Please take notes as you read 'What is the American Dream?' by Jennifer Hocschild.The author is highly critical of the American Dream as a core American value. Be patient with the reading. The author's main points are toward the end of the piece where she identifies the flaws in each of the four tenets of the American Dream.The notes should be at least 2 full pages in length, double spaced, 12 inch font and 1 inch margins.
What is the American Dream? by Jennifer Hochschild Abstract In this selection, political scientist Jennifer Hochschild examines the four basic tenets of the American dream. The dream is rooted in a variation of philosopher John Locke's fantasy frontier, a state of nature where anyone is almost guaranteed to be able to achieve any success with enough personal determination. Hochschild discusses the myriad of ways American history and popular culture have portrayed the "almost-promise" of success, and the equally haunting power of the fear of failure. Having articulated the virtues of the American dream and its ascendance to the level of a seductive ideology, she then assesses the flaws inherent in the dream's four key tenets. Particularly troubling is the nightmarish quality of the dream for those who fail to achieve it, who are subsequently devalued by society and who, often, devalue themselves. Hochschild finds that the dream, taken as a whole, is overly (and unnecessarily) individualistic, fixated on an extremely narrow definition of "success," and analytically deceptive in that it encourages an emphasis on traits of individuals rather than political, economic, and social structures. Moreover, our political culture offers few alternative ideologies against which to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our own. Thus, the individually focused, nonstructural tendencies of the ideology of the American dream make it that much harder for U.S. citizens to fully understand themselves and the political world they inhabit. Introduction "In the beginning," wrote John Locke, "all the world was America." Locke was referring specifically to the absence of a cash nexus in primitive society. But the sentence evokes the unsullied newness, infinite possibility, limitless resources that are commonly understood to be the essence of the "American dream." The idea of the American dream has been attached to everything from religious freedom to a home in the suburbs, and it has inspired emotions ranging from deep satisfaction to disillusioned fury. Nevertheless, the phrase elicits for most Americans some variant of Locke's fantasy—a new world where anything can happen and good things might.... The Meaning of Success The American dream consists of tenets about achieving success. Let us first explore the meaning of "success" and then consider the rules for achieving it. People most often define success as the attainment of a high income, a prestigious job, economic security. My treatment is no exception. But pace President Reagan, material well-being is only one form of accomplishment. People seek success from the pulpit to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, from membership in the newest dance club to membership in the Senate. Success can be as amorphous and encompassing as "a right to say what they wanta say, do what they wanta do, and fashion a world into something that can be great for everyone." Different kinds of success need not, but often do, conflict. A classic plot of American family sagas is the children's rejection of the parents' hard-won wealth and social standing in favor of some "deeper," more meaningful form of accomplishment. The rejection may be reversed, as Cotton Mather sadly reported: There have been very fine settlements in the north-east regions; but what is become of them? . . . One of our ministers once preaching to a congregation there, urged them to approve themselves a religious people from this consideration, "that otherwise they would contradict the main end of planting this wilderness"; whereupon a well-known person, then in the assembly, cried out, "Sir, you are mistaken: you think you are preaching to the people at the [Plymouth] Bay; our main end was to catch fish." Mather "wished that something more excellent had been the main end of the settlements in that brave country," but the ideology of the American dream itself remains agnostic as to the meaning of "something more excellent." A definition of success involves measurement as well as content. Success can be measured in at least three ways, with important normative and behavioral consequences. First, it can be absolute. In this case, achieving the American dream implies reaching some threshold of well-being, higher than where one began but not necessarily dazzling. As Bruce Springsteen puts it, "I don't think the American dream was that everybody was going to make ... a billion dollars, but it was that everybody was going to have an opportunity and the chance to live a life with some decency and some dignity and a chance for some self-respect." Second, success can be relative. 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. A benign version of relative success is captured by James Comer's "kind of competition ... we had . . . going on" with "the closest friends that we had": When we first met them, we had a dining room and they didn't. They went back and they turned one of their bedrooms into a dining room . . . After that we bought this big Buick car. And we came to their house and they had bought another car. She bought a fur coat one year and your dad bought me one the next. But it was a friendly thing, the way we raced. It gave you something to work for, to look forward to. Every year we tried to have something different to show them what we had done, and they would have something to show us. William Byrd II articulated a more malign version in 1736: slaves "blow up the pride, and ruin the industry of our white people, who seeing a rank of poor creatures below them, detest work for fear it should make them look like slaves." Success can, alternatively, be competitive— 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). U.S. News and World Report, in an article celebrating "SUCCESS! The Chase Is Back in Style Again," graphically illustrates the relationship among competitors in the business world. An opponent may, however, be entirely impersonal. John Henry, "the steel-drivin' man," is famed for beating a machine, and Paul Bunyan for taming the primeval forest. Tenets of Success The American dream that we were all raised on is a simple but powerful one—if you work hard and play by the rules you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you. —PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, SPEECH TO DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL, 1993 In one sentence, President Clinton has captured the bundle of shared, even unconsciously presumed, tenets about achieving success that make up the ideology of the American dream. Those tenets answer the questions: Who may pursue the American dream? In what does the pursuit consist? How does one successfully pursue the dream? Why is the pursuit worthy of our deepest commitment? The answer to "who" in the standard ideology is "everyone, regardless of ascriptive traits, family background, or personal history." The answer to "what" is "the reasonable anticipation, though not the promise, of success, however it is defined." The answer to "how" is "through actions and traits under one's own control." The answer to "why" is "true success is associated with virtue." Let us consider each rule in turn. Who May Pursue Success? The first tenet, that everyone may always pursue their dream, is the most direct connotation of Locke's "in the beginning.. .." But the idea extends beyond the image of a pristine state of nature waiting for whoever "discovers" it. Even in the distinctly non-pristine, nonnatural world of Harlem or Harlan County, anyone can pursue a dream. A century ago, one moved to the frontier to hide a spotted past and begin afresh; Montana frontierswomen "never ask[ed] women where they come from or what they did before they came to live in our neck of the woods. If they wore a wedding band and were good wives, mothers, and neighbors that was enough for us to know." But seldom, say Americans, does one need to take such dramatic steps; fewer than one-fifth see race, gender, religion, or class as very important for "getting ahead in life." Even two-thirds of the poor are certain that Americans like themselves "have a good chance of improving our standard of living," and up to three times as many Americans as Europeans make that claim. In effect, Americans believe that they can create a personal mini-state of nature that will allow them to slough off the past and invent a better future. What Does One Pursue? The second tenet, that one may reasonably anticipate success, is less straightforward. "Reasonable anticipation" is far from a guarantee, as all children on the morning of their birthday know. But "reasonable anticipation" is also much more than simply longing; most children are fairly sure of getting at least some of what they wish for on their birthday. On a larger scale, from its inception America has been seen by many as an extravagant birthday party: Seagull: A whole countries of English is there, man, . . . and . . . the Indians are so in love with 'hem that all the treasure they have they lay at their feet . . . Gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us. . . . Why, man, all their dripping pans and their chamberpots are pure golden; and all the chains with which they chained up their streets are massive golden; all the prisoners they take are fettered in gold; and for rubies and diamonds they go for the on holy days and gather 'hem by the sea shore to hang on their children's coats. Presumably few Britons even in 1605 took this message literally, but the hope of abundant riches—whether material, spiritual, or otherwise—persists. Thus Americans are exhorted to "go for it" in their advertisements as well as their commencement addresses. And they do; three-quarters of Americans, compared with only one-third of Britons, West Germans, and Hungarians (and fewer Dutch), agree that they have a good chance of improving their standard of living. Twice as many Americans as Canadians or Japanese think future generations of their nationality will live better than the present generation. How Does One Pursue Success? The third premise, for those who do not take Seagull literally, explains how one is to achieve the success that one anticipates. Ralph Waldo Emerson is uncharacteristically succinct on the point: "There