Is the Poem Let American Be America Again Left or Right Wing

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to exist.
Allow it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a dwelling where he himself is complimentary.

(America never was America to me.)

Permit America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

 - Langston Hughes, "Let America Be America Once more," 1936

American poet and writer Langston Hughes on the steps in front of his firm in Harlem, New York.

In moments of doubtfulness, we oft return to familiar touchstones. For me, 1 such ballast of comfort and clarity is the poetry of Langston Hughes, icon of the Harlem Renaissance.

During contempo weeks, I've constitute myself ruminating on Hughes's "Let America Be America Again," especially its amazing opening stanzas. In these 10 lines, Hughes evokes the power of the American promise, coupled with the hurting of indignity and inequality. He speaks to the complex mix of rage and hope, of anxiety and optimism, that characterizes the black experience in America—and that I would argue has characterized the experience of many Americans at some point, white, chocolate-brown, black, indigenous, and immigrant.

Over the by year, it has become clear that the noxious swill of rage and anxiety remains equally potent as e'er. Regardless of which side of the Usa election each of us was on, we all find ourselves living with a public discourse that has become increasingly draconian, contemptuous, and polarizing.

So, as nosotros launch ourselves into a new year, I find myself reflecting on where we go from here—how nosotros counterbalance anger and hopelessness with radical promise and optimism, and how we create, in Hughes's perfectly chosen words, "that bully strong land of love" and nobility for all.

2 reactions to our current moment

Hughes's poem captures a tension I've noticed in many of my daily interactions over the past several weeks, in all kinds of settings and amid all kinds of people, including myself: a tension betwixt a sense that our times are dangerously unprecedented and a sense that while unsafe, they are all besides familiar.

On the one hand, many of us experience that the earth has been turned upside down. To read the headlines is to see an unfamiliar mural in which several unsettling trends take converged. The proliferation of fake news and the prevalence of brazen falsehoods on air and online are undermining faith in bones facts. The burgeoning autonomous institutions that captured the imagination of Alexis de Tocqueville virtually 200 years ago—our civil society, our free press, our universities—are increasingly beleaguered and besieged. Rise hate voice communication and violence beyond the land has rightfully frightened many people. All this constitutes an assault on what we thought were well-established societal norms.

On the other paw, some of us look to history and recognize that our electric current moment is not without precedent. To me, ane clear parallel is America'south post-Reconstruction era in the South, when some Americans worked to roll back and repeal the hard-won voting rights and educational and economical opportunities that brought freedom and nobility to the lives of and then many of their fellow citizens.

Indeed, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all kinds of othering are non new. Identity politics has ever been a part of American life. Our founding fathers codification identity politics into our earliest documents, valuing the voices and contributions of white men above all others: Women were denied the right to vote; enslaved African Americans counted as 3-fifths of a person; indigenous peoples were exploited and marginalized. And throughout our history, waves of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere were initially met with suspicion and often discrimination. It's important to retrieve that over the course of our long, messy march toward justice, women and men—not only our predecessors, but we, the people, of every generation—have endured prejudice and persecution. We have seen it with our own eyes, and lived information technology in our own lives.

I'll never forget coming of age as a gay man in the 1980s—watching AIDS ravage our customs as politicians stayed silent. I'll never forget the brutality of apartheid, and how our own American government condemned Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and the other freedom fighters seeking to end that unconscionable regime. I'll never forget watching as the marches and protests unfolded in Ferguson in August 2014, or continuing with John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge a few months later, nonplussed as he recounted the bloody Dominicus in Selma l years earlier.

America's rich and inspiring history has taught us that progress is not linear. Equally the dazzling Zadie Smith recently wrote, "Progress is never permanent, volition always exist threatened, must be redoubled, restated, and reimagined if it is to survive." So while these twin reactions—the sense that our moment is either unprecedented or has articulate precedent—may seem at odds, they really reaffirm a deeper agreement of the persistence of injustice in our world. They also remind us of the forcefulness nosotros must continue to notice within ourselves to persevere and fight for our democratic institutions and ideals.

Against divisions, affirming dignity

Over the past three years, I've written well-nigh the ways inequality creates and exacerbates divisions. These include divisions of grade, race, gender, identity, and ability, as well as differences in how we brand sense of injustice in our lives.

In that location is no better illustration of this last category than the political binary of an election year, when our two-party system induces united states to spend months defining our collective future in terms of us versus them, this stark choice versus that 1. This rhetoric reinforces the notion of zero-sum outcomes, and encourages us to believe that the gains of one happen at the expense of another.

We must resist this impulse. It is easy to lose sight of what we have in common, but the fact is that all of us share a central man aspiration: to live in dignity. This is truthful no affair what we await like, where nosotros live, how we worship, who we love, or what our abilities are. Whether past holding a decent-paying task, having bureau in the decisions that bear on us, or freely expressing our thoughts and creativity, we spend our lives in pursuit of nobility for ourselves and our families. Recognizing this universal quest for dignity is a prerequisite for whatever meaningful work toward social justice.

I am not suggesting that dignity is guaranteed. There are people and systems that seek to rob people of their innate dignity. They accelerate narratives that pit communities against one some other—that allow some to falsely merits that the only way to ensure dignity for yourself is to strip it from others.

Of course, the dignity of i person does not preclude that of another. We tin can lift a poor Latina out of poverty and save a rural white man's factory chore. We tin fight to protect blackness lives and the lives of the law enforcement officers who protect us. Nosotros tin hold up a beacon of light for the "storm-tost" refugees who seek safety and opportunity on our shores, and experience safe and secure in our neighborhoods and gathering places.

I'1000 non simply saying that we can practice all these things; I'm saying we must.

Our electric current context demands that nosotros question our assumptions and expand our understanding of who is vulnerable and excluded. If inequality fuels the fault lines of division, then our shared pursuit of nobility must help bridge the gaps. To borrow a phrase from the brilliant artist Lilla Watson, our liberation is leap upwardly together.

The path forwards:"America volition be!"

It might be tempting to ignore or abandon the mutual obligation that ties us together, to embrace a kind of nihilism of indifference or, worse, to retreat into anxiety or rage. Merely we can choose a better path forward. With history as our guide, we tin can follow a path of promise—radical hope.

For Langston Hughes, born in 1902, the gap between America'south promise and its practices was wide. The slap-up-grandchild of slaves on ane side and slaveholders on the other—the child of educators and organizers—Hughes lived a life that demonstrated that the overwhelming fact of injustice does non obviate or relieve in whatsoever style our responsibleness to deed against it. He showed that a person tin simultaneously feel righteous anger about the world and radical optimism for it. We must assert the creed to which he gave voice, that the work of creating the America we envision requires optimism and resolve.

"America never was America to me," Hughes wrote in the penultimate stanza of his masterpiece. "And yet I swear this oath—America will be!"

For as much progress equally nosotros accept fabricated, America has notwithstanding to fully live upwardly to its promise and founding aspiration to exist a nation of liberty, nobility, and justice for all. Yet this noble vision remains as profound equally ever.

At the Ford Foundation, our commitment to achieving this vision will non change. Nosotros resolve to keep fostering a fairer, more than simply America and globe. We remain steadfast and unyielding in our support of the institutions and leaders fighting injustice and addressing inequality of every kind and category. And we are grateful for your leadership—and partnership—during the critical months and years ahead.

With appreciation and unbridled promise,

Darren

cochrannortrinter.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.fordfoundation.org/news-and-stories/stories/posts/let-america-be-america-again-a-new-year-s-reflection/

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