"In My Next Life, I Want to be a Black Woman"

Number one on my list of things I never thought I would hear at work is: "In my next life, I want to be a black woman." But there it was. I was chatting with a fellow attorney who is quite senior to me and he, overwhelmed by my sparkling and witty conversation, told me that in his next life he wanted to be a black woman. In this life, he is a Korean-American man. He told me he would like to have sooooul, to be able to say "Chil'" (I did not say "Chil'") and "mmmmhmmm" with feeling and pizazz. I thought to myself that who he actually wanted to be was Nell Carter.

Such is life in the workplace. My fellow female attorneys, particularly those who are young, are often mistaken for secretaries, although one wears a full suit and prada shoes almost everyday. I received an email sent to the three black female attorneys in my department that started like this: "One of you worked with me on this deal, but I have forgotten who....Could you please identify yourself?" Someone pointed out to the sender how his email came across and he apologized profusely.

When I worked in a department with another black woman who was my age, people would constantly mix us up: asking me how my vacation had been when I had clearly been in the office everyday, insisting that I had the documents from a certain deal that she had been on, and once, her secretary called me with information meant for her. Life in the "real world" is sometimes a strange confluence of invisibility and total visibility that can only be described as inescapable otherness.