Raisin Thoughts

The great African-American poet Langston Hughes wrote,

            “What happens to a dream deferred?

            Does it dry up

            Like a raisin in the sun?”

            This week, the college humanities students read and watched “A Raisin in the Sun,” the moving story of the Younger family by Lorraine Hansberry. This group of twenty students is beginning Humanities 220, an African-American literature class. The class is evenly split: ten white students and ten black students. It’s being taught by a blond, petite, late thirties PHD in English. That’s college … inside.

            Race is at the forefront of almost every moment inside prison. You can’t escape it; race matters in here. My time inside has caused me to question and reevaluate every preconceived idea I held about race in America. The issue, like the country, isn’t black and white. There is a dialog that has to take place in America between Black and White, Brown and Yellow. Without it, we are doomed to live apart while we reside together.

            “A Raisin in the Sun.” Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee starred in the 1960 film adaptation. It is the story of a Southside Chicago black family post World War II; three generations crammed into an old, two bedroom, apartment. The family matriarch awaits insurance money from the passing of her husband. Lena (mama) has a son, Walter, who “dreams big.” He wants the money to open a liquor store; he wants to buy his wife pearls; he wants to be “something,” not just a chauffeur driving “wealthy white folks” around.

            There’s Beneatha, Walter’s sister. “She’s gonna be a doctor.” She’s bright and pretty, and she rejects everything from her mother and father’s life … all the while afraid to venture out on her own. Ruth, Walter’s wife, struggles with an unplanned pregnancy and trying to come to grips with a life of disappointment. And, there’s Travis, the precocious 7 year-old son of Walter and Ruth who still has hope, still believes in his family.

            I watched as the men, black and white, listened to the bitterness in Walter’s voice as one more dream failed. I wandered if they saw the “Walters” in each other? So many of the young men I work with in here have “big: dreams, dreams of money, and fame, and fulfillment. But, like Walter, they miss the “big” picture: It isn’t money that makes the man, it’s his heart and his character. They dream “big,” but they don’t understand how to get to their dreams, how they need to read, work hard, and move forward.

            Do they see the “Beneathas” in each other? So many take on “non-government” names – Swahili or an “attribute” of their personality. They speak of Africa, yet they know nothing of the continent or their families’ lives there, or here. They are ignorant to the history, the culture, the current circumstances of Africa. They see Africa as a monolith – a large, unitary, “Black” world. They miss the tribal, the vegetation, the cultural and religious components that thrive and create great upheaval.

            In the climactic scene at the end of the performance, Walter becomes the man of the family. He tells a white homeowner visiting the drab little apartment in a quest to convince the Youngers not to move into an all-white neighborhood, “My son is the sixth generation in this country.” He tells the white man the family’s America story and he ends with this:

            “And we have decided to move into our house because my father- my father- he earned it for us brick by brick.”

            Brick by brick. Powerful words. So often we want, we desire so much that we see and we ignore all that it took to get us to that place. And yet the story matters. That is not a black issue or a white issue, it’s a human issue.

            We are separated in here so often by the color of our skin. We gather with what we know – or think we know. What I’ve found is the young black guys, from worlds far removed from any I’ve known, treat me with more respect than I deserve. They listen when I speak and take what I give them as truth. They’ve told me – politely – that I don’t know what it’s like to be black in America. And while I’ll engage them and challenge them on that point, they’re right. I know looking back on my own behavior pre-arrest, that color mattered then. Too often I made decisions about people based on the color of their skin.

            “A Raisin in the Sun.” I don’t know what it is like to be denied housing based on the color of your skin. I know the color of your skin doesn’t matter. There is a heart grabbing passage spoken by “Mama.” In it, she confronts her daughter who is ready to write off Walter who continues to fail. She says,

            “There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. When do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself cause the world done whipped him so. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”

            Those words are color-blind. Those words mean more than any skin tone.