Behold the Beautiful

 

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

 

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

 

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

 

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

 

I, too, am America.

-       Langston Hughes

And yet still, we are not ashamed. Still we steadfastly refuse to allow the needed trickle or the full gushing waterfall of shame to enter. We turn up the volume on our TV when grief knocks at the door or grab one of our too-many guns to shoo it away. We build steel walls around our heart to keep out the sheer pain of human existence, made yet more unbearable by all the suffering we’ve heaped on our darker brothers and sisters. For no other reason than our own smallness, our greed, our incapacity to love ourselves or others. We own and have owned things and property and people, but we can’t bear to own the pain that comes when the hatred stops. We bury it all—the necessary shame and grief and pain—under a mountain of distraction and entertainment, numb it with drugs and pills and alcohol, deny it by choosing ignorance and disinformation and lies. 

 

And so nothing changes. The Civil War rages on, both between us and within us, and everybody loses. 

 

But for those who dare to look, who have the courage to behold the beautiful, that’s where the healing begins. That’s when we will all finally sit together at the banquet of our mutual splendor.