American Dream

For other uses, see American Dream (disambiguation).

The Statue of Liberty was for many immigrants their first glimpse of the United States. It signifies freedom and personal liberty and is iconic of the American Dream.

The American Dream can be described as a belief in the freedom that allows all citizens and residents of the United States of America to achieve their goals in life through hard work. Today, in America it generally refers to the idea that one's prosperity depends upon one's own abilities and hard work, not on a rigid class structure, though the meaning of the phrase has changed over America's history. For some, it is the opportunity to achieve more prosperity than they could in their countries of origin; for others, it is the opportunity for their children to grow up with an education and career opportunities; for others, it is the opportunity to be an individual without the constraints imposed by class, caste, race, or ethnicity.

The definition of the American Dream is now under constant discussion and debate. Also "The package of beliefs, assumptions, and action patterns that social scientists have labeled the American Dream has always been a fragile agglomeration of (1) individual freedom of choice in life styles, (2) equal access to economic abundance, and (3) the pursuit of shared objectives mutually advantageous to the individual and society."

While the term "American Dream" today is often associated with immigrants, native-born Americans can also be described as "pursuing the American Dream," "living the American Dream" or "living the Dream."

Historical background

Historical American flags in Washington, D.C.: the Betsy Ross flag hangs on both ends and the classic Old Glory is to each side of the current 50-state version.

The generic definition of the term "American Dream" appears in a history book by James Truslow Adams entitled The Epic of America (1931)

"If, as I have said, the things already listed were all we had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement." [p. 404; italics in original]

However, the concept of the American Dream goes back to the 16th century. As 16th and 17th century English promoters were attempting to persuade Englishmen to move to the colonies, their language and promises about what the colonies were like were simultaneously laying the groundwork for three separate, but interrelated persistent myths of America: America as the land of plenty, America as the land of opportunity, and America as the land of destiny. America as the land of plenty figured more prominently in 18th and 19th century definitions of the American Dream than it does today. Central to the dream was the presence of the (still untamed) American land, along with the question how to deal with nature and how to live with other people on the land.

Ideology

The American Dream is deep rooted in the concepts found in liberal thought. It is an American adaptation of the norm of private property as a means of liberty, ultimately bringing happiness to the individuals. Classic liberal thought stipulates that liberty is guaranteed by free trade and competition, as these conditions let all individuals maximize their gains, derived from their needs and desires, through trade (the market). Furthermore, there is the hypothesis that all citizens are born with equal rights and opportunities, and only effort (work) differentiates them in the long term, hence the saying that those with will succeed and those without do not. This excerpt of the United States Declaration of Independence is an excellent formal example of the origins of the concept:

[...] We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. [...]

Regardless of the content of each individual version of the American dream they all include the belief in the opportunity to achieve some form of quantitative or qualitative success. Therefore, in order to better understand the existence of so many different versions of the American dream it would first be helpful to define the different ways in which success can be measured. In her book Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation, Jennifer Hochschild states that definitions of success involves measurement as well as content. She classifies success into the following three categories which have important normative and behavioral consequences:

Absolute success- "In this case achieving the American dream implies reaching some threshold of well being, higher than where one began but not necessarily dazzling."

Competitive success- requires "achieving victory over someone else. My success implies your failure. Competitors are usually people, whether known and concrete (opponents in a tennis match) or unknown and abstract (all other applicants for a job)".

Relative success- "Here achieving the American dream consists in becoming better off than some comparison point, whether one's childhood, people in the old country, one's neighbors, a character from a book, another race or gender-anything or anyone that one measures oneself against. Relative success implies no threshold of well-being, and it may or may not entail continually changing the comparison group as one achieves a given level of accomplishment.

Though some may believe that America is an unequal society and that one's race, sex, class and family background have a great deal to do with one's life chances, many Americans continue to hold on to their belief in the American dream. One way to better understand the meaning of the American dream is to examine it within the framework provided by Hochschild, who places the ideology of the American dream within four tenets of success. According to Hochschild these tenets define the American dream as well as its intrinsic flaws by answering the following questions about the pursuit of success:

Question Who may pursue success?

Answer-"everyone regardless of ascriptive traits, family background or personal history"(18). Flaws fail to account for aspects of inequality such as race and sex discrimination (26).

Question What does one pursue?

Answer-"the reasonable anticipation , though not the promise of success" (18). Flaw fail to acknowledge the shortage of resources and opportunities which prevent everyone from having a reasonable chance of having their expectations met (27).

Question How does one pursue success?

Answer- "through actions and traits under one's own control"(18). Flaws ignore the fact that if one may claim responsibility for success one must accept responsibility for failure. Therefore people who fail are presumed to lack talent or will (30).

Question Why is success worth pursuing?

Answer- "true success is associated with virtue" (18). Flaws Failure implies sin. Also devaluing losers allows people to believe the world is just even when it is not (30).

In addition to the individual flaws of each tenet Hochschild asserts that the overall flaw of the American dream ideology is its emphasis on "individual people's behavior rather than on economic processes, environmental constraints, or political structures as the causal explanation for social orderings"(36). She further states that social ordering takes place because our institutions are designed to ensure that some fail and the American dream ideology does not "help Americans cope with or even to recognize that fact"(37).

Early immigration

Early immigrants to the United States landed on a lightly settled and undeveloped continent. Until the end of the 19th century, the sheer amount of land available for settlement, the absence of a land-owning aristocracy, and federal policies to encourage settlement (exterminating or resettling the natives, and in some cases offering free land to settlers) meant land ownership was within reach for many immigrants. Land speculation, as described in Mark Twain's The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, as well as land grants to railroad magnates, made some rich. During the 19th century, the transcontinental railroads that opened the West to trade and settlement, the development of mass production through industrialization, and the discovery that oil was abundant and could be used as the basic energy source for manufacturing, greatly increased economic opportunities for workers and businesspeople, as well as raising the American standard of living. In the 19th century, "rags to riches" stories of business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, as well as popular fiction writers like Horatio Alger, contributed to the belief that talent and hard work could lead to riches.

Spurred by the potato famines in Ireland, the Highland clearances in Scotland and the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, impoverished Western Europeans emigrated to America. Scandinavian and German immigrants of the mid 1800s mainly settled the Midwest as farmers. In the late 19th century, southern and eastern Europeans were recruited as laborers for the new American industries. Jews fled religious persecution and mandatory military service in the late 19th and early 20th century Russian Empire. Asian Americans began crossing the Pacific Ocean in the 19th century to find work in the American West. At present, immigrants from regions like Southern Asia, Latin America and the former USSR come to America in search of the American Dream.

The land of opportunity

The American dream as the literary expression of 'America: the land of opportunity' has been expressed by many authors including William Bradford, Walt Whitman, Crevecour, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

The 'land of opportunity' component of the American dream was boosted by the G.I. Bill after World War II. The G.I. Bill was "the greatest social program the country has ever seen," paying for veterans' college educations and guaranteeing their mortgages. The result was a huge increase in the middle class.

Even when America is considered the "land of opportunity" for all, this is not always the case. Restrictions on opportunity have meant that all residents of the United States have not had a 'level playing field.' Black men did not have the right to vote until the United States Constitution was amended in 1870. Women did not have the right to vote until 1920. As the first large non-WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) group of immigrants, the Irish faced employment discrimination in the 19th century. "Second-wave" feminists in the 1960s and 1970s sought to overturn long-standing laws that had prevented women from taking an equal part in the economy.

Race and the American Dream

America has become a multiracial country through both forced and voluntary immigration. Many immigrants came to the United States with hopes and aspirations that have become known as the American Dream. The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that Americans are entitled to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". This is something that was denied to some of them in their home countries. Once in America, the American Dream was not as easily attainable as they had thought. The following quotation exemplifies this idea:

"I arrived in America thinking the streets were paved with gold. I learned 3 things: 1. The streets were not paved with gold, 2. The streets were not paved at all, and 3. I was expected to pave them." - Unknown Italian Immigrant

In America today, there are a multitude of race and ethnicities that are constantly adapting the American dream in order to achieve relative success. The vision of the American Dream is different from person to person, but there is a general consensus about what it consists of across all races. A person's race, however, does affect the way they view the American Dream and how to go about achieving it.

According to Josh Sides, the African American Dream was to escape the poor ghettos that they were residentially segregated into. They wanted to move from these neighborhoods, where crime ran rampant, to the peaceful security of the suburbs. It is here that their children will receive the education to break the cycle of poverty. Jennifer Hochschild (2001) says that it is this idea that keeps poor African Americans believing in and striving for the American Dream.

According to a study performed by "The National Community for Leadership", Latino Americans have their own ideology of the American Dream. For them, being able to better yourself and provide better opportunities for your children is what the American Dream encompasses. It is much more than having a lot of money and material possessions. They want to ensure future equality and prospects for all Latinos.

Black intellectuals and militants in the 20th century rejected the conformity of the melting pot and the assumption in the American Dream that hard work will receive its just reward. Blacks did not get the same benefits from the G.I. Bill as whites; the bill was administered locally, rather than by the federal government, and in the South blacks were steered to vocational schools or denied tuition assistance outright, and banks discriminated against black would-be homebuyers.

In the early and mid 20th century, the use of the term "American Dream" to more narrowly refer to home ownership was promoted by Realtors in order to associate social success with home ownership.

Education and the American Dream

Since America's founding, education has been a pillar of American success. Hochschild has written that "the American dream is the promise that all who live in the United States have a reasonable chance to achieve success as they understand it (material or otherwise) through their own efforts and resources".(Hochschild 2001:35) Many people believe that a significant resource in achieving the American Dream is by attaining an education. Education, for the most part, determines a person's job opportunities and level of income. It has become an understanding that without an education the idea of the "American Dream" seems out of reach. Education has become one of the central institutions in making the American Dream a reality. "Schools are expected to teach children enough so that they can choose their own vision of success and then to give them the skills they need to pursue that vision". (Hochschild 2001:36) However, not all public schools in the United States are equal in any aspect of education. This may lead to unequal opportunities for certain children based on their location or income level.

For example, in Jennifer Hochschild's article Public Schools and the American Dream (2001) and Heather Johnson's book The American Dream and the Power of Wealth: Choosing Schools and Inheriting Inequality in the Land of Opportunity (2006) both Hochschild and Johnson identify the role of public education as one that is supposed to level out what is initially an uneven playing field. However, both authors assert that economic inequality, racial segregation and inequalities created by inherited wealth result in public schools that are separate and unequal, a direct contradiction to the American ideology of meritocracy. (Johnson 2006:46) Therefore, as Hochschild asserts, a public school is the place where many of the lower class and minorities first encounter disadvantages in their pursuit of the dream because these schools don't equalize opportunities across generations but instead become the arena in which many Americans first fail.

Hochschild believes that educational policies that can help children with unequal opportunities achieve the goals of the American Dream are desegregation, inclusion, school choice, school finance reform and standards based reforms. However, these policies must be approved by individual state policymakers. Although the benefits from these policies would be great, the power is in the hands of the wealthy, which may not see a need to enhance education policies. Therefore the cycle of inequality remains for those on the lower end of the social ladder.

Social class and the American Dream

Americans would like to consider America as a merit-based society where individual effort and abilities determine how successful one will be in life (Johnson 2006: 150; Domhoff 2006: 200; Hochschild 1997: 18). The belief held by many Americans is that individuals themselves have the ability to choose their own destinies. Although the American Dream focuses on individualism and obtaining material, economic, and educational assets; evidence shows that hard work alone does not guarantee success, nor does merit alone determine a person's position in life. Johnson (2006) uses the working poor as an example of how some people work very hard and yet never achieve success.

Research has shown that social class is one factor that greatly impacts a person's privileges and advantages in life. "Class can shape, constrain, and mediate the development and expression of knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, motives, traits, and symptoms" (Aries and Seider 2007: 138). In laymen's terms, the more money, wealth, or economic assets one obtains, the higher the class he or she will achieve. "Social class constrains the possibilities they [people] face and the decisions they make and it provides the possibilities and limits for his or her personal identity" (Aries and Seider 2007:138). Social class places people in different positions that either benefit or limit their advantages in pursuit of the American Dream. Poverty reduces opportunities and can greatly inhibit one's chances of success. Therefore, class greatly impacts the way people perceive and achieve the American Dream.

Wealth and the American Dream

The United States prides itself with being a merit-based nation that "assures all citizens that regardless of the circumstances to which you were born, with hard work and determination we all have equal chances in life" (Johnson 2006:102). In this merit-based system, all people are ensured that they are competing on a fair and level-playing field, allowing all to have equal chances and opportunities when achieving/pursuing the American Dream. No one group or person is placed ahead or below another group or person. The actions and behaviors of people directly influence the rewards/punishments they receive on a daily basis. But is this always the case? According to Johnson (2006) and her book The American Dream and the Power of Wealth, a direct contradiction to the American Dream's ideal of a society based on merit has to do with wealth, not income, and the way it is acquired, distributed and used. Wealth (financial assistance, intergenerational transfers and family security) is not merit-based and acquired through individual achievement. Rather, wealth is a "critical advantage [that is] passed along to the next generation [and is an] advantage often unearned by the parents themselves, and always unearned by their children" (2006:102). "A foundational conflict exists between the meritocratic values of the American Dream and the structure of intergenerational money inequality" (2006:102).

The working class and the American Dream

The Change to Win Federation is also known as "The American Dream for America's Workers" and "was founded in September 2005 by seven unions and six million workers devoted to building a movement of working people with the power to provide workers a paycheck that supports a family, universal, affordable health care, a secure retirement and dignity on the job" (Change to Win 2007). They are an organization made up of several affiliated unions such as, but not limited to, the Laborers' International Union of North America, the Service Employees International Union, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. They strongly focus on the power of unions "to unite the 50 million workers in Change to Win affiliate industries whose jobs cannot be outsourced and who are vital to the global economy — but who are not given a chance to reach the middle class" (Change to Win 2007). The organization believes that the American Dream is being threatened as "CEO pay is skyrocketing and corporate profits go up and up. But most workers are being left behind — the gap between the rich and everyone else is gaping and growing" (Change to Win 2007). They believe that the only way to uphold the middle class and the American Dream is to unite American unions with other unions around the world who will all "negotiate with global corporations to raise living standards and win respect for workers' rights everywhere" (Change to Win 2007).

In order to achieve their goal the organization has created the American Dream Project, which is an "ongoing series of opinion surveys monitoring how Americans feel about their chances to achieve the American Dream" (Change to Win 2007). The newest survey in 2006 opened up to include all registered voters and found that "the respondents identified four elements as key to their conception of the American Dream:

• having a job that pays enough to support a family;
• having affordable quality health care;
• being able to ensure your children have the opportunity to succeed; and
• having a secure and dignified retirement.

On all four of these core issues, more than 90% of respondents said that having a union would help them do better. To take one example, when asked if having a union would help them achieve the American Dream goal of "having affordable quality health care", 94% said that it would help - with 67% going so far as to say it would "definitely" help" (Change to Win 2007).

Home ownership and the American Dream

Although wealth is a generally assumed characteristic of the American Dream, there are other aspects of the American Dream that some would argue are more important than the mere accumulation of wealth. Modarres (2007) explains that a major source of wealth and intergenerational transfer of wealth is real estate. Purchasing a home is perhaps the most important investment many Americans will make. With that statement, it can be assumed that the American Dream can be achieved, but can be achieved to its highest value with the investment in real estate.

The home ownership rate of immigrants exceeds their rental rate within 13 years of their arrival in the United States. This confirms the findings of other researchers (e.g., Pitkin et al. 1997), but as an independent statistic, this is not very informative and may even be somewhat misleading. Explaining home ownership as a function of residency equates it with assimilation, thereby placing a burden of achieving the American Dream entirely on immigrants (Modarres 2007).

Being foreign-born, the socioeconomic status of that population is complicated when attempting to achieve the American dream. Political and economic conditions of American society shape and reshape one's identity and social position. These conditions include aspirations for equality and achievement of the American Dream. In this regard, housing becomes an important factor in immigrants' experience as the idea of home is redefined within an American context (Modarres 2007).

From American Dream to American reality

According to a study of The Pew Charitable Trusts, the intergenerational mobility in United States is quite low, comparatively to some other countries : mobility is 1.2 times higher in France, 1.5 in Germany, 2.5 in Canada and 3.2 in Denmark. In the same way, the Center for American Progress reports that "Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States".

References

• "As a force behind government philosophy, it seems to be interpreted by most users as a combination of freedom and opportunity with growing overtones of social justice" - From Safire's New Political Dictionary by William Safire (New York: Random House, 1993).
• Hochschild, Jennifer. 2001. "Public Schools and The American Dream." Dissent: 35-42.
• Hornstein, Jeffrey M. A Nation Of Realtors: A Cultural History Of The Twentieth-century American Middle Class. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005)
• Johnson, Heather Beth. 2006. The American Dream and the Power of Wealth: Choosing Schools and Inheriting Inequality in the Land of Opportunity. New York: Routledge.
• L.L. Lee, "Walter Van Tilburg Clark's Ambiguous American Dream", College English, Vol. 26, No. 5. (Feb., 1965), pp. 382-387.
• Miller, Kerby A. 1988. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Pearson, Roger L. "Gatsby: False Prophet of the American Dream". The English Journal, 59(5) (May, 1970), pp. 638-642+645.
• Scouten, George Samuel. "Planting the American dream: English colonialism and the origins of American myth." PhD dissertation 2002, University of South Carolina; ISBN: 0-493-97159-9, Accession No: AAI3076792
• Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing. retrieved Oct. 2007. http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/sermons/650704_The_American_Dream.html
• Smith, Wendy. "Unintended benefits" (Review of Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream, by Edward Humes (San Diego: Harcourt Books, 2006)). Los Angeles Times, Oct 1, 2006. p. R.4
• Zangrando, Joanna Schneider and Zangrando, Robert L. "Black Protest: A Rejection of the American Dream". Journal of Black Studies, 1(2) (Dec., 1970), pp. 141-159.

See also

• Income in the United States
• Affluence in the United States
• Social structure of the United States
• Income quintiles
• Culture of the United States
• Secularism
• European dream