Let's do it together

A friend of mine once wrote, “Very occasionally, something comes along that makes you see the world with new eyes.” He was talking about an essay he had read that shifted the way he saw things, a perspective change that was impossible to undo.

I’ve been lucky enough to have two major perspective changes in my life, regarding the country where I was born. The first was spending six years living in other countries. You will never see your culture—both the good and the gross—as clearly as when you spend an extended period of time standing apart from it and are confronted with other ways of doing things.

The second was listening to the podcast series Scene on Radio.

Scene on Radio started as a production from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The series is helmed by John Biewen, whose voice I have spent so many hours listening to he is now as familiar as an old friend. Likewise, Chenjerai Kumanyika, who often joins as cohost, is a compatriot in sorting out difficult things. With these two as guides, the podcast strives to shed light in dark places.

The first series of theirs that I listened to was Seeing White, on racism and white supremacy in the US. It was so rich with detail I listened to it three times through, in order to absorb it all. The series came out in 2017. While there are many resources available on the topic now, I still find myself reviewing it once a year or so.

The series I’ve been thinking about recently, however, is Season Four: The Land that has Never Been Yet. (The title is a line from a poem by Langston Hughes).

I’ve been thinking about it because it reveals so much about who the US is as a country and how we find ourselves in this particular moment in time. And while not all my readers here are from the States, we are all affected by the outsized influence of the country’s politics, culture, and consumption.

I’ve been thinking about what I might be able to contribute to this moment, when things that have felt stable are less so and dangers loom. Though, depending on who you are, dangers have always been looming.

I keep coming back to these podcasts, which do such a good job of unlocking the past and giving context to the present; I wish everyone could listen to them.

So, let’s do it—together. Let’s unpack the past with a discerning lens. We can’t figure out how to solve today’s problems, much less plan or hope for a productive future, without a clear view of how we got here.

I’ll be back next week with a summary of the first episode: Rich Man’s Revolt. You can listen on your own and come here to think/talk about it. If you are more of a reader than a listener, there is a transcript available. I know I am not the only person who has found this series to be paradigm shifting, who has been left feeling like I am seeing the world with much clearer eyes.

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Since the election in 2016, I’ve been hearing Americans say: This is not who we are. But, actually, if we go back to the beginning, we might find something else entirely. Preferencing wealth over democracy is nothing new on these shores.

Doing something productive feels important right now, being in community feels important. Maybe this can be our summer learning program, the one that leaves us all seeing things differently.

If you have teens in your life, this would be a great project to tackle together (and here is another podcast, more story based, that would also make for good listening).

I’ll let Langston Hughes have the last word here, and be back here next week for more.

Wishing you well,

—Tara

LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN
by Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let 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.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

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This is all about balance: work and play, dark and light.