Intersection: The Black women in America's courts

DELIVERING ON DIVERSITY, GENDER EQUALITY, AND INCLUSION

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In this issue, we look at the experiences of Black women at US law firms and at how Americans are celebrating the Lunar New Year.

THE ZEITGEIST

Legal precedent

A Black, legal professional, standing on the steps of a court house

The current landscape: Black women make up less than 1 percent of all partners at US law firms—and just 3 percent of associates. What about the courts? Less than 10 percent of federal judges are Black (for comparison, Black Americans make up more than 12 percent of the total US population).

It’s not just the legal profession—Black women face disproportionately high barriers in workplaces across America, and they are affected heavily by bias in hiring and promotions. The latest Women in the Workplace study—conducted by McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.Org—shows that Black women are promoted at a significantly lower rate than White women at the first step up to manager. More than a quarter of surveyed Black women said that their race has led to their missing out on an opportunity to advance. Black women also experience more microaggressions than other groups of women, and they are three to four times more likely than White women to be subjected to disrespectful and “othering” comments and behavior.

One Black female attorney told McKinsey: “When I would go to court to represent a client, people would constantly say, ‘Where’s your attorney? Where’s the attorney?’ They would assume that I was either an administrative assistant or a mail clerk and that I couldn’t possibly be an attorney.” This is what sociologist Tsedale M. Melaku terms the “you-don’t-look-like mentality”—and as she points out, it is far from limited to the legal industry (as we saw in last week’s issue).

THE TAKEAWAY

For many Americans, a new year

Red colored chinese lanterns strung across a street

This week, people around the world—and across the United States—are celebrating the new year. We take this opportunity to reflect on the diversity of the Asian American community and to recognize Asian Americans’ wide-ranging business contributions.

Asian Americans make up 6 percent of the US population, and their numbers are growing rapidly. (The group has grown by more than 80 percent over the past two decades—the most out of any racial group in the United States.) Asian American immigrants and their descendants are diverse both culturally and socioeconomically; McKinsey analysis shows that their corporate success, educational attainment, and income vary widely. Together, they are a powerful economic force: Asian American–owned businesses employ nearly five million workers and contribute nearly $1 trillion to the US economy each year, according to data from the US Census.

Among those marking the Lunar New Year are many members of Southeast Asian communities, including Vietnamese Americans. One way they and other Asian Americans are celebrating the holiday is with fruit. As Dr. Linda Trinh Vo of the University of California, Irvine, explains, fruit is “a language of love” for many Asian families.

Kids in New York and San Francisco had the day off from school on Tuesday to celebrate the new year with their families. Here’s something little ones can enjoy year round: Amy Wu and the Perfect Bao, by Kat Zhang and illustrated by Charlene Chua, is a picture book that, like the Lunar New Year, is about family—and food. It’s among author Joanna Ho’s favorite children’s books featuring Asian characters and traditions. When she was growing up, such books were rare.

— Edited by Julia Arnous, an editor in McKinsey’s Boston office

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