Kimberly L. Bailey had a few butterflies, but the light conversation that the smiling woman made as she escorted her to the conference room made her feel a little less nervous. By the time the twentysomething Bailey sat facing the panel of three a White man, a White woman and a Black woman--she was ready for her interview with the large, highly regarded insurance company. What she didn't expect, however, was the icy reception she got from the sister.

"The two Whites were very pleasant, smiled as we talked, and looked at me," says Bailey, now a pension-program representative for the California State Teachers' Retirement System in Sacramento. "But the Black woman never smiled, only looked at me once, and read from a paper any questions she had for me. She was never rude or disrespectful, but it was almost as if she were intentionally trying not to connect with me. I was told she would be my immediate supervisor if I were hired. I didn't get the job. I thought I had interviewed well, and I know I was qualified, but I remember walking away from the interview wondering if the Black woman was jealous or insecure and just didn't want to work with me. I've never forgotten that experience."

Bailey's experience is one that's often repeated, not only in conference rooms across America but also in dorm rooms and classrooms. As far back as childhood, most of us have known sister-haters, or have done our own share of hating. Whether it was that girl in high school with the long hair and the big legs who got all the attention, or the trophy diva who snagged the great catch, or the sister with the M.B.A. who landed a job that put her in the six-figure league, women who seem to have more or to have it better--better education, better man, better looks, better opportunities--have always been targets of our collective jealousies and resentments. But now that we're settling in the corporate workplace in greater numbers than ever before, we have a new stage on which to play out our dramas. There the stakes are even higher because the rewards can be so lucrative, involving as they do money, privilege and perks. To get ahead, we're acting out with behaviors such as not speaking, withholding promotions or information, backstabbing and finger-pointing.

That kind of behavior isn't surprising when it comes from Whites--in fact, we almost expect it. Think bullied girl Stacie J. from The Apprentice. But when Black women in a predominantly White environment dish it out to one another, we're surprised and doubly hurt. We expect, maybe unrealistically, that because we have the common bond of race and gender, we will automatically have each other's back.

"We've moved away from the mythology of Black women's supporting one another at work because we're now in these corporate environments where it's much more competitive and individualistic," says ESSENCE career columnist Ella Edmondson Bell, an associate professor of business in the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. "There is literally room for only one [Black female] at the top, and we've all gotten caught up in deciding that 'I'm going to be that one.'" Companies may talk about teamwork, says Bell, but the reality is that it's the individual who gets ahead, sometimes at the expense of other individuals she is working with.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE WORKPLACE

Given that we spend a huge chunk of our waking lives at work, it's no wonder the office becomes an arena for some of our most intense personal dramas. "There are so few places where Black women feel affirmed and supported," says Bell. "We're competing for men and for the job, and we often feel unloved and alone. And when you're feeling alienated and wounded, guess what? You may go after that sister on the job who looks better than you, who's got that man or that professional title." That animus can be directed toward peers, superiors or subordinates.

Take the case of Frances Ruffin, a copywriter who was working at a small publishing company in the Northeast that had merged with a larger one. "I was very supportive of a Black female manager in the company who was worried about losing her job with the merger," Ruffin says. "As a result of the company's downsizing, I had revised a brochure that this woman took with her to a sales meeting. She made a point of phoning me from the meeting to say the sales staff hated it. This turned out to be a lie. I later learned that the staff actually loved it, and soon realized that this manager often gave me misinformation about things and lied a lot." That kind of behavior, whether caused by insecurity over their own positions or feeling threatened by another sister's skills, is increasingly showing up among Black women in the workplace.

"My Black female boss did less to promote me than any of the White bosses I ever worked with," says Tracy Samms (not her real name), a producer at a national radio news station. "She [the boss] was a senior producer who came up the hard way, when there were few Blacks in the newsroom. She didn't want anyone to think she was giving me special privileges because we were both Black. The thing is, once I got out from under her I was promoted twice in one year by a White woman who had no fear of giving me an opportunity."

At the heart of that fear are the psychic wounds of race and history, explains Joy DeGruy-Leary, Ph.D., an assistant professor of social work at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. "We have been conditioned to see each other as a threat--it's part of our being socialized in a racist society," she says. "There's this feeling that there can only be one or two of us in these corporate positions, so we're not collectively unified. As a Black woman, you always have the fear that you can be replaced by another Black woman--and the other woman may have better skills or a better education." Add to this vulnerability all our issues around being women in general--How well liked am I? How well dressed? Do I have a man? Is my house big enough?--and we have the potential for explosive conflicts between Black women at work.

Sometimes the sister-hating at work is more subtle and indirect, but painful nonetheless. Some women will simply go out of their way to avoid being seen in the company of other Black women. "They view associating with other Blacks as a liability," contends Ruffin, who remembers working with a senior Black woman at a large publishing company who actually refused her invitation to lunch by saying, "Let's not be seen together." "I was shocked," says Ruffin. "I thought, If Whites can be friends at work and help each other out, why can't Blacks?" Samms argues that it's "Black people who have a problem with nepotism in the workplace. Whites don't. We're so afraid of losing these positions that we operate from a place of fear and not from a place of power."

THE NEW BIG HOUSE

DeGruy-Leary, who lectures often on post-traumatic slave syndrome, the phrase used to explain how much of today's dysfunctional Black behavior is rooted in the trauma of slavery, equates the sister-hating done by some Black women in the corporate arena to that of an antebellum overseer on the plantation, "One of the ways many Blacks in the workplace think they will be accepted by the boss--by Whites is to act like an overseer," DeGruy-Leary contends. "They want Whites to think they're part of the team, so they don't associate with other Blacks. They believe it's a negative and could run counter to moving up. And by not associating, they think they'll be the favored one among White folks."

In some ways the American corporation is the new big house, where "good life" job perks like expense accounts, first-class travel, stock options, year-end bonuses and six-figure incomes have resulted in crabs-in-the-barrel competition among corporate Blacks. And while some favoritism and butt-kissing probably goes on in pink- and blue-collar jobs, advancement in the corporate sector seems to indeed turn on a more complicated axis of interpersonal relationships, which, DeGruy-Leary argues, Black folks don't always understand. "One of our biggest problems is that we take everything personally," she says. "It's not personal for Whites. They'll cut your throat, and then want to play a round of golf with you. They don't understand why we get so upset. But we go into these jobs looking for friends, and feel hurt and betrayed when the person creating difficulties for us at work looks like us"--namely, another Black woman.