By Norma Adams-Wade
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance …
Songwriters: Mark Daniel Sanders,
Photo: Peta Credlin on YouTube
I hope you dance, Joe.
That’s my appreciative fare-well to soon-to-be-former U. S. President Joe Biden. It’s an honorable testament to his comfort level and relatability that the nation knows our 46th president simply as “Joe.” No disrespect. Just fondness.
If you listen to Vice-President Kamala Harris use the term, you will sense the respect that goes along with the name.
Our national leader Joe is not a perfect human. He made mis- takes in his more than 50 years of public service and leadership. But I believe it was clearly understood that his motives were noble and consistently designed to benefit public interest. I was just thinking…writer, director, producer, cast member (Ben) Tyler Perry’s 2008 movie, The Family That Preys, embodies the message and meaning of Joe Biden’s public service in significant ways.
Yes, that’s correct “prey” as in take advantage of or mistreat; not “pray” as in commute with a higher power.
One of the main characters is Alice, played by my favorite actress, Alfre Woodard.
The character Alice is a selfless, rather devout matriarch who always puts family issues and family messes ahead of herself. Alice, a working-class Black person, owns a small diner and lives modestly. Her childhood best friend, though, is Charlotte, now a wealthy white female socialite who also is matriarch of her family and heads the board of a high-dollar family firm. The plot centers around the messes relatives create within the two families and how the messes impact the two matriarchs.
Looking at our society today, we are in a hell of a mess that seems to put our supposed democracy at the brink of civil war. This brink is defined by assassination attempts on top leaders, brutal name-calling and chaos in the nation’s Capital, tragic gun violence in the streets, schools, shops and houses of worship, and by refusals to honor our tradition of vote then yield to majority rule.
One particulate message — out of many portrayed – speaks loudest to me and seems to personify our Joe. It is dedicating your life to others at the sacrifice of your own.
Society recently witnessed our Joe struggle to give up his powerful role as the nation’s leader because others increasingly were telling him his age and health were becoming national hindrances.
Giving up power seems difficult for anyone, from a stance of ego or modesty. Nineteenth-century abolitionist Frederick Dou-glass attested to that with his famous words: “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and it never will.”
We can call the role of current and past leaders – some still here, others with the ancestors — who left deep footprints of public service and of whom we might wish they could dance center stage before exiting.
Photo: YouTube
Just to name a few: Eddie Bernice Johnson, Sheila Jackson Lee, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Nelson Mandella, Haile Selassie, Frederick Douglass, Shirley Chisholm, John Lewis, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Barbara Jordan, Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz), Martin Luther King Jr., … you fill in the many other missing names.
At a critical scene near the end of Tyler Perry’s movie, the character Alice (my girl, Alfre) looks back over her life and utters these powerful words:
“I have spent my entire life giving it away.
I think I will keep the rest of it for myself.”
The ending suggests she does just that after she poignantly and almost silently whispers to herself parts of the words of the song “I Hope you Dance” by songwriters Mark Daniel Sander and Tia M. Sillers.
“I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
….. Don’t let some hell bent heart leave you bitter
When you come close to sellin’ out, reconsider
….. Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance….”
In an old vintage car, a collectors’ item that best friend Charlotte left her, Alice drives off alone, symbolically into the sunset, suggesting to viewers that she happily and rightly will live the remainder of her sweet life for herself.
And we wish the same for our friend, Joe. Despite the criticisms, job well done also applies.
Norma Adams-Wade, a senior correspondent for Texas Metro News, is a proud Dallas native, University of Texas at Austin alumnae and retired Dallas Morning News senior staff writer. She is a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists and was its first southwest regional director. norma_adams_wade@yahoo.com.
