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Persuasive Essay On The American Dream

Decent Essays

The American Dream is a concept without a true definition, but is tossed around as a cornerstone of our society. Most see the dream as showing off the achievements of our people, but this idea of focusing only on our successes disregards the failure and struggle that everyone endures to even witness the light of success. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, they attempt to define the American Dream as "a happy way of living" achieved by "working hard and becoming successful." Contradicting the definition above, many people in this nation are not given equal treatment or equal access to opportunity. Success is not necessarily achieved in the states through the equal opportunity for people of differing races, ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic situations, and people lacking the proper connections to be able to easily enter into different establishments without the proper credentials.
The American Dream is not accessible to all because not every free, American citizen is able to attain the same equal opportunities, and while our rhetoric tells of a nation with no racial or other social boundaries, our history and our actions show a different America. The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal" and that they are deserving of, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but even the nation's founding fathers, such as George Washington, owned more than ten slaves - slaves being men that were denied their "unalienable" rights for another hundred years, and hundreds beforehand (Jefferson 69). The Bureau of Prisons tells of the struggles of blacks, even in more recent times, how they account for "37.9 percent" of the total inmate population while only consisting of "13 percent of the general population," according to an article by PolitiFact in early 2016 ("Blacks More Likely"): an insane set of statistics. Furthering the distance between equal treatment, NAACP.org tells how both blacks and whites use drugs "at similar rates" but African Americans are arrested for the same charges at nearly "6 times" the rate of whites. In, at the very least, the case of African Americans, it is obvious they are mistreated by the Judicial System, even after generations of prior abuse.
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