Bari-Ellen Roberts, Author Roberts vs. Texaco

Bowen:       Bari, tell us a little bit about your career. You were so successful in advancing up the corporate ladder in different banking institutions.

Roberts:      I graduated from college in 1978. I went to Loyola University in Chicago and was recruited immediately into a fast-track management training program for the Harris Bank of Chicago. I spent almost two years there and left for a more attractive position because I wanted to be in trusts, in corporate trusts. And in 1978, there were not a lot of African-Americans nor a lot of females in this particular area of the bank. So it seemed extremely challenging to me to get into that area and certainly everything I had read, up to that point, said that that was going to be a major growth area in banking over the next 20 years.

Then joined Continental Illinois Bank, the second largest bank in the United States at the time, actually, between the two coasts, and had a very successful career there. Went to Northwestern University, took courses, particularly in trusts, in corporate trusts, in estate planning and those kinds of things.

At the end of 1979, my husband, my then husband got an attractive offer to come east and I joined Chase Manhattan Bank as a Senior Trust Administrator in true corporate trusts, the giants, the Fortune 500 companies. I started out as a Trust Administrator and, then at the time in 1980, Texaco was one of my clients. I also had clients such as AT&T, Colgate, on and on. And over the next ten years at Chase Manhattan Bank, I rose to be the first African-American female vice-president of the Trust Department of a major bank.

Bowen:     That's a pretty impressive track record. And you left Chase, I believe, after an extended leave of absence for medical reasons.

Roberts:     Right.

Bowen:     Bari, as you pursued your career in the corporate arena, what kinds of discriminatory practices did you personally confront?

Roberts:     I've had issues with sexism, people making sexist remarks. I had an issue with one of my clients one time, who, when I was at the bank, I went to visit him and he was not expecting a black woman. And he said to me, "I'm used to my bankers either looking like me or looking like Farrah Fawcett."

I had an incident at Chase Manhattan Bank where my initial boss was making sexist and racist remarks to me and to others. I remember being given a challenge that I thought, "You know, if I was a white male, where I was given an assignment to handle 70 accounts with no administrator and no secretary and I had to enroll other people in the back office to help me with that," and it was hard for me to believe that they would have given that same challenge, in order to be promoted, to a white male.

Bowen:     And then you were recruited by Texaco. And from your book, we learn that you and 1,400 other African-Americans faced a persistent pattern of racial discrimination and, ultimately, it led to $176 million settlement. What prompted you to write the book?

Roberts:     In November, 1996, when the tapes were released, the press covered the tapes. They talked about the words that were on the tapes, certainly the black jellybean comment and the other derisive and derogatory remarks having to do with African-Americans and also the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Subsequently, the press gave a lot of coverage to the settlement.

Certainly it was a historic settlement for racial discrimination, as you said, $176 million to 1,400 African-American domestic employees at Texaco. But one of the things I was never satisfied with was that the true story behind the lawsuit, Roberts v. Texaco, that had been filed in March of 1994, none of that was ever told. The true discrimination that went on in that workplace that led to the filing of Roberts v. Texaco was never discussed in any of the papers or any of the TV news shows or the radio interviews. At the end of that period in January of 1997, after the settlement was agreed upon and I had a little time to reflect, I thought, "Oh, my goodness, you know, there's a real story here. There's a real story of David vs. Goliath. There's a real story of victory." The fact that the suit was settled for the amount of money but also there was a real personal story of my challenge in even deciding to file the suit and the things that went on in my life. And I went to work every day after the suit was filed, which in and of itself was unusual. But the personal story of someone going through something like that, from an African-American, from a female perspective, had never been discussed. So I did some research and I said, "You know, Bari Ellen, you should write a book."

Bowen:     So from promising career to black jellybean stories, what a contrast. Who was the deep throat? Obviously, someone came forward disclosing the tapes.

Roberts:      Well, actually there was a deep throat all during the suit, all during the two and a half year legal battle that we were fighting Texaco, we were being provided with data. This was a class-action suit so all the anecdotal stories of name calling and those types of things would not have made a good suit. We actually had data from the payroll that showed that African-Americans were being paid anywhere from 10 - 50-percent less for the same jobs with the same education and the same work experience. We actually had data that showed that there was secret promotion lists and secret bonus lists that African-Americans certainly were not aware of or privy to or included in. So there was a deep throat providing us with that kind of data.

In August of 1996, a gentleman, a disgruntled employee, who was actually the Director of Human Resources in my department, came forth to my attorneys and turned over these tapes that he had been secretly recording. He had been secretly recording in meetings, that he captured the disparaging remarks and the name calling, etc.

Bowen:     How did you link with the other people in the organization who were being discriminated against?

Roberts:       Initially there was myself and one other guy who was in my department. We were both brought in from the outside, he came from a Wall Street firm, as well, and we started one day just comparing notes. I was getting excellent reviews and I was not getting any promotions, any opportunities, and whenever I would ask about, you know, what's my next move, having been used to being on the fast-track in my career, I was not getting any answers. And he and I one day at lunch, we just started comparing notes as to how our careers weren't going and then we decided to see if it was just us. And the more people we talked to, who had certainly been at Texaco longer or in lower job positions, the more information we got. And, you know, we said, "Boy there's a pattern here."

Bowen:     The discrimination at Texaco, what were your feelings about it

Roberts:     The issue for me at Texaco was the overtness, from the bottom to the top, of their intolerance. I remember very early on, the first week I was there, I was given my office and people came from all over the company, particularly white males, to see me sitting in my office. It was just such an anomaly. And they felt so empowered to make comments to me, to come into my office to make comments to me like, "Geez, I never thought I'd see the day a black woman would have an office in finance," or "Geez, you know, you must be an outside auditor. This couldn't possibly be your office." And I thought, "How strange. I mean, this is 1990. How obvious these people are." Things like that continued over the two years. I remember at another time, a gentleman came in and sat down, took a seat and sat down, and said to me, "You have my job and you're just here because of affirmative action. You're not qualified." And not even bothering to ask what my qualifications were or who I was, just a total affront.

Bowen:     How did you feel about that?

Roberts:     You know, I was angry, at him in particular. I was very angry because it was like you have to defend yourself. You have to explain to me why you are here and make me satisfied that you should be here instead of me. And I told him, "I'm not going to defend myself to you. If you have issues with me having this job or if you really feel that it's your job," and him not even recognizing that I was several levels above where he was, I said, "you should go talk to the people who hired me. You shouldn't be in here challenging me on this, Bill. You should go talk to the treasurer and the assistant treasurers and the senior people who hired me."

Bowen:      But what did you do with your anger? How did you deal with that?

Roberts:      One of the things I do when I'm angry is I search myself to find out where the anger is coming from. And what I did was, instead of me carrying the burden of explaining myself or trying to defend myself, I put the onus back on him. I never, ever try to act out of anger. I try to calm myself and center and see what buttons are being pushed. And really try to come from a very neutral position. I find that that works for me. If I'm trying to get reason out of a reasonable situation, I have to try to be as reasonable as possible.

Bowen:     And for you that's worked how?

Roberts:      On the whole, I think it has worked very effectively. I know, at one point during the suit when I had to be even more cautious than usual, I internalized a lot of it. And I talk about in the book how it didn't cost me physically. During the part of the suit when the stress got very high, I developed different physical elements that I had to deal with.

Bowen:     What about those that you were with who were involved in the suit, the 1,400 others?

Roberts:     One of the saddest parts of the book to me is when I really talk about how lonely it was going through this suit. How there was really no support from the African-Americans at Texaco once the suit was filed. I was ostracized. I was not to be seen with, talked to, having lunch with or in any way shown support. And even though the company didn't direct that, a lot of the other African-Americans were either in denial, they were apathetic or they were in fear of being associated with what I was trying to do there. So I talk about not being supported other than my attorneys and the other key player in the suit.

Bowen:     So what happened as the suit concluded? Was there a coming together at any point?

Roberts:     Oh, no. Absolutely not. It's really one of the saddest parts -- that even after the suit was settled (and on average, on average each African-American at Texaco received close to $70,000), there was still this fear that even though you won and even though we all are receiving this money, you are still an outsider and you are still a troublemaker. And so even in victory, some people still thought it was best, and I respected that's their choice, to stand away from me.

Bowen:     How did you deal with it and how are you dealing with it?

Roberts:      How I dealt with it was, one, by writing the book. The book was was such a catharsis. It really was and it gave me a chance to examine my behavior. It certainly gave me a chance to examine the company and its' lawyers? behavior. It gave me a chance to examine how other human beings react.

And I've come away with the belief that people react from three very strong emotions. One is denial. There are people who told me, "You are a troublemaker. Why are you stirring up all of this trouble? It's not that bad." The other emotion I found was apathy. There are people who told me, "That's just the way it is. That's the way it's always going to be and there's nothing we can do about it." And then there, the other emotion I think people act from is fear. And, "I'm scared. I don't want to risk my job if I'm associated with you. My boss is looking at me funny and I'm scared." So it's fear.

I think my answer to all of those, to those emotions for me, is to act from a sense of self-respect, you know, and I talk about that earlier on as something my grandmother gave me. She used to say, "If you don't have anything else at the end of the day, be able to look in the mirror and look at yourself and respect yourself and what you've done. And if you can't do that, then, you know, you've done something wrong."

I think the other place that I come from is belief, I mean, you know, is a true belief and a true optimist. An optimism that, if you're acting in integrity and if you're acting out of self-respect, that you will get, the world will be right. I don't know, it's an optimistic point of view that things really aren't as bad as they seem.

And finally, the third emotion I think counteracts those other three is courage. I mean, if there's going to be change, it starts with you. And that's what I felt when I filed the suit. I thought, "If this company is going to change, if they're going to live up to the things that they promised and the things that they said in their glossy brochure, then I'm going to have to have the courage to at least ask for it on my behalf and, if I'm at a high level, then all the other African-Americans, who are in lower grades, in lower positions, must be suffering from the same thing."

Bowen:     So how has this experience affected you?

Roberts:       It's certainly made me stronger. I think it's certainly, you know, it was very pivotal because, now, I definitely see the world a lot different. I definitely don't see a lot of shades of gray anymore. It's not quite like fearless because I'm not, you know, reckless. But certainly I'm willing to take on a lot bigger things in my life.

Certainly I'm willing to be more of a spokesman. I've been doing a lot of public speaking. And the college students and high school students are my favorite groups without a doubt because they ask really tough questions about corporate America or about the workplace.

Bowen:      How do you think the attitudes of other people have been affected, particularly at Texaco, now that the case is over?

Roberts:     I'm finding that things at Texaco, given the fact that there is an outside taskforce, part of our settlement called for an outside taskforce headed by Duvalle Patrick, the former U. S. Attorney in the Civil Rights Department, that Texaco is certainly undergoing a change. And they had to, I mean, there was no way that they could go through what they went through and not be changed. That certainly they've opened up their doors more to the community, I'm finding, in sponsoring events or in advertising. Some of their hiring practices definitely have changed and, you know, there's, what do I want to say, public, or at least in the company in terms of job searches and no more secret payrolls, those kinds of things, secret bonus plans.

I'm disappointed, it's only been a year and it's a five-year program, I'm disappointed that there has not been any movement in the upper management. Like to me, one of the measurements for me is when Texaco gets African-Americans in the upper executive offices, that they will really have begun to change because, just hiring people at the lower levels, that was never an issue. It was always at the executive levels, that management at the executive levels that, you know, as I said, there's a difference between a glass ceiling and a brick wall. And I thought that African-Americans were definitely up against a brick wall there.

Bowen:     As far as your counsel to college students and those that you speak to and particularly people who may be joining the workforce, what advice do you give them?

Roberts:      A lot of them ask me, especially the African-American students, should they go into corporate America? And I say, we belong everywhere. We belong everywhere in America. You have your skills, get your education, work hard and, yes, you should go. Because if that's where your skills and talents are and that's where your hopes and dreams lie, then go there.

Hopefully my case has not just touched Texaco and I know for a fact that it hasn't but that it has brought attention to this issue in all of corporate America. Companies took notice as to what went on there and are really trying to do something about it. The battleground of the 60's, whether you could eat at a counter, that's done. The battleground of whether you could ride in the front of the bus or the back of the bus, that's done. The battleground to me for the next millennia is the workplace.

Bowen:     As we look at some of the societal influences that are now impacting the workplace directly, the workplace is becoming a battleground on many fronts and in many different ways. What are some of the observations that you might make about the American workplace today?

Roberts:      Well first of all, I think it's more competitive than ever, as it should be.

Certainly you have the influence of a global economy where you're competing on a global level that my parents never had to think about and really until the last ten years, neither did I or people of my generation.

I think you then have the backlash against Affirmative Action where white males are saying, you know, "I'm being discriminated against." Like the gentleman that came in my office who said he was being discriminated against or he wasn't given a job because he felt that, you know, they had to give a job to a black woman. And then that's a whole other issue of gender discrimination or gender competition in the workplace.

So it's all very challenging but, heck, to me, part of life is dealing with the challenges. And, again, when I talk to students, I go, "Whatever package you're in, that's not going to change." It still should be, and that was my issue with Texaco, it should not be about the package that the person comes with. It should be about the skills. It should be about the education. It should be about the experience and it should be about the positive things that they bring to a work situation.

Bowen:     What advice would you give with respect to managing anger?

Roberts:     The advice that I give is don't come into a situation or don't try to expect to defuse a situation while you are angry.

I think one of the good things for me, when I was going through the Texaco suit was my family (even though they were in Cincinnati and I was up here on the east coast,). I called my father almost every night or he called me or my sisters or my brothers or friends outside, to give me some kind of support.

had my then teenage daughter who most of the time people are thinking would have been almost another issue because she was going through her teenage years. And, actually, she was a fabulous support for me. She was like, "Mom, you have to fight. Mom, you can't let them do this to you." So I think when you're dealing with anger, find other people to bounce the situation off of. Find other people to discuss it with. So that, when the African-Americans and also the white people at Texaco stopped speaking to me or stopped socializing or whatever, that I just wasn't totally out there alone.

Bowen:     Given the experiences that you had, do you see Texaco as being an aberration or does it speak to some sort of universality?

Roberts:     I don't think that Texaco's the only corporation that was guilty of what was uncovered in 1996. I think Texaco's a microcosm of society. I think any workplace is. And again in my travels and in my speaking, I have so many people that will come up to me at book signings and wherever I am to say, "Thank you for writing my story," or, "The same thing happened to me or my son or my husband." And so I am not na®ve enough to think that it's just Texaco.

Bowen:     So how do these practices affect the attitudes of minorities, with respect to the way they look at work, do you think?

Roberts:      I think anytime you have to go into an environment day-in and day-out and spend minimally eight hours a day and being challenged or being treated less than because of your skin color, that there is a toll on you emotionally and physically and economically. I mean, let's be real, one of the reasons we filed the suit was 10 to 50-percent less pay, that it can't help but to have an overall toll on any African-American going into a workplace be it corporate, institutional, public, or whatever.