Abstract
Black leaders regularly contend with the historical and lingering effects of racism in American society. No matter the degree of success or accomplishment, or no matter the comfort level that blacks achieve within American society, there is always a persistent “otherness”—a need to prove oneself as well as to battle the negative assumptions of the larger society. Dorothy Height, who devoted her life to organizations that supported women and families and that built interracial understandings, contended that individuals do not need to be racist for racism to persist. “It’s in the system in which we live,” she said. “It operates whether you know it or not. The banking system, the housing system, the employment system. It affects me as it affects you. It affects you as it affects me.”1
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Notes
There is a rich social scientific literature on both leadership and race that focuses on the challenges faced by minorities. This literature addresses issues of trust, belief, legitimacy, and rapport and explores how race enters into hierarchical relationships. Sociologists analyze how cultural beliefs impact the potential for success, and examine how external characteristics such as gender, race, occupation, and educational attainment directly correlate with expectations for high status positions and the willingness to respect the authority of another. Women and minorities all too frequently face resistance that limits their ability to be recognized leaders and to maintain positions of authority. See, for example, Ronald A. Heifetz, Leadership without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1994);
Martin Chemers, “Leadership Effectiveness: Functional, Constructivist and Empirical Perspectives,” in Dean van Knippenberg and Michael A. Hogg, eds., Leadership and Power: Identity Processes in Groups and Organizations (London: Sage Publications, 2003);
Joseph Berger, Cecilia Ridgeway, M. Hamit Fisek and Robert Norman, “The Legitimation and Delegitimation of Power and Prestige Orders,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 63 (June, 1998), 379–405.
Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff, Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 175.
Walter R. Allen, “African American Family Life in Societal Context: Crisis and Hope,” Sociological Forum, Vol. 10, No. 4, 591. For a further exploration of these issues,
see Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010);
Joe Feagin and Karyn McKinney, The Many Costs of Racism. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003);
Sharon Hays, Flat Broke with Children (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003);
Karen Lacy, Blue-Chip Black (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007);
Mary Pattillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences (Chicago, IL: Univerity of Chicago Press, 1999);
Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge. 2006).
Cornel West, Race Matters. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001.
Elice E. Rogers, “Afritics from Margin to Center: Theorizing the Politics of African American Women as Political Leaders,” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 35, No. 6 (July 2005), 703.
Wade W. Nobles, “African Philosophy: Foundations for Black Psychology,” in Reginald L. Jones, ed., Black Psychology, 3rd edition (Berkeley, CA: Cobb and Henry Publishers, 1991), 47–63. See also Rogers, “Afritics from Margin to Center: Theorizing the Politics of African American Women as Political Leaders,” Journal of Black Studies, 701–714.
We know that there are other African American leaders who actively pursue a nonpartisan approach to political leadership, rejecting the two-party system. Lenora Fulani, for example, was the first African American and woman to appear on the ballot in all 50 states, running for president in 1988. For an analysis of her role as a political activist, see Omar H. Ali, “Lenora Branch Fulani: Challenging the Rules of the Game,” in Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz, African Americans and the Presidency: The Road to the White House (New York: Routledge, 2010), 129–148.
Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, African American History Reconsidered (Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 45–47. Dagbovie represents the views of Manning Marable in advocating for more “living histories” of African Americans centered on their personal life experiences.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., Bearing Witness: Selections from African-American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991), 4.
Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effictive People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989);
Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (Philadelphia, PA: The Running Press, 2006);
Sheryl Sanderg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013). Although Covey and Sandberg are among the best known authors, many others have produced well known works. Among them are Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, Bruce Avolio, John Maxwell, Warren Bennis, and Howard Gardner.
Warren Bennis, Managing the Dream: Reflections on Leadership and Change (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2000), 5–6; Bennis has published over a 40 year period and has produced close to 40 books. For a recent book of interest,
see Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge (New York: Harper Business Essentials, 2004).
Howard Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 42–43.
For an annotated bibliography, see Ronald W. Walters and Cedric Johnson, Bibliography of African American Leadership: an Annotated Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1997), 38.
Ernest Allen, Jr., “Du Boisian Double Consciousness: The Unsustainable Argument,” The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2002), 217–253.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West, The Future of the Race (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 3.
Ronald W. Walters and Robert C. Smith, African American Leadership (Albany, NY: State University of Press, 1999), 33.
Ibid., 75. Representative books which deal with this topic include Walters and Smith, African American Leadership; Jacob Gordon, Black Leadership for Social Change (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000);
Lea Esther Williams, Servants of the People (New York: St. Martins Press, 1966); Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, Blacks in the White Establishment?; West, Race Matters;
Robert Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996);
Ronald Walters and Cedric Johnson, Bibliography of African American Leadership: An Annotated Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000).
Gordon, Black Leadership for Social Change, 41–56, 101–132. Gordon makes a useful distinction between ideological/intellectual and social movements. See also Williams, Servants of the People, xii–xiv, 1–9. For compilations on black leadership, see Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West, The African American Century: How Blacks Have Shaped Our Country (New York: The Free Press, 2000)
and David DeLeon, Leaders from the 1960s: A Biographical Sourcebook of American Activism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994).
See, for example, M. Elaine Burgess, Negro Leadership in a Southern City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962);
Daniel C. Thompson, The Negro Leadership Class (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963);
Everett C. Ladd, Jr., Negro Political Leadership in the South (New York: Atheneum, 1966); Jacob U. Gordon, Black Leadership for Social Change; Robert Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era;
Robert C. Smith, “System Values and African American Leadership,” in Manning Marable and Kristin Clarke, eds., Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America’s New Leadership (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009);
Manning Marable, Black Leadership (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Walters and Smith, African American Leadership, 17–21;
Lenora Fulani, “Race, Identity, and Epistemology,” in Lois Holzman and John Morss, eds., Postmodern Psychologies, Societal Practice, and Political Life (New York: Routledge, 2000), 151–164.
Nathan I. Huggins, “Afro-Americans,” in John Higham, ed., Ethnic Leadership in America. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 107–108.
Bruce J. Avolio, Full Leadership Development: Building the Vital Forces in Organizations. (London: Sage Publications, 1999), xi–xii.
Anne Maydan Nicotera and Mircia J. Clinkscales with Felicia Walker, Understanding Organizations through Culture and Structure: Relational and Other Lessons From the African American Organization. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 2003), 12, 68.
Mary Frances Berry, Explorations in Black Leadership, Contemporary Lens on Black Leadership, Black Leadership: Engaging Issues of Race.
Johnnetta Cole, Conversations: Straight Talk with America’s Sister President (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 1.
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© 2014 Phyllis Leffler
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Leffler, P. (2014). Introduction Black Leadership: A Collective Biography. In: Black Leaders on Leadership. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342515_1
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