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.
Unbelievable
A mutual contact set up a client meeting....at a strip club!
Once I was at a trade show conference in Las Vegas with a senior vice president. About 20 of us were sitting around a dinner and the senior vice president said, "I got an idea, let's go around the table and see which woman can best fake an orgasm.
During business trips my boss would always ask for the room right next to mine. He would knock on the adjoining door and slip me notes asking where I was.
We found out that our company offered pet health insurance, including unusual pets like pigs, rats and snakes but they didn't offer same sex domestic partner benefits.
I joined a tech company as a marketing director and of the 4,000 employees at a similar level as mine, I can't recall another African-American female but I do recall this woman who couldn't stop slapping me in the butt.
I was working as in-house counsel in a small investment company in which the President of the company also owned a small stock brokerage firm. Apparently, years before I was hired the President and his "business partner" used the broker-dealer subsidiary to artificially inflate the stock prices of companies in which they had invested.
In one of my first jobs as an accountant, I was the only black woman in accounting. It was during an office celebration for a holiday or something that one of the vice presidents started telling a story about a taxi ride.
I put in my notice when I was going to move and I groomed a white man for two months to take my job. They split my job in two and gave him $20,000 more than what I was making. But he wouldn't take the job.
When I finally got hired, I had to meet with the administrator and the first thing she said was, "I hear that you don't wear dresses." And I said, "Is there a problem with that? Is there some sort of dress code?" And I looked around and all of the other women there were wearing slacks.
I was making a presentation in Northern Colorado. Driving into town they told me that they had just taken down the sign that said, "No Dogs and Blacks After Dark." This was 1995. I thought, "Wow! This is strange." Before I got there, they had faxed my bio ahead of time so they could make an introduction.
