Finding New Hope In America
The future has never looked better
A wise man said, even with proof some will refuse to relinquish debunked beliefs and hold tight to falsehoods that suits their worldview. All my life I’ve seen how the haves lived. I’ve seen how the have-nots scraped by day after day and the staggering degrees of opportunity that separated them. Mindset separated them. Fear and resentment too.
I’ve always heard the haves say to the have-nots: why can’t you just control yourselves, act civilized, get an education, get a job, use birth control, obey the law. And I’ll hear the have-nots’ babies cry, mothers weep, fathers and sons plead for mercy and a communal choir chant in the streets for justice and equality.
I’ve seen how nearly impossible it is to break out of the poverty cycle and stay in school. I’ve seen how difficult it is to find a good job that pays the bills, with policies that make success achievable for all based on merit with human-focused benefits to keep that job. And housing? I’ve been in the urine-soaked projects afraid to go out and go in.
So when hard work and resilience begins to pay off, order comes out of chaos and your personal circle widens to include a larger variety of people from different backgrounds, you proceed with caution. You learn and navigate this new world while pushing yourself to be the best you. And when your career takes off like a flywheel and you take a personal inventory and see you’ve made real progress, it feels like a dream.
When neighbors stop by your gate just to say hello and you have to resist a drive-by flashback, takes some adjustment. When they couldn’t care your skin is ten shades darker or that you’ve moved to their neighborhood and don’t act like your presence is a threat to them or their property value, makes you wonder if you’ve died and reached heaven.
There is such a place in America where no matter how hard I try to find the racism and prejudice I’d experienced elsewhere, another neighbor from way on the other side drives by, stops at my gate, smiles and says, Welcome. Who are these people?
I was content to generalize and expect hate everywhere I went but I don’t anymore. Discomfort serves its purpose to tell us to keep moving. The beliefs I’d learned, adopted, fed, and nourished are crumbling and giving way to a new wholesome worldview that I’m losing my old self. I was the black girl to be discriminated, to be ignored, to not feel welcomed, to not have her American dream come true but there are some people changing the hateful narrative. The demeaning words and innuendos I’ve come to learn so well, the ones I’m prepared to hear, see and face fail to materialize. I say again, who are these amazing people? Imagine being treated like a respectable human at first glance.
I want to cry and run through the streets and fields with my arms wide open to embrace this new found reality. I want to tell the ones I left behind and the ones coming up to never give up, get that education, reject controlled substances and try to be self-sufficient or use the public assistance received as a springboard instead of a lifeline. I want to tell them despite what they see everyday in their neighborhoods and on television there are good and decent people out there who sees beyond race, but sometimes words are not enough.
I want to tell the ones about to lose all hope, the overburdened and the ones who had to grow up prematurely, the ones in the inner cities of Chicago, Detroit, Newark and NYC, hope is alive! This isn’t all there is. There’s better. The earth is not flat. Don’t give up on yourself and your dreams. But, will they listen, will they believe?
“You are all the places you have been, the sights you have seen, the marvels you have achieved and every soul you have touched. Each passing moment is another brushstroke on the canvas. So rise, live always with passion and heart, and someday you will look back on your life and find a work of art.” — Beau Taplin
Is it true?
I don’t know if this is what MLK was talking about, if his dream has taken root and is flourishing in small neighborhoods across the country but it’s a relief to be judged by the content of my character for once.
Every smile, every hello, every “welcome”, is genuinely felt and is a salve for a deep wound I didn’t know I had or that it needed healing. I smile in return and say, Thank you.
I know it doesn’t mean I’ve arrived, the struggle ends or my work is done and that’s it for dreams. It’s just begun. This is what came after.
Holding on will take as much determination and ingenuity as it took to get here, and there. I have to make it better than how I found it, that much I know. And, I have some minds to change, beginning with myself.
I keep this twitter post bookmarked:
So, better is the new goal.
How long this euphoria will last or even this heartwarming and groundbreaking moment, is unknown, but I’ve never been more in love with America than I am now. There’s a hint of new hope.
Do you feel hopeful too?
© 2020 Greenstone Publishing.
