No Tools, No Experience:

An Exploration of the Disparity of Capital between the Races.

I remember walking up to the counter and letting the cashier know I was there for an interview. Even though it was a fast food restaurant, I arrived in a business suit, and pumps. I had a résumé. The girl asked if I was there for the management position. I was just out of high school, in a town away from my parents and friends. I only had cashier experience. Little did I understand then, I was experiencing cultural capital at work. I applied for a cashier position; I walked out of the interview that day, the only white female manager in a store of 12 African American and Hispanic employees. I was 19.

My experience illustrates the continuing replication of the hierarchy of white repression preventing minority Americans from succeeding in the labor market. Carrie was a 23 year old Hispanic woman under my supervision. I spent the first three months of my employment learning how to do my job from her. When I was getting ready to leave the company, I learned she had applied for the position I held. My supervisor told her she wasn’t qualified and that she needed more education to work at Burger King as a manager. Carrie was of the opinion she needed to be more white.

Deirdre Royster (2003) presents a picture of how black and white employment seekers obtain jobs. She suggests, in an ideal situation, schools help sort students onto appropriate skill paths, which will lead to meaningful employment according to their ability. Meaning, if a group of individuals, with nearly the same background, and nearly the same level of ambition and nearly the same goals entered an institution of learning, they would all leave at nearly the same level of preparedness and with nearly the same success expectancy. However, there is an invisible hand at work in this ideal system. Some of the students might have a father who knows a teacher who knows someone who needs something done cheap, thus gaining experience and beginning their own network. Some of the students may have been receiving tools of their trade as presents for the last few years. Some of the students may have grown up with their future colleagues coming over to the house on Saturdays for barbeques. Royster’s study reveals these invisible advantages translate into who ultimately gets a job when all is said and done. And these advantages predominantly belong to whites.

Gary was one of the few white males that experienced the same difficulties a Black job seeker experiences. He lacked social capital. He was in a city away from family and friends who could help him get a job with a living wage. He lacked cultural capital. He did not know what a skill-based résumé was, much less how to market his skills to potential employers. To this day, he does not own a suit. He had considerable word processing skills and knowledge of computers in the early 90’s, and no way to apply them in a steadily growing lucrative field. As a result, he accepted employment at a fast food restaurant in order to support his growing family. The growing financial hardship of raising a family on minimum wage forced him to enter military service, something in high school he had considered as an extreme solution to an extreme problem. Fortunately, dumb luck stepped in, and Gary was able to make a military enlistment into a successful civilian career.

In contrast, the typical white employee represented in our class study got their job because somebody knew someone. JR’s dad was a waiter at a restaurant, and spoke to one of his customers about his son. This was JR’s foot in the door for a successful career that spanned two continents. Bob Haney got his job after a series of criminal incidents that I would not have hired him after. He got the job through his weed buddy’s dad. Tim’s dad had a list of contacts. Brian got his first job through his baseball buddy. Mary’s job at a nursery school was through her neighbor. The success of a job search had a great deal to do with not what they knew, but who they knew; the very definition of strong social capital.

Black Americans however, seem to be following the great Protestant work ethic of, “Work hard, and you will be rewarded!” They better be eating real high on the hog in the next life, because they sure aren’t being rewarded in this one. Both Royster and our class observations demonstrate a group of hard working Americans following the rules, wearing suits, carrying résumés, and still being denied employment. White employers are subtle about it; they can’t use overt racism any longer. While a member of the white good ‘ole boy network might not have the right piece of paper to qualify for a job, the employer is more likely to over look the lack of preparedness and make it happen later. The Black applicant however, will more likely be held to the standard, if the Black applicant is even called in for an interview.

Karl exemplifies the dedication Black Americans put into their job. He worked hard to drag a failing company out of the red. He landed major accounts that contributed to the success of the company, and a substantial increase in the pocketbook of the company president. All the while, he was being held hostage to the greed of his white supervisor. Promised bonuses were never delivered, ambition was crushed. He was told, “You would be no where or nothing without this company” by the company president. Fear of losing his job kept Karl silent. Once again, white repression of Black economic success was being used to keep Karl, “in his place.” Karl described feeling like a “slave” to his supervisor, and feeling like he no longer has a sense of self. These are the same instances and feelings invoked 200 years ago to keep “them niggers” at the bottom of the economic ladder, subservient to whites and without hope.

Jason White summed up the black experience, in employment searches, opportunities for advancement, and life in general when he said, “Everything about me affects me… the color of my skin, the way I talk, the shit I did in the past….” No matter how much the white race would like to pretend they are color blind, and that everyone succeeds based on their merit, our society’s history, and current reality says otherwise. In order to define themselves, whites have held Black Americans up to show what they are not. This process of exclusion has left the Black American culture with limited social contacts and little access to the white cultural capital they need to succeed in a white business world. Combining this disparity of knowledge with lingering fear from whites, and the Black American is doomed to remain on the fringes of poverty, or forced to sell his body to the military or the streets to escape from a desperate situation.

Works Cited

• Royster, Deirdre A., (2003). Race and the Invisible Hand. Berkley. University of California Press.

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