Let America Be America Again
THE LEADEN EYED Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world’s sore crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden eyed. Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but they seldom reap. Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve Not that
... See moreDavid Whyte • The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America
In this long battle, a battle by no means finished, the unforeseeable effects of which will be felt by many future generations, the white man’s motive was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity. And despite the terrorization which the Negro in America endured and endures sporadically until t
... See moreJames Baldwin • Notes of a Native Son
Out of this incredible brutality, we get the myth of the happy darky and Gone With the Wind. And the North Americans appear to believe these legends, which they have created and which absolutely nothing in reality corroborates, until today. And when these legends are attacked, as is happening now—all over a globe which has never been and never will
... See moreJames Baldwin • Notes of a Native Son
She would, at times, criticize the national anthem, pointing to its inherent hypocrisy: I cannot stand when people stand to sing the national anthem, “O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hail . . .” I ask myself the question, “What do we have to hail?” When actually, “the land of the free and the home of the brave” mean
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