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Even blacks in public affairs, personnel and affirmative-action positions that pay well and sound important complain they have been placed in high-visibility jobs that are dead ends. Such posts frequently provide little experience in managing subordinates or critical decision making. Says Professor Frank Cassell of Northwestern University's Graduate School of Management: "In the '70s there was a push to get black managers in the public-display jobs. Even if they are not fired because of the recession, they still find their promotions at a standstill."
Blacks in jobs with more responsibility also find their way to the top blocked by what they consider lingering prejudice. In 1970 Milton Johnson was promoted to senior buyer of a $35 million line of children's sportswear at J.C. Penney Co., one of five blacks with such a job. Twelve years later, there are still five black senior buyers. Johnson, 43, who makes more than $50,000 a year, is disenchanted. He wishes he had started his own business rather than worked for a big corporation.
Just as frustrating is the inability of blacks to be accepted as professional equals. Van Johnson, 43, a Ph.D. in chemistry, joined Du Pont in 1968, and is now responsible for divisional sales of about $15 million. He observes, "In a company like this, sophisticated and genteel society that it is, it is difficult to define manifest prejudice. But no matter how long I have been here, there is always the suspicion when I negotiate a contract that maybe I didn't bring home as much as I might have if I were white."
Unable to surmount long-held biases in the workplace, blacks feel that they have been equally cut off from the social circles that revolve around every company. Even those who would like to fraternize with fellow workers away from the office complain that they are seldom included. That hurts their day-to-day relations with peers and subordinates, and keeps them out of the old-boy network so useful to the careers of whites.
Some experts take a longer view of progress in the workplace. Richard F. America, co-author of Moving Ahead: Black Managers in American Business, says that since blacks began to get low-level management jobs only 15 years ago, better results will not be seen until they have climbed the corporate ladder, a process that could take another ten years. By the year 2000, he believes, a black will be chief executive of a FORTUNE 500 company. Many of today's black managers are not nearly as optimistic. Looking back on the progress they have made, they feel they have not been treated well by U.S. corporations.
—By Alexander L. Taylor III.
Reported by Jack E. White/New York and Roger Witherspoon/Atlanta