Blindsided: Essays from the Only Black Woman in the Room

We strive for authenticity, but expediency often demands we suppress our true feelings.

Dawn Downey struggles to find her genuine self, as she navigates her white surroundings. She wages an internal war, her intuition recognizing bigotry and her intellect wanting-needing-to deny it. At the end of any given day, she is angry. She is weary. She despairs.

“You get to hopeless by sinking,” she tells us.

“I sank through dreamlike images of shackles, chains, branding irons, whips, ropes, nightsticks...