I Saw The Future Today

We’re all going to be okay. The student in the picture made it possible. Not in a hopey changey kind of way, but stone cold real.

Here’s the issue: At a high school in South Africa, African woman are told their hair is untidy. It’s clear to me now that “WTF” was coined many years ago just for this very story.

And when the school officials at Pretoria Girls High required female students to braid their hair, a beautiful thing happened. They didn’t braid their hair, and instead showed us what unity looks like.

Trying to unify a group of people isn’t easy. As a faculty union senator at a community college, I led a campaign to organize 300 adjunct instructors. Only 135 joined. But at Pretoria Girls High, the entire campus of teenagers joined in.

Our future leaders know that when one stands, many follow.