A leading sociologist reveals why racial inequality persists in the workplace despite today's multi-billion-dollar diversity industry--and provides actional solutions for creating a truly equitable, multiracial future. Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work--from getting a job to workplace norms to advancement and mobility--ignored and failed Black people. While explicit discrimination no longer occurs, and organizations make internal and public pledges to honor and achieve "diversity," inequities persist through what Adia Harvey Wingfield calls the "gray areas: " the relationships, networks, and cultural dynamics integral to companies that are now more important than ever. The reality is that Black employees are less likely to be hired, stall out at middle levels, and rarely progress to senior leadership positions. Wingfield has spent a decade examining inequality in the workplace, interviewing over two hundred Black subjects across professions about their work lives. In Gray Areas, she introduces seven of them: Alex, a worker in the gig economy Max, an emergency medicine doctor; Constance, a chemical engineer; Brian, a filmmaker; Amalia, a journalist; Darren, a corporate vice president; and Kevin, who works for a nonprofit. In this accessible and important antiracist work, Wingfield chronicles their experiences and blends them with history and surprising data that starkly show how old models of work are outdated and detrimental. She demonstrates the scope and breadth of gray areas and offers key insights and suggestions for how they can be fixed, including shifting hiring practices to include Black workers; rethinking organizational cultures to centralize Black employees' experience; and establishing pathways that move capable Black candidates into leadership roles. These reforms would create workplaces that reflect America's increasingly diverse population--professionals whose needs organizations today are ill-prepared to meet. It's time to prepare for a truly equitable, multiracial future and move our culture forward. To do so, we must address the gray areas in our workspaces today. This definitive work shows us how. Gray Areas includes 15 black-and-white images and a photo insert.

This book is a study of the challenges, issues, and obstacles facing black professional workers in the United States. Though they have always been a part of the U.S. labor force, black professionals have often been overlooked in media, research, and public opinion. Ironically, however, their experiences offer a particularly effective way to understand how race shapes social life, opportunities, and upward mobility. As the 21st century continues to usher in increasing demographic, social, and economic change to the United States, it is critical to consider the impact this will have on an important sector of the labor force. In this book, I examine the reasons why sociological study of black professional workers is important and valuable, review the literature that examines their experiences in the workplace, and consider the issues and challenges they are likely to face in a rapidly shifting social world.

The goal of this new, unique Series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today's social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http: //routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html

For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.

The first edition of this book offered one of the first social science analyses of Barack Obama's historic electoral campaigns and early presidency. In this second edition the authors extend that analysis to Obama's service in the presidency and to his second campaign to hold that presidency. Elaborating on the concept of the white racial frame, Harvey Wingfield and Feagin assess in detail the ways white racial framing was deployed by the principal characters in the electoral campaigns and during Obama's presidency. With much relevant data, this book counters many commonsense assumptions about U.S. racial matters, politics, and institutions, particularly the notion that Obama's presidency ushered in a major post-racial era. Readers will find this fully revised and updated book distinctively valuable because it relies on sound social science analysis to assess numerous events and aspects of this historic campaign.

The first edition of this book offered one of the first social science analyses of Barack Obama's historic electoral campaigns and early presidency. In this second edition the authors extend that analysis to Obama's service in the presidency and to his second campaign to hold that presidency. Elaborating on the concept of the white racial frame, Harvey Wingfield and Feagin assess in detail the ways white racial framing was deployed by the principal characters in the electoral campaigns and during Obama's presidency. With much relevant data, this book counters many commonsense assumptions about U.S. racial matters, politics, and institutions, particularly the notion that Obama's presidency ushered in a major post-racial era. Readers will find this fully revised and updated book distinctively valuable because it relies on sound social science analysis to assess numerous events and aspects of this historic campaign.

This book is a study of the challenges, issues, and obstacles facing black professional workers in the United States. Though they have always been a part of the U.S. labor force, black professionals have often been overlooked in media, research, and public opinion. Ironically, however, their experiences offer a particularly effective way to understand how race shapes social life, opportunities, and upward mobility. As the 21st century continues to usher in increasing demographic, social, and economic change to the United States, it is critical to consider the impact this will have on an important sector of the labor force. In this book, I examine the reasons why sociological study of black professional workers is important and valuable, review the literature that examines their experiences in the workplace, and consider the issues and challenges they are likely to face in a rapidly shifting social world. The goal of this new, unique Series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today's social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http://routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.

This volume examines the connections between race and work, focusing on three key themes. First, contributors consider how racial minorities deal with questions of identity in the workplace. This is especially important as ideas about professionalism often hinge on implicitly racialized criteria, to an extent that racial identity may pose a challenge to meeting occupational requirements. Secondly, contributors address ways racial exclusion occurs in jobs in the new economy: while organizations can no longer legally segregate or discriminate on the basis of race, exclusion processes still occur in the contemporary workplace. Finally, this volume considers the strategies that minority workers use to combat and change patterns of workplace inequality. In the new economy, where workers arguably have limited power relative to organizations, the techniques of the past may not be as effective. Providing valuable insight on a growing segment of the labor force, this book considers the US's rapidly changing racial demographics and how this phenomenon fundamentally alters many aspects of work, providing an in-depth understanding of how race affects work for people of color across occupations, workplaces, and industries.

What happens to black health care professionals in the new economy, where work is insecure and organizational resources are scarce? In Flatlining, Adia Harvey Wingfield exposes how hospitals, clinics, and other institutions participate in "racial outsourcing," relying heavily on black doctors, nurses, technicians, and physician assistants to do "equity work"-extra labor that makes organizations and their services more accessible to communities of color. Wingfield argues that as these organizations become more profit driven, they come to depend on black health care professionals to perform equity work to serve increasingly diverse constituencies. Yet black workers often do this labor without recognition, compensation, or support. Operating at the intersection of work, race, gender, and class, Wingfield makes plain the challenges that black employees must overcome and reveals the complicated issues of inequality in today's workplaces and communities.

The 'invisible men' of sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield's urgent and timely No More Invisible Man are African American professionals who fall between extremely high status, high profile black men and the urban underclass. Her compelling interview study considers middle class, professional black men and the challenges, obstacles, and opportunities they encounter in white male-dominated occupations. No More Invisible Man chronicles these men's experiences as a tokenized minority in the workplace to show how issues of power and inequality exist - especially as it relates to promotion, mobility, and developing occupational networks. Wingfield's intersectional analysis deftly charts the ways that gender, race, and class collectively shape black professional men's work experiences.

What happens to black health care professionals in the new economy, where work is insecure and organizational resources are scarce? In Flatlining, Adia Harvey Wingfield exposes how hospitals, clinics, and other institutions participate in "racial outsourcing," relying heavily on black doctors, nurses, technicians, and physician assistants to do "equity work"-extra labor that makes organizations and their services more accessible to communities of color. Wingfield argues that as these organizations become more profit driven, they come to depend on black health care professionals to perform equity work to serve increasingly diverse constituencies. Yet black workers often do this labor without recognition, compensation, or support. Operating at the intersection of work, race, gender, and class, Wingfield makes plain the challenges that black employees must overcome and reveals the complicated issues of inequality in today's workplaces and communities.

Black women comprise one of the fastest-growing groups of business owners in the United States. In Doing Business with Beauty, sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield examines this often-overlooked group and one of the most popular businesses run by these entrepreneurs: hair salons. Using in-depth interviews with hair salon owners, Doing Business with Beauty explores several facets of the business of owning a hair salon, including the process of becoming an owner, the dynamics of the owner-employee relationship, and the factors that steer black women to work in the hair industry. Through Harvey Wingfield's research we can understand the black female business owner's struggle for autonomy and her success in entrepreneurship.

Black women comprise one of the fastest-growing groups of business owners in the United States. In Doing Business with Beauty, sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield examines this often-overlooked group and one of the most popular businesses run by these entrepreneurs: hair salons. Using in-depth interviews with hair salon owners, Doing Business with Beauty explores several facets of the business of owning a hair salon, including the process of becoming an owner, the dynamics of the owner-employee relationship, and the factors that steer black women to work in the hair industry. Through Harvey Wingfield's research we can understand the black female business owner's struggle for autonomy and her success in entrepreneurship.