Leading While Black (ePub)

The American workplace exhibits a growing imbalance when it comes to human identity. Leaders are frequently defined in the absence of their critical social identifiers, but the exclusion of these identifiers is a mistake and ignores essential physical, cultural, and spiritual realities. Their exclusion is especially problematic for leaders of the Black identity and the Christian faith. Color-blind ideology harms people of color, while religion-blind systems damage people of faith, and both are especially problematic for individuals who reckon with both realities.

Rather than abandoning an individual's social identities, the ones we choose and the ones we do not, Leading While Black draws on the lived experiences of executive-level leaders of the Christian faith and Black identity, and offers a testament to the power of a living God in the social fabric of public life. Instead of ignoring the narrative arc of social identities and the weight they carry when considering an individual's conception of leadership, Torrance Jones leans into the value of those identities and asserts their integral importance for Black leaders and for those who work with and for Black voices.

The reality of those who live with the experience of being Black and Christian in the workplace matters for the grand narrative of leadership in the United States. Through conversations and deep attention to the lived experience of leaders, Torrance Jones explores the intersectionality of these two worlds--Black and Christian--and inspires readers to lead from the context of all that they are.