Michael Franks sat in his chair, deep in thought. A stocky, red-haired and green-eyed Caucasian male in his late twenties, he loosened his tie and sank comfortably in his chair, thinking about what Dr. Leonard Kingsbury revealed to him just hours ago. You're sterile Mr. Franks, the good doctor said in that neutral voice. Michael swallowed hard, nodded and then left the doctor's office. Calmly he walked to his car, and drove home. Just another day in the life of a young white man in North America.
In his high-rise condo in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Michael poured himself some wine and sat on the patio, feeling warm all over in spite of the frosty November wind outside. Michael looked at his apartment, filled with the trappings of success. His Carleton University bachelor's degree in business hung on the wall, along with his Law degree from the University of Toronto. Yeah, he was destined for success. That's what he'd been told time and again. Not bad for a poor guy from the Vanier sector of Ottawa, the son of poor British immigrants.
All his life Michael Franks had pushed himself to go further, to be the best, and now, it seemed, mother nature just handed him a checkmate. What's a lad to do when told by a doctor that he would never be able to reproduce? Michael shook his head, and swallowed the wipe. Without thinking he flung the empty glass at the wall, and watched it shatter. Rubbish, he said, then got up. His bare feet stepped on a shard, and he yelped in pain. He slipped, and almost went over the rail but caught himself at the last minute. Perfect end to a perfect day, he told himself as he went back into the living room. His bloody feet smeared red all over the pricy white carpet, imported from Camargue, France.
Michael cleaned up his wound in the washroom, and applied a bandage on his foot. Then he went back to the living room, and watched TV. They were giving a rerun of Star-Gate Atlantis on the Space Channel. Michael thought of what he'd done in the past few hours. He just got promoted as an account manager by the Dominion Securities Division of the Royal Bank of Canada. Not bad for a twenty-seven-year-old associate fresh out of university, eh? Michael shook his head. It's all for naught, he thought. What good was he? A good-looking, seemingly healthy and successful man who couldn't reproduce due to a tweak in his DNA. In the eyes of mother nature, he was an abject failure.
Michael went to work the next day, wishing the events of the previous day had been an unpleasant dream but knowing they weren't. Such is my fate, he thought. Walking through the crowded office like a zombie, he didn't notice a pair of eyes staring at him. Those eyes belonged to Yasmina Camara, a tall and lovely young black woman from Senegal whom Michael met a few months ago. Yasmina was only the fourth visible minority person hired by the Dominion Securities Division of RBC. The top branch of the largest bank in all of Canada wasn't exactly known for its commitment to diversity. Even in Toronto, Canada's largest and most racially diverse metropolis, discrimination was alive and well.
Yasmina Camara had been wide-eyed, optimistic and eager when Michael Franks had contacted her on behalf of the Human Resources Department and told her she was hired by the Dominion Securities Division of RBC. The young black woman had no way of knowing it but she was indeed lucky. Yasmina Camara's hiring had been preceded by that of Ahmed Hussein, a Somali-Canadian guy with an Algonquin College business degree, and Christina Suleiman, a Lebanese Christian woman with an accounting degree from York University. The very first visible minority person hired by the Division was Jerome Yamamoto, a Japanese immigrant with an MBA from the University of British Columbia. It was Michael Franks who suggested to his boss, Eric Carter, that they hire more visible minorities. This is Toronto if the staff is all white it doesn't look good, Michael said. Sounds good so you handle it, Carter had replied.
Michael Franks shook his head. How odd for him, the British-born immigrant to be the only non-racist person at the office. The Division Head Eric carter wasn't fond of visible minorities and didn't hide it, though at first glance the tall, middle-aged white male with the silver-specked reddish hair and distinguished good looks seemed affable enough. Michael knew that Carter had hired him mainly because of how he looked. He was a tall, good-looking and ginger-headed young white guy in his late twenties. When a man like Carter looked at Franks, he saw a younger version of himself. There were lots of qualified applicants, young men and women from Latino, African, Arabian, Caribbean and South Asian backgrounds with degrees from Toronto-area institutions like the University of Toronto, York University, Seneca College and many others. Yet these folks got passed over nine times out of ten in favor of white applicants because Eric Carter, the Head of the Dominion wanted to keep it as white as possible.
