Leadership Quote by Major Owens

Owens frames the laptop not as a luxury good, but as a civic instrument, the kind of everyday infrastructure that quietly determines who gets to participate and who gets left behind. His diction is deliberately practical: “tools,” “help,” “program,” “provides.” That plainness is the point. He’s arguing that the digital divide isn’t a cultural failing of poor communities; it’s a policy-made absence of equipment, access, and institutional will.

The real sting lands in his aside: “most of us are not aware of, or will not admit to.” That’s a political accusation delivered as a mild observation. Owens is calling out a comfortable majority that benefits from the invisibility of deprivation. If you have always had devices at home, school, and work, you can treat technology as optional, even “distracting.” If you don’t, it becomes the gatekeeper to homework, job applications, government services, and basic literacy in the modern economy. The gap is “tremendous” not because poor students are inherently behind, but because society has normalized a two-tier system of opportunity.

Context matters: Owens, a longtime public servant associated with urban policy and education equity, is speaking from an era when laptops were rapidly becoming the default interface for learning and employment. His push anticipates today’s pandemic-era revelations: when school goes online, device access stops being an abstract fairness issue and becomes attendance itself. The intent is strategic: make the invisible visible, then make it fundable.