In fairness, I had two or three white bosses like that. They were all glad handers and self-promoters who had managed to get promoted way beyond their abilities. It always shocked me that the people in charge of promoting them did not see them for what they really were. A couple of them were downright crooked grifters. One who was really good at hoodwinking people and schmoozing customers became company president.
I had a couple of bad white bosses as well.
But—95% of the black hires fit the same pattern I described so we developed special procedures to “handle them”. What was interesting is that they didn’t mind people working around them since they had no clue what we were doing anyway and just wanted the pay check.
I had one black boss who would call me into his office now and then for a friendly chat. He knew he didn’t know what was happening and from time to time he would just the open ended question...”Is there anything I need to know about?”
I would smile and say “no”. We solved all the problems and he know we were doing it but it was a total mystery how we are doing it. It was all very friendly—I think he viewed us as in-house magicians.