UNBIAS

CHAPTER 10Belonging Makes an Impact

Have you ever been visiting a friend whose family spoke a language you didn't understand? Or maybe you misunderstood a wedding invitation and showed up in formal attire while everyone else was very casual. Perhaps it was as simple as being underdressed at a business event. Regardless of the circumstance, the reaction is the same. You feel out of place. In the examples of attire, your thoughts wander from deciding whether to leave to whether anyone really noticed.

In these examples of feeling out of place, the difference is that you can leave, or you can change clothes. The feeling doesn't last, and you're not left with the sense that something about you, which you cannot change, is flawed or wrong. This feeling of being an outsider makes an impact. But it's the exact opposite impact you want to make as a leader.

I spent much of my life wanting to belong, attempting to fit in and failing miserably at it.

• I was a Black girl in every all‐white school I attended in London. If I could count on one hand the number of Black children in the school (the entire school), that would have been a lot.
• I was an intelligent girl who read faster than everyone in class, completed her math problems before everyone in class, and so frustrated one of my teachers with my intelligence that he ripped a book I was reading out of my hands and threw it in the trash.
• I was the only Black girl on my block with no friends after my only friend was told by his mom that ...