Brilliant Color

Everything I Need to Know About Success, I Learned From My Grandma Billie, Part VII

Successful Women Don't Know Their Place

One of the things that made me most proud of my grandmother was that she did not have believe that there were any limitations on what she was able to do with her life.  Growing up in the early 20th Century, it would have been easy to accept that her life was somehow limited by her skin color.  But she understood what all successful women should, your potential is only limited by your desire and willingness to work towards your dream.  Billie was never afraid to dream or to work towards making dreams reality.  It was that spirit that led her to leave home and pursue a career in dance and later to become an entrepreneur.  Billy had an internal drive that pushed her to achieve, others need a little help from others.

I can remember when I was think about going to law school.  I had gone to a career counselor because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  The first time I went to see the counselor she asked me what I wanted to do when I was a child.  I told her that when I was a little girl I wanted to be a lawyer or a journalist.  In college I focused on journalism, but discarded the idea when I realized the starting pay for a young journalist was very low.  But somehow, I never got back around to the law.  After graduation I took a job at a bank and began to work like many people do.  After a couple of years, I realized that I was not going to be happy at the bank for the rest of my life but I could not visualize any other path. I found myself settling for the opportunities my superiors saw as good for me rather than pursuing the options that were interesting to me.

During my conversations with the career counselor, law school kept coming up.  I had so many reasons why I could not do it, I would not do well on the LSAT, I could not afford to quit my job and the excuses went on and on.  Finally, one day I went by the law school and I stood staring at a rack of LSAT registration booklets.  As I stood there, paralyzed, a woman walked by and said, "Are you thinking of going to law school?, you should go."  I was stunned and I told her I did not think I could afford it, that I had waited too long since undergrad and that I would not be able to quit my job. She looked at me and told me that she was 36 years old she had a 12 year old daughter and she was a full time law student.  She assured me that I was making excuses because if she could do it I could do it.  I picked up the book, but in the back of my mind I still did not believe that I could do it.

Well the woman was right, I could do it and by the next August I was  a law student. I did it by setting incremental goals.  Each time I would achieve a goal I would set another one until there was nothing else to do but go to school.  The key thing is that each time I achieve a goal, I get a little more confident. Billie never doubted that she could make her dreams come true, she just took incremental steps toward making the dream a reality. It just goes to show that once you begin to change your thought process there are no insurmountable obstacles, only challenges that need to be methodically attacked. 

Generation Y: Lazy Workers or Rational Reaction to Changing Corporate Climate?

A couple of weeks ago 60 minutes ran a story on the impact of younger workers in the workplace.  The piece noted that younger workers have different expectations concerning their careers than older workers.  According to the story, gone are the days of working your way up through the ranks.  Younger workers are demanding changes in the terms of their employment and are less likely to remain loyal to an employer who does not grant them their requests.

While the story did accurately depict a change in attitudes among younger workers, it was off-base with regard to the causes.  The piece pointed to baby-boomer parenting tactics that encouraged self worth over hard work and results driven praise as the cause of changes in the attitudes of younger workers .  What the piece did not address was what role changes in employer behavior played in the change.  Over the past two decades, younger workers have watched as their parents were laid off or had their salaries cut at the whim of their employers.  This corporate behavior sent a powerful message to the children of the workers that there is no such thing as job security in today's workplace.

Simply put, the change in behavior is probably due at least in part to a recognition of the fact that the employer is going to make choices based on the bottom line.  If the employer can and will make decisions without regard to the impact on individual employees,isn't it rational for the employee to demand all it can and vote with their feet if the company does not oblige?

Is The End of Blackness Coming?

On Tuesday, NPR reported on a Pew Research Center/NPR poll that indicates that the end may in fact, be near.  The study, that looked at perceptions of issues of race among Blacks, Whites and Hispanics found that some 37% of the Blacks who responded indicated that Blacks could no longer be seen as one "race."  We have talked before about how there is no such thing as physical race, but this poll is important because it talked about whether there is still a social race that predominates among people who share similar phenotypic traits.

We may indeed be at a tipping point in which values are more associated with class status than with traditional notions of race.  This is important because the NPR story that analyzed the survey indicated that white and black values are in fact, becoming more similar as the gulf between lower-class blacks and middle to upper-class blacks grows.  The gulf may be widening as people of higher socio-economic classes begin to try to shed the stereotypical images that seem to predominate the media's airwaves. Or perhaps the Gulf is a result of the simple economic truth that education and access to money have a profound effect on an individual's values.

For those of us interested in issues of diversity it means that perhaps it is time to re-examine the assumptions we make about race.  Instead, maybe t is time for us all to take a long hard look at the class issues that are at the heart of the problems we all face.   

Confessions of A "Big" Firm Dropout: Why Women of Color are Dissatisfied in the Firm Environment

I ran across this Law.com article this morning that reports a study of job satisfaction among mid-level associates.  The article explained that a study of mid-level associates at law firms indicated that minority women were less satisfied with their firms than white men and men of color and were less likely to see a future with their current firms. 

Frankly, as a firm dropout, this study did not surprise me at all.  Earlier this year the ABA's Commission on Women in the Profession published its own study that came to largely the same conclusions.  From my perspective, the problems stem from partners' and coworkers' inability to see people as the individuals they are, rather than  stereotype based on physical characteristics.  For a woman of color, this inability can result in a double set of stereotypes that are hard to live down.

It is normal to notice the differences among us as long as we are sure we are noticing real differences and not presumptions based on misinformation and outmoded prejudices.  If firms want to increase the feeling of inclusion among their associates, they have to understand that diversity is about nuance and balance and actions speak louder than words.  It is simply not enough to publish policy statements about valuing diversity and recruit at minority job fairs.  Firms have to think about what they will do with the candidates once they become employees.  That means changing the firm's culture if necessary and confronting partners who refuse to get with the program.  If your firm is having a hard time retaining double minority employees, perhaps the firm needs to take a look at whether there are institutional barriers to success that linger rather than writing it off as just another bad hire.

Reflections on the Genarlow Wilson Case

While I was on vacation, I saw that Genarlow Wilson, a young athlete from the Atlanta area in prison for having oral sex with a younger girl was released from prison by the Georgia Supreme Court.  The Wilson case drew national attention because it arose in the aftermath of the Marcus Dixon Case.  Dixon, like Wilson was a talented athlete who was imprisoned for having sex with a younger girl.  The Georgia law at the time required a mandatory sentence when the age difference between consenting participants was more than two years younger that resulted in injury.  Dixon's conviction was overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court shortly before Wilson's case occurred.

The case came to my attention when I was an intern in the Georgia Governor's office as the Executive Counsel's intern.  I worked for Georgia Supreme Court Justice Harold Melton who at the time was the Executive Counsel to the Governor.  At the time, the case was just beginning to get publicity because video of the incident between Wilson, his friends and the underage girl had leaked to the media. The case was beginning to snowball and I had to give a report to the Executive Counsel explaining how Wilson's case differed from Dixon's. Wilson, like Dixon, was charged with aggravated child molestation and faced a mandatory sentence.  What made the Wilson case legally interesting was that although the Supreme Court ruled in Dixon's case that the legislature's intent was not to subject those convicted of consensual sex with a younger person to felony molestation charges, the precedent did not extend to cases where the conduct involved non-procreative sex.

Both cases drew national attention because of the perceived injustice facing two young males who had done nothing more than have sex with arguably consenting young women.  There was a lot of talk about their promising futures lost to the harsh realities of being a convicted felon sex offender. However what seems to be missing is the discourse on why society allows young male athletes a pass when they take part in denigrating young women.  In Wilson's case particularly his behavior was deplorable.  He not only took part in encouraging a young girl to perform a sexual act on him and his friends, they also videotaped the episode.  Despite this, many people rushed to his defense and demanded his release.  Maybe the punishment was harsh, but what about the damage he did to the young girl he took advantage of?  What about her future?

Why Aren't More Blacks Competing in Triathlons?

I have not posted for a while because my husband Omar and I have been vacationing on Maui.  Well it was not exactly a vacation, my husband was competing in the Xterra Off-Road Triathlon World Championship race.  (The picture to the right shows us atop Haleakala just before sunset a couple of days after the race.)  We had a great time, but we did notice something interesting related to diversity while we were there.  As far as we could tell, there were no other African-Americans competing.  Actually, we are sort of getting used to it.  My husband was a collegiate swimmer at Auburn University and he says that there were probably only four or five other black men competing in division one at the time he was swimming.  He is also usually one of the few African-Americans out mountain biking out on the trails at Oak Mountain our local state park. 

As we traveled to his races throughout the summer, I always knew there were not many, if any, other blacks competing but we never really took time to think about why until we were on the plane ride home and we started talking to the person sitting next to us.  He was traveling with a friend who was also an Xterra competitor and we sort of struck up a conversation. When he told us that it struck him as odd that there were no other African-Americans out there competing, we all began to wonder out loud.

So why is it?

One issue could be access to financial resources. Both mountain biking and swimming are expensive sports. Omar has been swimming since he was a child, in fact he swam in the same club team as Michael Phelps.  He tells me that this type of training requires a significant time and financial investment.  Mountain biking and road cycling are also very expensive sports where bikes cost in the thousands and shoes and other equipment are also very expensive, so perhaps money is an inhibitor.

Another, closely linked consideration could be return on investment.  Few, if any, triathletes can make a living at the sport that they love. Even if you can get sponsors, the money that can be earned pales in comparison to what can be earned in revenue generating sports like basketball or football.  So perhaps there is little incentive for parents to get their children involved in these kinds of sports.

We never came to any definitive conclusions, but you are welcome to share your thoughts about why there are very few blacks in the sport by commenting on this post.  You can also keep track of Omar's progress as he trains for next season at his website.