If I'm a kid growing up in certain areas of South Central Los Angeles, the world isn't inclined to accord me much significance.  I'm typically treated as not much more than a throw-away person in a throw-away place.

I can study a little harder and work a little harder and maybe do a little better than most of the other folks around me, but unless I have some extraordinary talent, there are limitations to how far a product of deficient schools in an environment of limited job prospects can go. As long as I remain in South Central, I'm not likely to amount to all that much in anybody's eyes--including my own.

What's important to recognize is that this is primarily because my frame of reference is no longer just the people immediately around me. 

My world isn't some little village in a distant land anymore, or some small town in the rural South.  My world, and my primary frame of reference, are what's on the other side of that screen I'm always watching.

How can I matter there?

Well, if I could find a way to move up and out of this bleak place where I now live--get to someplace that at least looks like the world on the other side of the screen--then I could feel like I was part of the bigger world, and be part of the way there.  A couple of people knowing me, a little courtesy from the store clerks, a stray "Sir" here and there, and I could begin to feel pretty okay about myself.

Then again, if I had feathers and a bill and webbed feet, I could be a duck--but I don't, so I'm not.

What can I do to "be somebody" without leaving this place?

The answer turns out to actually be fairly simple.  All it takes is a little guts, a little willingness to fight, and a little readiness to gamble the life that everybody tells me is inconsequential anyway, for the chance to at least temporarily be someone who people have to take notice of and seriously deal with:   a gangbanger.