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[[File:Statueofliberty.JPG|right|thumb|250px|For many immigrants, the Statue of Liberty was their first view of the United States, signifying new opportunities in life. The statue is an iconic symbol of the American Dream.]]
[[File:Statueofliberty.JPG|right|thumb|250px|For many immigrants, the Statue of Liberty was their first view of the United States, signifying new opportunities in life. The statue is an iconic symbol of the American Dream.]]


The '''American Dream''' is a national ethos of the [[United States]] in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward [[social mobility]] achieved through hard work. In the definition of the American Dream by [[James Truslow Adams]] in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of [[social class]] or circumstances of birth.<ref name=LOC>Library of Congress. American Memory. [http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/american-dream/students/thedream.html "What is the American Dream?", lesson plan].</ref> The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the [[United States Declaration of Independence]] which proclaims that "[[all men are created equal]]" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."<ref name=vanityfair>{{cite journal |last=Kamp |first=David |work=Vanity Fair |month=April |year=2009 |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904 |title=Rethinking the American Dream |accessdate=June 20, 2009}}</ref>
The '''erican Dream''' is a national etho of the [[United States]] in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward [[social mobility]] achieved through hard work. In the definition of the American Dream by [[James Truslow Adams]] in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of [[social class]] or circumstances of birth.<ref name=LOC>Library of Congress. American Memory. [http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/american-dream/students/thedream.html "What is the American Dream?", lesson plan].</ref> The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the [[United States Declaration of Independence]] which proclaims that "[[all men are created equal]]" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."<ref name=vanityfair>{{cite journal |last=Kamp |first=David |work=Vanity Fair |month=April |year=2009 |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904 |title=Rethinking the American Dream |accessdate=June 20, 2009}}</ref>


==History==
==History==

Revision as of 15:41, 30 April 2012

For other uses, see American Dream (disambiguation).
For many immigrants, the Statue of Liberty was their first view of the United States, signifying new opportunities in life. The statue is an iconic symbol of the American Dream.

The erican Dream is a national etho of the United States in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.[1] The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."[2]

History

Since its founding in 1776, the United States has regarded and promoted itself as an Empire of Liberty and prosperity. The meaning of the "American Dream" has changed over the course of history. Historically the Dream originated in the New World mystique regarding especially the availability of low-cost land for farm ownership. As the Royal governor of Virginia noted in 1774, the Americans "for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled." He added that if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west.[3]

The ethos today simply indicates the ability, through participation in the society and economy, for everyone to achieve prosperity. According to the dream, this includes the opportunity for one's children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the prior restrictions that limited people according to their class, caste, religion, race, or ethnicity. Immigrants to the United States sponsored ethnic newspapers in their own language; the editors typically promoted the American Dream.[4]

19th century

In the 19th century, many well-educated Jews fled the failed revolution in Germany in 1848. They encountered political freedoms in the New World, and the lack of a hierarchical or aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for individual aspirations. One of them explained:

”The German emigrant comes into a country free from the despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belief and conscience. Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases. No passport is demanded, no police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements....Fidelity and merit are the only sources of honor here. The rich stand on the same footing as the poor; the scholar is not a mug above the most humble mechanics; no German ought to be ashamed to pursue any occupation....[In America] wealth and possession of real estate confer not the least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has. Nor are there nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral power of the people, nor are there swarms of public functionaries to devour in idleness credit for. Above all, there are no princes and corrupt courts representing the so-called divine 'right of birth.' In such a country the talents, energy and perseverance of a person...have far greater opportunity to display than in monarchies."[5]

20th century

Historian James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America:

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. 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 is not 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 are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.[1]

And later he wrote:

The American dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.

Martin Luther King Jr. in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) rooted the civil rights movement in the black quest for the American dream:[6]

"We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. . . . when these disinherited childrens of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."

Literature

The term is used in popular discourse, and scholars have traced its use in American literature ranging from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,[7] to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Willa Cather's My Ántonia,[8] F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977).[9] Other writers who used the American Dream theme include Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Albee,[10] John Steinbeck,[11] Langston Hughes.[12] The American Dream is also presented through the American play, Death of a Salesman by playwright Arthur Miller. The play's protagonist, Willy, is on a journey for the American Dream.

As Chua (1994) shows, the American Dream is a recurring theme in other literature as well, for example, the fiction of Asian Americans.[13][14]

Political leaders

Scholars have explored the American Dream theme in the careers of numerous political leaders, including Henry Kissinger,[15] Hillary Clinton,[16] Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln.[17] The theme has been used for many local leaders as well, such as José Antonio Navarro, the Tejano leader (1795–1871), who served in the legislatures of Coahuila y Texas, the Republic of Texas, and the State of Texas.[18]

In 2006 U.S. Senator Barack Obama wrote a memoir, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. It was this interpretation of the American Dream that helped establish his statewide and national reputations.[19][20]

Political conflicts, to some degree, have been ameliorated by the shared values of all parties in the expectation that the American Dream will resolve many difficulties and conflicts.[21]

Public opinion

Hanson and Zogby (2010) report on numerous public opinion polls that since the 1980s have explored the meaning of the concept for Americans, and their expectations for its future. In these polls, a majority of Americans consistently reported that for their family, the American Dream is more about spiritual happiness than material goods. Majorities state that working hard is the most important element for getting ahead. However, an increasing minority stated that hard work and determination does not guarantee success. On the pessimistic side, most Americans predict that achieving the Dream with fair means will become increasingly difficult for future generations. They are increasingly pessimistic about the opportunity for the working class to get ahead; on the other hand, they are increasingly optimistic about the opportunities available to poor people and to new immigrants to get ahead in the United States. Furthermore, most support programs make special efforts to help minorities get ahead.[22]

The four dreams of consumerism

Ownby (1999) identifies four American dreams that the new consumer culture addressed. The first was the "Dream of Abundance" offering a cornucopia of material goods to all Americans, making them proud to be the richest society on earth. The second was the "Dream of a Democracy of Goods" whereby everyone had access to the same products regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or class, thereby challenging the aristocratic norms of the rest of the world whereby only the rich or well-connected are granted access to luxury. The "Dream of Freedom of Choice" with its ever expanding variety of good allowed people to fashion their own particular life style. Finally, the "Dream of Novelty," in which ever-changing fashions, new models, and unexpected new products broadened the consumer experience in terms of purchasing skills and awareness of the market, and challenged the conservatism of traditional society and culture, and even politics. Ownby acknowledges that the dreams of the new consumer culture radiated out from the major cities, but notes that they quickly penetrated the most rural and most isolated areas, such as rural Mississippi. With the arrival of the model T after 1910, consumers in rural America were no longer locked into local general stores with their limited merchandise and high prices in comparison to shops in towns and cities. Ownby demonstrates that poor black Mississippians shared in the new consumer culture, both inside Mississippi, and it motivated the more ambitious to move to Memphis or Chicago.[23][24]

Home ownership

Home ownership is sometimes used as a proxy for achieving the promised prosperity; ownership has been a status symbol separating the middle classes from the poor.[25]

Ethics

Sometimes the Dream is identified with success in sports or how working class immigrants seek to join the American way of life.[26]

Criticism

European governments, worried that their best young people would leave for America, distributed posters like this to frighten them. This 1869 Swedish anti-emigration poster contrasts Per Svensson's dream of the American idyll (left) and the reality of his life in the wilderness (right), where he is menaced by a mountain lion, a big snake, and wild Indians who are scalping and disembowelling someone.[27]

The American Dream has been credited with helping to build a cohesive American experience, but has also been blamed for over-inflated expectations.[28] Some commentators have noted that despite deep-seated belief in the egalitarian American Dream, the modern American wealth structure still perpetuates racial and class inequalities between generations.[29] For example, Dr. Heather Beth Johnson, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lehigh University, notes that advantage and disadvantage are not always connected to individual successes or failures, but often to prior position in a social group.[29]

Recent research suggests that the United States and the United Kingdom show less intergenerational income-based social mobility than the Nordic countries and Canada. These authors state that "the idea of the US as ‘the land of opportunity’ persists; and clearly seems misplaced."[30]According to these studies, "by international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. 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."[31]"This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity."[32][33][34]

Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby, satirized or ridiculed materialism in the chase for the American dream. Within 'The Great Gatsby', Gatsby - the character representative of the American dream was killed, symbolizing the pessimistic belief that the American dream is dead.[35] In 1949 Arthur Miller wrote the play "Death of a Salesman" in which the American Dream is a fruitless pursuit. Hunter S. Thompson in 1971 depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream a dark view that appealed especially to drug users who emphatically were not pursuing a dream of economic achievement.[36] The novel "Requiem for a Dream" by Hubert Selby Jr. is a study of the pursuit of American success and stability, and is told through the ensuing tailspin of its main characters. George Carlin famously wrote the joke "it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."[37] Carlin pointed to "the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions" as having a greater influence than an individual's choice.[37]

Many counter-culture films of the 1960s and 1970s ridiculed the traditional quest for the American Dream. For example Easy Rider (1969), directed by Dennis Hopper, shows the characters making a pilgrimage in search of "the true America" in terms of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyles.[38]

Other parts of the world

Britain

The American dream regarding home ownership has been emulated in Europe. In the 1980s, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher worked to create a similar dream, by selling public housing units to their tenants.[39]

Russia

Since the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991, the American Dream has fascinated Russians.[40] In 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev lamented the fact that 77% of Russia's 142 million people live "cooped up" in massive apartment buildings. In 2010, his administration announced a plan for widespread home ownership. "Call it the Russian dream," said Alexander A. Braverman, the Director of the Federal Fund for the Promotion of Housing Construction Development. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, worried about his nation's very low birth rate, said he hoped home ownership will inspire Russians "to have more babies."[41]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Library of Congress. American Memory. "What is the American Dream?", lesson plan.
  2. ^ Kamp, David (2009). "Rethinking the American Dream". Vanity Fair. Retrieved June 20, 2009. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  3. ^ Lord Dunmore to Lord Dartmouth, December 24, 1774, quoted in John Miller, Origins of the American Revolution (1944) p. 77
  4. ^ Leara D. Rhodes, The Ethnic Press: Shaping the American Dream (Peter Lang Publishing; 2010)
  5. ^ F. W. Bogen, The German in America (Boston, 1851), quoted in Stephen Ozment, A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People (2004) pp 170-71
  6. ^ Quoted in James T. Kloppenberg, The Virtues of Liberalism (1998) p. 147
  7. ^ J. A. Leo Lemay, "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream," in J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall, eds. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (Norton Critical Editions, 1986) pp 349-60
  8. ^ James E. Miller, Jr., "My Antonia and the American Dream" Prairie Schooner 48, no. 2 (Summer 1974) pp 112-23.
  9. ^ Harold Bloom and Blake Hobby, eds. The American Dream (2009)
  10. ^ Nicholas Canaday, Jr., "Albee's The American Dream and the Existential Vacuum." South Central Bulletin Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter 1966) pp 28-34
  11. ^ Hayley Haugen, ed., The American Dream in John Steinbeck's of Mice and Men (2010)
  12. ^ Lloyd W. Brown, "The American Dream and the Legacy of Revolution in the Poetry of Langston Hughes" Studies in Black Literature (Spring 1976) pp 16-18.
  13. ^ Anupama Jain, How to Be South Asian in America: Narratives of Ambivalence and Belonging (Temple University Press; 2011), looks at the American dream in fiction, film, and personal narrative such as Meena Alexander's Manhattan Music.
  14. ^ Guiyou Huang, The Columbia guide to Asian American literature since 1945 (2006), pp 44, 67, 85, 94
  15. ^ Jeremi Suri, "Henry Kissinger, the American Dream, and the Jewish Immigrant Experience in the Cold War," Diplomatic History, Nov 2008, Vol. 32 Issue 5, pp 719-747
  16. ^ Dan Dervin, "The Dream-Life of Hillary Clinton," Journal of Psychohistory, Fall 2008, Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 157-162
  17. ^ Edward J. Blum, "Lincoln's American Dream: Clashing Political Perspectives," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Summer 2007, Vol. 28 Issue 2, pp 90-93
  18. ^ David McDonald, Jose Antonio Navarro: In Search of the American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Texas (Texas State Historical Association, 2011)
  19. ^ Deborah F. Atwater, "Senator Barack Obama: The Rhetoric of Hope and the American Dream," Journal of Black Studies, Nov 2007, Vol. 38 Issue 2, pp 121-129
  20. ^ Willie J. Harrell, "'The Reality of American Life Has Strayed From Its Myths,'" Journal of Black Studies, Sep 2010, Vol. 41 Issue 1, pp 164-183 online
  21. ^ James Laxer and Robert Laxer, The Liberal Idea of Canada: Pierre Trudeau and the Question of Canada's Survival (1977) pp 83-85
  22. ^ Sandra L. Hanson, and John Zogby, "The Polls—Trends," Public Opinion Quarterly, Sept 2010, Vol. 74 Issue 3, pp 570-584
  23. ^ Ted Ownby, American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture 1830-1998 (University of North Carolina Press, 1999)
  24. ^ Christopher Morris, "Shopping for America in Mississippi, or How I Learn to Stop Complaining and Love the Pemberton Mall," Reviews in American History" March 2001 v.29#1 103-110
  25. ^ William M. Rohe and Harry L. Watson, Chasing the American Dream: New Perspectives on Affordable Homeownership (2007)
  26. ^ Thomas M. Tarapacki, Chasing the American Dream: Polish Americans in Sports (1995); Steve Wilson. The Boys from Little Mexico: A Season Chasing the American Dream (2010) is a true story of immigrant boys on a high school soccer team who struggle not only in their quest to win the state championship, but also in their desire to adapt as strangers in a new land.
  27. ^ The pictures originally illustrated a cautionary tale published in 1869 in the Swedish periodical Läsning för folket, the organ of the Society for the Propagation of Useful Knowledge (Sällskapet för nyttiga kunskapers spridande). H. Arnold Barton, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 152547256425264562564562462654666 FILS DE (Uppsala, 1994) p.71.
  28. ^ Greider, William. The Nation, May 6, 2009. The Future of the American Dream, Retrieved on June 20, 20205.
  29. ^ a b Johnson, 2006, pp. 6–10. "The crucial point is not that inequalities exist, but that they are being perpetuated in recurrent patterns—they are not always the result of individual success or failure, nor are they randomly distributed throughout the population. In the contemporary United States, the structure of wealth systematically transmits race and class inequalities through generations despite deep-rooted belief otherwise."
  30. ^ Jo Blanden; Paul Gregg and Stephen Machin (2005). "Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America" (PDF). The Sutton Trust. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  31. ^ CAP: Understanding Mobility in America - April 26, 2006
  32. ^ Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well? Economic Mobility Project - May 2007
  33. ^ Obstacles to social mobility weaken equal opportunities and economic growth, says OECD study, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Economics Department, 10/02/2010.
  34. ^ Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs | By JASON DePARLE | January 4, 2012 ]
  35. ^ Dalton Gross and MaryJean Gross, Understanding The Great Gatsby (1998) p 5
  36. ^ Stephen E. Ambrose, Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) p. 518
  37. ^ a b Smith, Mark A. (2010) The Mobilization and Influence of Business Interests in L. Sandy Maisel, Jeffrey M. Berry (2010) The Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups p.460
  38. ^ Barbara Klinger, "The Road to Dystopia: Landscaping the Nation in Easy Rider" in Steven Cohan, ed. The Road Movie Book (1997).
  39. ^ Michael Poole, Human Resource Management: Origins, Developments and Critical Analyses (1999) p. 159
  40. ^ Richard M. Ryan et al., "The American Dream in Russia: Extrinsic Aspirations and Well-Being in Two Cultures," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, (Dec. 1999) vol. 25 no. 12 pp 1509-1524
  41. ^ Anastasia Ustinova, "Building the New Russian Dream, One Home at a Time", Bloomberg Business Week, June 28--July 4, 2010, pp 7-8

References and further reading

  • Adams, James Truslow. (1931). The Epic of America (Little, Brown, and Co. 1931)
  • Brueggemann, John. Rich, Free, and Miserable: The Failure of Success in America (Rowman & Littlefield; 2010) 233 pages; links discontent among middle-class Americans to the extension of market thinking into every aspect of life.
  • Chua, Chen Lok. "Two Chinese Versions of the American Dream: The Golden Mountain in Lin Yutang and Maxine Hong Kingston," MELUS Vol. 8, No. 4, The Ethnic American Dream (Winter, 1981), pp. 61-70 in JSTOR
  • Cullen, Jim. The American dream: a short history of an idea that shaped a nation, Oxford University Press US, 2004. ISBN 0-19-517325-2
  • Hanson, Sandra L., and John Zogby, "The Polls—Trends," Public Opinion Quarterly, Sept 2010, Vol. 74 Issue 3, pp 570–584
  • Hanson, Sandra L. and John Kenneth White, ed. The American Dream in the 21st Century (Temple University Press; 2011); 168 pages; essays by sociologists and other scholars how on the American Dream relates to politics, religion, race, gender, and generation.
  • Hopper, Kenneth, and William Hopper. The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream Amidst Global Financial Chaos (2009), argues the Dream was devised by British entrepreneurs who build the American economy
  • Johnson, Heather Beth. The American dream and the power of wealth: choosing schools and inheriting inequality in the land of opportunity, CRC Press, 2006. ISBN 0-415-95239-5
  • Lieu, Nhi T. The American Dream in Vietnamese (U. of Minnesota Press, 2011) 186 pp. isbn 978-0-8166-6570-9
  • Ownby, Ted. American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture 1830-1998 (University of North Carolina Press, 1999)
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