How our similarity makes us different: A minority perspective on the community impact on work-family balance

Abstract

Because much of our research centers on the study of diversity in general and racial and ethnic differences in particular, we are often asked questions by our students, colleagues, and media about actual versus contrived differences created by race and ethnicity in the workplace. People want to know if race and ethnicity really make a difference and, if so, how they affect employees and their employers. No matter the audience, these discussions inevitably seem to lead to two questions. The first is: "But aren't we really more similar than different?" When we concede to believing that we are, the follow up is: "So why should race and ethnicity matter?"The purpose of this column is to answer this second question by providing a minority perspective on how community characteristics affect the achievement of work-life balance. Readers should notice three key things. First, minorities appear to be looking for many of the same things in a prospective community sought by majority group members. Second, this process for minorities entails inherent difficulties that White employees often do not experience. Third, it is the similarity in our desires and the dissimilarity in the relative ease of their attainment that creates the meaningful between-group differences. Interestingly enough, a recent review of the work-family literature concluded "we appear to know little about WF issues of employees from diverse racial and ethnic groups"