There is an article today in the Washington Post here about The Meaning of Work for black men. The article concludes with the hope its subject, Chris, gets from a view out of a window to see beyond the neighborhood where he has spent his whole life:
He picked up the final box, carried it to a far wall and placed it under a window that happened to offer a breathtaking view to the south.
Down there to the right was Ward 3, where the unemployment rate was 1.5 percent.
And down there to the left was Ward 8, where the 16.3 unemployment rate no longer included Chris, who stood now at the window transfixed.
He’d never seen things from such a perspective.
In a moment, he would get back to work. He would move some filing cabinets. He would keep a job. He would learn how to love himself.
But right now, all he could do was stare.
“Damn,” he said.
A mobile phone in his pocket increasingly becomes a window beyond his circumstances for a man like Chris — and for individual people everywhere across the world. For now, weather, ball games scores and a few special features are the first views from this window. Soon there will be much more as mobiles begin to browse the Internet more and do so more thoroughly. Chris and billions more will “have the big world in my pocket” — seeing things for the first time from such a perspective. Damn cool!
