ONE: PROBE
To orient you with information and ideas surrounding the essential question, what follows is an essay that spotlights The American Dream. It references an array of sources that address the concept and it proves the relevance of this question to world politics and personal pursuits.
To orient you with information and ideas surrounding the essential question, what follows is an essay that spotlights The American Dream. It references an array of sources that address the concept and it proves the relevance of this question to world politics and personal pursuits.
What are the truths and lies of the American Dream?
Dana Nicholson, Wake Forest University Graduate School
What is the American Dream? If James Truslow Adams (1931) had not coined the term and defined it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” (Adams, 1931), then someone else would have surely labelled the idea. For it wasn’t a created something – it is something that wasin the mind of anyone who imagined or dreamt of a better life and wanted a place in which to fix the fantasy. Since it was among the last of lands to be “discovered” and it seems every other place had been “settled” and all of the disappointments of those places had already been laid bare, America became the last frontier. The last hope for a better life. The last chance for freedom, the desire for which is so intrinsic to human nature that you could say it is our defining characteristic. In other words, The American Dream was already innate to the human and just needed a name. Adams happened to be the one who gave it.
After all, it is not something purely imagined. The American Dream has been realized often enough that it has legitimized itself. Testimonies in letters, emails, pictures, and cash in the bank or in bundles sent to families abroad have confirmed that rumors are true, and give tune to Dorothy’s song that goes, “Somewhere over the rainbow, dreams really do come true” (Harburg, 1939). Anyone who has travelled across her boarders knows that America’s beauty, wealth, opportunity, and privilege are not merely rumors. America will win a contest with any other country when it comes to promise. There is something extraordinarily real about America’s potential for almost any type of success. This is not to say that other nations don’t deserve the full devotion of their own citizens and that they don’t have unique features that outshine every other place on earth. No. It is only to say that in its very foundation America was designed for refugees because she has expansive wings under which to hide or on which to ride. She is the mother ship of Dreamers. She offers escape from captivity, cover from storms, and resources for prosperity.
Having The American Dream is obviously not exclusive to a certain class. It’s shared among peoples worldwide. Is it egocentric for this author to purport that notions of “The Russian Dream” or “The Tanzanian Dream” are not worldwide phenomena? Go to the farthest reaches of the earth and while the people there may have never heard the name “Jesus” and perhaps cannot name more than three countries outside their own, they will not be wrong in their definition of America as a kind of Promised Land. Eleanor Roosevelt described this prolificity in definition when she said of the American Dream, “No single individual … and no single group has an exclusive claim to the American dream. But we have all, I think, a single vision of what it is, not merely as a hope and an aspiration, but as a way of life, which we can come ever closer to attaining it in its ideal form if we keep shining and unsullied our purpose and our belief in its essential value” (Clark, 2007).
Texts that Explore Truths and Lies of The American Dream
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is brilliant in her focus on giving color to black and white photos and also highlighting what is fake about the too-glossy pictures that residents of America would send to the world. One of the sobering facts of American life is that while we are a self-proclaimed melting pot of different ethnicities and cultures, we are more color-conscious than Adichie’s main character, Ifemelu, could have imagined in her most outlandish dreams of immigration. She never knew she was “black” or that her shade of black could speak until she settled among African Americans, whites, and every tint of color in between. It was as if there were a skin color-coating chart for interpreting identity with a key that she didn’t know. This anomaly disturbs Ifemelu so much that she expresses her outsider observations in a blog that gains momentum for how the lie of American equality bites. Meanwhile, she lives fifteen years with a line-up of prince-like boyfriends, one of whom buys her anything her heart desires, parades her like his beauty queen, and takes her on countless fairytale vacations. Ifemelu wins favor in the work force and lands a fellowship position at Princeton (it could have been Podunk College and that would have been a good dream come true but no, it’s Princeton, wildest dream come true). In the end Ifemelu has achieved so much autonomy that you could say she embodies the truth of the American Dream.
What point is there in attempting a full survey of books that either confirm or debunk any vision of the future called “The American Dream” when the collection is so vast there could be a library dedicated to this theme? As a non-fiction sample, take Cowen’s The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dreamand Churchwell’s Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream. Even if we limit our search to What Immigrants Think of the American Dream: Before & After Settlement (my own tag), titles like Marerro’s Killing the American Dream, Okero’s Quest of the American Dream, Clark’s Immigrants and the American Dream: Remaking the Middle Classare among thousands of American Dream accounts that surface. As for fiction, the harder question is, “What book with America as the setting or subject doesn’t contain threads of the American Dream?” Taking the path of less resistance, consider classics like The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Beautiful and Damned(Fitzgerald obsessed with living his version of the American Dream at all costs, even his life), Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, The Glass Castle, and on and on. A new novel worth examination is Behold, the Dreamersby Imbolo Mbue. Students can inventory truths and lies of the American Dream as revealed in each of these compelling stories. Note that in the case of a thing that means something different relative to any person who would dream, what is truth for one could be a lie for another. And vice versa. So from volumes about the American Dream, both true stories and contrived, truths and lies of the American Dream can only be deciphered from one point of view at a time, whether collective or individual. A Rwandan immigrant wife could say that most of her dreams came true when she moved to American whereas her husband (with whom she lives), could say that his dreams were dashed. From this plethora of resources students can gather what it means to have an American Dream; they can describe their own American Dream; and they can delineate what makes a dream an American Dream rather than just a dream.
Investigations of The American Dream
In “Come into my parlor:Rendition, Ugly Betty, and rude awakening from the American Dream” Bernard Beck (2008) of Northwestern University exposes unique challenges that Mexican and Middle Eastern immigrants encounter in realizing The American Dream and the influence of media on popular prejudices. Without the trite labels, Beck basically classifies for these two groups of foreigners which implications of the “Welcome All Who Would Enter” banner at their proverbial Ellis Island are “true” and which may be “false.” He is savvy in his recognition that the issue is so complex that, in fact, The American Dream is neither all true nor all a lie for these peoples. This article shines light on part of why the American Dream is American. The world-wide rumor is that the USA welcomes all. Is this the alleged reputation of any other country on earth? And yet when an unsuspecting Arab immigrant disembarks to be met with resistance at the American gate and at every checkpoint beyond, is the “welcome” he thought he heard from afar genuine? Beck specifies the roadblocks that Mexicans and Middle Easterners will face and then praises certain TV series and movies that counter stereotypes that reinforce prejudice against these two types of people.
From a different angle Yusuke Kuroki and Henoc Preciado (2018) investigate today’s headline issue in their research article “DREAMers accessing the American Dream: Their academic and civic engagement outcomes.” Gleaning from quantitative research the dual authors advocate for John Adams’ pronouncement that “’The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and be willing to bear the expenses of it’” (Kuroki and Preciado, 2018). Herein lies another common tenant of the American Dream. That every person is entitled to a solid education is what beckons so many American Dreamers. Students can engage in meaningful debate about whether in the late 1700s “the whole people” was meant to include all residents or whether it implied all citizens of the newly established country and regardless of original intent, for whom should the offer of public education be reserved today?
Why is the question, “What are the truths and lies of the American Dream” so essential? Does the truth matter? A synthesis of research, conversation, and personal experience in pursuit of an answer highlights the fact that truth matters. What proves false is not to be trusted and what proves true can be securely believed. Thinking about the question under these terms should prompt revisions to our own draft of the American Dream.
References
Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America. Little Brown, 1931.
Beck, B. (2008). “Come into My Parlor: Rendition, Ugly Betty, and Rude Awakening from the
American Dream.” Multicultural Perspectives, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 150–154.,
doi:10.1080/15210960802197706.
Clark, Jonas. (2007). “In search of the American Dream.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company,
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/06/in-search-of-the-american-dream/305921/.
Harburg, Y. (1939). Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Recorded by Judy Garland).
Kuroki, Y. and Precadio, H (2018). “Dreamers accessing the American Dream: Their academic
And civic engagement outcomes.” Liberal Education, Spring 2018.
Dana Nicholson, Wake Forest University Graduate School
What is the American Dream? If James Truslow Adams (1931) had not coined the term and defined it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” (Adams, 1931), then someone else would have surely labelled the idea. For it wasn’t a created something – it is something that wasin the mind of anyone who imagined or dreamt of a better life and wanted a place in which to fix the fantasy. Since it was among the last of lands to be “discovered” and it seems every other place had been “settled” and all of the disappointments of those places had already been laid bare, America became the last frontier. The last hope for a better life. The last chance for freedom, the desire for which is so intrinsic to human nature that you could say it is our defining characteristic. In other words, The American Dream was already innate to the human and just needed a name. Adams happened to be the one who gave it.
After all, it is not something purely imagined. The American Dream has been realized often enough that it has legitimized itself. Testimonies in letters, emails, pictures, and cash in the bank or in bundles sent to families abroad have confirmed that rumors are true, and give tune to Dorothy’s song that goes, “Somewhere over the rainbow, dreams really do come true” (Harburg, 1939). Anyone who has travelled across her boarders knows that America’s beauty, wealth, opportunity, and privilege are not merely rumors. America will win a contest with any other country when it comes to promise. There is something extraordinarily real about America’s potential for almost any type of success. This is not to say that other nations don’t deserve the full devotion of their own citizens and that they don’t have unique features that outshine every other place on earth. No. It is only to say that in its very foundation America was designed for refugees because she has expansive wings under which to hide or on which to ride. She is the mother ship of Dreamers. She offers escape from captivity, cover from storms, and resources for prosperity.
Having The American Dream is obviously not exclusive to a certain class. It’s shared among peoples worldwide. Is it egocentric for this author to purport that notions of “The Russian Dream” or “The Tanzanian Dream” are not worldwide phenomena? Go to the farthest reaches of the earth and while the people there may have never heard the name “Jesus” and perhaps cannot name more than three countries outside their own, they will not be wrong in their definition of America as a kind of Promised Land. Eleanor Roosevelt described this prolificity in definition when she said of the American Dream, “No single individual … and no single group has an exclusive claim to the American dream. But we have all, I think, a single vision of what it is, not merely as a hope and an aspiration, but as a way of life, which we can come ever closer to attaining it in its ideal form if we keep shining and unsullied our purpose and our belief in its essential value” (Clark, 2007).
Texts that Explore Truths and Lies of The American Dream
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is brilliant in her focus on giving color to black and white photos and also highlighting what is fake about the too-glossy pictures that residents of America would send to the world. One of the sobering facts of American life is that while we are a self-proclaimed melting pot of different ethnicities and cultures, we are more color-conscious than Adichie’s main character, Ifemelu, could have imagined in her most outlandish dreams of immigration. She never knew she was “black” or that her shade of black could speak until she settled among African Americans, whites, and every tint of color in between. It was as if there were a skin color-coating chart for interpreting identity with a key that she didn’t know. This anomaly disturbs Ifemelu so much that she expresses her outsider observations in a blog that gains momentum for how the lie of American equality bites. Meanwhile, she lives fifteen years with a line-up of prince-like boyfriends, one of whom buys her anything her heart desires, parades her like his beauty queen, and takes her on countless fairytale vacations. Ifemelu wins favor in the work force and lands a fellowship position at Princeton (it could have been Podunk College and that would have been a good dream come true but no, it’s Princeton, wildest dream come true). In the end Ifemelu has achieved so much autonomy that you could say she embodies the truth of the American Dream.
What point is there in attempting a full survey of books that either confirm or debunk any vision of the future called “The American Dream” when the collection is so vast there could be a library dedicated to this theme? As a non-fiction sample, take Cowen’s The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dreamand Churchwell’s Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream. Even if we limit our search to What Immigrants Think of the American Dream: Before & After Settlement (my own tag), titles like Marerro’s Killing the American Dream, Okero’s Quest of the American Dream, Clark’s Immigrants and the American Dream: Remaking the Middle Classare among thousands of American Dream accounts that surface. As for fiction, the harder question is, “What book with America as the setting or subject doesn’t contain threads of the American Dream?” Taking the path of less resistance, consider classics like The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Beautiful and Damned(Fitzgerald obsessed with living his version of the American Dream at all costs, even his life), Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, The Glass Castle, and on and on. A new novel worth examination is Behold, the Dreamersby Imbolo Mbue. Students can inventory truths and lies of the American Dream as revealed in each of these compelling stories. Note that in the case of a thing that means something different relative to any person who would dream, what is truth for one could be a lie for another. And vice versa. So from volumes about the American Dream, both true stories and contrived, truths and lies of the American Dream can only be deciphered from one point of view at a time, whether collective or individual. A Rwandan immigrant wife could say that most of her dreams came true when she moved to American whereas her husband (with whom she lives), could say that his dreams were dashed. From this plethora of resources students can gather what it means to have an American Dream; they can describe their own American Dream; and they can delineate what makes a dream an American Dream rather than just a dream.
Investigations of The American Dream
In “Come into my parlor:Rendition, Ugly Betty, and rude awakening from the American Dream” Bernard Beck (2008) of Northwestern University exposes unique challenges that Mexican and Middle Eastern immigrants encounter in realizing The American Dream and the influence of media on popular prejudices. Without the trite labels, Beck basically classifies for these two groups of foreigners which implications of the “Welcome All Who Would Enter” banner at their proverbial Ellis Island are “true” and which may be “false.” He is savvy in his recognition that the issue is so complex that, in fact, The American Dream is neither all true nor all a lie for these peoples. This article shines light on part of why the American Dream is American. The world-wide rumor is that the USA welcomes all. Is this the alleged reputation of any other country on earth? And yet when an unsuspecting Arab immigrant disembarks to be met with resistance at the American gate and at every checkpoint beyond, is the “welcome” he thought he heard from afar genuine? Beck specifies the roadblocks that Mexicans and Middle Easterners will face and then praises certain TV series and movies that counter stereotypes that reinforce prejudice against these two types of people.
From a different angle Yusuke Kuroki and Henoc Preciado (2018) investigate today’s headline issue in their research article “DREAMers accessing the American Dream: Their academic and civic engagement outcomes.” Gleaning from quantitative research the dual authors advocate for John Adams’ pronouncement that “’The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and be willing to bear the expenses of it’” (Kuroki and Preciado, 2018). Herein lies another common tenant of the American Dream. That every person is entitled to a solid education is what beckons so many American Dreamers. Students can engage in meaningful debate about whether in the late 1700s “the whole people” was meant to include all residents or whether it implied all citizens of the newly established country and regardless of original intent, for whom should the offer of public education be reserved today?
Why is the question, “What are the truths and lies of the American Dream” so essential? Does the truth matter? A synthesis of research, conversation, and personal experience in pursuit of an answer highlights the fact that truth matters. What proves false is not to be trusted and what proves true can be securely believed. Thinking about the question under these terms should prompt revisions to our own draft of the American Dream.
References
Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America. Little Brown, 1931.
Beck, B. (2008). “Come into My Parlor: Rendition, Ugly Betty, and Rude Awakening from the
American Dream.” Multicultural Perspectives, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 150–154.,
doi:10.1080/15210960802197706.
Clark, Jonas. (2007). “In search of the American Dream.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company,
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/06/in-search-of-the-american-dream/305921/.
Harburg, Y. (1939). Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Recorded by Judy Garland).
Kuroki, Y. and Precadio, H (2018). “Dreamers accessing the American Dream: Their academic
And civic engagement outcomes.” Liberal Education, Spring 2018.