The sponsorship function of mentoring has vast potential to increase career advancement for African American protégés in cross-race mentoring relationships but is not well understood. We conceptualize the processes, practices, and challenges involved in cross-race sponsorship of African American protégés through an identity perspective. We provide a theory regarding how identity processes are involved at different stages of cross-race sponsorship involving African American protégés, as well as for their mentors, by drawing on identity, diversity, and mentoring research. This work is suggestive of opportunities for improvement in the sponsorship function of mentoring in order to increase career advancement for African American protégés and provides theoretical contributions to research on identity, diversity, and career advancement.

辅导的赞助功能在跨种族的辅导关系中具有极大的潜力，可以提高非裔美国人门生的职业发展，但人们对此知之甚少。我们通过身份角度概念化非裔美国人跨种族赞助的流程，做法和挑战。通过提供身份，多样性和指导研究，我们提供了一种理论，涉及如何在跨种族赞助的不同阶段涉及身份过程，涉及非裔美国门生及其指导者。这项工作为改善导师的赞助职能提供了机会，以增加非裔美国人门生的职业发展，并为身份，多样性和职业发展的研究提供理论上的贡献。