Career Advancement Concerns Associated With Black Women Military Leaders

The career advancement inequalities of Black women in the military have been mainly aberrated. Race and gender in the Air Force are often treated within the scope of the AF’s leadership development system as vestiges of bias or domination. There aren’t available findings that show the AF has taken the necessary steps to consider the interlocking of identities such as race and gender. As a result, career advancement inequalities go unaddressed, which fuels marginalization and ignores intragroup differences. However, ignoring differences within groups can ignite animosity among groups. The formulation of animosity, a potential blind spot, may be due to the lack of understanding of institutionalized discrimination that is the product of a system mainly developed in the image of a particular demographic group.

Yet Black/African American women must employ many highly recommended leadership traits and styles to catch up to other leaders for whom the Air Force’s leadership development system was specially designed. While these leaders are running a steady race, Black women run sprints. Black women may catch up or even pass their opponents in the leadership development race. As a sprinter (putting their all into the race), they’re going to get exhausted, and as their energy is depleting, their steady racing opponent may pass them. Black women need to understand that they run another man’s race. Entering a system knowing there is a disadvantage rather than an equal can help prepare them mentally to strategize the best way to run a race in the AF’s leadership development system.