Dec 8, 2020
Desiree Adaway is no stranger to being the only black person in a room, or even in an entire community.
At 16, while skipping class, she saw an ad in the back of a magazine about exchange student programs and applied, signing her mother’s name on the application, the passport application, and all other necessary documents.
She was accepted into the program, but had to decline the invitation because she knew her mother couldn’t afford it. The program administrator found a sponsor, and Desiree started packing - before ever talking to her mother.
Desiree didn’t want to go to Germany. She felt a deep need to go, like she would suffocate if she didn’t go.
Arriving in Germany, she was placed with a host family in a tiny town where she was the only person with dark brown skin within more than a 500 mile radius. Her peers touched her skin and hair, stared at her, she felt like an animal at the zoo. And that was only the beginning.
Throughout school and career, she had many of these experiences, including being the only black person at board meetings, management team events. She lost track of the number of times strangers have reached out without hesitation, much less asking to touch her hair, her skin, one woman at a market hugged her as if she had no ownership of her own body. People have had an outrageous sense of entitlement to touch her. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you put this entitlement into the context of the history of the enslavement of dark skinned people, you might begin to understand.
This part of her story particularly resonated with me because of my experiences as a pregnant woman. Strangers would randomly reach out to touch my belly - and I know this is a common experience during pregnancy. It’s absurd.
Our conversation here is rich with experiences, stories to open eyes to the many different ways racism is experienced in a variety of environments.
The highlight for me was when I asked Desiree about a positive experience when a white person acknowledged racism, acknowledged the beauty of diversity as opposed to pretending to be “color blind.”
She said that her business partner, early in their relationship, pulled her aside and said these words:
One day my whiteness will betray me and I’m going to make a
mistake. What will we do to move through that?
The extraordinary thing about how Desiree told me this is that she
turned it around and applied that sentiment to herself. She
acknowledged that at some point she will fall into that trap as
well, potentially with gender identity issues and other parts of
humanity that she’s unfamiliar.
If we want to address inequity and racism, we must acknowledge it as it exists for those who experience it.
If you’re ready to take action as a human, you don’t have to make huge gestures. You must notice when micro-aggressions happen, and if you miss it and someone points it out to you, do not dismiss the concern. Ask about it, find out why it’s so insulting, demeaning, why the action or words are symbols of racism and bigotry.
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Desiree Adaway is a consultant, trainer, coach and speaker building resilient, equitable, and inclusive organizations. She holds a vision for people’s lives, workplaces and communities until they can hold it for themselves. Learn more by visiting her website, connect with her on LinkedIn, and be sure to follow her on your favorite social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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About Sarah:
In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve
their 
communication using storytelling as
the foundation of our work together. What I’ve realized over years
of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don’t
realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal
messages, and on the people they’re sharing them with.
My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home.
The audiobook, Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available!
Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana.