In the course of my pondering the meaning of education and having discussions with friends, the topic has sometimes turned to the question of how broad an education should be. Some say that the single purpose of school is to fulfill the necessary requirements for some future field of activity, and in microcosm, to make learning secondary to the top grade of a class. Such an attitude may prepare for a successful career and the clear ability to attain one’s goals. On the other hand, upon such a course may leave untold numbers of missed opportunities to advantageously extend beyond the pre-planned course. Most dangerous of all, it may leave a person in full acquisition of what he has sought, only to realize that he missed higher things.
The ideals of the honors program align better with my own view of education. Lectures like today’s, by Dr. Matthews, look deeply at a subject that is new to the world of my mind. Although a social awareness of racism has been embedded in me by the collective consciousness of America, it never seemed real enough within my realm to stir any feeling. In my Utah issues of race are as rare as the members of that race. When first I met African Americans on my mission, I formed strong friendships with many of them. Neither heart nor mind had ever found reason in prejudice to move me yet separate enough to stretch me beyond my borders.
Centered in Southside Chicago, Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” takes up the anthem of the Harlem poet who penned, “What happens to a dream deferred?” By doing so echoes rebound to a better known Black Rights activist who also spoke of a dream. In the course of this play, however, we are not destined to see success, and any martyrdom is left hanging ominously in the future. Instead we enter a family where different ways of dealing with racist persecution are attempting to coexist.
Walter, the only man we learn of in the story, wishes with all his heart to achieve the success of a white tycoon without changing the system. His pragmatic wife Ruth can’t help him see that the implicit rules of the nation prohibit his dreams; instead, she supports him the only way she can, preparing his food and even thinking of aborting her child to make room for his dreams. Daughter Beneatha is not satisfied with the assimilation of Walter or the strict family view of Ruth. Her search for identity and expression turns her views first to the Black American kinship and then to the pan-African family the world-over.
The emergence into racial equanimity, insomuch as we have it now, has been taken for granted by me – some distant past in a land far away. But just as I trace a heritage from the sacrifices of pioneers, the black heritage of many of my friends is built upon the remnants of dreams both glorious and crushed, some of them dried and shrivelled like a Raisin in the Sun.
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 Hughs, "A Dream Deferred"