THE 15 PERCENT DIFFERENCE

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Life is hard for blacks before they get their first job. Whether we went to a private school or a public school or an all-black school or a mostly white school, if we've dealt with whites in any capacity, being different and having different experiences isn't new to us. Today's average sixteen-year-old black may deal with it less than his grandparents did when they were young, but less than is not the same as not at all.

I think many whites, including (ironically) even liberal whites, don't get that even though our experiences as black people can be 85 percent the same as white people, some days that 15 percent difference is the only difference we feel. Technically much of this book will apply to any worker regardless of race, but that 15 percent difference for blacks is going to put just a little bit of a spin on the rest of our day.

For example, applying for a job is applying for a job — no matter what your color or race, you need to fill out an application or submit a resume and go through some formalized process to actually get the job offer. But at some point, there are those 15 percent issues that put just a little twist on our experience. For example, if the receptionist who takes your application has had bad experiences with blacks, your resume may end up at the bottom of the pile, meaning you never even get the interview. Therefore, that 15 percent can be the difference between you getting through the door or not or the difference between you being happy or miserable once you get through that door.

This book aims to do a couple of things. One is to address the 85 percent commonality, and two is to give you helpful advice, tips, and perspective for when that 15 percent pops up. I know that many times just knowing that I'm not alone is enough to get me through an experience or put perspective on a puzzling situation.

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When I was in law school, many of the other blacks I met there wanted to go into civil rights law because they wanted to make a difference in the lives of black people. While civil rights law is a great area, I personally feel that black people make a difference wherever we are and whatever we do. We pay taxes. We have wills and estates when we die. We get divorced. We have car accidents. We buy and sell companies. In other words, as blacks we have the power to influence the whole world. One black person changes the dynamic just by being in the room; so yes, while it is important to be at the forefront of civil rights, all these other areas of the law need us, too. One of the reasons our people marched for civil rights and put their bodies, lives, and livelihoods at risk was so that no door would be closed to us. One of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. speaks to this issue:

If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."

Notice that King didn't say if you're called to be a doctor, lawyer, or chemical engineer. King said a street sweeper because he knew that it was a humble job but one that still required heart to do it well. I'd like to think that one of King's points was that the struggle for equality was not just for black Americans to get the best jobs in our society but rather for each of us to get any job or opportunity in our society that was best suited to our individual dream.

Maybe that's why it is easier to be a black civil rights attorney than a black tax attorney in a large, white law firm, or maybe it's easier to be a teacher in an inner-city school district rather than the headmaster at a hoity-toity East Coast school. But each person has the right to deal with that 15 percent difference however he or she chooses. Maybe the black tax attorney gets her rocks off from calculating tax exemptions for the wealthy. Maybe the black headmaster loves a more extravagant lifestyle than a public school salary can offer. Therefore, when these 15 percent issues come up, it may all be worth it. It should be, because none of us can avoid it anyway.

Let me repeat: none of us can avoid it anyway. No matter what path you choose, if another person can look at you and tell you're black, that will mold your experience with that person from that point forward. Notice I didn't say it will negatively mold it, just that it will.

Do You Instinctively Aim to Survive, Strive, or Thrive?

My observation, from thirty years of working, eight years of practicing employment law, and several years of being a diversity expert, remains that black folks have roughly one of three instinctive agendas in the workplace. And this delineation is true whether we're talking minimum wage, blue-collar, just plain-ol'-shirt-on-your-back-when-you-go-to-work-in-the-morning-collar, or white-collar professional.

Working while black requires you to have a mental awareness, a psychological game plan, so to speak. You've got to know if you're in it just to survive, if you're in it to strive to get ahead, or if you're in it to thrive, be your natural brown self, and make the white folks move to your rhythm instead of constantly having to adapt to theirs.

There is no particular mentality that is best for every black person. Every job change, every career choice, and maybe even every change in supervision might force you to make a drastic shift in whether you're in the game to survive, to strive, or to thrive; however, no matter what your initial motivation or instinct, you can always choose to be a driver, creating your own destiny.

I've created these categories based on my experiences in the working world. For me, there is no value judgment attached to being in the workplace as a survivor, a striver, or a thriver. We've all been visitors to each place at some point in our working careers. Some people settle into the lifelong comfort zone of being survivors. Some people were ambitious from the first step they took as toddlers, so they will be diehard strivers. Other people come out of the womb pushing their mama's limits, and those thrivers spend the rest of their lives doing the same to everyone else as well.

A survivor is there for the paycheck and lives his or her work life like a duck floating on smooth waters. Someone who is trying to survive wants to stay under the radar. His goal is to not draw attention to himself or do anything other than work, collect the paycheck, and...