"that American dream of a better, richer and happier life for all of our citizens of every rank"
James Trustow Adams, The American Epic, 1931.
In this era of change (when has any era in history not been characterized by change?) when Americans are increasingly occupied with pondering not only the future of their nation and its standing in the world, but the very essence of what it means to be American, there is a lot of talk about how the Great Recession is creating a need to reevaluate the American Dream.
When hearing this I tend to go on an inner rampage about how I could not disagree more - I feel like concepts such as the American Dream are being looked at through the reality of prerecession and an abundance that we are moving away from. I have trouble, and forgive a foreigner for venturing to know better, making sense of this questioning of this great descriptor of what America has been and is about.
The argument seems to be that, because we are experiencing an economic crisis of still unknown proportions and can no longer afford the same luxuries as we used to, the American Dream of a "better, richer and happier life for all of our citizens" is passe. As if because the nation has, for now, seized to become wealthier, the relevance of pursuing the dream is lost - what?!
I realize that I am living in a capitalist society and that is why, to me, the American Dream never had much to do with wealth for all and issues of equality. Not so much as it is a description of the American boldness to dream as well as doing, and most of all the determination of the American worker to work hard to achieve that dream and the will of fellow Americans to help those who work to help themselves.
But there is a reason why they call it a dream.
America is not known, at least where I come from, for being a country of equality of opportunity - remember the longevity of slavery, Jim Crow, and the endurance of racism in many places still? Which brings me closer to my point. The reason it is called a dream and not the American Reality is that is only becomes that if the person works hard for it. See where I'm going? (...) It takes hard work because we may all be born with inalienable rights, but also, as far as Americans are concerned, into a proud, if recently perhaps lesser so, capitalist society that eschews the idea of moving towards anything remotely socialist due to their belief that you need incentives to make your own luck.
Well - that is one thing that we are being given in this recession - something more to strive for that we are not just being handed either by birth through luck of being born into this abundant age or handed through a credit card that allows us to spend before working beforehand. The period in which we are entering is by far the one where the idea of the American Dream is at its most relevant.
Old Lincoln who grew up in log cabin, the poor kid from Queens who makes it to the CEO chair, and this multinational kid, raised in Kansas and Hawaii to a white single mother whom I hear made it big - those are the stories at the heart of the American Dream, not the notion that simply by being born in America the American Dream shall be bestowed upon you automatically.
What is pretty characteristic here and perhaps unique is the wonderful will of Americans to help those who are willing to help themselves. And that is what makes the American Dream achievable. Everybody, fortunately, cannot be a president (cough! Palin! cough!) but because of the American boldness to dream and the national consensus to help people achieve it, they can make it further from less than perhaps in any other country.
That is social mobility though, not equality, and it is something to strive for in a time when we haven't had incentive to strive very far in a long time.
Americans, however, do like to pride themselves on the notion that everybody can become a president, pointing now to the election of Barack Obama as newly evidenced proof of that idea. But a bold and probably unique approach to social mobility is nowhere the same. Obama is the embodiment of the American Dream and acknowledges this in his statement that only in this country would his story be possible. But the idea that that dream stands for an America of equality is one that I and I would think the President too would beg to differ on.
America's new president will have experienced that lack of equality himself just by being half black, and I see it everyday in the still somewhat segregated city that is my otherwise beloved Washington, D.C., where the lowest payed jobs are usually filled by black and Hispanic people and where a peak into the floors of Congress will make you rethink the idea that everybody can become President. I would argue that there are very few financially underprivileged people in the House and Senate buildings even though those entities are made up to comprise representatives of the people.
So I was sort of surprised to find out last week that the coinage of the term, the American Dream, stemmed from a 1931 book, The American Epic, by historian James Trustow Adams, in which a large part of this dream is described as precisely that of equality: Foreign friends of Adams are being quoted for their statements of amazement of the way in which "everyone of every sort looks you straight in the eye, without a thought of inequality".
Without question I would concur that Americans in general are a lot more chitty chatty and that it is easier to get into random conversations with random people here, and yes, from all representations of society than it is where I come from. But does that really constitute equality? To some extent perhaps, but I have a feeling that a lot of bad off Americans would argue that in terms of equality America has a long way to go. The Declaration may have stated as early as 1776 the self evident truth that all men are created equal, but that required of course that you were not born black, or worse even, a woman.
But that brings me finally to the point (...)
Though everybody can dream, and perhaps with enough determination to create one's own luck, make that dream reality, America is not about equality of outcome as Adams' definition seems to point to. The dream is about equality of opportunity and about being the smith of your own happiness as we would say in old Denmark. It is not about everybody ending up with everything they want. Making it is not always easy and that is why it remains a dream. If everyone got what they wanted there would not be enough for the extremes of the Donald Trump version of the dream and his is very much an embodiment of the term as well.
If everyone were equal, that, my comrades, would be socialism, and nobody would want that (!). But the American Dream, as I see it, has rarely been of more relevance to us than it is now. In this time when so many are losing their jobs and investments, the mentality of making your own luck when what you had is lost or looking to leave, is now more relevant than ever.
And for a country that just elected the ultimate agent of hope, I have pretty good hopes for the survival of the American Dream. Even if recession would change its spelling to begin with the tabooish letter d, I do recall a certain people who emerged stronger than ever out of the last one.
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