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Episode #1805
Stress on the Job
Lewis: Mitchell
Lewis, Host
Brown: Natalie Bullock Brown, Co-host
McLinney: Dr. Earl McLinney, Jr.
Cook: Professor Sharon Warren Cook
James: Dr. Robert James
McManus: Cecil McManus
Porter: Monica Porter, Ph.D.
Lewis: Coming
up, do African-Americans face more stress in the workplace
than others? If so, then why? Is it race related? Are there
any solutions? We'll discuss this topic next on Black Issues
Forum.
Voiceover: This program
was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers
like you. Thank you.
[THEME MUSIC]
Lewis: Good evening
and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I'm Mitchell Lewis.
Tonight's subject deals with African-Americans and stress
in the workplace. Anyone who is a part of today's workforce
has experienced some type of stress, but what are the situations
that lead to stress, and why does it appear that African-Americans
have more of a challenge in coping with it? In a few minutes
we'll talk with two experts to give their insight on what
makes African-Americans more susceptible to stress on the
job. But first, Black Issues Forum co-host, Natalie
Bullock-Brown reports on new research that suggests that African-Americans
dealing with stress in the workplace often have an uphill
battle.
Brown: Stress is something
we all experience to one degree or another and it's probably
true that some if not most of our stress originates in the
workplace. But new research suggests that although all of
us experience stress, African-Americans may experience it
for different reasons. Reasons like racism, according to Dr.
Robert James, a private practice psychologist in Durham.
James: One of the reasons
I would say many people of color can express stress in a different
way, primarily because of racism that exists, and many times
many people of color may not even be aware that, of what is
going on in the workplace or wherever they might be.but they
may be just experiencing the stress. Many are aware and they
become very, very angry, very upset, knowing that there is
discrimination, knowing that they're being treated differently,
they're being treated in a way that-say, if they were not
of color, they would not be treated in that way. And just
feeling that it's completely unfair.
Brown: And James' assessment
of what African-Americans experience in the workplace is supported
by the work of another doctor, Cecil McManus, who teaches
psychology at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh. He recently
completed a ten-year study of nearly 2000 African-Americans
and found that most, if not all, of those surveyed said they
experienced stress because their hard work in the workplace
seems to go unrewarded.
McManus: If they find
that what they do does not predict their outcome in terms
of a raise or whatever else, and they tend to be a little
bit more stressed out. People are trying to gain control.
Brown: Experts acknowledge
that anyone can experience stress because of inequity in the
workplace, but McManus says that for African-Americans, the
feeling that they're being overlooked or overused in the workplace,
because they're black, is hard to resist. And due to fear
of backlash, most African-Americans keep their mouths closed.
Which is why in this piece, you won't see an African-American,
on camera, talking openly about their experiences with stress
and racism in the workplace.
M: They'll tell me
in my lab, one on one, they'll tell their Aunt Betty-they
won't tell you, it's not going to go on TV, no, because then
the boss will see them. It goes back to the plantation back
when, if you say the wrong thing, you lose your life. Now
you lose the job, which for most folks, is their life.
Brown: Dr. Robert James
agrees, in fact, he says he has many African-American clients
who complain about the stress that originates in the workplace,
and it's James' job to help his clients determine if racism
is playing a role.
James: I see a number
of people who come to me, many of them again come with just
saying that they are stressed at the workplace; they may not
put two and two together to realize that what it is, is racism
that they're experiencing. And they feel comforted to know
that they are not crazy, that they are not-that what they
were thinking was happening is real.
Lewis: And joining
me now is Dr. Earl McLinney, Jr., Associate Professor of Public
Administration at Virginia State University. Dr. McLinney
is a noted author and has written several books, including
how to survive when you're the only black in the Office
and Troubling Corporate Waters: How to Supervise Blacks,
Minorities and Women. Ms. Sharon Warren Cook is an assistant
professor of social work at Winston-Salem State University.
She specializes in mental health and conducts training on
stress management for women. Professor Cook is also a former
social worker and has experience working in law enforcement.
And to both of you, welcome to Black Issues Forum.
McLinney: Pleasure
to be here.
Cook: Thank you, thank
you.
Lewis: Dr. McLinney,
we'll start off with you. Now, what led you to write the book,
how to survive when you're the only black in the Office?
McLinney: Basically
it started in the classes that I teach, talking to young men
and women, and my friends who came out from the office stressed
out, and my own experiences. And we decided that we had to
have a way to talk about it. And the way we talk about it
is to describe it as a plantation. Once you put it in the
context, then you can understand what happens to you. So as
they complained to me, talk to me, I made notes and that turned
out the book how to survive when you're the only black
in the Office.
Lewis: What were some
of the incidences that they discussed with you?
McLinney: The biggest
problem at the outset was the question of job evaluation,
job performance at work; they would come to work on time,
go to lunch on time, leave when they're supposed to leave,
and get bad evaluations, and they couldn't understand why
is this, why is the white man treating me like this? Why am
I getting bad evaluations? And then in other instances, the
white males would call him "boy" or "uncle"
or "Sam" or "Do you know James Brown?"
or "Do you know Bill Cosby?" and put that racial
burden on them in that context. And then in some cases they'd
call about right, Black Boy or Tom or whatever they want to
call him. So that's what started it. So as I've been talking
about how you survive, that's what we got into, our discussion
about.
Lewis: Professor Cook,
what type of symptoms of workplace stress have you experienced
with African-American women?
Cook: Well, in particular,
women report gastrointestinal problems, headaches, sleep disturbance;
kind of what we call in mental health, generalized stress.
There's a huge amount of anxiety. This certainly does translate
into everything from hypertension to some other illnesses
that the larger society generally chooses to talk about the
life-threatening diseases of African-American women. And we
talk about stroke, heart attack, hypertension, and never really
look at some of the underlying causes for that.
Lewis: You were involved
in law enforcement, and it seems like that would bring a rather
unique stress in the workplace. What would be some of the
stresses involved in that field?
Cook: Right, as a law
enforcement officer, because I was in an environment where
the greatest number of employees there were men, I was probably
more conscious of my gender most of the time, than my race.
And certainly one of the things that I was always conscious
of and aware of, was the fact that I was a woman. And so there
were always these tensions with not only conversations and
comments, but there were tensions about how I was supposed
to respond, and just how "feminine" I could be in
that environment. It was an issue of attempting to fit in,
but yet maintaining some identity also.
Lewis: Now the report
that we saw earlier indicated that racism is a major cause
of stress among African-Americans. Should racial discrimination
on the job be treated, say, as like any other obstacle like
some hurdle to overcome?
Cook: I don't know
if I like the term "hurdle to overcome," but I certainly
do think it is a challenge, and it certainly is an obstacle
that management, that administration is going to have to address,
even if they just look at it from an economic standpoint,
and the $300 billion a year that we lose each year on absenteeism
that's stress-related. In addition to that, it translates
into health problems, which translate into family problems,
which translate into community problems. Because we just don't
compartmentalize stress in the workplace. We take it home,
it impacts our families, it impacts our children, and it impacts
everyone that we touch. So from an ethical and professional
and humane standpoint, not even thinking about the capitalism
that I'm sure businesses take into consideration, I do think
we're going to have to address it strategically and with a
purpose.
Lewis: Dr. McLinney,
any thoughts on that?
McLinney: Yes, I think
one can take a careful look at the number of suits filed by
African-Americans--I think the last numbers I saw in 1999,
there were 82,000 EOC complaints, based on racial discrimination.
And you can look at the cases settled by Circuit City, Philip
Morris, and other large corporations; so yes, there is racism
in the workplace. And what I'm attempting to say to the young
brothers and sisters, you have to learn how to deal with it.
It's not going away, it's ingrained, it began 400 years ago.
Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that it's there when he talked
about how he saw his peers teaching their children, and that
same thing continues on today. They bring racism, white folks
bring racism to the workplace, and we have to learn how to
deal with it. We can't change them, but we can certainly deal,
learn from our own customs, how to deal with it. For example,
the brothers need to stay away from the white girls. Don't
fool with white women at work. Take the rings and the bones
and the things out your ears. Go to work dressed up, learn
how to read, speak in white English. I teach that every day.
You can't bring street talk to the job. I'm sure the Professor
sees the same thing at her institution.
Cook: I do.
Lewis: Now, do you
generalize this to perhaps all whites, or how do you generalize
this?
McLinney: How do I-yes,
I have to generalize because if you go in, as I started saying
in my first comments, it's a plantation. So you have to assume
that it's a hostile environment. When you walk up to the door,
to the office building, what do you see-a building. Well,
take away the building and think about it as a plantation:
now, if it's hostile to your environment, you don't own it,
you don't put any money into it, you don't own the resources,
you have to follow the rules of the master. So if you think
of it as a plantation, then you begin to think, "well,
how do I survive this day? What do I have to do?"
Lewis: Well is that
perhaps sort of preliminary stress-getting, before you get
into the workplace?
McLinney: Well it depends
on the personality. Now, of course I leave it to my friend
here to talk about that, but I think you have to be prepared
to go to war. And of course getting-if you think, if you see,
learning how to speak English well, read and write, is causing
you stress, then you've got other problems. You need to go
to work, ready to go to work, be there on time, do what you're
told to do and understand yourself. As I said earlier on,
you have to have some strong belief system. And we can talk
about other things too.
Lewis: Professor Cook,
are there any differences in stresses for a black woman who
is, say, not the only black in the office, but the only black
woman in a certain or unique position?
Cook: I think so. I
think there is the stress that comes with the burden of certain
unique positions, or being in a small number, or in the minority,
even if there are three women out of 150. I also feel that
if you are the woman and you're in that situation, that there
is some psychological preparation that I think you were kind
of alluding to, that people do come into the workforce with.
I think there are a number of burdens that women have self-reported
that they bear-and that all the research is panning out-that
we don't come to work necessarily to be mother, sister or
girlfriend, but we certainly do end up acquiring and having
to sometimes assume those responsibilities, be it putting
juice on the table or preparing for a meeting that's coming
up, or taking the nurturing role when there is a death or
crisis in the workplace. So a lot of times I think we not
only assume it because we've been socialized that way, but
I think the presumption in the workplace is that we will assume
those roles. And so there is kind of a double burden of stress:
do I and do I not; what are the expectations versus what you're
anticipating that I'm going to do in response to these situations?
Lewis: Professor, Doctor,
thank you very much. We're talking with Dr. Earl McLinney,
Jr., and Professor Sharon Warren Cook on the topic African-Americans
and Stress in the Workplace. Now we'll take a look at the
second part of Natalie Bullock-Brown's report to find out
the health issues associated with job stress.
Bright: There has been
sufficient enough research that has been done, that can show
without a doubt, that stress and issues of racism can lead
to higher incidence of hypertension, hypercholesterol, and
in some instances increased amounts of stroke. So the data
is pretty clear about that.
Brown: Cedric Bright
is a medical doctor at Duke Veterans Medical Center in Durham.
He says the institutional racism that African-Americans often
face, can extend beyond the workplace.
Bright: Part of institutional
racism, besides the effects that you might find on the job,
also affects your ability to get healthcare. And then on upon
getting healthcare, getting the proper diagnosis and the proper
treatment. We've had many studies done, one in particular
done here at Duke by Kevin Schulman, that has shown that even
in equal settings with equal background and equal information,
that minority patients receive different outcome treatment-wise
Brown: And in many
cases, James says, African-Americans make the decision to
leave a stressful job in order to avoid complicating new or
existing health problems, problems that again, no one wants
to talk about.
James: For some people,
this is a very painful subject, and if they have stopped working
as a result of the racism, they may not want others to know.
They may not, because they still have to work. They still
have to get a job someplace else, and if other people see
that, they might feel that it will tarnish their opportunity
to get a job someplace else.
Brown: So what can
be done to alleviate what some researchers call the silent
suffering of African-Americans in the workplace? Dr. Monica
Porter, who teaches psychology at St. Augustine's College
with McManus, says employer attitudes have to change.
Porter: First, a corporation
would want to make sure that their employees are at the table;
they want to make sure that they're creating an environment
where if their employees desire to share openly and honestly
about problems that they're experiencing in the work setting.
First of all, that there are no backlashes to that.
Brown: And McManus
says that a company's sensitivity towards the health of its
employees just makes good business sense.
McManus: So even if
it's a selfish reason, you don't care about people at all,
for your bottom line, if they come to work and they are comfortable,
they're more productive, they aren't sick as much and they
don't max out your HMO.
Brown: Experts agree
that employers should be willing to take better care of their
employees no matter what color. But they also say African-Americans
and other employees have to take some responsibility for their
own welfare, and as Dr. Bright suggests, band together.
Bright: I think support
group among your peers on the job is very important. There's
nothing worse than being pretty isolated, and to be isolated
makes you an easy target. So that means that we have to form
relationships with our peers that we work with. They might
not be the same color. That's fine. This world needs more
integration of thought, and that's the only way that we get
it.
Lewis: And we're back
with Dr. Earl McLinney, Jr., and Professor Sharon Warren Cook,
the topic, African-Americans and Stress in the Workplace.
And Professor Cook, I'll start with you; how does stress affect
areas outside of the workplace?
Cook: Well certainly
we take home what we've experienced for seven, eight, nine
hours a day, and it impacts our ability to have healthy relationships;
it impacts the way we view ourselves as far as self-esteem,
as far as our own mental health. It certainly does impact
how we attempt to respond to it. We know that certainly some
of the unhealthy ways that people attempt to self-medicate
may include drugs, may include alcohol, and certainly the
violence that is not able to be displayed in the workplace,
is sometimes displayed in the home. So that certainly affects
spouses, children, other family members; so the detrimental
affect just continues to grow, if we don't address this in
the workplace and we take it home. We certainly do see it,
and see the manifestations of it.
Lewis: Dr. McLinney?
McLinney: Yes?
Lewis: What are your
suggestions?
McLinney: My suggestions,
there's a saying I heard in the country, if you are not your
own reality then whose myth are you? And I say that to the
brothers and sisters because I think I'm not a person skilled
in sociology and social work, but you've got to have something
else to do. You have to define yourself. And if you go to
a job, as I say to my students, when you get your first job,
start looking for something else to do. That gives you an
out. That gives you something else that defines yourself,
which I think would strengthen your own sense of self-perception.
Get involved in your community, become involved with the persons
who can counsel with you, like myself and like Professor Cook,
who can help you work through it to keep your mental health.
And most of all, learn how to read the organization. Organizations
make noises. When you go in and sit down at the table or you
get called to a conference or your boss calls you in, don't
walk in and just sit down somewhere, because power relationships
are defined by who sits beside whom. And if you sit in the
wrong chair, as we do in the black church when you sit in
the wrong pew, you raise the hackles of people. Wait to see
who sits at the table. Read what's going on in the agency
about taking a look at who's going to lunch with whom. Learn
how to survive on that plantation. That keeps your mental
health. If you have those skills, then whatever they do to
you, it won't bother you.
Lewis: Professor Cook,
any suggestions?
Cook: Yes, I think
I would want to put more responsibility on the workplace.
I certainly do agree that we as African-Americans are responsible
for our own fate. But I also think that the corporations who
exploit us and make billions of dollars from our labor and
from our intellect, from our knowledge and from our skills,
have a responsibility to infuse into the infrastructure, a
system that acknowledges, supports, and helps us to define
these issues of workplace stress, and then offer some type
of intervention and some type of remedy for that. I certainly
do think that as women in particular, we can acknowledge stress,
we can work on being more assertive, and we can certainly
be more proactive in those areas.
Lewis: What would you
say to folks who would say, okay, African-Americans, minorities,
say that there's stress in the workplace and they feel like
because of that, their job performance may be rated differently
than those of other races? Perhaps the owners who may be of
a different race might say, "well, oh, you're throwing
the race card out; there's not really racism in the workplace."
What would you tell them?
Cook: Well I guess
I would begin by analyzing your statement, because I think
there's a lot of truth to that. I think one of the things
that is stressing people out, especially in the black community,
is the fact that they are afraid to put this on the table.
Because we are hearing that this is the race card, this is
an excuse, this is your explanation for not having adequate
performance. So I certainly think that we've got to justify
it by using statistics, data, by providing people with the
evidence that this is not just my excuse and my unwillingness
to do what you're asking me to do, or to be uncooperative,
or to be a complainer in the workplace, so that I really am
here to do my job, I can do my job. But with all these other
variables out there that confound the difficulty of it, it
makes it impossible for some people, especially low-wage employees
that do not have a lot of outlets and who don't have a lot
of skills.
Lewis: But once you
get that evidence, what is the next step from there?
Cook: Then I think
we make a plan. We just saw how are we going to address this?
If these things do exist, and we can acknowledge that they
are here and that they are having detrimental impacts, emotionally,
psychologically, physically; then we decide, as a corporation,
as a company, as an agency, as a university, as a country,
how are we going to address this? Because the impact is just
so voluminous in all these other areas, the fallout where
we see children or families or violence or health-related
problems. We don't want our jobs to literally kill us, and
some people are being killed by their jobs.
Lewis: Do you think
it's just another obstacle to overcome?
Cook: I don't think
it's just another one; I think for many of us, it's the primary
one that we're going to have to overcome. I think in a capitalistic
society, where in our culture we place a huge amount of value
on individualism and on success and the American dream, I
think African-Americans in particular are chasing that dream,
and I think some of us are killing ourselves in the process
of doing that. So I do think it is a primary hurdle to overcome.
Lewis: Dr. McLinney,
your response.
McLinney: Yes. One
of the reasons I wrote the other book, Trouble in Corporate
Waters, was to describe the behavior of white males in
the workplace. Because it's that behavior that they haven't
accepted as cause for racism in the workplace. In the book
I've read called Shades of Freedom by A. Leon Higgenbother,
he talks about the precepts of inferiority. And most white
males, white females, white corporations, when they invite
you in as an employee, they hire you as an employee, there
is the precept that you are at the beginning, inferior, and
you have to overcome that. And it's not our problem that they
think we're inferior, it's your problem, Mr. White Employer
on the plantation, that causes the problem. Yes, I have to
play the race card because you played it for me before I got
here. That's what I try to tell the brothers, in the first
book, how to deal with it. And perhaps one day the other book
will tell the white guys how to not do it, how to recognize
when they're doing it. For example, if the black engineers
want to go to the National Association of Black Engineers
Conference. And the white manager says, well why do you all
have to have your own organization? That's the dumbest question
in the world; the same reason you've got your own organization.
It's all white, why can't I go to my organization? So you
see, it's that kind of a pressure that happens in the organization,
that white managers don't think about when they say that,
well why do you have to have your own group? Because I go
to my own church. I don't go to your church.
Lewis: To wrap it up
just quickly, I'll start off with you, Professor Cook. Do
you believe that there will ever be a true reduction of stress
for African-Americans in the workplace?
Cook: No, not in my
lifetime. I don't believe we're going to see the kind of reduction
that can be evidenced through our healthcare and our health
disparity and the problems that African-Americans face that
we typically want to ascribe to poor diet and lack of exercise,
and we're just now coming on the scene to acknowledge stress
is a factor.
Lewis: And quickly,
Dr. McLinney?
McLinney: I think it
can be reduced if we as a people understand what it is and
prepare ourselves to deal with it. We cannot expect "the
Man" to change. But we can change how we deal with it.
But it's not going away.
Lewis: Thank you so
much, thank you for your comments. Thank you, Dr. Earl McLinney
and Professor Sharon Warren Cook for being a part of our program,
and thank you for watching Black Issues Forum. If you
would like to learn more about tonight's guests, please visit
our web site at www.unctv.org/bif or you can call us at 919-549-7167.
We do appreciate your calls and your feedback. For Black
Issues Forum, I'm Mitchell Lewis; good night.
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