Successful Rebellious Professionals: The Black Woman's Professional Identity and Community Commitment

Using interview data from a larger career study of 25 black women who have achieved public recognition as workers for change in the black community, this paper explores the experiences of seven black professional women. The conflicts they confronted as black professionals, resolution of those conflicts, the special conditions of conflict resolution through rebellious professionalism, are explored, as well as the curious routes to success which place them in the position of role models to other human services professionals who are organizationally constrained from rebelling in such ways. The implications of these routes to professional success are explored in an effort to understand contemporary nationalism among black professionals and semi-professionals within the context of conflicts between dominant group organizational expectations and black community membership. The data suggest that particularistic commitments do not necessarily conflict with professional ideals if success is defined in terms of community achievements and positive evaluation by colleagues, rather than material rewards.