American Dream Totally Explained

Everything about The American Dream totally explained

The American Dream can be described as a belief in 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's the opportunity to achieve more prosperity than they could in their countries of origin; for others, it's the opportunity for their children to grow up with an education and career opportunities; for others, it's 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

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

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. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It isn't a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they're innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

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 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.
Also the book Of Mice and Men is a good example of pursuing the American Dream.

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's 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're 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.
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 isn't always the case. Restrictions on opportunity have meant that all residents of the United States have not had a 'level playing field.' Black men didn't have the right to vote until the United States Constitution was amended in 1870. Women didn't 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.

Aspects

The American Dream has implications in a variety of aspects of life.

Race

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 wasn't as easily attainable as they'd 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's 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's 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.

Education

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's 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

Most 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 doesn't 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'll 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

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're 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's acquired, distributed and used. Wealth (financial assistance, intergenerational transfers and family security) isn't merit-based and acquired through individual achievement. Rather, wealth is a "critical advantage [thatis] passed along to the next generation [andis 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).

Working class

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 can't 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

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 (for example, Pitkin et al. 1997), but as an independent statistic, this isn't 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).

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".

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