The American Dream was a concept first realized by the forefathers of this country. The men and women who anchored on the sandy shores of Plymouth, Mass. 388 years ago envisioned this as a land of plenty, of freedom, and of hope. Today, Boston College is less than 50 miles away from that first landing, from the first steps those dreaming men and women took on American soil. The idea of the American Dream, however, seems much more distant.
At BC and other universities across the nation, students are being pushed more than ever to achieve a new American Dream, one of vast wealth and materialism.
Last Monday, BC held its Black History Month opening ceremony with speaker Bakari Kitwana, author of numerous books on hip-hop's fusion with politics and faculty member at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago. During his discussion, Kitwana came across this idea of the American Dream, and what it has come to mean in today's society.
"The American Dream is evolving from where it used to be," Kitwana said. "You used to work your entire life, turn 50, and retire with the gold watch. Now you've got to be big, happy, and successful in your 20s. ... There's a disconnect between what young people aspire to and are being told to aspire to and the job options made available to them."
Seniors searching for the perfect first job can see this disparity, and may feel the demands of today's society lurking over their shoulder as they seek out this high level of success that others have been expecting of them since their admittance to BC four years ago.
"It used to be this idea that anyone can make it in America, that there were all these opportunities," said Steve Isom, CSOM '09. "But for kids at BC and other major universities, the American Dream has morphed into a get-rich-quick mentality."
While everyone may not feel this pressure, and some may reject this notion as being the American Dream, this definition seems to have been absorbed and accepted by mass culture.
Charles Derber, professor in the sociology department and author of The Wilding of America: Money, Mayhem and the New American Dream, recognizes that we are in an era of the American Dream that has become synonymous with capitalist gains, corporations, and monetary wealth. He said, however, that this is not the first time in American history that the original dream of our forefathers has been altered.
"There is a cyclic nature to the dream in American history," Derber said. "These periods [of the money-driven American Dream] tend to happen during the more conservative eras in American life, such as the Regan period and the 1920s - times of major prosperity dominated by major business."
It is in these times, he said, that Americans lose touch with the original ideal of the dream, an ideal that is encapsulated well in our nation's greatest document, the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God, Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
So how and when will this country return to this universal, egalitarian, and optimistic dream of the past?
One problem, Derber said, is the actions of citizens being driven by this unrealistic goal of mass self-prosperity. In his book, Derber uses the term "wilding" to refer to the type of human behavior that this new American Dream has created.
"This new American Dream leads people toward behavior that is very sociopathic and self-absorbed … extreme wilding is doing whatever it takes to get ahead, and this self-interested behavior is a perversion of the American Dream."
Derber gave the example of students cheating on exams or plagiarizing papers in desperate attempts to get ahead of their peers, something found on any college campus. He also cited the use of performance-enhancing drugs by college athletes as another example of this dire pursuit of the new American Dream.
Of course not every college student in America is a morally depraved cheater, but, Derber said, this is a trend that is becoming an increasingly grave problem within our society.
"People go through life thinking 'I am going to work really hard and get a great job,' most of it is just money driven," said Leslie Threlkeld, A&S '09. "People don't concentrate on happiness now. If I were to die right now, I'd want to be happy with what I've accomplished."
Another concern over this changing face of the American Dream, said Cynthia Young, director of the African and African Diaspora studies program and associate professor of English, is the loss of a sense of community. To Young, the greatest threat to the American Dream is this belief of the dream as a changing ideal on an individual-to-individual basis.
"We as a country live as much more isolated entities. We sit in our own houses, get in our own cars, and go to work. We know less about our communities and neighborhoods than ever before," Young said.
The problem with this, she said, is that the dream of universal hope and success cannot be realized without the entire community working together for a like cause.
"In the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the South, they had a sense of themselves as a community under seize. This bred a sense of community … and people need to feel connected and accountable to people other than their families and co-workers to feel the entire world is really connected to their own," Young said.
Derber said the last time in American history when the American Dream was truly associated with its original intentions of freedom and equality and was fought for on this common ground basis was during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
This movement is honored throughout the month of February and on the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the leaders of the movement who has been remembered in society as someone who kept the dream alive through the legacy of his "I Have a Dream" speech.
What Martin Luther King, Jr. did for the dream, Young said, goes beyond even what our forefathers laid out. Young said he allowed the dream to be recognized by modern American society as something not yet attainable by many still living in the country.
"Martin Luther King, Jr. had a vision," Young said. "And his vision was calling on us to live up to this rhetoric, this myth [of the American Dream]. That's the power of myth, people believe in them. It's untrue that all it takes is hard work."
Young cited the exclusion of minorities, both racial and religious, from colleges until the 19th and 20th centuries as evidence that this dream was no where near universal. And these struggles still exist today, she said, for those people trapped in dead-end jobs, and immigrants failing to find sustainable incomes and permanent lives in this country. Young said this counteracts any thought that the American Dream has been met.
"We need to realize that not everyone's experience is the same, that's the first step," Young said. "Then you need to develop empathy for these people struggling to meet the American Dream of coming to a better world, and then act on it."
During his speech, Kitwana mentioned one outlet youths across America have turned to as a means of expressing the reality of the dream today and keeping Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision alive: hip-hop music and culture.
He referenced organizations such as the Hip-Hop Congress, whose mission, according to its Web site, is "to use the culture of hip-hop to inspire young people to get involved in social action, civil service, and cultural creativity," and the "raptivists" of the 1990s.
"Dr. King's legacy is manifesting itself in another generation of young people alienated from mainstream American life," Kitwana said. "Young people are trying to create dialogue, and all of this is very exciting and empowering."
While Kitwana was more critical of some of the bigger names in hip-hop who have helped create that "big-spending" mentality and "big celebrity dreams of wealth early in life" that have in some respect reshaped the American Dream, he is still hopeful for a better future.
"I do believe we have the capacity to build a political movement in our lifetime," Kitwana said.
"I'm really excited, for example, about this year's election, both because of the diverse candidates and youth voter turnout, but what I want to stress this is a long time coming and it has taken a long process to arrive at this point today."
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