Social Change

Sitting in LaGuardia Airport, I was hit by two stirring feelings to step up and change the world. The feelings were triggered by a public-service-type commercial on CNN at the gate area.

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The scene: a nice restaurant, diners dressed in business clothing. One diner, a middle-aged white male, speaks up to get the attention of a waiter or busperson. Enter twenty-something Hispanic male speaking English with a thick latin accent: "Yessir, can I help you?" The diner complains that he had requested whole wheat bread, and the bread on his table was not whole wheat. The busboy takes the basket away and comes back with a new basket as the camera cuts to other tables of diners continuing their meals without flinching.

Apparently the new breadbasket is still not whole wheat, and the man raises his voice irritatedly, "Excuse me, I said whole wheat! Wheato!" The white female hostess quickly brings a basket of whole wheat and quietly apologizes. By this time several other diners have turned their heads at the noise, and the man grumbles something under his breath. After a brief pause with the entire restaurant hanging, a white man across the room calls out the first man, firmly telling him that he is wrong. Another pause as the screen cuts to black, with a voiceover and text along the lines of "Look at the power of one voice."

I was left with a strange feeling of disgust for the rude diner and of admiration for the man who spoke up. The commercial really made me ponder what I would do in that situation: would I have the balls to say something? I hope that I would.

Rob certainly would have said something in that situation. He has acted in like manner before. I reflected back to one day ago, sitting at dinner with him and others, hearing him talk about the plan he and his co-teacher made for their classroom.

Rob is part of Teach For America, and today he begins teaching a fourth-grade class in Harlem. He and his co-teacher are calling their class "The Academy." The students' groups, rather than getting names like Yellow Table and Blue Table, will have names like Harvard and Yale. Fourth graders! When addressing the students, they will use language like, "Now pay close attention, because you'll use this all the time when you're in college." When they're in college, not if they go to college. That idea struck me: so simple yet so powerful, why hadn't others thought of it before? Don't give the kids hope that they'll go to college; start them early with the expectation that they'll be there.