Vote on Desiree Davidson's Story
Were they afraid we were planning a coup d'etat?
I spent my first summer during Columbia Law School at a firm in Philadelphia described as one of the best places in the city for black lawyers. I believed that if there was any place where I would have an equal chance at opportunities, be treated fairly and succeed, this would be it. There were three black female summer associates out of sixty that year but any time all three of us were in an office talking, one of the partners would knock on the door to see how we were doing. It happened too often to be a coincidence that sometimes we would purposely agree to meet in so-and-so's office to test our theory that we were being monitored. Like clock work, ten minutes after we would get together a partner would stop by.
Recruiting
I worked in corporate Human Resources for a mid-sized company. I enjoyed the people I worked with, but didn't agree with a lot of the company's practices.
I was hired as a recruiter to bring in more Asian Americans but when I pushed for more resources to recruit in the Asian American community my boss said, "You're not behaving like the Japanese women at my church.
When I was finally in a position to hire other employees, the first two people I happened to hire were black.
I worked for a major health insurance provider when one of the Asian directors of a small research unit was hiring multiple Asian employees.
It's all about who you know. In one of our engineering groups, a lot of the managers came from one school.
When I interviewed at the DA's office, he asked me, "Shouldn't you be at home with your children?" Of course I didn't get the job.
I was pretty involved in recruiting and I would spend some time with senior people and hear their thoughts about recruits; it was fascinating to me. A lot of the time performance or background was never an issue.
It was expected for me to do some recruiting for MBAs of color. Early on I got credit for doing it and I put it on my evaluation. It was something that I enjoyed doing, so I never bothered to try to explain that I was really working on some of these things.
