Adia Harvey Wingfield

Racializing the Glass Escalator Reconsidering Men's Experiences with Women's Work

Many men who work in womens professions experience a glass escalator effect that facilitates their advancement and upward mobility within these fields. Research finds that subtle aspects of the interactions, norms, and expectations in womens professions push men upward and outward into the higher-status, higher-paying, more “masculine” positions within these fields. Although most research includes minority men, little has explicitly considered how racial dynamics color these mens encounters with the mechanisms of the glass escalator. In this article, the author examines how intersections of race and gender combine to shape experiences for minority men in the culturally feminized field of nursing and finds that the upward mobility implied by the glass escalator is not uniformly available to all men who do “womens work.” The author concludes that the glass escalator is a racialized concept and a gendered one and considers the implications of this for future studies of men in feminized occupations.

Caring, curing, and the community: Black masculinity in a feminized profession

Men maintain advantages in “womens” professions in large part because masculinity retains higher status than femininity even in feminized jobs mostly filled by women. Thus, men in these jobs tend to perform masculinity in very traditional ways, and are generally rewarded with increased access to higher-status positions, often with the cooperation and approval of their women coworkers. Yet much of the research in this area has neglected to explore how race intersects with gender to shape the ways men perform masculinity when they are employed in professions where they do “womens work.” How do men of color perform masculinity in female-dominated jobs? Are they able to engage in the expressions of masculinity documented among their white counterparts? Based on semi-structured interviews with black men nurses, I argue that these men encounter gendered racism from colleagues, supervisors, and customers that impacts the ways they construct and perform masculinity.

Keep Your "N" in Check: African American Women and the Interactive Effects of Etiquette and Emotional Labor

Black professional women report that they must transform themselves to be welcomed and accepted, especially in the workplace. They speak of performance weariness in verbal and nonverbal communicative interaction-exchanges with white colleagues. Many simply state that they feel they are in a ‘parade’, being judged for appearance, personal decorum, communication skills, and emotion management in addition to productivity. The objective of this article is to describe these women’s experiences in line with promotion opportunities. For them, going to work involves a multilayered performance: (1) they must engage in racialized, gendered impression management at the generalized bureaucratic level; and (2) they rely on instructions grounded in race-based survival strategies to cope with challenges they face in unwelcoming work environments with concrete ceilings. Our analysis of these aspects of workplace behavior reveals that black women co-mingle etiquette and emotion management to gain acceptance and promotions, which strengthens race/ethnic group solidarity.

Maintaining Hierarchies in Predominantly White Organizations A Theory of Racial Tasks

Predominantly White workplaces are environments in which Whiteness is privileged in numerous ways. Studies show workers of color doing self-presentation, emotion work, and other forms of social interaction intended to help ease the difficulties associated with being in the minority. In addition to the expectation that they smooth interactions with White peers, workers of color are assigned positions and tasks which reinforce that racial status quo. In this theoretical article, we attempt to place these various processes under an umbrella term we define as “racial tasks.” We examine the ideological, interactional, and physical labor racial minorities perform in mostly White work settings, and the ways these racial tasks vary at different levels of the organizational structure. We consider the ways that the tactics and requirements associated with racial tasks maintain the racial hierarchy of predominantly White organizations and conclude by examining the implications of this work for racial minorities.

(IN)VISIBILITY BLUES: THE PARADOX OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

In this article, we demonstrate how the taken-for-granted, inner-workings of culture can become implicated in the (in)visibility of minority members. We seek to illuminate ways in which institutions may unwittingly facilitate (in)visibility through their organizational habitus. We begin by providing further evidence of invisibility and visibility as real and commonly experienced psychosocial phenomena among minorities within predominantly white, institutional settings. In particular, we argue that a minoritys inconspicuousness can be simultaneously fused together with ones conspicuousness to form what we call racial/ethnic (in)visibility. This study employs focus-group data collected from a sample of administrators and faculty from elite K-12 independent (private) schools, an institution that admittedly has been slow to make cultural change in its racial/ethnic ideologies and practices.

Race, gender, and class in entrepreneurship: intersectional counterframes and black business owners

ABSTRACT Entrepreneurship is often touted as an economic opportunity that embodies American ideals of individualism and financial gain. Yet social scientists have long noted divergent entrepreneurial outcomes among various groups. In this paper, we consider how race informs entrepreneurship for minority business owners. In particular, we focus on the ways black entrepreneurs use racial counterframes as a means of defining various aspects of the entrepreneurial experience. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of intersectional counterframes to show how black entrepreneurs understand business ownership as a response to categories that interact with not only to race, but other social group categories as well, such as gender. We argue here that these business owners use both counterframes to construct entrepreneurship not simply as a potential pathway to economic stability, but perhaps more importantly, as a response to existing inequality.

Racializing Gendered Interactions

At this point, extensive research and data document the myriad ways that gender shapes social interactions. Yet while sociologists have devoted a great deal of attention to understanding how gender informs interactions, most of this work has yet to incorporate an intersectional approach that examines how these interactions are racialized in ways that produce specific outcomes. In this entry, we briefly review the literature that highlights the multiple ways social interactions are gendered. We then consider different approaches that seek to racialize these interactions, and end our paper with discussion of areas for future research.

Comment on Feagin and Elias

Despite the centrality and significance that race continues to hold in shaping social life in the USA, theoretical analyses of race are surprisingly few and far between in sociology. Researchers have moved from models grounded in analyses of prejudice towards theoretical paradigms designed to focus more explicitly on the ways that race and racism are built into the social structure of US society. Omi and Winant’s (1994) racial formation theory has long been regarded as a classic in this regard, and one of the most important foundational paradigms for making sense of contemporary race relations. Joe Feagin and Sean Elias have developed an interesting and pointed commentary of this theory, and provide useful points for critique and contention. Feagin and Elias are correct to note that one of the most important contributions that Omi and Winant (1994) make is the acknowledgement of the ways that race is a central organizing principle in society, and their rejection of the assimilation, class and colonialism paradigms as unsuited for theorizing and making sense of race and racial inequality. This is a significant shift that has pushed sociologists to think more about the ways that race is a critical feature that shapes social life, and to consider more clearly the import it has in affecting a myriad of outcomes and opportunities. As they note, previous models often reduce or explain away race by linking it to other categories like ethnicity, class or nation, thus minimizing the ways that race itself is a significant, autonomous field that is a site of contestation and struggle. However, while there are strengths with the racial formation model, it also has its associated weaknesses. Feagin and Elias point out several of these, but perhaps the strongest and most powerful points they note are that Omi and Winant (1994) understate the centrality of white social actors in maintaining and upholding racist structures, and the role of racist inequality to the development and maintenance of numerous social systems in the USA. Neither do Omi and Winant (1994) consider the significance of the fact that these two points are related. In other words, a major weakness of racial formation theory is its lack of active attention to the specific group that maintains the Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2013 Vol. 36, No. 6, 989 993, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.767920

Public Sociology When the “Public” Is under Attack: Response to Hartmann

ABSTRACT In his presidential address, Douglas Hartmann refines existing theoretical approaches to provide a more precise framework of public sociology. In this response piece, I consider several of his key points and elaborate on their implications for contemporary society. Specifically, I address whether distinctions between types of sociology remain essential and consider the challenges associated with doing public sociology in an increasingly fractured public sphere. I conclude with a call for sociologists to think through these issues in more detail to heighten our influence on the social spheres we research and discuss.

Legal Outsiders, Strategic Toughness: Racial Frames and Counter-Frame in the Legal Profession

Despite the advantages of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, black workers remain underrepresented among the ranks of professional/managerial employees. Black professional men occupy a somewhat unique position in that they can benefit from gendered advantages in male-dominated occupations, but still encounter racial biases and obstacles given that most professional occupations remain predominantly white. The author uses Joe R. Feagin’s concepts of white racial framing and counter-framing to assess how black male lawyers understand the challenges they face in these environments, as well as the strategies they use to resist.