Donna James felt triumphant. She had recently been promoted to senior vice president at Nationwide, an insurance and financial-services company in Columbus, Ohio, where she had started years ago as an accountant. But then a white male colleague burst her bubble. "You know, Donna," he said, "the jury is still out on whether you are where you are because you have talent or because you are female and black." James was stunned into silence, not because she had never beheld such a stereotype in the workplace but because no one had ever voiced it to her face. Her colleague explained he meant no harm. "He was trying to help me, and in his own way, he did," she says. "It was a blast of reality." James, now 48, answered in time-by rising to division president.
展开▼
