Page 36 - How We Lead Matters

Imagine

Sometimes I engage in a simple mental game. My college minor in theater
helps me, but I believe it’s a game everyone can—and should—play once in
a while. You could call the game “Can You Imagine?”
The goal is to try to imagine how another person felt in a certain situ-
ation. It’s a step beyond empathy, really. It’s more like closing your eyes and
becoming that person—hearing what that person heard, feeling what he or
she felt.
Try it: Imagine that you are a 6 year-old girl, the year is 1960, you live
in racially segregated New Orleans, Louisiana—and you are black. Because
of a recent Supreme Court decision, you are going to your first day of school
at an all-white grade school. Your name is Ruby Bridges. Can you imagine
the terror that little Ruby felt walking into school between two rows of six-
foot armed federal marshals?
Here’s another: It’s 1955, and you’re a 37 year-old colored woman (in
the parlance of the day) heading home on the bus from your job as a seam-
stress in Montgomery, Alabama.
You know the bus laws in Montgomery: You must pay your fare to the
driver, get off, and re-board through the back door. You must sit in the back,
in the “colored section.” If the white section is full and another white pas-
senger gets on, you must give up your seat and move farther to the back.
On this day, you find a seat, but then the bus begins to fill up. Soon the
bus driver approaches and tells you to give up your seat to a white passenger.
You refuse. He says that if you don’t, he will have you arrested.
You reply: “You may go on and do so.” Can you imagine?

Marilyn Carlson Nelson 19