As Rebecca Carroll watched the season premiere of Mad Men she was reminded of time when racial inequality was acceptable. Carroll believes that although advancements have been made, black women are still struggling for equality in corporate America. The Daily Beast reports:
When I was in high school, I had a secretarial job at a fuel company in a small town in New Hampshire. I had the usual duties—answering the phone, taking messages, filing receipts. The company was owned by a local family. One day, one of the sons, a grubby high-school dropout, trudged past me, walked into the bathroom, then came out and ordered me to clean it. When I said that wasn’t in my job description, he replied, his voice low and rotten, “You know, we give you people a chance to work.” Then he turned and mumbled, “But you’re all just lazy ni**ers.”
I recalled this experience when watching the season premiere of Mad Men, in which a slew of black women line up at Don Draper’s ad agency, responding to a classified ad. Flustered at the lobby full of black people, the ad men discuss how best to handle the situation. Maybe one of the women could be a secretary, they decide, but then conclude that they simply couldn’t put “one of them”—meaning a black woman—out front at the reception desk.
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