|
Language carries emotions and assumptions that are often unspoken.
Here’s a nudge… At a recent dinner party, from journalists to guests, the words refugee, immigrant, asylum seeker, or migrant worker were spoken interchangeably. Often, chosen words will engage people for intentional and meaningful dialogue or enrage them to reinforce exclusion and any number of social-political ideologies. Depending on country of origin, people will use different words that hold different meaning and carry with it different emotions, assumptions, and value of their humanity. This calls for an invitation to make corrective measures with our language.
Another invitation for Juneteenth 2023 is to supportively guide ourselves and each other to lean toward our collective humanity. This includes word choice and holding dreams that carry an intentionality of belonging. Our ancestors carried messages of hope with them as well. My two grandmothers, who fled north to escape Jim Crow during the Great Migration, carried words that inspired them to forge ahead and carry the resilience of those before them.
Reading Langston Hughes’ famous poem ‘Let America Be America Again', for probably
the 100th time, can remind us of the thousands who traveled from around the world to America. As we continue to bear witness to their migration, they too carry words of aspirations, dreams of new beginnings and stories of anguish and hope.
Another invitation is to listen to an elegant poet in his own right, Danez Smith, recite ‘Let America Be America Again’. On the right side of the written version of the poem is Frederic Edwin Church’s painting from 1860. It is our last invitation for internal reflection. It speaks volumes of America, then and now. Like each stanza of the poem, it calls us to reimagine words that cultivate belonging and healing or speak for truth and reconciliation.
In Solidarity.
Reference Links:
The Great Migration
Langston Hughes’ poem Let America Be America Again
Danez Smith, recites Let America Be America Again
| 
