I heard Bro. Sunship from Assata's Forum say this: "I ponder over and over again what Langston Hughes so eloquently alluded to in prose, “what eventually happens when a dream is deferred?”
Could oppression, repression, our diets, some of our most caustic music, let alone the schizo way we have to relate to this bastardize reality finally metastasize into a nurturing of mental illness in some socio-psychological sense over time?
Can hundreds of thousands of years of our brains being developed in a certain conducive and natural environment be finally finding it impossible to ward off, or assimilate into, or decipher this racist exilic madness called, western civilization?
How long did we think Africans (the original people) could survive under another’s cultural behaviorisms, which we see is further distorting man’s relationship to the natural and the spirit world?"
Every time I read those paragraphs I feel a deep punch to the gut. I have thought long and hard on this topic --what happens when a dream is deferred? Have you ever thought about it? I have, and too often I see that the people without dreams, faith and determination check out early. It's hard to reach them.
A DREAM DEFERRED
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
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DREAMS
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Langston Hughes
PS. If anybody is interested in Brother SunShip's full comment let me know and I will do the necessary digging and get it back to you.
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