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Blacks Leading Whites
How Mutual and Dual (Ingroup and Outgroup) Identification Affect Inequality
LUMUMBA SEEGARS and LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN
All my skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.
—Zora Neale Hurston
As Hurston’s quotation suggests, just because one is Black does not mean that he or she also identifies with other Black people. In this chapter, we bring this phrase into dialogue with conversations about Black leadership and attempt to move these conversations beyond simply creating more Black leaders. Specifically, we take seriously the premise that Black representation in leadership positions is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for advancing the welfare of Black people and, in particular, challenging the inequality that results from racial hierarchy and injustice. Therefore, we explore constraints and opportunities that Black leaders face when attempting to challenge inequality, particularly in majority-White organizations.
At the heart of this chapter lies one question: When are Black leaders most able to challenge inequality? Both the popular and the scholarly press suggest that greater representation of Blacks at the top of organizations should result in challenges to inequality, by which we mean using their position to alter organizational practices, structures, and cultures that maintain the current racial hierarchy. Scholars have explored the importance of the representation of subordinate group members in leadership positions (Zweigenhaft & Domhoff, 2006). For example, scholars suggest that greater representation of subordinate group members in leadership positions provides role models and encourages feelings of empowerment among underrepresented group members (Bobo & Gilliam, 1990; Ely, 1995; Lockwood, 2006). However, research also suggests that it is difficult for members of underrepresented groups to actually create change. For instance, subordinate group members can take actions that maintain intergroup inequality because they ascribe to beliefs and ideologies that justify inequality (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Moreover, members of underrepresented groups may actually feel threatened when more members of their ingroup enter organizations and thus choose not to promote or enable the success of others like themselves (Duguid, Loyd, & Tolbert, 2012; Srivastava & Sherman, 2014). These findings suggest that it is important to look more critically at the role racial minorities might play in either reducing or perpetuating inequality once they rise to positions of leadership in majority-White organizations.
Black leaders, who are motivated to enact change, face two hurdles in their ability to challenge inequality. First, they are not seen as prototypical leaders—both in general and particularly in predominantly White organizations (Hogg, van Knippenberg, & Rast, 2012; Rosette, Leonardelli, & Phillips, 2008). This challenge limits their ability to deviate from the status quo in work organizations, which are often associated with structures and practices that perpetuate inequality (Acker, 2006; DiTomaso & Hooijberg, 1996). Second, Black leaders have two groups they must lead, each with its own relationship to inequality: a Black ingroup and a White outgroup. The Black ingroup of the leader is a minority in majority-White organizations but is likely to have high motivation to reduce inequality because of the group’s subordinate position in the societal and organizational hierarchy. The White outgroup is a majority within the organization and controls access to organizational resources that can reduce inequality.
Becoming a leader represents a mutual identification process that requires both that the leader claim the leader identity and that the identity be granted by those who follow (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). We argue that Black leaders must build mutual identification with both groups in order to be most effective at challenging inequality. In this chapter, we use the lens of mutual identification to describe how different configurations of mutual identification with both the Black ingroup and the White outgroup can affect the extent to which Black leaders will challenge inequality. Challenging inequality here consists of both the desire to challenge inequality and the ease of that challenge. We note that Black leaders are not inherently motivated to challenge inequality; rather, the degree to which they are self-identified with the Black ingroup, which has historically been marginalized, relates to the degree that they will be motivated to take measures to reduce that marginality by challenging inequality. Once ingroup identification occurs, the degree to which other Black people and the White outgroup identify with this leader will affect the ease with which he or she can effectively follow through on his or her desire to challenge inequality.
This chapter contributes to our understanding of Black leadership in three ways. First, we elevate the desire and ability to challenge and reduce inequality as a relevant and important dependent variable in judging the success of Black leaders. Second and relatedly, we explore the processes that enable Black leaders to fundamentally restructure the rules of the “tournament” (see Thomas & Gabarro, 1999, for a broader discussion of race-based tournaments for leadership trajectories in work organizations). Finally, we contribute to our understanding of the Black leadership experience by theorizing about the process of leaders establishing mutual identification with two separate groups. Previous literature has demonstrated the importance of mutual identification between followers and leaders (DeRue & Ashford, 2010); however, this chapter extends this work by addressing the conundrum of leaders who have to appeal to multiple groups with different objectives and motivations.
Becoming a Black Leader in a White Organization: Mutual Identification with the White Outgroup
Before we can consider how Black leaders might challenge inequality in majority-White organizations, we must first consider how Blacks become leaders in these organizations. In the mutual identification process, leaders and followers must agree on their respective identities. This agreement is often determined by implicit theories of leadership (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). In particular, the prototypical leader is usually thought to be a White male (Rosette et al., 2008). Because they do not fit the prototype, Black people may be less likely to claim and be granted a leader identity. Therefore, a key challenge Blacks face in gaining leadership positions in predominantly White organizations rests in their ability to overcome intrapersonal challenges and gain acceptance and recognition by their White peers.
One way to overcome this obstacle is to become a more prototypical organizational member and, thus, potential organizational leader through mutual identification with the White outgroup. The concept of identification captures the multilevel process of attachment between the individual and the collective. Identification refers both to a sense of connection and shared fate between an individual and a target and to the process by which this connection unfolds (Ashforth, Harrison, & Corley, 2008; Ashforth & Mael, 1989). This process of identification must occur both through the Black member identifying with White members of the organization and vice versa. For example, Black organizational members may manage impressions by signaling that they share qualities of the White outgroup, which may enable White organization members to identify with them (Roberts, 2005). Black organization members may discover over time that they share similar values with White organization members that may lead them to identify more with the White outgroup (Harrison, Price, & Bell, 1998; Phillips, Rothbard, & Dumas, 2009). Thus, as Black people build mutual identification with the White outgroup, they are likely to become more prototypical organizational members and, therefore, leaders. We discuss how this process of mutual identification for Black leaders affects their willingness and ability to challenge inequality next.
Challenging Inequality: The Black Leader’s Perspective and Dual Identification
While the mutual identification process with the White outgroup enables the Black leader’s personal advancement in a White organization, it does not speak to how the Black leader may challenge inequality. On the one hand, the White outgroup holds greater control over the social, economic, and cultural resources of the organization than the Black ingroup. Thus, the Black leader of such an organization has the ability to challenge inequality. However, the mutual identification process with the White outgroup may constrain the Black leader’s motivation and ability to challenge inequality in two ways. First, while mutual identification may enable Blacks to claim and be granted leadership, the fundamental nonprototypicality of Black leaders limits their ability to deviate successfully from the status quo and, therefore, challenge inequality (Hogg et al., 2012). That is, the more prototypical a leader is, the more license he or she has to deviate from group norms and create change. Thus, Black leaders might be constrained by their nonprototypicality to perform successfully as leaders by doubling down on organizational practices and structures that emphasize traditional measures of successful performance, which may be the very same practices that perpetuate inequality. Second, the process of mutual identification is likely to result in strong ties and relationships with the White-majority outgroup that can stymie the possibility of divergent change (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012). To the extent that the White outgroup is motivated not to challenge inequality but rather to preserve the status quo, Black leaders who build strong ties with White outgroup members who are negatively inclined toward change may not be inclined to challenge inequality themselves.
However, a key factor that may moderate Black leaders’ motivation and ability to challenge inequality is their level of identification with the Black ingroup. A key aspect of group identification is the advancement of the group’s welfare (Blader & Tyler, 2009; Tyler & Blader, 2003). As the minority group at the bottom of the status hierarchy in both society and the organization, the Black ingroup has greater motivation to challenge inequality than the White outgroup. Black leaders who do not identify with the Black ingroup are likely to have a low level of motivation to try to challenge inequality. Therefore, even if they have the access to resources that come with White outgroup identification, the Black ingroup is not likely to experience significant changes in the reduction of inequality due to these individuals’ rise to power. In contrast, Black leaders who identify with their Black ingroup are likely to be motivated to advance their group’s welfare. This mutual identification with the Black ingroup can alter the Black leader’s motivation to access organizational resources, including networks and relationships, decision-making ability, and financial resources, and channel them toward challenging inequality. In sum, we theorize that the Black leader’s level of identification with the Black ingroup will moderate the effect of his or her identification with the White outgroup on challenging inequality, such that Black leaders who identify with both groups are the ones who will both want to challenge inequality and have the motivation to access organizational resources in order to implement those changes. In the next section, we explore how being granted the leadership identity by the Black ingroup and White outgroup affects the types of challenges to inequality that a Black leader who already identifies with both groups will make.
Challenging Inequality: The Follower’s Perspective—Mutual and Dual Identification
In order for Black leaders to be granted a leadership identity that allows them to effectively challenge inequality, followers from both groups also need to identify with Black leaders. Figure 19-1 zooms in on the other half of this mutual identification process, exploring how Black leaders who identify with both groups are identified with by the Black ingroup and White outgroup, respectively. We discuss four categories of leaders based on their ability to gain follower identification from each target group: factionless, opposition, co-opted, and consensus leaders. We theorize that Black follower identification and White follower identification will differentially contribute to the Black leader’s ability to be effective. Black follower identification will provide a power base invested in challenging inequality because of their position in the racial hierarchy. White follower identification will provide a power base that can offer greater security in the face of challenging inequality because of their control of organizational resources. Because each of these types of leaders is motivated to make change and use available resources to follow through on that motivation, they mostly remain capable of challenging inequality; however, the types of change they will be able to implement will be different depending on follower identification from each group. In addition, we provide brief examples of individuals who fit these descriptions. As the real world is often messy, these individuals do not fit perfectly into the categories; however, they are useful illustrations of what these categories look like in reality.
Factionless Leader
The bottom left quadrant represents a leader with whom neither the Black ingroup nor the White outgroup identifies. Because of this, the leader has neither a power base invested in challenging inequality nor a power base that can offer him or her insurance for deviating from the status quo. Thus, this leader lacks the security and support necessary to engage in change, even though the leader might like for it to happen based on his or her identification with the Black ingroup. The factionless leader will be more concerned with business as usual in the short term, even though he or she might hope to engage in change efforts further down the line.
Typology of Black leaders based on Black and White follower identification
Example: Michael Steele during his tenure as the chairperson of the Republican National Committee. Although Steele attempted to help steer policy in a way that he thought would be useful for reaching out to Black voters and reducing interracial inequality, he was not able to achieve identification from them, as many Black voters remained much more identified with the Democratic Party and the first Black president, Barack Obama. Simultaneously, Steele angered and lost identification from White people as well when he made negative remarks about Rush Limbaugh. Thus, Steele found himself without a substantial power base and only served one term as chairman.
Opposition Leader
The top left quadrant represents a Black leader whom the Black ingroup identifies with but the White outgroup does not identify with as strongly. This is an opposition leader—not accepted by the White outgroup but still accepted by the Black ingroup. The opposition leader has a power base of people who are invested in challenging inequality. The White majority may have identified with this leader enough to allow him or her to rise to power; however, due to the mutual identification with the Black leader’s Black ingroup, they might hold reservations about this leader’s attempt to challenge inequality and, therefore, may resist change. For example, the White outgroup may withhold access to organizational resources or resist redistribution of those resources. Thus, even though this leader may have ambitions for more divergent change, the resistance from the White outgroup will likely result in more incremental change.
Example: US congresswoman Maxine Waters during her tenure in Congress. Waters has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump and Republicans, particularly in response to policies and statements that have been noted as disparaging toward the Black community. As an elected member of Congress for over twenty-five years, Waters enjoys considerable support from her district, but also from many members of the Black community beyond her district. Her attempt to use a procedural tactic in order to “reclaim her time” during a congressional hearing of Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin went viral, and many racial minorities claimed her affectionately as “Auntie Maxine” in order to express their strong support for and identification with her. Yet she has not been able to stop many of the policies of Trump, and, in the same hearing in which she attempted to keep Mnuchin on topic, she later expressed that she still felt that he did not adequately answer her questions. Thus, even though she has considerable appeal and has potentially slowed down some of the harmful effects of Trump’s policies to the Black community, she has not been granted power to enact her challenges to inequality from her majority-Republican, and majority-White, colleagues in Congress.
Co-Opted Leader
The bottom right quadrant represents a Black leader whom the Black ingroup does not identify with but the White outgroup does identify with. This is a co-opted leader—one who has been accepted by the White outgroup but is not desired by the Black ingroup for whom he or she ostensibly would be advocating. The co-opted leader has a power base of people who can offer a stable leadership platform; however, this leader does not have a power base of people who are invested in challenging inequality. Thus, the leader is more likely to advocate for the type of changes that the White outgroup will feel comfortable with. As the White outgroup members are more likely to be invested in the status quo, this leader will be more likely to engage in incremental changes that minimize Whites’ discomfort but may not have much legitimacy from the Black ingroup.
Example: Dr. Ben Carson in his capacity as the secretary of housing and urban development for the US federal government. Once beloved in the Black community, the Gifted Hands author and surgeon eventually lost the identification of many Blacks through a series of statements and policy choices, most notably when he likened former African slaves to immigrants. Yet the majority-White, Republican administration of Trump has identified Carson as a champion of Black progress by putting him in charge of housing and urban development. However, despite his formal authority, he has been unable to create change in housing inequalities.
Consensus Leader
The top right quadrant represents a leader whom both the ingroup and the majority outgroup identify with. The consensus leader has trust and support from both bases of power: the Black ingroup and the White outgroup. This leader represents a pragmatic consensus between both groups and has the ability to integrate both the motivation for change and access to resources into an effective challenge to inequality. Trusted by both groups, this leader has the greatest chance to advance his or her agenda to challenge inequality. This leader is supported by people who want to challenge inequality, as well as by people who can provide security for the leader to take risks. Thus, this leader should feel a greater sense of freedom to push boundaries and change the organization. Similar to those with idiosyncratic credits (Hollander, 1958), the consensus leader can take risks while knowing that he or she will largely be given the benefit of the doubt and not risk complete alienation for thinking and acting outside the box. Thus, this leader can enact more divergent change within the organization and provide a sustained challenge to inequality.
Example: Dr. Freeman Hrabowski in his capacity as the president of the University of Maryland–Baltimore County. Hrabowski has presided over UMBC for over twenty years while also explicitly advocating for the advancement of Black and other minority students. Through programs such as the Meyerhoff Scholars, Hrabowski has used the resources of his institution to challenge inequalities in higher education and develop future science PhDs from the Black community (as well as other minorities). He has been able to keep the identification of both Black and White members of his university in order to maintain access to resources and use those resources to help the Black community. Thus, he has been able to challenge higher education’s disproportionate lack of minorities pursuing advanced degrees and disrupt the current racial hierarchy.
Discussion
A key motivation for this chapter is to expand how we conceptualize the success of Black leaders by moving beyond an understanding of it as simply making it to the top of White organizations and instead looking at the constraints and opportunities that determine how Black leaders may challenge inequality in these positions and, consequently, assessing the degree of difficulty they may face in pursuing this challenge. We argue that Black leaders are most effective at challenging inequality when they achieve mutual identification with both the Black ingroup and the White outgroup. We propose that various types of Black leaders also have varying effects on inequality: factionless leaders are not able to create meaningful change, opposition leaders and co-opted leaders are able to make incremental change, and consensus leaders are able to make more divergent change. The motivation for challenging inequality is affected by how much the leader identifies with the Black ingroup, and the ease with which change can be enacted is affected by how much the Black ingroup and the White outgroup identify with the leader.
One clear path for future research is to further explore the various pathways inductively, as well as test them deductively. First, researchers should engage in qualitative research in order to understand how Black leaders think about inequality in general and their ability to affect it within the firm (i.e., beyond external work, such as sitting on nonprofit boards or donating money). Although there has been considerable work done to explain the trajectory of Black leaders, how these leaders use their positions to challenge inequality is a much more nascent area of research. Thus, this area of research is well suited for inductive work that seeks to explore when and how these leaders consider and enact challenges toward inequality. Second, our emergent model of mutual and dual identification also sets the foundation for testable hypotheses. In the field, researchers can measure both (Black) leaders’ and followers’ identification with each other by race within majority-White organizations and code actions that the leader has taken from incremental to divergent change. In the lab, researchers can experiment with different configurations of mutual and dual identification and assess the degree to which individuals are willing to challenge inequality.
Future research should also explore how Black leaders balance being simultaneously constrained and enabled in their ability to challenge inequality by their mutual identification with the White outgroup—in particular, the co-opted and consensus leaders. The simultaneous constraining and enabling of Black leaders who want to challenge inequality makes them sanctioned radicals. Similar to tempered radicals, whose values and identities are at odds with their organization and, therefore, they attempt to change the organization without destroying it (Meyerson, 2001; Meyerson & Scully, 1995), sanctioned radicals are unique in that they hold formal power granted to them by the organization to challenge inequality. These leaders are both sanctioned by being given permission to exercise leadership and sanctioned by being constrained in how they exercise their leadership. They are radicals to the extent they are engaged in challenging inequality and therefore attempting to create change in their organizations. Thus, they are sanctioned radicals because they are given the authority to challenge inequality, whether it be incremental or deviant. Exploring the tensions built into sanctioned radicalism will aid our understanding of how Black leaders manage constraints embedded within organizational structures.
Additionally, future research can address the spillover effects of this identification process with the Black ingroup to other minority groups. The extent to which Black leaders look at themselves and other minorities in an overarching way (e.g., “Black and Brown people”) might affect how they relate to the needs of those groups. In contrast, tensions between minority groups might hinder productive dialogue between groups and stymie policy changes meant to reduce inequality (e.g., a recent lawsuit filed against Harvard by Asian Americans maintaining that affirmative action policies are discriminatory against Asians). Thus, how Black leaders experience mutual identification with other minority groups can also have an important role in how much they will be both willing to and able to challenge inequality effectively.
While this chapter is focused on what Black leaders can do, challenging inequality is not solely the responsibility of Black individuals. The focus on the effects of mutual identification with the White outgroup demonstrates the important role that White organizational members can play in challenging inequality. The more the White outgroup enables Black leaders to take risks and deviate from business as usual, the more these Black leaders will be able to challenge inequality effectively. One way White people can enable this type of behavior is by providing more space for Black leaders to experiment with challenges to inequality that might make White people uncomfortable. While some White people may tend to search for solutions that minimize discomfort, White people interested in helping Black leaders challenge inequality might instead search for optimal discomfort—feelings of unease that encourage reflection and growth—within themselves.
We also note that Black leaders are not monolithic and that there might be important gender, sexuality, class, and other intersecting identities that moderate the model we have laid out. The differing experiences of Black women and Black men have been documented (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Rosette & Tost, 2013) and are important to consider as central to the inquiry of understanding Black leadership and challenges to inequality going forward. For example, scholars could examine whether Black women leaders are more or less penalized than Black men for challenging inequality due to their gender and racial nonprototypicality and whether the mutual identification process might differ based on whether they challenge gender or racial hierarchies.
One way to address inequality has been to focus on increasing the representation of Blacks within the leadership ranks of organizations with the hope that this greater diversity at the top could trickle down throughout organizations. Yet, as Zora Neale Hurston cautions, relying on Blackness as an indicator of a desire to help other Blacks will have limited results. We take Hurston’s statement seriously and push it further by arguing that not all “kinfolk” can effectively serve their kin either. That is, a desire to challenge inequality is not enough. Even though some Black leaders might intend to challenge inequality, it is their ability to achieve mutual identification with both the Black ingroup and the White outgroup that makes them capable of successfully challenging inequality. While we laud Black leaders who are taking advantage of opportunities that they have been historically denied by making it to the top of White organizations, we hope this chapter also inspires leaders and scholars to think more critically about how Black leaders can challenge inequality within their organizations and society at large.
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