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

Events that make a conflict more difficult are called

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.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.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.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.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.The players sat down together on the benches in the locker room. Jesse and Neto repeated the words they had heard and said it hurt too badly for them to play in the next game."Yeah, I've heard those things, too," said one player. "Sure it's terrible, but you can't quit! If you guys leave, it will destroy our team.""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.

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.Soon there was even worse news for Neto and Jesse. Most of the players who had voted not to play had suddenly changed their minds. Even the Hispanic players. They could barely look at Neto and Jesse as they explained that they loved football too much to give it up. In the end, only four players—Jesse, Neto, Rigo Delgudillo, and Johnny Garcia—were committed to staying off the field.The more Neto thought about it, the more determined he became. "I knew we were right," he recalls. "I didn't care what anybody else thought. And I also knew the team couldn't afford to lose me. If the school really wanted me, the fans had to stop saying those things. Only then would I play. Not until."

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?

Read the excerpt from It's Our World, Too!: Young People Who Are Making a Difference.Now Jesse Paz was proposing to take away the thing Neto loved most, to turn him into just another big kid at school and maybe even ruin his chance for a college scholarship, all because a few jerks had said things that turned Jesse off. Neto didn't answer for a while. Finally he said, "I've never heard anyone say those things, Jesse," and walked away.But Jesse's words stayed with Neto. What if it were true? Could he really perform before people who felt that way about him? Could he represent a school that would let it happen?