After approximately four years at a top national law firm, Deborah’s career was drawing to an unhappy close. She had reached a dead end. She sensed that she would never make partner at the firm; her senior colleagues were not providing her with the developmental opportunities and mentorship necessary to compete for partnership, and she had not distinguished herself among the other associates in her cohort. Even worse, Deborah did not have any promising options elsewhere, as she had not been able to amass the achievements or close connections with partners and clients critical for landing other competitive legal positions. Although Deborah still earned more than $3,000 per week and had not yet been passed over for any promotions, she was growing increasingly despondent about her situation. And because many law firms, like other elite professional services firms, use some version of “up-or-out” career models, in which junior professionals who are not promoted often are forced to leave, she was running out of time to figure out her next move. Deborah left the firm shortly after our interview and within a few years had stopped practicing law altogether. 

Deborah’s career trajectory unfortunately is all too common for Black professionals working at large White firms. America’s elite professional services firms—its preeminent law firms, investment banks, and management consultant firms—can be difficult workplaces for employees of all races. Between the long, sometimes stressful hours, the low odds of promotion, the often unrewarding work assignments, and the up-or-out personnel practices, most professionals who begin their careers in these institutions leave within a few years. But although careers in these firms can be challenging for all professionals of all races, they are especially difficult for Black professionals. Black professionals leave these firms more quickly and receive far fewer promotions than their White counterparts. 

As a result, they remain highly underrepresented in senior positions. As of 2021, the partnerships at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP—two of the most prestigious law firms in the country—were each only 2 percent Black, up from 0 and 1 percent, respectively, in 2019. Other top law firms reported similarly disappointing numbers; some have no Black partners at all. Firms in other industries do not share their diversity statistics as openly as law firms do, but the data available for those professions do not appear to be any more encouraging. At Goldman Sachs, the nation’s preeminent investment bank, only 3 percent of executives, senior officials, and managers were Black as of 2021. Other banks, including Morgan Stanley (3 percent) and JPMorgan Chase (5 percent) also reported low percentages of Black senior professionals. 

The difficulties facing Black professionals and the ongoing racial disparities at elite firms have been the subject of extensive coverage in scholarly and popular publications. But in reflecting on her law firm career, Deborah offered a new perspective not captured in these works. While many writings on the tribulations of Black professionals have focused in particular on the possible contributing role of racial bias—the positive and negative assessments and feelings people have regarding racial groups and their members—Deborah made clear that she did not attribute her problems to racial bias.10 Instead, Deborah described her difficulties as “more cultural than anything.” She spoke of certain social and cultural dynamics within her firm that she believed posed unique challenges for her as a racial outsider. She found that the cultural norms at the firm seemed to revolve around certain experiences, values, and lifestyles most common among affluent White Americans. She explained, “The corporate culture itself is based on White shit— [I’m] just being honest. It is more class too, but it just happens to fall in line with Whiteness.” She watched some of her White peers develop rapport with clients and influential colleagues with ease while she struggled to forge similar connections. She found engaging her senior colleagues in conversation difficult: her attempts to initiate small talk were generally awkward and unsuccessful, compounding her sense of alienation. She attributed these difficulties to differences between Black attorneys’ personal backgrounds and cultural repertoires and those of their White colleagues and clients. With evident frustration, Deborah observed that “the powers that be” evaluated associates through implicitly “cultural” criteria that placed her at a disadvantage. “There’s some part of the culture that I am not grasping,” she explained. “There are tons of things that come easy to some people and don’t come easy to me.” These interpersonal difficulties tarnished her professional image. During a recent performance review she had learned that partners in her group questioned whether she was engaged in her work or interested in a long-term career at the firm, a perception that she attributed in part to her lack of interpersonal rapport with them.