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Yes, she saw that. She felt that we're lucky that we haven't. During World War II I used to say, “How are we going to come through this?” She would say, “We'll bungle through.”

To come back to stress in the workplace, I phrased that question just in the context of working black women. Have you observed any differentials in stress among working black men, depending on the type of workplace they're in, or the proportion of blacks?

Personally I haven't. I've done no study on this. My hypothesis would be that generally this too would be a matter of individual differences. Differences in terms of the ability to cope with race, and racial pressure generally, and the carryover from the ability of the individual to deal with American racism in general to the job. I think that I would expect that a black male who is anxious and insecure, or quasi-paranoid might be more stressed, and bring to the work situation the determinants of stress. On the other hand I can conceive of black males who have developed adaptive ways of coping with racism, and with certain kinds of personality qualities and characteristics going into the workplace and not denying racism, but not being interfered with, unless it's very flagrant. But even flagrant forms of racism in the workplace, I think, can be handled by individual blacks in terms of that individual's capacity to cope, and that individual's qualities, characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. Here I'm sounding like Mamie. We developed in our life together a curious combination of