Introduction to Making a Difference: It's Our World, Too! Answers

Which idea best indicates that one of the purposes of the author of It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference is to persuade?

includes mostly factsexpresses mainly opinionsaddresses several hopesgives specific details

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference."Look," Neto said, "if we don't take a stand now, those fans will say those things forever. Even after we graduate, they'll keep putting Hispanic players down. We have a chance to stop it now.Finally there was no more to say. The question came: "Who votes not to play the next game?" Every player raised his hand.That night, Neto, Jesse, and another teammate walked into the coach's office and handed him their uniforms and pads. They explained why they were leaving and expected him to understand, but they were disappointed. "The coach said, 'Quitting will just make it worse,'" Neto remembers. "He said the fans would call us losers and quitters instead of respecting us. Nothing could convince him. After a while we just walked out." Now there was no turning back.

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.Since that letter was read, there have been no more racial slurs from the Marsing Husky fans, at least none loud enough for the players to hear. Neto and Andy know that they and Jesse and Rigo and Johnny didn't do away with racial prejudice in their town. Many white parents still won't let their sons and daughters date Hispanics, and the two groups still don't mix much outside school. But they also know that they did what no one before them had done. "At least," says Neto, "we made it known that we wouldn't accept racism in our school or from our fans. We made a difference in the part of our lives that we really could control."

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.Neto decided to ask Andy Percifield for help. Percifield was the student council president, a tall, red-haired senior who always read the morning announcements over the P.A. system. Neto didn't know him, but people who did said Percifield was smart and fair. Maybe he would know what to do.Neto was waiting by Andy's locker the next morning. "He had tears in his eyes," Andy remembers. "He said that adult fans were swearing at the Mexican players and that it wasn't fair. He was really hurting. He said, 'Is there any way you can help?' I told him I'd try."

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.In his small Idaho school, football meant everything to Ernesto ("Neto”) Villareal, sixteen, the team’s star running back. And yet when he heard fans screaming racial insults at him and his Hispanic-American teammates, he wondered how he could keep playing for fans who felt that way. The insults also bothered Andy Percifield, a white student leader. When Neto and Andy teamed up, each using his own special power, fans began to feel heat they had never felt before.

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.The board was meeting that night. Baldy offered to pick Neto up and take him. Neto hesitated. He knew he had the courage to blast through tacklers and the toughness to work all day in the beet fields, but this seemed harder. When Jesse Paz said he'd go, Neto finally agreed.Baldy picked up Neto first, but when they got to Jesse's, Jesse was nowhere to be found. Now Neto had to choose: did he testify alone or forget it? "All right," Neto finally said, letting out a long breath. "We've gone this far. Let's finish it."

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.At halftime, as homecoming floats circled the field, Allison Gibbons, a member of the student council, entered the press box, stood before the microphone, and asked for everyone's attention. The crowd grew silent as she began to read the letter."I was watching the crowd while Allison read it," Andy said. "When she finished, there was silence, and then almost everyone stood up and cheered. All the students stood up. And the football players were all clapping. It was a wonderful feeling to know that we had people behind us."

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.When they entered the board's meeting room, Neto was terrified. They were alone with the ten white men who were the members of the Marsing school board. "I couldn't believe I was really doing this," Neto recalls. "Then I heard Baldy say, 'Neto wants to talk with you about the football team.'"So I just started. I told them I was quitting and why. I told them word-for-word what I had heard. Only one of them looked like he was really listening. When I was finished, they thanked me for coming, but they didn't say they would do anything about it. I went home thinking, Well, at least I tried. Now they can't say nobody told them."

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.At 10:30, students from all grades packed themselves into the lab. Andy stood up and reported what was happening, then read his letter aloud and asked for suggestions to improve it. There were a few. Then he asked for, and got, the students' unanimous approval to have it read at halftime.