Success Is No Shield From Racism : Discrimination: No matter what positions they hold, blacks say they daily confront adversity that their white counterparts cannot imagine.

By LISA GENASCI

June 14, 1995 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — Early in May, Earl Graves Jr., dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase, stepped off a commuter train from Chappaqua, N.Y., and was grabbed by police officers looking for a black suspect.

They interrogated and frisked Graves, the son of Black Enterprise magazine publisher Earl Graves and himself the magazine’s senior vice president for advertising and marketing. They made him stand against a wall with his arms in the air.

Graves, who is clean-shaven and stands over six feet tall, bore no resemblance to the small, mustachioed man the police sought except that he is black.

Black executives and business owners say what happened to Graves was not an isolated incident. No matter what positions they hold, they daily confront hostility and adversity their white counterparts cannot imagine.

Although Graves was well-dressed and carrying a briefcase and had stepped off a commuter train from an affluent suburb, the white officers saw only the color of his skin.

“Regardless of your station in life, you are viewed first as a black male,” Graves said in an interview. “And with that come a variety of assumptions, most of them negative, that unfortunately white people sometimes have--you’re a threat, a suspect, you’re less than they are.”

Graves, educated at Yale University and Harvard Business School, says he knows of no black male who has not had problems with police.

“That’s not a coincidence,” Graves said. “It happens because people make assumptions and apply prejudicial beliefs. . . . Black males in this country are guilty until proven innocent.”

Elijah Anderson, sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees.

“That someone is black supersedes whatever else they might claim to be,” Anderson said. “At a time of increasing economic distress . . . many black people are associated in the public mind with crime and incivility.”

William G. Mays, chief executive of the company he founded, Mays Chemical Co. Inc., based in Indianapolis, senses that attitude when he is stopped by police on routine matters like speeding. His heart still thumps when he’s pulled over, he said.

Kyev Tatum, who runs an academic support services program at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, said, “As Americans we strive to work hard, play by the rules and improve our lot. But for black males there is a hesitancy. No matter how much we try and how far we climb the ladder, we will always be threatened by the institutions that should be protecting us.”

“I have to be on my guard 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Tatum said. “When I take off my shirt and tie I become just another black man who fits a profile.”

It is not only issues relating to police conduct that are a constant source of anger and frustration for black professionals.

Something as routine as a visit to a bank to cash a check is often complicated by an extra review of identification and documents, Mays said.

“There is always more checking than the situation might warrant,” said Mays, whose distributor of industrial chemicals drew $89 million in sales last year.

Since founding his company in 1980, Mays said one of his biggest obstacles has been the sense in corporate America that minority businesses tend to fail.

“Those failures are remembered for years and years,” Mays said. “I frequently hear from a potential client something like, ‘I used to do business with a black company that went under in 1984, why should I do business with you?”’

In one instance, Mays said, a minority-owned chemical business in Chicago failed and his company was put on credit hold by a corporation that had done business with both.

“It was as if they wanted to check whether all black-owned companies were connected or conspiring,” Mays said. “Corporate America has the memory of an elephant when it comes to forgetting any negative dealings with black-owned companies.”

Comer J. Cottrell, founder and chief executive of Pro-Line Corp., the Dallas-based manufacturer and distributor of hair-care products, said that when he started his business in California in 1970, just writing a business check was difficult.

“People I was dealing with would call the bank and sometimes I had to see the manager,” Cottrell said.

Graves said he experiences prejudice daily. It begins when he leaves his house and tries to hail a cab that passes him but will stop for a white man or woman down the road.

When he gets into an elevator, white people flinch because they worry about being alone with him.

“On a sales call people sometimes spend time congratulating me on how articulate I am rather than focus on what I am saying,” Graves said. “I deal with patronizing attitudes all the time because I am lumped into an assumed role.”

In order to get ahead in corporate America, Tatum said he feels he needs to act, dress and speak in a certain way.

“It’s a matter of survival,” he said.

Many black executives find they have limited access to capital to start or build a company. At G.B. Tech Inc., a Houston-based software company, financing was a serious problem during the firm’s first years of operation in the mid-1980s, Chief Executive Gale Burkett said.

Part of the problem, Burkett said, is many minority-run firms are service-oriented rather than manufacturing concerns, and have only themselves to put up as collateral.

“Banks run the risk of them not performing and then not collecting on the loan,” Burkett said.

Without access to capital and in an increasingly global economy, it is becoming difficult for many smaller minority-owned firms to compete, he said.

Indeed, Black Enterprise magazine’s list of the United States’ top 100 black-owned companies notes that the firms’ dramatic growth in 1993 was followed by only slight growth last year.

Active Transportation Co. President Charlie Johnson finds white-owned businesses don’t take his company seriously.

“You are always faced with comments about whether you can handle the amount of business,” said Johnson, whose company is the largest minority-owned carrier of new cars and trucks. “And you know in your heart that other people don’t get asked those questions. You have to prove yourself all the time.”