What happens to a dream deferred?

pauly (check out his blog) has made a powerful comment on lenin's wise and perceptive post, White supremacy is... (re: Jena 6 & inherent, systemic American racism) --

... Liberation for oppressed peoples won't be found by using the very categories which keep them oppressed as a starting point. Since when is it the task of radicals to use a patently oppressive legal system to adjudicate who is deserving of our sympathy?

Th[at] brings me to my second point, which is that we don't judge victims of oppression by their conduct; we judge oppression by what the oppressor does. Black folks in the freedom movement of the 60s had tons of backwards ideas about homosexuality, abortion, etc, but that doesn't mean they weren't oppressed. Nor does it mean any leftist worth her salt shouldn't have stood resolutely on their side against the cops and klansmen. The same is true today. Whether they beat up Justin Barker or not, they are victims of a racist legal system, which by its very nature can never give justice to black folks.

Any denial that black folks in Jena (indeed, anywhere in America) are oppressed is sheer denial. This is a county that voted overwhelmingly for Klansman David Duke. This is a town where Brown v. Board is still reaching "with all deliberate speed," as evidenced by the existence of "a white tree." This is a county where, when Black folks drove into town, they were greeted with a pickup truck with a noose hanging out the back. We are in no position to judge the behavior of black kids growing up in this town.

He ends with words by the great African-American poet, Langston Hughes --

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?