As a summer associate, I was assigned a partner-mentor and one afternoon, I sat in on a client conference call with her. We were discussing the various employees in the client's office and there was one person the client had avoided answering questions about. Finally, the client said, "Well, we just had to hire him. He's our little affirmative action hire. We don't really do much with him." Obviously the client could not tell that I was black over the phone. My partner-mentor was stunned but didn't say anything. I was obviously uncomfortable. After the meeting, my partner-mentor asked me, "How do you think I should have handled that?" What an odd question for a partner to ask a summer associate. The firm should have had a policy for how to deal with clients' racist comments.