Black People’s Image Problem and It’s Impact on Getting a Job

This blog entry is off my usual Marketnology topics but it’s my blog and I thought this topic rant worthy.

I didn’t start off wanting to be an entrepreneur. Five years ago I was laid off from my job as the head of Engineering for the interactive marketing division of a large ad agency. The timing was right for me. My family was going through a trial with the illness of my grandmother and I figured I’d “retire” for a few months, help out with my grandmother and start looking for a job in the coming year…

Before I continue let me say that I am a black man who has not bought the race arguments. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I often, perhaps naively, ignore race as a factor in my professional interactions. I believe we make our own success. If one person won’t hire you because of your race, move on and find someone who will. I figure I’m better off not working for a jerk who believes I’m inferior. That’s just me.

With that being said… When I got back into the job market, three months after being laid off, I was amazed by the difficulty I had getting a job. I’d led technology teams at two of the best-regarded interactive agencies in the country. My client list read like a list of Fortune 50 companies. I’d worked on acclaimed and innovative projects. That’s not even to mention that I have a Bachelors degree in Physics and an MBA degree. I was very qualified. And yet, I could not find a job. Calls from ad agency recruiters were scarce. Headhunters wanted to place me in jobs that were clearly below the level of my experience. In the year after I was laid off, I may have gone on 3-5 interviews.

I can remember one interview with a media company quite clearly. The hiring manager, the Chief Information Officer (CIO), met with me and as I walked in the door he told me he was headed to lunch and only had a few minutes. He asked a couple of perfunctory questions and prepared to go. Before he could get up, I started showing him a PowerPoint presentation I’d created for his company. In it, I had detailed what was wrong with their web systems, what they needed to do strategically and tactically to address their issues, how they should structure a team and other relevant topics. He was blown away. The meeting went from “I’m going to lunch” to “Come back in an hour. I want you to meet four members of my team.” I did and I blew them away too. I went back for one additional interview, which went very well. And then, radio silence. I didn’t hear from them for what must have been two weeks. I called. I emailed. Nothing. In the third week, I finally reached the HR person who informed the position had been filled.

The natural conclusion for me was that someone better came along. Truthfully, I’ll never know what happened. It irks me to think race may have played a factor in that decision. I prefer to think a better candidate came along. Again, maybe it’s my naïveté, but I don’t find it productive to think of my race as a hindrance.

Then again…

The New York Times has published a few articles over the past year highlighting disparity of the impact of the recession on black people and others. This article from July puts a magnifying glass on the accelerated rate of job loss in the black community. In September, the Times published an op-ed piece where they likened the impact of the recession on the black community to a depression. These facts laid out in these articles are kind of hard to ignore… And yet, I tried.

I rationalized the recession’s impact on the black community by telling myself that because many in the black community don’t value education, we end up with jobs that are among the first to go during layoffs. I told myself that people like me with college degrees from good schools, graduate degrees and work experience would be protected from the same ills. It’s a bit of an elitist thought – my own budding John McWhorter-ness, but it’s what I told myself to minimize the race factor. Then the Times went and dropped me on my head.

They published an article a couple of days ago indicating that even “educated” black professionals with years of experience were running into trouble getting jobs. So as to make the story’s topic clear to me, they titled it “In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap”. There are stories of interviews that had gone warmly over the telephone turning cold once the candidate shows up and their race is clear. Naturally, there’s the old chestnut of people resorting to changing their name on their resumé so they’re not readily identified as being black. (I found an article highlighting name bias dating back to 2003.)

The Image Problem

Black people have an image problem. There I said it… I mean if experience and education don’t prevent people from wanting to as much as interview us because our name sounds black then we have an image problem. We can blame it on racism or anything else we’d like but that doesn’t change the situation on the ground. Debating the reasons for the ship sinking doesn’t stop the ship from sinking. Someone has to figure out how to seal the hull and get the water off the boat.

Having spent most of my career in advertising, it continues to crack me up when people attempt to rationalize negative media images by saying something along the lines of “Well, people are smart enough to realize this is just a fictional depiction and not accept it as real.” If that were the case, companies wouldn’t run commercials. Do we really believe the “nine out of ten doctors” claims are real. Ten out of ten of my friends think I’m pretty great (I chose which friends to ask carefully).

Television has a profound impact on how people see others – and especially black people. And again, being John McWhorter-like, what I see on television is enough to make me look sideways at people of color so why not others? Think about it. People of every race listen to rap and watch rap videos. Which of the images in rap videos reflects most black professionals? I can’t think of one popular rapper I’d like to have representing me in the media – not one. What about scripted television? Black characters are largely absent from prime-time TV and many of those who do appear, as in Meet the Browns, appear to be focused on tom-foolery. Then of course, there’s reality TV where the women of Real Housewives of Atlanta offer great examples of black women – if all black women were rude, catty, obnoxious and materialistic. In fact, I would wager it’s easy to watch Real Housewives of Atlanta and think to yourself that they’re plenty entertaining but you wouldn’t want to risk hiring one of “them” to work for you.

I miss the Huxtables. I miss George and Louise Jefferson. I miss Isaac from the Love Boat. I miss Tootie from The Facts of Life. Heck, I miss Dr. Benton from ER. What the hell has happened? How have black people gone from being portrayed as regular people with regular issues – just like everyone else – to being represented by the most ignorant, most base, most buffoonish people in the media? (Well, either that or really good singers and dancers.) And, how do we change that?

This is a serious problem. It’s not just about jobs for us now. It’s about how people perceive us going forward. It’s about a global society where people see African-Americans as thugs and skanks. It’s about the world believing what they see in the media is a microcosm of black America. It surely isn’t me. In fact, I don’t think it’s anyone I know, for that matter.

I’m going to spend some time thinking about how I can personally address some of these issues. In the meantime, I have a couple of questions for the general public.

• How do you see black people? What’s your honest opinion? Not asking you to be nasty but I want to know if media portrayals match your personal interactions.
• What impact does a name have on your perception of a (potential) co-worker?

I started off by saying I didn’t intend to become an entrepreneur. I didn’t. I did so because I couldn’t find a job I thought suited me so I made a job. In fact, before she died, my grandmother told me to start my own business. I ignored her advice for as long as I could. I have to say it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. By the grace of God, I’m blessed to do what I enjoy with clients I like. There’s something to be said for that and if my race had anything to do with how I got here, then so be it.