No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men's Work

Making visible the experiences of black professional men in white male-dominated occupations

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Tokenism Reassessed 2 The General Experience of Partial Tokenization 3 Interacting with Women in the Workplace 4 Other Men in the Workplace 5 Black Men and Masculinity 6 Emotional Performance Conclusion Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Adia Harvey Wingfield is Associate Professor of Sociology at Georgia State University. She is author of Changing Times for Black Professionals; Doing Business with Beauty: Black Women, Hair Salons, and the Racial Enclave Economy; and co-author (with Joe Feagin) of Yes We Can? White Racial Framing and the 2008 Presidential Campaign.

Review :
"Conducting in-depth interviews with black lawyers, engineers, doctors, and bankers, she studies their challenges, obstacles, opportunities, and interactions with colleagues. As expected, the subjects experienced racism, discrimination, and stereotyping at work...Though their upward mobility gave them solidarity with men in their social group, they no longer had an affinity with working-class blacks. This solid academic study enhances our understanding of the difficulties professional black men face in the work place." - Publishers Weekly "For those who delve into Wingfield's book, the one thing they are guaranteed to come away with is a greater appreciation for the fact that for Black men who work professional jobs, the work involves so much more than just the work itself... [No More Invisible Man] shows how entrenched and lingering racial stereotypes about the intelligence and aims of Black men often make the professional jobs they work much more complicated than they would otherwise be." - Diverse "What is unique about this book is the fact that very few studies focus on the issue of the black professional male across varied white-dominated professional spaces. Wingfield offers insight into the nuances involved in black male experiences at the professional level. Briefly, this study encapsulates how tricky it is to navigate the corridors of professional settings when confronted with age-old stereotypes. Summing Up: Recommended." - Choice, July 2013 "Wingfield's adeptness at relating each aspect of her findings to the wider scholarship on tokenism is one of this book's main strengths... [T]his is a revealing and thought-provoking study... [that] provides some new insights into this somewhat neglected topic." - Ethnic and Racial Studies "No More Invisible Man is an engaging and compelling book. Through interviews with forty-two doctors, lawyers, engineers, and bankers, Adia Harvey Wingfield illuminates the experiences of black male professionals and makes critical contributions to our understandings of inequalities in the workplace... One of Harvey Wingfield's strongest theoretical contributions is her documentation of the significance of black professional men's relationships with colleagues and potential mentors... Another significant theoretical contribution is Harvey Wingfield's description of the diversity of black professional men's responses to women in their male-dominated workplaces... [T]he book is superb. Harvey Wingfield's writing is fantastic and a pleasure to read... She walks the reader clearly and explicitly through the questions she brings to current theories, her comparisons between what theories predict and what her data reveal, and the theoretical and practical conclusions she draws... No More Invisible Man is a successful addition to Harvey Wingfield's legacy - and to intersectionality scholarship." - Gender & Society