In 1951, the African American poet, Langston Hughes published his anguished masterpiece, Harlem:
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?
In the 238 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed, what has happened to the deferred dream of freedom and justice for all Americans?
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln dragged our nation a tiny step closer to fulfilling the dream when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery. Between 1865 and 1870, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments of the Constitution dragged us a few more tiny steps closer to fulfilling it by formally abolishing slavery, and by extending basic constitutional and voting rights equally to all citizens. The Civil Rights Acts of 1875 and 1964 dragged our nation even closer to fulfilling it by making racial, sex, religious and ethnic discrimination illegal and by outlawing segregation. In 2008, Barak Obama became the first African American to hold the office of president.
After his election, many of us gushed about having entered a post-racial America that had shed its ugly past permanently, allowing the dream to become a reality. Sadly, the persistence of racial discrimination and tensions, whether because of voting rights abuses or the abuse of young black men by law enforcement, keeps disabusing us of such willful naïvete. There are still times when progress on race in America feels more like a nightmare than a dream deferred, and is much more likely to freeze in the icy, manipulative grip of a cynical power elite, than to explode in the hands of angry, frustrated minority communities.
Paradoxically, what better reason, than seeming despair, is there for Americans to refuse to lose hope that this dream will be fulfilled? In the Jewish wisdom tradition, there is a peculiar yet insightful teaching about how to understand dreams and their delayed outcomes that speaks, howbeit obliquely, to this hope. The biblical hero, Joseph dreamed that his family would one day pay homage to him as his subjects. Twenty two degrading, tumultuous, and ultimately vindicating years then passed between his dreams and his reunion with his estranged family. By then, he was ruling Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh himself. Joseph’s journey prompted one Jewish sage to remark that a person should anticipate waiting as long as 22 years between the occurrence of a good dream and its fulfillment. This seemingly arbitrary twenty two year span is really a metaphor for hope balanced with pragmatic activism during the long struggle for progress. Joseph refused to let go of his dreams, but he also understood that hope alone would prove to be chimerical. He couldn’t just hope, he also needed to fight for his life.
As a comfortable, white middle class man who has never experienced discriminatory hatred or economic hardship, I know that preaching this dreamer’s message runs the risk of being patronizing. It is simplistic and insensitive to tell people who have suffered from institutionalized racism that ours is the best of all possible dreams, with the best fulfillment yet to come. 238 years of waiting for full respect and equality is a whole lot longer than a mere 22 years. Yet in teaching this, I am actually trying to follow the counsel of our teacher, Dr. Martin King, Jr., who, like Joseph, taught that we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. My commitment in this coming new-year is to apply the lessons of these two great people in my own life and work. I will do my part to move the dreams deferred of millions of Americans closer to the ideal that can be America at Her best.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi at Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY.