“Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.)” - Langston Hughes An immigrant escapes poverty with only the clothes on his back, and hope in his heart. Clutching the frail hand of his child he lifts his weary eyes towards the road sign before him: “Next exit, The American Dream”. Immigrants, contrary to the belief of many Americans, are truly amazing people. They migrate from their country, their jobs, and often, their home and family, in search of a better life; The American Dream. The truth is however, immigrants are not the only individuals in search of this patriotic ideal. Today, according to the United States …show more content…
An ideal that has been deeply rooted in liberal philosophy ever since John Locke put quill to paper and wrote “ “Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” in the second treatise of government in December 1689. However, equality, or more specifically, the lack therefore, Has prevented many Americans from holding the American Dream in their calloused hands since the very conception of the United States of America. From the Jim crow laws of the early to mid 20th century to the subconscious misogyny of the job force, the American Dream cannot be universally accessible as long as race and gender inequality persists. Moreover, many people still believe that gender and racial discrimination is not a valid issue in the United States. They acknowledge that discrimination used to be commonplace, but many do not empathize with the currently oppressed. “Didn’t we elect the first black president 10 years ago? And didn’t we almost elect a woman president 2 years ago?”. Although it is true that slavery and Jim Crow have been abolished in the United States, and women 's suffrage has been granted, the underlying …show more content…
We as Americans are indifferent to the injustice that surrounds us. We see the homeless on the street, but we don’t stop to ask them how they’re doing. We hear phrases like “Man, that shits hella gay” being thrown around on a daily basis, but we never stop to think about the LGBT community whose reality has become a derogatory term. We pass by the ghettos of Detroit and the slums of South Chicago, but when a child dies from gang warfare we don’t register them as a fellow human being, but as a statistic. It is this indifference that prevents many from achieving the American Dream. By proliferating indifference we turn a literal blind eye to those in need when sometimes, all a person needs is an opportunity and a starting point. Many will say that “well if they weren’t so goddamn lazy, maybe they wouldn’t be poor.” Although it is true that the American Dream, by definition, is achievable for those who work hard for it, sometimes hard work is simply not enough. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr once proclaimed in the 1960s, “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” The moment we begin to realize that the American Dream is NOT achievable for all is the moment we begin to synthesize solutions to level the playing field so that America may be the dream that it once
America: The Beacon of Hope To many, America is considered the greatest country in the world; a place where anyone’s dreams can come true, a beacon of light in a world of oppression. Open doors give everyone the chance to enter, with a chance at a better life, with the mentality that working hard will let you succeed, building America up from the original 13 colonies to the 50 states we have today. However, in recent times there has been a change in people’s frame of mind, and as a result America has started to slip from its number one status.
In the process of working toward the American Dream, people struggle to fit in, to belong, to be accepted. For many of them, an important part of the American Dream is the chance to reinvent themselves—the opportunity to become someone different, someone better. In “Outlaw: My Life in America as an Undocumented Immigrant”, Jose Antonio Vargas is an “undocumented immigrant” who has been living illegally in the U.S. since he was twelve years old. To chase his American dreams, he embodied a lie until it became unbearable and he expose his truth and let the masks crumble onto the ground. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. broke unjust laws and engaged in nonviolence direct action in order to pursue his American dream of equality and freedom.
The history around African- Americans has painted colored people as bad guys. This is an example of prejudice because it’s the knowledge that people think they have, which they don’t. Obama shared with us his personal experience with this judgment. He states, “ There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.” Furthermore, this explains how Obama had experienced prejudice, an African American man who later became the President of The United States.
“Let America Be America Again” is a poem written by Langston Hughes during the Great Depression in July 1936. The poem takes you from a dream, the American dream to reality by spreading the awareness that the “American Dream” is about freedom, equity, and prosperity. On the other hand, a dream is only as real as you make it, and the author along with Americans feels that it is just that a dream. Throughout the poem, Lanston Hughes talks about the American dream and how different it is compared to the world he sees within the United States.
In “ The Struggle Continues for Racial Equality in America” speech by Ginger Adams Otis, there’s a quote that explains how equality may never be achieved: “ Blacks also make forty-percent of the population in homeless shelters, although they account for thirteen-percent of the U.S population. They also have the highest rate of ‘severely cost-burdened renters’- those who pay at least half their income to rent, leaving little for continued education for themselves or their children.” Our country’s equality hasn’t changed from 1963, so equality doesn’t seem achievable. The quote proves the point that equality can’t be achievable because although the law wants equality in the United States, there are people who make it impossible. But, there are Americans with the hope that equality will be achieved, but there are people who don’t have the hope that equality will be achieved.
From the lightbulb to the assembly line—the freedoms and opportunities that came with being an American fostered innovation and societal development for generations. These opportunities allowed countless downtrodden individuals to lift themselves and their families out of poverty while changing the world in the process. This is what it truly means to be American. Unfortunately, recent years have seen an erosion of the American Dream and a complete departure from our founding principles. The very fabric of what it means to be an American is under assault.
It seems that so often the subject of economic standing and wealth are said synonymously with the phrase “The American Dream.” To the enlightened individual the dream is not just a dollar sign, or desk name-tag at work, but the ability to walk into a room or a home, and know that their presence is welcomed and looked forward to. The dream is realizing that in America, we have resources to make an honest difference. In “Scratch Beginnings”, this quote says that “Hey, we all come from different backgrounds, most of which weren’t normal. We’re all messed up.”
It is getting harder for immigrants living in the United States to fulfill their American Dream, which causes them to put pressure on their first generation American child to fulfill the dream for them. To many immigrant parents, the Dream consist of getting a high paying stable job, and being able to provide for the rest of the family. However, even if a first generation child goes to a well respected college to get the stable, high paying job of their parents dreams, it is sometimes not enough. Due to language barriers and ethnic sounding names, first generation Americans are constantly being put down by employers who care more about appealing to the White public than provide an educated person a job. Immigrant parents fail to understand
Even though the optimal American Dream doesn’t promise that all citizens will achieve personal success, it offers equality and fortunes for them to pursue dreams through hard work. However, during the Industrial Age, American Dream didn’t apply to lower-class proletariat. Most immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived in the United States to escape religious persecution and poverty in their home countries and also seek new opportunities because of advertisements of the American Dream. But, they did realize that fantasy differed from reality after their arrival. As unskilled foreigners who suffered poverty and lacked experience and English skills, immigrants lived in nasty tenements located in city ghettos, earned little wages that
“Less than twenty percent of Americans say they 're living the American Dream,” concluding the point that no matter how hard you work, it never results in exactly what you desire (Carter). The goals citizens are looking to achieve today are dreams of the past, but not financially or lawfully perceptible: you must be aware that the infrastructure and resources of the past are either gone, much more difficult to access
Immigration and The American Dream Immigrants from the mid 19th century and early 20th century consisted of mainly Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Immigrants motivations, experiences, and impacts shaped what an immigrant had to go through being a different person from another country. Although Americans dislike foreigners who came to the United States, immigrants had a role in political, economic, cultural, and social aspects of immigrants because of their motivations, experiences, and impacts in America. New Immigrants did not have it easy and went through obstacles natives, political figures, bosses and others had thrown at them.
No matter who you are or where you have come from, you have undoubtedly heard of the American Dream. The idea that no matter who you are or where you have come from, you can do whatever it is you desire in America. What was once one the main driving forces for immigrants to flock to the new world, has slowly changed over the years, but still holds its value in the eyes of those who are looking for a promising new place to live. The American dream might not hold the same awe inspiring sound that it once did, but for many generations before ours it was a beacon of hope that helped build the foundation that the United States was built on. And, still, today the American dream might not be as achievable as it once was, but it is still an important
Impossible Dreams The meaning of the American Dream can be seen as ”A uniquely American vision of the country consisting of three central ideas. The American dream consists of a belief in America as the new Eden- a land of beauty, bounty, and unlimited promise; a feeling of optimism, created by ever expanding opportunity; and a confidence in the triumph of the individual.” Using this definition of the so called “American dream”, it seems to be a great representation of it at first, until you realize it includes everyone as the individual. From the beginning of the Civil war to the end of the War to End All Wars, the American Dream wasn’t possible due to the treatment of the Native Americans, the inequality between women and men, and the false promises given to the immigrants coming to our country in their time of need.
Dreams are hard to attain without discrimination, but with discrimination it is even harder to do, for this reason women had a hard time of achieving their dream, “While some women surely found some satisfaction in their domestic roles and knew their work to be both hard and necessary, many were aware that domestic labor was not only undervalued by their fellow Americans but also would never lead to success and stature”(Loranger). This quote proves that with discrimination against gender it was hard to attain the American Dream because even while doing work
More than 50 years ago, Martin Luther King held the memorable speech “I have a dream”. His impressive rhetoric demanded racial justice, which became a basis for subsequent generations of black Americans. His words have later been used to achieve a better understanding of the social and political upheaval at the time. The main point of the speech is that all people are created equal and although not the case in America at the time, Martin Luther King felt that it should be the case in the future. The audience of the speech is considered very general, however, the speech was held in Washington meaning it is possible that the speech was an attempt to engage law and policy makers who work in the nation’s capital.