build a – In a personal essay, Ben Jealous argues that America’s instinct should be welcome rather than fear, pointing to Frederick Douglass’s calls for a “composite nation,” the Statue of Liberty’s hidden symbolism, and Josh Fox’s upcoming HBO film “The Welcome Table,”
A friend’s words have stayed with Ben Jealous for years. Alec Baldwin told him, “I’m an old school American. That means I believe you’re an American the day you decide to come here and join us.” Jealous calls the line simple, generous, and true—an ideal of belonging rooted in making space.
But, he writes, America seems to have drifted away from that belief. In recent years. he says. public debate has leaned toward walls and exclusion. turning fear into a guide for policy and public life. Fear. he argues. teaches people to lock doors. to assume the stranger wants what everyone has. and to act as if there isn’t enough to go around.
Jealous counters that fear has been wrong before. He turns to Frederick Douglass. who. born into slavery and later freeing himself. stood up in Boston in 1869 to speak for people who faced hostility. Douglass’s targets then were Chinese immigrants, many of whom Americans wanted shut out. Jealous recounts Douglass’s response: he called for a “composite nation”—“one people. made from many.” Jealous quotes Douglass’s warning about the pressure of arrivals: the immigrants would keep coming “the way waves keep coming to the shore. ” and the country would be stronger if it met them as friends. stronger rather than weaker.
Jealous then brings the argument to a familiar national symbol: the Statue of Liberty. He says most people aren’t taught where the statue comes from—the end of slavery. He describes how the men who dreamed up Liberty had fought to end slavery. and that an early design placed broken chains in her hand. Looking closely. Jealous says visitors can still find a broken chain and shackle at her feet. even if most never notice them.
At its core, he writes, Liberty is about people set free and about welcome—two ideas that were always linked.
That theme returns in the film Jealous says he can’t stop thinking about: “The Welcome Table.” He notes that filmmaker Josh Fox made it. and that it premieres June 23 on HBO. Jealous describes Fox’s yearslong work following families driven from their homes by floods. fires. and drought—people who. he says. the world keeps trying to wall out.
Fox’s key idea, Jealous writes, is starkly simple: “A wall, on its side, can be a table.” Jealous says Fox builds around the notion that what gets constructed to keep people out can be laid down to invite them in—“Same wood. Same length. We only have to lay it down flat.”
For the project, Fox made a table a thousand feet long. Jealous says he gathered families from around the world to sit together on a levee in New Orleans, where they ate, sang, told their stories, and began to heal.
Jealous says Fox sees the country’s welcome as something it has done before. He points to New Yorkers’ earlier fear of Italian immigrants—newspapers that depicted them as criminals—before. in Jealous’s words. the city learned to embrace them so completely that “you cannot imagine New York without pizza.” Each wave that was feared became something later thanked.
Now, Jealous writes, Fox is taking the table on the road. He’s building what Jealous describes as a movement of house parties across the country. Neighbors gather in living rooms, watch the film, and talk—about where their own families once came from and who they might welcome next.
Fox’s message, Jealous reports, is direct: “Welcoming is a virtue.” Jealous says it has “slipped,” and that Fox wants people to pick it back up.
To Jealous, the choice is clear. The country can keep building walls, or it can lay them down and set a longer table. He says he wants the America Alec Baldwin described—where someone is considered an American the day they decide to join. He also says he wants the America Frederick Douglass fought for: the “composite nation,” stronger for its mix. And he wants the America the Statue of Liberty was built to represent: “A free people. making room for the next.”.
In closing, Jealous invokes an old saying: when there’s more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher wall. “So let’s build the longer table.”
Ben Jealous Alec Baldwin Frederick Douglass Statue of Liberty The Welcome Table Josh Fox HBO premiere June 23 immigration welcome