Village of 100 People

I watched this video for the cultural diversity and special populations class I am taking right now.

The class has been talking about the perspective it offers them of the world - I am interested to know what anybody in the WP community has to say about it!

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The other day a woman from down the street came into my friend's yard where her sons and their friends were playing. The woman asked if one of the neighbor boys was mine, or my friend's. We both said no. She approached us and told us that the day before he walked up to her with a dollar bill in his hands, crinkling it, asking, "How much?"

She went on to tell the boy the importance of talking to women in the right way, the extreme hurt such a comment can cause a woman to hear...especially if that woman, like she was, had experienced prostitution - she told him that many women do not choose that and he will never know where those in that position have come from, what their story is, if they were being forced, if they were doing it to feed their kids...

Cody's eyes filled with tears while she spoken to him and when she was done he asked if he may say something. I noticed his hands shaking as he was about to speak for himself and I felt empathy for him. I think of how I used to often feel when I was about to speak for myself: my heart would beat so fast, my knees gave out, and my hands shook.

He was apologetic, she hugged him before she walked away, and I told Cody he was lucky for having her come over to explain the lesson to him, this way he knew to never say that to a woman again, and not only not to say it, but WHY. As the woman spoke I could hear trembling in her voice while she briefly told just a glimpse of her own story.

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"You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indespensable to the world...The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it." James Baldwin.