Amy and I’ve spent the last three years trying to strike that perfect balance between being a wife, mom and professional career woman. I’ve decided that I’ll never perfect the art of “having it all”, but this blog is a chronicle of my attempts to continue to do so. I’m a blogger (my personal blog about Canadian home life is Hearts into Home), gardener, college instructor, wife to Graham and mom to Nate. If you’re also a working mom who finds there just aren’t enough hours in the day, I hope you’ll enjoy this column!
Read her blog at Hearts into Home.
|
There’s a really interesting conversation starting in one of our discussion groups, where a member asked if anyone feels pressure at work because they’re black. The question struck a chord with me and really made me think.
As you can see from my picture at the top of this page, I’m a woman of color. What you can’t see is that I’m a woman of many colors — my mom is from India, but she’s of Persian decent and looks Greek; my dad is from Haiti, but his family’s roots go back to France, Germany, Africa, and the Arawak Indians who were the natives of Haiti before everyone else got there. I’ve never been able to choose one facet of my ethnicity over another — when it comes to race, I’ve always checked “other”, and if “other” isn’t an option, I either check several different things or nothing at all. So when it comes to race in the workplace, I really have to think about where I stand and how, or if, it has affected me.
When I joined the company I still work for, back in 1994, my coworkers joked that the company covered a lot of ground with one hire. I represented many minorities — young, female, non-Christian, multi-ethnic — and, except for the youth part, I still do. But out of those four categories, I think my age and my gender were harder hurdles to overcome than my race or my religion.
Time took care of the age issue pretty quickly. And motherhood, I think, has presented more professional challenges for me than anything else so far.
Some of those challenges have been entirely internal. I was a national and political editor during 9/11, and after the news-cycle dust started to settle I discovered that I was more concerned about why our then-4-year-old had started sleepwalking than I was about making deadline. When my husband and I decided to have more children together, I obsessed over maximizing my maternity leave and paying the bills, not over keeping my name in print.
Some of them have been entirely external. A former boss, who no longer works for the company, wrote on an evaluation that my judgment and my ability to be a good editor was negatively influenced by my parenthood. There are very, very few women in glass offices who also have children at home and, for most of them who do, each one’s child (yes, singular) was born after they already had already climbed the corporate ladder.
Now, the fact that race hasn’t been an issue for me at work may be a factor of my location (Massachusetts) or the size and age of my company (big, old, and well-established) or my own life experience. There are plenty of women with whom I work, but I’m the only woman of color in my department — in fact, over the course of nearly 15 years, I can count the number of women of color I’ve worked with directly on one hand (and none of them had children).
But do I experience more pressure at work because of my race? Not that I’m aware of. But I’m sure I’ll be more aware from now on.
Any other working moms of color out there? What have you experienced in the workplace?
Subscribe to blog via RSS
I feel it depends on which race.
I have close friends and colleagues of many different backgrounds. There is no question in my mind that, all other things remaining equal, a black woman has the toughest struggle. (Next, a black man.) Not only do the unfair stereotypes abound, but even when they are disproved on a case-by-case basis, such “cases” are thought of as exceptions to the rule. Every time they switch jobs, they have to start over re-proving themselves. Because many of their colleagues will assume they were the “token black” in their previous job. Every time something doesn’t go perfectly, it’s because they are unintelligent - where the person in the next cube made the same mistake because she needs more training or experience or mentoring support. It’s so disheartening. Most of the educated black women I know work in the nonprofit sector - and this includes women who were extremely competent, highly-qualified corporate employees who quit because they’d had enough of the never-ending stereotypes.
On the other hand, a woman with an Asian appearance is more likely to be viewed through other stereotypes - that they are intelligent, responsible, have a good work ethic, won’t be too controversial, etc. So having an Asian appearance may be a benefit or at least neutral.
Hispanic - that is one I’m not sure of. On one hand, there is a stereotype that the average Hispanic woman is uneducated, has low language skills, and is likely to have about 12 children. On the other hand, having landed a professional education and job, they may be seen as a “different kind of” nonwhite - much like immigrants from Africa are seen as different from “blacks.” A black or hispanic person with a foreign accent is automatically smarter than one with a local accent. Of course, none of these stereotypes are “consciously” thought, which makes them all but impossible to challenge.
How strange we humans are. It’s funny, but it’s not. My daughters are Hispanic, so this is a personal issue for me - what challenges should I prepare them to face? I know it won’t be as easy as just feeling confident in an interview.
SKL | August 28th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I am not a women of color. But I am curious to find out what kind of struggle you are referring to? Is that because you are black you are not treated fairly?
I think if that what it is then you can be anyone and not treated fairly. You can be Jewish, woman, tall, fat, skinny, Indian, Asian, etc.
Anytime you are the minority in the group, meaning if you are the only black amongst all white, only women amongst all men, only jew amongst all non jew, only white amongst all black you may feel that you may be treated unfairly from time to time.
Right now my current workplace is mainly Italian men with grown children or no children, and I am a the only russian jewish woman with young children and I do feel that I am treated unfairly from time to time.
Also, if Oprah became Oprah and Obama made it as far as he did I think people have learned to respect each other beyond color.
Vera Babayeva | August 28th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Vera, I will give an example from my previous job. I was speaking to my mentor - a nice white guy who really thought he was being understanding. I had a well-qualified black employee who was struggling to impress the powers that be, and I was having a hard time figuring out how to help him. I had also observed that all the black people who had worked for our department over the years I’d been there had been fired. All of them. And these are educated folks. I felt the problem was that they didn’t have black mentors in the company. I mentioned to my white mentor: it would help if the company hired a black partner from a competitor so he could be a mentor and improve the success rate of our black professionals. The white partner retorted, “why should we lower our standards?!!” I responded “why would you think a black partner at a competing firm is of a lower standard than a white partner? Presumably he had to work extremely hard to become partner.” But the white guy couldn’t get past the idea that a black person simply had to be a lower standard than a white person. Subsequently, my black employee was fired, and there have been no successful blacks in the department in the years since. I should also note that a similarly-educated white guy they hired at about the same time, at a salary literally twice that of my black employee, and a higher level, has been at the company for five years, and still hasn’t reached the benchmark that the lower-level black employee was fired for missing. He ought to be fired, but the same people who fired the black guy don’t have the heart to fire the white guy.
I’ve never heard anyone suggest that hiring/promoting a Jewish, Russian, Asian, or white partner would be lowering our standards. It’s a black thing, I am pretty sure.
Several years ago Mr. White Guy and I interviewed a highly qualified black woman who later became my good friend. When I wasn’t present, he asked her how much she was making at her previous job and how much she hoped to make at our company. We discussed that she was the best candidate and resolved to make her an offer, with him being in charge of the amount. He decided to “offer” her LESS than she was making at her last job, even though we didn’t have a budget restriction. Obviously he didn’t want her working there.
There are other examples along the same lines. I am pretty confident that there’s a bigger penalty for being black than for being a member of just about any other demographic one is born into.
SKL | August 28th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
I love everything you said SKL. You said it with class and it is sooo true! Thank you!Thank you Lylah for opening this discussion further. I am married to a hispanic man and so of course that makes my children bi racial. I have 2 teen daughters, 1 who is very light looks like her father could have been a white man and my other teen is very dark long hair looks like a dark spanish girl. I notice the treatment my light daughter gets is very diffrent then my dark daughter. Even at school. My darker daughter has already had to struggle so much more then I ever thought. They also get people of the spanish race who are not happy about their mixed race. I do wish we could all just look inward. There is so much more to a person then the color of their skin.
amanda | September 5th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I am a mother of 4 bi-racial daughters. They all have done good in their endeavors-but it is not
always easy. My oldest interned at a major media network here and had a struggle advancing through the ranks. Went she quit to pursue a different career she was executive producer. When she was turned down the 1st time for advancement - I gave her the best advice of anyone-just keep trying-don’t give up.
It is harder of people of color-Yes. (Vera) only some people have learned to respect each other beyond color-others just hide it -
and pretend that they are not prejudice At least in front of people of color.SKL-
you learned the same thing I learned many years ago-when other people don’t know your views-they think you feel the same as you and let their true feelings show. How sad that some people still judge others-not by how smart, etc. they are but by the color
of their skin, religion,etc.
eileenb | October 26th, 2008 at 12:08 pm