The American Dream

The greatest explanation of the American dream is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech” I Have a Dream.” In 1963, King and other leaders of the civil rights movement organized a huge march for equal rights in Washington, DC. With a massive crowd of over 200,000 followers, the march was protesting racial discrimination in employment, racial separatism in schools, and they demanded minimum wage for all workers. (Biography.yourdictionary) Dr. King’s speech is more like a testimony of truth rather than a speech. At the time of his speech, African Americans were not free while the Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal. Dr. King’s movement established the way for the idea that there is an American dream, the idea that somebody can be anything they would like to be. This idea is still relevant now in America. Americans pursue their dream everyday by having the opportunity to attend college, and work. Although America is the land of opportunities, Americans take these opportunities for granted, while other parts of the world make it their lives’ time goal to get here. In certain times of history the American dream has not been available to some races. For example it be the Japanese during World War 1 and the African Americans during the Civil rights era. “The land of opportunity has discriminated people from completing their dreams” (Nobelprize.org.). Our country has gone through great trials of racism. The great Martin Luther King Jr. worked his whole life to change these things. Dr. King made history when he gave his speech “I Have a Dream” at the Nation’s Capital in 1963. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal (King, Martin L., Jr.). The famous speech is a testimony to the struggle of African American people and the deep desire of Dr. martin Luther King Jr. who lived, fought and died to win equality for the African American community. Another important aspects of Dr. King's struggle was his vision for the memphis sanitation workers strike.

    The American Dream is a lifelong objective that many Americans aim for. This Dream is not the same for every person in the United States, and throughout the course of American history, it has changed gradually. From the beginning of time, the dream was to own land and to live off of it, but now it has branched out into so much more.  According to Google Dictionary the American Dream is “the ideal that every U.S. citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.” This is not always the case because though Americans work for what they have and to be where they are, the American Dream is not always attainable. Some believe that the American Dream is just a dream and sometimes it is, but it can also be a reality. To attain the reality of the “dream” there are obstacles that differ for everyone. Of these challenges are wealth, gender, inequality, race, and social class. The American Dream can remain a dream or become a lifestyle depending on the hard work one is willing to put in.

Achieving the American Dream is like fighting over the last TV on Black Friday. The American Dream is very limited. A person has to have a certain background to achieve it. The American Dream is an illusion. America wants one to believe that they have the perfect set of materialistic things to make their life better. The American Dream consist of having money, a nice house, a great looking car, and a family. Not everyone can achieve that though because of the barriers that they have in this country. The American Dream is not achievable by all people because individual’s divergent backgrounds.

The American dream for years has been see known to be something that anybody can achieve with hard work through all obstacles. For most of Americans, especially minorities, this does not occur. The notion that working hard will get you somewhere with your merits does not face up to the statistics. But despite all these statistics, facts, and evidence, people, usually minority, aspose these talking points non-stop. Matter of fact, the average person has a little chance of mobility or stay in the same socioeconomic class. In my own personal life, I have yet to achieve the American dream. My own parents have are janitors and grew up in poverty. You can say that they themselves are clear example of the difficulty of achieving success solely on meritocracy. Now you might ask what is your definition of the American dream? For me, the American dream is about owning a home, having enough money to not struggle to buy food, clothing, and decent water for not only me but my wonderful family as

The American Dream is not equally accessible to all. “The traditional American Dream is based on the belief that hard working citizens can better their lives, pay their monthly bills without worry, give their children a better life and still save enough to live comfortably after they retire (Wallechinsky 25).” However, it is hard for everyone to achieve this dream. We take better care of our criminals and those that are too lazy to work. Our colleges are so expensive that people have to take on a lot of debt in order to go to college.

I say that the American dream is different and have obstacles to concurred because of racism in the country. I think that the American dream will always have problems because parents have there kids growing up teaching them to be racist. Another reason is because people will look at black people a different way towards getting jobs and accomplishing something just because of the way they came up or was raised they will always look at black people different. The final reason why I say this is because they still have police that are racist and other people who are white that see you with some money and will always take it in a negative way like if you work for it and you not an athlete or rapper they would think you sell drugs or do something else. The American dream is hard on stuff because of racism and always has been since before everything happened with slavery even on other races like Chinese, Hispanic, mexican, and Arabian people, they make like the people are meant to do certain jobs just based off their race.

The American Dream is defined as all of it’s citizens having equal opportunity to have success and beneficial growth through hard work and dedication through hard work. Sadly, this is not the case for many citizens living in the United States of America and it is not attainable for anyone. In America, all of its wealth is owned by a small circle of individuals that have the power to rule this country from the inside. These wealthy believe that power and wealth come to those that work very hard and turn nothing into gold, however in many cases with very wealthy families the money is most likely an inheritance. The American dream is not attained for all of it’s citizens because of the large wealth gap between classes, the media’s coverage on class, and distribution of wealth.

The American Dream is a theory that is controversial and has many different prospects for each individual. America is the land of the free. It comes with many struggles that are faced by the people who choose to settle here. From the very beginning, the settlers who came to escape from Great Britain and start a new life started the standard life in America. The treatment of African Americans was one example of how the American Dream can be taken away from a group of people, but it also shows how much the American Dream is wanted by that same group of people. “The Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson, and the “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr., speech are just small beginnings to something as great as what America is today.

The American dream is an elusive idea for many Americans; it allows access but does not provide equal opportunity to achieve it for every American citizen and varies wildly throughout different social classes in America. Inequality plagues society throughout these social classes, providing or denying certain opportunities throughout them.

When someone is asked what the “American Dream” is, he says it is freedom, choice, opportunity, wealth, and the pursuit of happiness. All of these descriptions of what the dream should be is just a notion made up by society. People want a nice place to live, a family, and most of all people want to be economically and physically wealthy. In most cases, to live the American Dream is to live in a constant struggle with yourself and with society. Everything people want or desire is just a doorway to a lot of struggles and at the end of the path is the sacrosanct American Dream. The American Dream is often misleading because there are times where people can not reach the goal no matter how hard they work and sometimes the following generations are affected by the struggle their own parents went through. Living the dream is not always pretty and it is not perfect either. Like most things in life, the “American Dream” is not handed to you. It is just made up and people have to suffer the consequences. Today, people still have hope and believe that there will be a better tomorrow. People still share the same dream that has been upheld as a sacrosanct for many years. Life has become a tad bit easier but in the early 1920’s there was a family who could not seem to understand and accept the rough path of life find the end of the. In The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, Ayana Mathis tells us the story of a true American family who is living in the middle of segregation and a national

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.

Depending on who you speak to, or what pockets of society are examined, the concept of the American Dream is a relative concept. The mantra is depicted as if one works hard and saves money, then one can own a house, a car or two, and have a family with two children. This 1950s invention has proven to be highly reductionist. It paints a picture of the Leave it to Beaver sitcom, where a husband who works from 9 to 5, returns home after a day’s work to be received by a beaming wife, a hot meal and doting children. America is far different than the distortions of television. In fact, differences have always existed between race and class. In this context, the question to be posed is, whose American Dream has been packaged and sold to society?

First off, we must understand the definition of this so called, “American Dream”. A basic definition would describe it as, “the mindset that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative”. Now in a way this can either be true or false. You could either strive for success and work your entire life to make it to the “White picket fence”, or you could be born with a silver spoon and literally have everything you needed in life just given to you. This is also a lifestyle we all sought out to be an easy task to live every day in this “American Dream.” Let’s look into some readings that actually tell about these thoughts.

The idea of the American Dream is first voiced by James Adams, who says that it is “that dream of a land,” where life should be better for everyone, “with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement” (Tobak). The main drag American society has today is the “according to his ability or achievement.” Most believe that the American Dream is a promise dealt out exactly equal to all, this is false. The American Dream is not assured, it is dealt out according to ability, achievement, and a little luck. This is because America is not class locked, unlike many other nations “where position is far more important in determining a life’s outcome” (Tobak).

In order to question the American dream you have to know the meaning. Based on a search the definition of the American dream it is “the American Dream, the notion that the American social, economic, and political system makes success possible for every individual” (“dictionary”,1). The biggest challenge is to prove that the dream is a reality. Racially speaking who is benefiting from this dream before we get into the reality aspect? The people that most frequently focus on the so called American dream are those who try to sell the thought that it actually does exist in reality. The American dream does not exist.