Minority Rules

I'm reading a new book, "Minority Rules: Turn Your Ethnicity Into a Competitive Advantage", written by Kenneth Arroyo Roldan, the top dog at Wesley, Brown & Bartle, an executive headhunting firm that specializes in finding minority candidates for gigs in corporate America. Like others before it (see Cora Daniels' Black Power Inc.), Roldan's book is all about decoding the corporate labyrinth and unlocking the translucent barriers to success that minorities face as we climb the management ladder. I'm not far enough along in the book to critique Roldan's writing one way or the other, but I do have some context I'd like to lend to his subject.

In most cases I'd be quick to point out the difference between income -- what you bring in each week from a job -- and wealth or net worth -- cash or assets you own regardless of your employment status. But in this case, I think there's an important link between the two. Roldan's advice could be critical to helping more young African-Americans generate some real assets of their own, to the extent it helps anybody get a real job with some real income.

Why? For two reasons: 1) We as black folks tend to have fewer real assets than other Americans and 2) our incomes as a group continue to lag those of whites of the same age. The income and wealth gaps taken together, then, mean that attaining high-salaried management and executive-level jobs like those Roldan discusses in his book is a more critical step for young African-Americans struggling to gain an economic foothold than it is for similarly situated whites -- at least in many cases (there are always exceptions, and certainly not every white kid climbing the corporate ladder was born filthy).

That said, anybody care to share some anecdotes on the comments page about their own push to get a bigger, better job, or if you have one, how much did the salary bump really help you attain some real assets -- a house or stock options, as opposed to say, a new Land Rover with some nice rims?