Is the American Dream Achievable For Everyone?
Cue Bruce Springsteen´s “Summer Of 69”. Raise the flags and sound the trumpets. It’s 1969 in America and the Flower Power movement is in full blast. This fantasy seemed to flourish until the 1970s.
The so-called “American dream” pursued by Americans and immigrants is based on the idea that anyone with ability, desire and perseverance can make it to the top.
However, global economic crises such as those of 2009, and recent global pandemics, have accentuated inequalities. Some prominent professors and philosophers argue that in some Western societies, this false sense of meritocracy is actually generating a new form of “aristocracy.” And at its root, is a prominent and exclusive educational system in the US.
What Is the American Dream?
This idea, first expressed in 1931 by American historian James Truslow Adams, refers to prosperity depending on one’s skills and work, not on a rigid destiny dictated by social hierarchy, although the meaning of the phrase has changed during U.S. history. After the abolition of slavery in 1865, racist repression was and still has been a reality for afroamerican communities, not neccessarily because of race but because of socioeconomic differences, where most local education systems are funded from nearby neiborghoods.
Brief History of the American Dream
The generic definition of the term appears in a 1931 history book by James Truslow Adamsonm entitled American Epics. However, just like many essays about american dream have stated, the concept of the American dream dates back to the 16th century. In both the 16th and 17th centuries, English pioneers attempted to persuade their country’s citizens to move to the British colonies in North America; their language and promises about these colonies ended up realizing three separate but interrelated persistent myths:
- America is a land of plenty.
- America is a land of opportunity.
- America is a land of destiny.
This, then milked and marketed by mid 20th century marketing geniuses, gave it the glorified sense that is attributed to it nowadays.
American Opinion
“It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”
I think this is a perfect tombstone for whatever idea or residue people may think still exists. Thank Christ, people are much more aware nowadays of the social issues and sistematic racial bias that all immigrants are subject to.
The United States, if we are completely honest, has become a very rigid and selective class hierarchy in which the elites are segregated from the rest of society.
The New York Times posted a brief survey back in 2009:
Conclusion
Although the idea of the American dream sounds dreamy and romantic, it often shifts the weight of obtaining success from circumstance and proper equal possibilities for all, to the individual. In this case (and many more) I think we could take up Scandinavian countries as an example. In Sweden or Denmark, there are no elite schools and almost everyone attends public schools. They have an education system that is not hierarchical, whereas the education system in the United States is the most hierarchical in the world.
