False Idols of the American Dream

By Anonymous / Fall 2020

Often, I have heard that your parents (if you are lucky enough to grow up with one or both) are your first heroes. For me that hero was my mother. Most of my early years, my mom was a single parent raising my sister and myself. In order to make ends meet, and to make sure us kids had a good and full childhood, my mom gave up many personal goals, sacrificed opportunities and even switched career paths. Despite this, she maintained a positive outlook and a belief that she could provide for us so that we could grow up to be people both of deep character and of deep reverence to God. Her dream was and is not a self-focused dream, although taking care of her mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health are something she holds fast to do. Her dream, in essence, is the root of what I hope will be taken away from this paper.

The American Dream can be boiled down into a short few sentiments along the lines of: Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever your circumstance, if you have enough drive and are willing to work hard enough, you can succeed and rise up above your starting situation, depending primarily upon yourself and your will. It is a Dream that one does not live in a caste system where their role in life is predetermined by birth. You may hear it worded differently, or with one of the pieces of that Dream emphasized more than the rest, but overall, it seems this is a sufficient summary. Reading over that sentiment again, it sounds pleasant. I can do it; I can succeed if I put the effort in. American history has a way of spotlighting many who have succeeded in a rags to riches fashion, much as the extreme of the American Dream foretells. Characters such as Rockefeller, Ford, Vanderbilt, among many of the Gilded Age’s magnates are the center of so many business books since these men rose to financial strength. In order to fuel the Dreams of these men, countless people suffered poor living and working conditions [O’Donnell]. So, as the few rose to power and achieved their Dreams of exorbitant wealth, many others had to relinquish their American Dream of making it big and settled for making ends meet due to the system the successful imparted. Many Americans took this Dream and scaled it down to a more achievable bar of: With hard work, I can be better off in the future than I am right now. The idea of growth and gain via independence is still there at the heart of the Dream and many follow this as sailors would follow the stars. Keeping this in mind, the story of my mom will be revisited, starting from the beginning.

Growing up in the “high desert” of California is as rags of a place to start as any. Daughter of a Catholic chaplain and his wife, my mom grew up learning to say prayers, attend mass, and grow close to a select few friends. She pursued advertising, wanting to learn how to market good things to people who needed them. While early in her career, she met my dad on a trip to Canada, they were married about a year later. My sister came along a few years after that, and after two more years I did too. My parent’s marriage ended soon after I was born and both my sister and I moved with my mom down to Orange County near one of my mom’s close friends. With her parents having moved to a different state, my mom did not have much family support California-way and began raising the two of us to the best of her ability. Somewhere along the way, when I do not know, my mom’s focus and dream shifted from making it in advertising over to providing the best she can for her children. Once in California, she began regularly attending her friend’s church and those in the community took her in and helped how they could, with babysitting or needed kitchen supplies or just a listening ear. While my mom was still doing some advertising part time, as the task of raising us would allow, she began looking for other career avenues to put us kids through school. About four years into single parenting, she met the man who would soon be my stepfather. He found a job for her at an elementary school as a secretary. It was not glamorous, but it opened the door to a worthwhile opportunity in her eyes, good education for her kids. Financial burdens were still there, but many congregants helped fill the needs they were able to see. Moving forward to present day, my sister went through college on a volleyball scholarship and graduated with three business related majors and has just bought her first home through working successfully for a high-level company. I am setting up to graduate with a Structural Engineering degree and a wide-open road of possibilities. Both of us have strong moral compasses and strive to keep great relationships with the Lord, our family, and those we choose to have closest to us.

From many perspectives, it seems my mom’s dream of providing for us so we could be set up for success, as well as being people of deep character and reverence to God, has been well achieved. The American Dream sentiment seems to have been filled to an extent, as she is arguably better off than where she began. Materially, she has all she needs and more, and she is now able to pursue one passion of hers, tutoring dyslexic children who are often passed by or steamrolled by the current school systems. Many of these things came after great waiting and at no small cost of the material as well as emotional and mental taxation. From an outside perspective, she seems to just be another working middle-class American white woman who has relatively stayed steady in socioeconomic status and has set some dreams and is presently fulfilling many of those dreams on top of the dreams she has already achieved.

To some, this is a success story, to others it is stepping into the average role within a system, and to some others it is a picture against which a less fortunate circumstance may be contrasted. My mom, as I said before, is a middle-class white woman, meaning there are many things inherently working in her favor in the American system. Our zipcode, for one, gave many opportunities. Redlining is a tactic in which areas were divided on a map as a reference for where banks should offer and avoid investment, often directly correlating to demographics of the area, making those in poverty less able to come out of poverty [Twohig Lecture 14, 88]. Although the act of redlining was overturned in 1917 (not because of the increasing of the poverty issue, but rather to help defend homeowners’ freedom to rent to who they choose), effects are still seen today [Rothstein 47]. In my town, there are multiple neighborhoods that I was told to steer clear of as a child. Much of the town’s population is Mexican, and the vast majority live in small and homogenous communities, the ones which I was told to avoid. It would be very common when driving around those areas that someone would comment of “Little Mexico” (as the neighborhoods were so unaffectionately named) or comment that they “felt danger” just driving through the area, as there was gang activity every so often. All that to say, my mom did not live in those communities, and that (sadly) had serious impact for the better on her socioeconomic status among other things. She is also white, which is nothing to her fault, but may bring unintended benefits, such as the job she attained as a secretary at the private school my sister and I ended up attending. While this is no direct causality between race and the American Dream, there is correlation and I am sure there are many more personal examples the reader can resonate with of neighborhoods or communities of predominantly or completely minority residents which is worse off than most. At this, the façade of “I do not live in a caste system” begins to peel. Not that the American system is directly a caste system, being explicitly enforced, but rather people are guided and pulled into the caste system by the eddies and undertow of systemic foundations of inequality.

While advantages came for my mom, there were also many setbacks handed to her, predominantly the fact that she was a single parent raising two kids. As of June 2019, there are over 13 million single parent families in the United States, with single mothers accounting for 82.2% of that 13 million [Hooray Health]. The American divorce rate and the destruction of the family unit is another issue, not covered in this paper, but our government has implemented some safety nets to help single parents. Despite these safety nets, things like unforeseen health complications or injury can derail the plans of a two-parent family, let alone a single-parent family. When I was in high school, I had a climbing accident and snapped my humerus just below the shoulder joint. It took an ER visit, two appointments with a surgeon, one surgery, and three months of physical therapy to get back to semi-normality. As can be imagined, the bills racked up and my parents had to pay no small amount. The silver lining of this incident is that my mom had remarried, and my dad paid part of the bill, so what could have been a life-crushing sum of money was able to be managed, with sacrifice but managed. I can only imagine if this were to have happened to me when my mom was single, or even for it to happen to a resident of “Little Mexico”. At my parents’ church, there are often fundraising campaigns for those in worse off conditions than what I experienced; some people have cancer treatment bills, some have been in vehicle accidents and need fundraising for life-saving surgery, most recently there was a funeral cost which needed to be paid for an 8-month-old boy who was the son of a single mom. Thankfully, in all these cases, the church congregation came together and raised the needed funding and went above that to create meal trains, babysitting services, grocery runs, whatever was needed. Sadly, this is not always the case, not all Americans have that self-sacrificing kind of community I was blessed to grow up in. It is important to note the action of the community to help the individual.

The church community is one positive example of the system of religion upon the individual (although there are some who spread hate and malice under the guise of religion) and has a long history of stepping in and helping the destitute. In Christianity, this may be seen from the scripture James 1:27:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” [Biblegateway]

This ideology is one driving force to love and take care of those in need within the Christian doctrine. In Biblical times, orphans and widows did not have as much protection under Roman law and thus were susceptible to being taken advantage of. Reorienting this verse in current context takes out the box of only orphans and widows to take care of, but rather those who are in need and are vulnerable. Islam has a more fixed end form of giving to those in need within the third of the Five Pillars of Islam, Zakat. Zakat refers to “systematic giving of 2.5% of one’s wealth each year to benefit the poor” rather than the open ended, looking after those in need [BBC]. The Islamic Pillar is essentially a tax to directly go to the benefit of those in need, whereas the Christian ideal is along the lines of giving sacrificially along with those around you, so that the needs are met. (It must be admitted that I am not Muslim and do not have full awareness of the intricacies of the religion). In the American system, taxation works to put money toward national interests, some small portions of which include helping the needy through social services and healthcare relief for those in dire circumstances, but as mentioned above, these services are a safety net with wide gaps within which many fall through. When the safety net fails, people die or go into poverty, among other things.

Looking deeply at the American Dream, its promises and systemic pitfalls, my mom’s story can be viewed in a new light. The American Dream, as mentioned above, projects illusions of exuberant wealth, as the Gilded Age magnates had, as an attainable and very beneficial goal for every individual to set for themself. There are many who are systemically pushed away from this goal, yet still most Americans reach to gain what wealth they can and focus on their own triumph individually over the system and believe they have achieved their American Dream of rising above their starting place. My mom did, from these vantage points, rise above, but not by her own strength. She had to give up many things for my sister and me, very often financial opportunities, but was determined to give us the best life and possibilities she could. Her Dream, unlike the American Dream, extended beyond herself. She dreamt of her children growing up with opportunity and optimism. She did not achieve her Dream by herself. As I mentioned before, she met my stepdad, and they were married when I was 6. He gave up much of himself and what he had accumulated to see to it that my mom’s Dream was achieved. Even more, many from my church sacrificed to help my mom achieve her Dream. Comparing my mom’s Dream to the American Dream, she was willing to give up of her own joy and comfort so that others could have what they need, deeply contrasting the American Dream of rabid individualism to create self-gain and prosperity. While it may be argued that her children are just an extension of herself, I have seen so many times where my mom has reached out and helped those in similar situations to what she went through. She led a single moms’ group, led the Christmas toy drive which saw to it that dozens of families (each year) in need got gifts and necessities when they likely would not have. She has helped single parents of minority races to make ends meet, and helped others see the need they could fill for those families. My mom, along with my church community, made it their Dream to help those in need, even when in need themselves.

As may be evident, money is not a key motivator in the life of my mom, other than the fact that it helps fill the needs of her family and allows her more opportunity to fill the needs of individuals in her community. The Bible labels the love of money as a root of all kinds of evil in 1 Timothy 6:10 (Biblegateway). The American Dream holds money and personal gain as an integral part of what makes one happy and successful. The first of two contrasting images that purveys American media is the drive toward being wealthy and the idolization of the wealthy, the second is the message from some of the wealthy that money is not everything and focus on the hang-ups and amplified struggles of the rich and famous. Despite this second image, so many place their wealth, their socioeconomic status, and their material goods, at a place of personal identity and pride. The danger of this cannot be understated. When an object of personal identification is taken away, such as through sudden loss of wealth or health or whatever is idolized, a person is as prone to collapse as a building whose foundation is removed.

Furthermore, the idolization of independence has permeated more than just the American Dream, but even most aspects of the American day-to-day life. Independence is something to be cherished and to strive after, says the American Dream; work hard and you can make things happen for yourself, it may come at a cost, but you can hold your head high saying I did it, I do not need other people to depend on. This form of thinking further isolates a person from their community and turns the focus on themselves, fueling the issue of race division and socioeconomic gap. When a person has only their own interests in mind, the well-being of those around them is left up to the chance that benefitting the other person falls within the direct benefit of oneself. The opposite of this would be the dependence (not complete dependence) on those around you and being the one others can depend upon. It must be pointed out that there is a healthy and an unhealthy dependence on others. Healthy dependence would consist of allowing others to know of needs you have which you cannot meet and allowing others to lend support. Unhealthy dependence often consists of assuming everything will be taken care of for you, so you do not need to put any effort to make ends meet for yourself (exploitation) or wrapping your identity into how others accept you and desperately doing all you can to be accepted or relying excessively on others emotionally (codependence). Because of how easily the idea of healthy dependence can turn into unhealthy situations, this system is hard to mandate, and even harder to personally keep oneself walking the line.

The difficulty and possible unethicality of enforcing dependence upon one’s community has been an age-old issue. Socialism seeks to enforce this through high taxation, and increased reliance on a more ever-present government. Capitalism seeks to reach a goal of all being taken care of through demand and market regulation. It seems religion holds one of the most pure and distilled motivations of growing this dependence. The separation of church and state, however, limits this opportunity (rightly, I might add, as again it should not be forceful). Forced religion is a terrible thing and that fact is documented through much of history. Instead, the prospering of the idea of dependence upon one’s community and holding the needs of others as equal or greater to that of your own seems to boil down to an individual issue. The driving impetus of this must be compassion if true growth is to be attained, compulsion or selfish gain as a motivator may attain a result of helping those in need but is ultimately flawed and prone to toppling.

The best way to begin reparation is to alter the American Dream. Instead of the Dream being self-gain through independence and sheer will, a better Dream may be the betterment of those in most need, myself included, by the optional sacrifice of my own excess. Opening up to show your need takes courage because in our current society, under our current American Dream, need equates to a level of failure and failure is seen as shame. This shame and fear of failure opens the door to even more systemic issues, such as a culture of anxiety, but these topics will need to be discussed later. For now, working to reorient the American Dream away from independence and selfish gain seems to be one root issue to be fixed first.

It may be argued that humans are inherently selfish creatures, and those who hold to the theory of evolution argue that it is hardwired through survival of the fittest. This new American Dream is even able to fit within that mentality because we are social creatures. Whether we evolved to be more social creatures or not, much of our own personal prosperity depends on the prosperity of the group. Therefore, the giving up of one’s resources to help those in need may even be beneficial from a social evolutionary standpoint.

Starting from one’s own family could be the easiest or hardest way to begin. The family system was broken down long ago and we, as a society, are still suffering from it. Taking one issue at a time, this new American Dream could be seen initially as seeing the needs of those closest to you and filling them, whether that is family, close friends, or neighbors. Moving out and expanding from there could be keeping an open eye for those who do not have a family or community, such as people experiencing homeless, immigrants who have come to America alone, or those who have been abandoned by their family.

References

Holy Bible, James 1: 27 (NIV). Biblica Inc. Accessed 7 December 2020

Holy Bible, 1 Timothy 6: 10 (NIV). Biblica Inc. Accessed 7 December 2020.

O’Donnell, Edward. “Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0?” History.com. 31 January 2019. Accessed 6 December 2020.

“Parents Across the U.S. are Struggling to Afford Healthcare Coverage. But Single Parent’s are Having a Hard Time.” Hooray Health. 20 June 2019. Accessed 7 December 2020.

Rothstein, Richard. “Racial Zoning.” Liveright Publishing Corp. 2017.

Twohig, Niall. “Beyond the Myth of Progress.” Lecture Notes Day 8.

“Zakat: Charity.” BBC Religions. 09 August 2009. Accessed 7 December 2020.