Of course you can go on racist forums and see racists fomenting on and on about the incompetent Black employee, often offering examples of such. Fair enough. That’s their experience.
However, some of these stories didn’t have a whole lot behind them. Some just argued for a more relaxed style of working which doesn’t rise to the level of laziness unless you are a workaholic prig. There was also an idea that the employees could not wait to get out of the office at 5. But I worked at an office full of White and Amerindian employees who did the same thing. Once again this implies a more relaxed working style, which I for one don’t mind, as I am done with White workaholic bastards.
There are stories about coming in habitually late. My mother experienced a Black employee like that at the college she worked at. Her boss wanted to fire the woman but was stymied over union rules and fears of a discrimination lawsuit. You have to admit that being stymied from firing a lousy employee for reasons like that is disgusting.
I haven’t experienced much of the “incompetent Black employee.” Sure racists go on and on about it, but I have worked with significant numbers of Blacks over the years in many different occupations, and I saw very little evidence of this.
I worked in a medical coding office for a while, and we had some Blacks working there. Some even lived in the heart of the ghetto. They were all fine workers. Never saw any problems.
I worked as a security guard at one of the richest communities in the US. A young Black man worked with me. He was the “jolly Black” or easygoing Black guy type, but he did his job just fine. He was always happy and very friendly, and he had a lot of wisdom about life, including how to lead a less worried and stressed life.
Most of the rest of the jobs I worked at were in White communities, and there were only a few Blacks working there. The ones who worked there were just fine. I remember they fired a Black woman who worked night shift at my factory for no apparent reason other than to shove 16 hours of work on my swing shift. She was part of that ghetto culture, but she was basically a very good person. Many people who live in that culture are not bad people at all. This is what people don’t understand.
Of course I worked at jobs where they would not tolerate this nonsense anyway, so maybe I am looking at a self selected group.
Most of my experience was with Black educational professionals, both Black schoolteachers, Black administrators, and Blacks who worked in the district office. I saw almost no evidence of incompetence among any of these Black education professionals the entire time I worked in the field. And keep in mind that I worked in the heart of the ghetto in Compton and Gardena for a lot of that time. I met quite a few of these Black teachers and got to know some of them fairly well, especially the men. They were very nice people, and they were quite competent. I never got to know the women much for some reason.
I did work one day in Watts, and some Black kid stole my car battery. Some Black shop teacher helped me fix it. Things were extremely lax there and the students were almost completely useless, but even there I did not see evidence of incompetence among the Black school professionals. The administrators in Watts were mostly Black, and they were extremely laid back, relaxed, and easygoing. I didn’t see any incompetence and they were far less hard-ass than White administrators. The students were almost completely useless there anyway as I found in my joke of a day teaching, so why should the administrators care about much? They were keeping the ship going.
There was one Black teacher in Gardena who was apparently an alcoholic, and he showed movies all day. I suppose they had a hard time firing him for some reason. But he was so nice, friendly, happy go lucky, and easygoing that I almost didn’t even care that he was an alc. He was too pleasant of a person to hate.
Now you have to jump through a lot of educational and testing hoops to even do that job in the first in the first place, so maybe there is some self-selection.
I’m not saying there is nothing to the incompetent Black employee stereotype. I am simply suggesting that there is a lot less there than meets the eye. If it was omnipresent, I would have experienced it by now.
The way to deal with this problem to the extent it exists at all is to hold Black employees to the same high standards that you hold the rest of your employees. Fire them if they come in late all the time, screw off, or are incompetent. Hold the sword of firing over their heads at all times. Many Black adults, if held to high standards and demands and powerful threats of firing, will perform remarkably well on the job. Relaxed standards don’t help any race or group of people.
