Surviving ‘stressful process’ of being black male

The smile factor
Fletcher knows his light brown skin gives him an advantage — except that he’s “unsmiling.”

“If you’re a black man who doesn’t smile a lot, they (whites) get really nervous,” he said. “There are black people I run across all the time and they’re always smiling particularly when they’re around white people. A lot of white people find that very comforting.”

All this takes a toll.

Many black men say the daily maneuvering leaves them enraged and exhausted. For decades, they continuously self-analyze and shift, subtly dampening their personalities. In the end, even the best strategies don’t always work.

“I’ve seen it play out many times” in corporations, said Reid of Global Lead. “They go from depression to corporate suicide. Marital problems can come up. He loses all self-confidence and the ability to feel manly and in control of his own fate.”

Sherman James, a social psychologist at Duke University, studies how the stress of coping for black men can damage the circulatory system and lead to chronic poor health. Black men are 20 percent more likely to die of heart disease than whites, and they have the highest rates of hypertension in the world, according to the National Medical Association.

What doesn't kill makes you stronger
The flip side, black men say, is that many learn to be resilient. Ferguson recalls when a new Wall Street colleague, minutes after meeting him and hearing he grew up in a housing project in Newark, N.J., asked if he had been involved in “any illicit activities” there. He shrugged it off.

Over the years, as he has earned promotions and built client relationships over the phone, he has learned to steel himself for face-to-face meetings — for clients’ raised eyebrows and stuttered greetings when they see he is black.

“It just rolls off our backs — we grin and bear it. You can’t quit,” he said, sighing heavily. He vents his frustrations to mentors and relaxes with his wife and young children.

“Then you go back,” he said, “and fight the good fight.”

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