Citizenship: Looking to Dream City to Understand Home

Citizenship is a balance of two instincts: one is compassionate and invests citizens in communities; the other requires a certain level of objectivity that enables improvement. Developing these instincts requires a synthesis of multiple cultures and contexts. Citizens must shed their commitments to idiosyncratic identities in the interest of the common good. Dialectical forces of pride and shame in Raisin in the Sun result from narrow definitions of culture that some characters subscribe to and others dismantle. In her portrayal of Beneatha, Lorraine Hansberry advocates for a loosening of rigid cultural archetypes. Beneatha’s participation in various cultural contexts allows her to recognize flaws in her community, and retain the compassion to help repair them. As Zadie Smith might put it, Beneatha is learning to “speak in tongues,” or use her eclectic persona as a roadmap to both empathy and pragmatism. Hansberry illustrates glimpses of these evolving forces in Beneatha. 

Beneatha’s journey to citizenship is ostracizing. She is the nonconformist of the family, torn between intellectual and economic pursuits. She wants to be a doctor. Her ambition seems silly to her brother Walter. Walter needs money and becoming a doctor as a black woman does not guarantee a profit. Walter’s idea of what Beneatha should be is not just about money—his traditional ideas about gender prevent him from understanding Beneatha’s ambitions. He and Beneatha tease each other in the following scene: 

WALTER: (Defensively) I’m interested in you. Something wrong with that? Ain’t many girls who decide—

WALTER and BENEATHA (In unison) — “to be a doctor.” (Hansberry 36)

WALTER: Who the hell told you you had to be a doctor? If you so crazy ‘bout messing ‘round with sick people—then go be a nurse like other women—or just get married and be quiet…  (Hansberry 38) 

Beneatha resists the stereotype that her brother—and society—have imposed on her. While she understands the importance of an income, she allows herself more flexibility than Walter might want for her. She explores her interests, makes friends from other cultures, and corrects her family’s ignorance. Her relationship with a Nigerian student, Asagai, is particularly enlightening. Asagai inspires Beneatha to experiment with her clothing, hairstyles, and ethnic identity. As a result, Beneatha’s obligation as a citizen extends beyond her family. She resists her family’s prejudices but does so in a playful way, embodying the loving but honest nature of family interaction Hansberry has illustrated throughout the book. She corrects Mama’s assertion that church donations save Africans from “heathenism” by saying “I’m afraid they need more salvation from the British and the French” (Hansberry 57). Beneatha’s education—in school and with Asagai—has made her empathetic to people across the globe, but also critical of her own culture in America. She dismantles her mother’s bias in such a way that synthesizes empathy, analysis, and the language she is most used to. 

Some see Beneath as condescending because of her intellect. George Murchison, a man who occasionally goes out with Beneatha, concludes that education makes her proud, dampening her curiosity. When Beneatha begins to discuss her thoughts, George says, “You read books—to learn facts—to get grades—to pass the course—to get a degree. That’s all —it has nothing to do with thoughts.” (Hansberry 96). George’s commitment to his own culture—one that narrowly defines Beneatha and conveniently gives George more status—prevents his acceptance of Beneatha. He cannot learn from her because her intellectual pursuits threaten his masuline pride. This discord proves the necessity of exploration. Beneatha introduces new ideas to those close to her, demanding flexibility from them. Like George, Beneatha’s neighbor Mrs. Johnson rejects Beneatha’s intellect in favor of her own ego. Mrs. Johnson finds Beneatha’s indifference to her offensive and attributes it to her education. She says, “It’s just—you know how some of our young people gets when they get a little education” (Hansberry 102). Mrs. Johnson is threatened by the Youngers, with their education, ambition, and newfound wealth—conditions which separate the Youngers from Mrs. Johnson and fuel Mrs. Johnson’s anti-intellectual resentment. Beneatha resists, later telling Mama, “if there are two things we, as a people, have got to overcome, one is the Ku Klux Klan—and the other is Mrs. Johnson” (Hansberry 104). Both entities threaten empathy and reason because of their excessive pride. Mrs. Johnson’s pride in tradition insulates her from progressive ideas. Beneatha’s association of Mrs. Johnson with the Ku Klux Klan seems radical, but articulates the ignorance both share. Her exploration of cultures besides her own family’s has enabled Beneatha’s insight. While her identity as a Black woman in a low-income family informs her condemnation of the Ku Klux Klan, her education and global perspective informs her disapproval of Mrs. Johnson. But in seeing things from a broader perspective, Beneatha has to give up a part of herself. For Mrs. Johnson, Beneatha’s independence is a betrayal. Beneatha’s ability to compare and contrast cultures is analytical, not emotional. Emotion, when territorial, limits citizenship. Beneatha loves her home, but no so much that she cannot recognize its flaws. She abandons the mold that unconditionally binds her to her family and her neighbors. She has to form opinions of her own, becoming a citizen for a broader community. 

Hansberry demonstrates that Beneatha’s combination of modern ideas and traditional mores, family values and education, enables her empathy. Beneatha absorbs influences outside the small apartment that comprises the play’s setting. Even so, she does not abandon her home. Zadie Smith’s description of Barack Obama in her speech “Speaking in Tongues” reveals a similar combination of commitment and exploration. As a result of Obama’s myriad cultural connections, he has a “strange, reflective quality, typical of the self-created man” (Smith 65). Obama’s mirroring the experience of others is authentic—his upbringing demanded the flexibility to transition between cultural contexts. He is able to objectively evaluate these cultural contexts, but his emotional connection to them makes his critiques humanitarian. This attitude “will enable him to say proudly with one voice, ‘I love my country’ while saying with another voice ‘It is a country, like other countries’” (Smith 72). Obama has sacrificed the pride one feels in a single culture to access an objective view of reality. 

This degree of objectivity enables service to others, and makes people into citizens. An obligation to the collective results from time spent in what Smith calls “Dream City.” Here, identity does not disappear, but it expands. Dream City is “the kind of town where one says ‘I’ cautiously, because ‘I’ feels too straight and singular a phenome to represent the true multiplicity of the experience. Instead, citizens of Dream City prefer to use the collective ‘we’” (Smith 65). Those who grow up in Dream City exist in the “dreaded, interim phase,” (Smith) among multiple cultures. Citizens (or to-be citizens) must learn to jump from culture to culture, often having to conform to narrow definitions. They learn empathy from having to immerse themselves in several narratives. They gain a universal understanding of humanity, and must sacrifice singularity in favor of the collective. This evolution of compassion is “a story about a wonderful voice, occasionally used by citizens, rarely by men of power” (Smith 70). Citizens are not excessively proud of one background—they are proud of “Dream City.” This eclectic, abstract, beautiful place is somewhere everyone is familiar with, but not everyone accepts. Integrating multiple identities enables empathy and objectivity. Although ambiguous, Beneatha’s identity and future demonstrate that citizenship is a combination of curiosity about others and commitment to one’s own community.