American Dream

For other uses, see American Dream (disambiguation).

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 term American Dream has had many shades of meaning throughout American history. Today, 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. 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 still others, it is the opportunity to be an individual without the constraints imposed by class, caste, race, gender or ethnicity. It sometimes includes the idea of owning a home.

In general, the American dream can be defined as being the opportunity and freedom for all citizens to achieve their goals and become wealthy and renowned if only they work hard enough.

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" or "living the American Dream".

Historical background

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

The generic definition of the term "American Dream" appears in a history book by Michael Jones 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 sixteenth century. As sixteenth and seventeenth 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.

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 fiction by popular 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 labor 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 in search of the American Dream.

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 welfare 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.

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.

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 U.S. 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. Most job descriptions that specified that only men or women could apply were only made illegal in the 1970s. "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.

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.

Quotations

In 1960 the poet Archibald MacLeish, debating ‘national purpose,’ said: "There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right, It is. It is the American dream."

George Carlin once said, "It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

J.G. Ballard once wrote, “The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam...”

American Britney Spears sings in her 2007 song Piece of Me from album Blackout, "Miss American Dream since I was seventeen".

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