What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like A Raisin in the Sun?
Or fester like a sore and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over, like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
– Langston Hughes, 1951
Now
as the streets fill with protesters
In cities
across this country,
In cities
around the world
Now
as peaceful protests by day
turn violent as they pass
into night
As gunshots are fired and
pepper is sprayed
among innocent crowds,
As rubber bullets stray
through the masses,
And tear gas canisters
Explode
at the bases
of their feet.
Now
like a call and response
across seven decades of time
Perhaps Now the answer
to Langston’s prophetic question
is finally being revealed.
To say that Langston Hughes was a gifted writer would be a gross understatement. One of the truly great American poets of our time, Langston had the gift of fusing poetry and music.
As a young poet, in the early 20’s, he spent his days studying at Columbia University; his nights in Harlem, at the burgeoning music clubs that were emerging as jazz came into being. And in those years, the music literally infused his poetry, informing its rhythm and cadence in countless, unknowable ways.
Writing was like an instrument to him, which he played so beautifully and so clearly. He had the gift of great poets, of being able to say something without saying it. He asks, “What happens to a dream deferred?” In between the lines, a hidden question silently asks, “what has deferred the dream?”
The beauty of poetry is that, like any great art form, it leaves room for interpretation, allows the receiver to participate in the creative process. A single poem can have many levels of meaning. And indeed, the greatest poems always do. To me, this poem about a dream is also a poem about decades and centuries of prejudice and discrimination and certainly much, much more.
It’s a poem about racism, about oppression — about the fundamental will to oppress–to have power over another human being. That fundamental will is the basis, the foundation of inequality itself.
And even the very title of the poem had multiple meanings. Was this poem simply about Langston’s own dream that had been deferred? Of course not. Was this dream also about the black community’s dream? How an entire race’s dream had been deferred? Absolutely.
But I believe that there was even more to Hughes’ vision. I believe that he saw further. His vision traveled not just along, but beyond the arc of justice.
I believe that Langston’s poem is also about America’s dream.
Not the dream we are living right now. Not the dream that we have lived as a country, but the dream, the promise of a dream much greater. After all, Hughes 25 years earlier had bookended his poem, “I, Too” with “I, too, sing America….I, too, am America.” I believe that Hughes envisioned the true American dream, which was a dream not deferred for any of us. It was a dream with the potential to be realized for all of us.
Just as Black Lives Matter, Black dreams matter.
They are an integral part of the American Dream, of the collective tapestry of our nation.
And Hughes understood the true vision of that word. Not some watered-down version, but the true Dream of Democracy: one with actual liberty, true equality. A vision of a world where no human’s dream is deferred. His was not some hollow self-serving vision, it was a dream, a hope, a promise that belonged to all of us.
And I also read this poem, this portrait of a dream deferred as analagous to the carrying of a wound. A wound carried for lifetimes, for generations. It’s as if there’s a splinter inside that digs at you, gnaws at you. Like Hughes says, one that “festers like a sore and then runs.” And, like a wound, before scarring and hardening, it “crusts and sugars over like a syrupy sweet.”
That wound, that splinter, is the racism embedded in the fabric of our country—in our country’s history, going back to its very founding roots.
We are a country founded on unequal and opposing forces traced back to the Declaration of Independence itself, traced back to the roots of the dream. And if you dig in there, you’ll find a very deep story of opposing forces.
For some, this was the dream of a new nation, a nation based on tolerance, on equality, on creating a country in which one could have a dream, where every human had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of their dream. But that was only half the story.
The other half was motivated by profit based on a business model of free labor, of enslavement. This vision was held by the crop holders of the land, the promise of a new country of nearly unbounded riches; one where they could make more money than they’d ever dreamed possible; the ability to have more than they ever had before; the very root motive of the instinct of avarice, of greed.
What makes this country unique with all its faults and shortcomings is that all of those people — the delegates for each of those divided states, arrived in Philadelphia and hashed out all of these things, and somehow managed to temporarily balance those unequal and opposing forces.
244 years ago today, that group of representatives signed their respective names to the Declaration of Independence….That was to become the basis for our country.
Fast forward to the present — the greed, the profiteering, the fundamental racism didn’t just disappear when the Declaration was signed. The prejudice, oppression (explicit and implicit), intolerance, even hate is woven like insidious threads through the fabric and tapestry of our entire history, woven into our American flag.
And Langston foresaw it all; he felt this splinter of racism, saw it was indeed a wound; a wound that would fester, infect, and ultimately explode.
I believe that we are at a very critical juncture in the evolution or devolution of our country’s history.
This wound is raw; it’s been opened and the splinter is emerging. There are two diametrically opposing forces at play right now. One carries forward the golden thread of Langston Hughes’ poetry, his spirit, his dream deferred; the theme of inevitability woven through all of his poetry; that actually says, “the sun’s gonna shine through my back door, one day”… The light that strives to realize that dream.
The other, opposing force, would have you believe that the splinter is not racism, the wound is not prejudice. Forces of greed and avarice held by many of the greatest positions of power in our country will try to convince you that the black people in our country, the African Americans themselves are that splinter or that wound. These forces are trying to drive that splinter back into our body — our country’s collective body — as deep as they possibly can, so they can continue to reap the advantages they have sown for themselves for so many years, decades, and centuries of generations.
Where does that leave us? We are at a critical point where we have an opportunity to work this splinter out, to heal the centuries’-old wound. It’s not a simple task. I was happily buoyed by the words of Jean Baptist, when he was interviewed recently, talking about the hope that exists in all of this — the power of possibility that as this wound reopens, we are on the precipice of something great and have the potential for healing — the power to reconcile; the possibility that all of us can come together to see the way forward, to heal this collective body that we inhabit right now more than at any time in the history of this democracy.
In keeping with the spirit of Hughes’ vision that calls us — compels us — to action, I believe we have a responsibility to speak up, to write, to reach out, to do whatever we can, large or small.
Some say that we must address from the top down; we must change the policies themselves, the structures, systems, and laws that dictate who are the haves and have nots. Others say it must be a grassroots endeavor, mobilization and organization of the people — a groundswell from the bottom up. A taking to the streets.
I believe that it is all of these actions simultaneously. We must do all of it, everything at once. It will not be easy, but we must move, change, mobilize everyone and everything that we can in order to move towards the light of truth, freedom, purpose, equality; towards the light of the dream that Langston spoke of so clearly.
After all, the question that Langston posed was not “what happens to a dream destroyed?” We must bring this train to destination, we must heal this wound as uncomfortable as that process will be.
Do not be fooled. The forces of darkness are mobilizing to do everything in their power to dispel, disperse, and undermine our voices.
We can’t wait another month, another day, another second.
Like a call and response,
A plea
across seven decades,
The time
to act
is Now.
