Framing the Professional Pose: How Collegiate Black Men View the Performance of Professional Behaviors

Abstract Black professionals in predominantly white workspaces must often make use of the professional pose – styles, behaviors, and practices meant to help navigate middle-class white professional settings – to assuage interactions with white colleagues and clients at work. Previous research has noted the emotional toll this often takes upon black workers. Based on two years of observations and interviews with a college organization of black men, this project builds upon previous work and investigates how collegiate black men frame those practices associated with the professional pose. Instead of framing these behaviors as only being emotionally taxing, these college men expressed that these behaviors were a necessity meant to prepare them for the real world of working alongside white coworkers, as a performance they could take pride in, and as a way to combat negative stereotypes regarding black men. These behaviors, though not necessary for their white peers, were necessary for the men if they sought to find success in the labor market they were preparing to enter.