Mandatory reading for both junior professionals and senior management alike.
A sociological inquiry into the cultural disadvantages faced by Black professionals in elite, professional service firms.
Although racial bias is mostly muted in highly competitive and prestigious law firms, consulting companies, and investment banks, according to Woodson, a sociologist and professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, Black professional employees still contend with “subtle social dynamics,” that generate racial discomfort and diminish their career prospects. Drawing on life-history interviews, the author documents the workplace disadvantages that stem from the discrepancy between a firm’s dominant white culture and prior life and educational experiences that likely featured minimal engagement with that culture. In these firms, social relationships are key to positive yearly evaluations, promotions, collegial support, rewarding assignments, and partnerships. “Careers are determined by the discretionary actions and subjective assessment of their predominately White colleagues,” writes Woodson. In addition to instances of overt racial discrimination, many Black professionals suffer from “feelings of alienation, frustration, and isolation.” Two types of racial discomfort ensue: social alienation related to personal background and cultural repertoire, and stigma anxiety generated by perceptions of the risk of unfair treatment. In response, many Black professionals engage in “racial risk management,” which often further weakens relationships with colleagues. Although Woodson concentrates on race, he acknowledges its intersection with gender and class. “For Black women…gender-related cultural difficulties can be just as challenging as racial ones,” he notes. As for remedial action, firms must be more supportive, Black professionals must engage in acts of “strategic acclimation and acculturation,” and white colleagues should “reduce social alienation by using more inclusive interactional habits, for example by engaging in more open-ended discussions that draw out the interests and experiences of colleagues.” In this well-researched book, Woodson identifies a significant and widespread consequence of the country’s racial divide.
Mandatory reading for both junior professionals and senior management alike.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780226828725
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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