The Price of Success

At the U.S. Senate, Deputy Sergeant-At-Arms Trudi Morrison, 36, prepared for a working lunch with Senator Robert J. Dole. As second in command for administrative and protocol needs, she oversees 2,200 employees and a $ 100 million budget.

In New York, Mary Ann Spraggins, 38, vice president for Salomon Brothers, the big investment banking firm, received a call from the director of the state agency her company has been wooing. Spraggins’ bid for a $200million municipal bond deal has been approved.

In Lawrence, at the University of Kansas, vice-chancellor Marilyn Yarbrough, 40, turned to draw a chalk diagram during a law seminar outlining the details of a runoff primary.

Young, gifted and black, they seem to have it all. But except for Morrison, their personal lives mirror those of many other black professional women. Many have had to postpone or abandon plans for marriage and family. In their strivings to succeed they have separated themselves from the bulk of America’s black men.

Statistics explain part of the story. To begin with, there are 1.5 million more black women than men. According to a 1985 survey by the U.S. Department of Labor, only 47 percent of black professional women are married, compared to 62 percent of their white counterparts. The study also indicated that while there are 560,000 black women professionals, there are only 287,000 black men professionals–little more than half as many.

And the future is not promising. According to the 1980 U.S. Census, black males are not entering white collar fields as rapidly as black females. Of all blacks enrolled in colleges, 60 percent are women. Of those blacks who graduate, 70 to 80 percent are women.

Hidden beneath the numbers are the problems black men have faced in American society. “Their numbers have been decimated by homicide, suicide, casualties in Viet Nam and unemployment,” says Bebe Moore Campbell, an author who specializes in ethnic issues.

During a period of two months, I interviewed 19 black women whose names I chose from lists compiled by acquaintances from around the country. In their mid-thirties and early 40s, they represent the best in American education. They are graduates of universities such as Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, and Bryn Mawr. Seven completed law school and three medical school. Their average salary is $61,000. All but five came from a two-parent family. Seven are married, seven divorced. Of course, not everyone wanted to be married. But of the 10 who do want marriage, half said they have given up trying to find a mate.

In Lawrence, Kansas, professor Yarbrough, who is divorced, shares a roomy house built in the 1850s with her two teenage daughters. Downstairs, in the stone basement, there is a sealed-off passageway.

“It once led to a tunnel,” explained Yarbrough. “This house was a stop-off point for the underground railway.”

The irony is not lost on Yarbrough. She, and other blacks have worked hard and come far since the days when that tunnel meant the difference between freedom and a life of auctions and beatings for blacks. She has come so far, yet her strides have put her an arm’s length from a mate.

“The fact that I’m not dating anyone is not unusual,” said Yarbrough, whose earlier marriage to a black professional ended in divorce. “My friends in Tulsa and Charlottesville aren’t either.”

Their dilemmas are caused partly by disparities between the romantic visions of who they want, and the realities of who they are. Practical options for them would be working class black men or interracial marriages. But they generally find neither acceptable. Some of the women have dated blue collar men but none have married one. They want men who have similar backgrounds: college educated, high salaried, living in upper-scale neighborhoods where they are enjoying the good life. And overwhelmingly, the women I interviewed said they want those men to be black. In fact, many were willing to forsake their dreams of marriage and children if it meant not having black men for husbands.

As a result, the high demand for black professional men has become emotionally expensive to those not fortunate enough to meet the right mates.

In Washington, DC, USA editor Howze said competition for professional black males has hit an all time high.

“A lot of black women in this town will do anything to have a black man who is a professional,” she said. “They buy them cars, pay their rents.”

Last year, Howze adopted two children. These days, her early morning weekdays are spent performing the tasks she watched both her mother and father share when she was growing up in Detroit. First she readies two-year-old Karie and three-year-old Charlene for the day, drops them off at a nearby child care center, then rushes to the office. Howze said she can’t imagine herself married anytime soon. She is not willing to dive into the diminishing pool to struggle for a man.

In Los Angeles, Cassandra Durant, 34, a staff assistant to the owner of a textile company, feels the competition edged her out of her marriage to an up-and-coming politician.

“Women used to leave their telephone numbers on his car,” Durant said. “A flight attendant slipped him a note on the plane. When I went to City Hall, young black women were all over him.”

Some social critics believe that a profound distrust exists between many black men and women as a result of the violent and ugly slave history they share. This tension forestalls many lasting relationships, critics say, and the career imbalance only exacerbates the problem.

The theory became the subject of national discourse in 1979 when Michele Wallace wrote “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman.” Wallace attempted to show how tension developed between black men during slavery, as black women were abused by their white masters. The men were virtually unable to protect their women and the women may have been somewhat resentful that they could not.

Recently talk of that kind of tension has resurfaced with the movie, “The Color Purple,” based upon a book by Alice Walker. Black intellectuals such as Wallace, have debated the script’s portrayal of black men. Some feel the movie was rife with symbols of emotional castration–a long-standing complaint about black women by some black men, who accuse them of being too bossy and too pushy in relationships.

Vice Chancellor Yarbrough said tension between black professional men and women has resurfaced. “I’ve gone to restaurants, parties where I’ve heard black men I know to be generally very rational get involved in very irrational arguments,” she said. “They say, ‘I’m angry with Alice Walker.’ But I think it’s really symptomatic of an underlying problem. A lot of black men are angry with black women for succeeding.”

One woman, who asked not to be identified, said her success is causing problems in her relationship. “My husband is loving and supportive. But I feel tension in the relationship each time I get a promotion,” she said. “I can understand it. He’s just as motivated as I am, even works longer hours. But he’s tall, dark and handsome. Those are qualities that may spell success for a white man but not for a black one.”

While racial prejudice creates a web of complexities in the workplace for blacks regardless of sex, one psychologist believes black men face special problems. Ron Brown, who owns a management consulting firm in San Francisco, where he works with Fortune 500 executives, focuses on issues dealing with minorities in the work place. Brown said a seldom discussed but major issue in corporate America is sexual fear of black men. He said many of his white clients often complain about black male employees or co-workers, fearing that they’re preferred sexually and romantically, by white women in the office.

“They ask me questions like ‘what do the women see in him? What’s so special about the way he looks?’ “

Brown said another factor that keeps black men from moving up the career ladder is that racial stereotypes cause white supervisors to misinterpret their body language.

“Even something as benign as pounding a fist on a table can generate anxiety among white males,” Brown said. “When these men raise their voices or ask difficult questions, they are perceived as threatening.”

But even before they make it to the lower rungs of the corporate ladder, Bebe Moore Campbell, the author, feels black men start out at a cultural and historical disadvantage.

“Except for the middle class, intellectual competitiveness is not one of the devices used by black males to tout masculinity,” said Campbell. “The typical working class male favors being athletic, fearless and sexual. And as a people we tend to listen more to music than read books. All that is fine, but it doesn’t help to pass college entrance exams.”

Campbell said historically, black women were given incentives to go to school, while black men were not. “After the slaves were freed the women were able to get jobs as maids and cooks. And at home, they were told by their parents that if they wanted to get up off their knees from scrubbing Mr. Charlie’s floors, they’d have to go to school, become teachers. The men went in the direction of the fields, not toward schools. Even today black males have the highest high school drop-out rate.”

In the black community, the shortage of men is nothing new. What’s changing is the insistence by many black women on having a mate of equal or higher professional status. And it reflects a fundamental shift in the way potential partners are viewed.

As a child growing up in New York during the 1950s and 1960s, I knew black professional women who were married to blue collar men. Back then, however, the word professional had a narrower meaning for blacks. They were registered nurses, teachers, and social workers working in jobs that seldom paid enough to support a family. Most of the married men were the major breadwinners.

In my own family, an aunt who was a nurse was married to a carpenter. My best friend’s mother, a social worker, was married to a musician. And my mother, a divorcee, was a legal secretary and self-styled entrepreneur. She managed to buy our 13-room house in Flatbush with money earned from her book of children’s poetry, and sent us to college with profits from one of the first jazz and exercise records that she composed and produced. During these ambitious projects she dated a janitor, then a subway conductor.

The expression that we were “all in the same boat” was almost literal. Except for the few of us who lived in integrated areas, most of the middle class black population lived in black ghettos. Even if one didn’t live there, the rest of the family did. Although it was not talked about, there was the understanding that because of racism, black people, no matter how hard they worked, would not be able to rise in large numbers through the professional world.

Those women not “lucky’ enough to be married to one of the lawyers or doctors but who still wanted to fulfill their middle class yearnings dressed up, and on Saturday nights they went to a fancy but usually segregated club. Sunday mornings they attended churches with other people of their ilk. The support they felt from the black community helped to affirm their marriages, no matter how professionally unbalanced they might be.

Many of the changes accomplished by the Civil Rights Movement were ushered in by the emerging black professional class. For the first time it was no longer acceptable for Audrey, the executive, to marry Sam, the truck driver. Audrey and her friends were learning a new language, that of corporate culture, one that dictated that if Audrey was invited to a company outing, she would be expected to arrive on the arm of a man who could converse intelligently with the other guests, whomever they might be.

Although they are seldom discussed, there are victims of this change. When Bebe Moore Campbell wrote a story on what she called “cross class dating” for “Essence” magazine recently, she said she received several letters from black men “who are very hurt.” They feel looked down on. A few men told me that when they meet a woman, the first thing she wants to know is where they work and what they do.”

Although most of the 19 black women interviewed said they would be willing to marry across class lines, none had. Those who were married had found equally successful and ambitious men.

Trudi Morrison of the Senate, for example, was trained as a lawyer and as a classical violinist. At one point she dated a janitor. The relationship eventually faltered, but not because of the kind of work he did, explained Morrison. Today, she is married to an attorney.