Strategically Created Shared Affinities: Black Professionals in Silicon Valley

• In Event: 1162 - Navigating Diversity in Everyday Life

Abstract

Black professionals make up two per cent or less of the workforce of Silicon Valley’s top high-tech firms. Using data from an interview-based study at one firm, the author illustrates the strategies black respondents used to create coalitions with colleagues from varied racial and ethnic backgrounds in an effort to circumvent stigma and bias on the job. As the minority ‘out-group’ in a majority white and Asian workforce, respondents engaged in the additional social labour of reaching out to colleagues to create alliances across racial and ethnic lines. This was done by creating small affinity groups with others that were demarcated by symbolic micro boundaries and based on everyday shared experiences such as shared work, religion, veteran’s status, and interests in hobbies and sports. This article reorients boundary theory from the macro to the micro sociological perspective, treating boundaries like membership circles whose axis is the individual. From this viewpoint, agentic actors can recognise, create and utilise boundaries as tools.

Author

• Rebecca C. Franklin, University of California, San Diego