Color of America Essay 1.) During the last few centuries many people have migrated to America. One of the main reasons for that is that they all hear about the American Dream and the Promise of America. The American Dream/Promise of America is pretty much a false idea. People from many different places hear that there is freedom and fairness here in this nation, and they hear that there is opportunity in America for everyone and that everyone had a word in things. This promise wasn’t really a promise though.
For Native Americans, African-Americans, and other groups…this promise has been broken…mostly because the American Dream is obtainable…but very difficult to achieve. Let’s take African-Americans for example. African-Americans obviously have a very large difference compared to most others in the world. They are black. People seemed to have a difficult time accepting this and because the farmers and people working on plantations with slaves all got their slaves mainly from Africa and the blacks were chosen to be used by them to do all of their work.
This made the blacks immediately a lower class of people and before they knew it they were getting pushed to the back of the bus and not allowed to use the same bathrooms or water fountains as white people. 2,) Today American life is like a tossed salad. When people starting migrating to America many years ago, this country was known as a melting pot. Meaning that everyone just pretty much blended in with each other. This became a problem though. People didn’t always mix very well, as they all had come from different cultures and had many cultural differences and also just many different lifestyles.
If this country were a melting pot with immigrants from all over bringing over their culture, this country would be very difficult to live in. You could have people like the bushmen living right next door to upper class Americans that just don’t want people who walk around pretty much nude right next to them. That then has people of different groups striving for their cultural identity to be shown because they aren’t fitting into the Eurocentric ideal of an “American” culture. Saying that this country is like a tossed salad though is a lot different and a lot more realistic.
This is saying that like vegetables in a salad, ethnic groups are being able to maintain their own identities while they can still participate in the culture of Americans.
“ In the case of the melting pot the aim is that all cultures become reflected in one common culture, however, this is generally the culture of the dominant group. - I thought this was mixed vegetable soup but I can only taste the tomato.” The greatest fault in the melting pot is that in reality, America is far too complex to meet the constraints of being socially dominated by one group due to the vast amount of cultures, religions, and ideologies that are very prominent and prevent any one culture to overshadow all of the others. We move further away from being a melting pot every day due to the freedom of expression and noncensorship becoming societal norms. However, if viewing America as a melting pot would be considered far right, then it would be far left to consider America as a salad
Blacks were treated unjustly due to the Jim Crow laws and the racial stigmas embedded into American society. Under these laws, whites and colored people were “separate but equal,” however this could not be further from the truth. Due to the extreme racism in the United States during this time period, especially in the South, many blacks were dehumanized by whites to ensure that they remained inferior to them. As a result of their suffering from the prejudice society of America, there was a national outcry to better the lives of colored people.
America has always been a land of hope and possibilities. People coming from around the world has once carried the American Dream settling in America imagining they all would have the equal opportunity to achieve success as well as prosperity through determination and hard work. However, in times of economic crisis and situation where racial relationship was tensed portrayed on films like “Who Killed Vincent Chin” and “Rising Sun”, the ides of American Dream seems to differ among by different individuals and families.
The American Dream is referred to by many people as the reason to come to America. It is, or so they say, the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Unfortunately they are incorrect, there truly is no American Dream, it is all an illusion given to us by our founding fathers as a reason for the inequality in which people are treated. I have lived in this country for 16 years now and have all the patriotic bullshit about how we give everyone equal opportunity and how everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. I just laugh when I read this. Throughout our country’s 300-year history, it is all about raising one person over the other. It started with the movement of the Native Americans. They were here before anyone else, and they were moved because they did not live with all the violence our ancestors did. The founding fathers continued to push them further and further away because it was beneficial to them at the time. They said if you stay here we will not bother you anymore, then when they decided that area was nice and they needed it for the white man. Then we began to take the black man out of Africa and use them on our plantations so the white man could get more money. The President ended slavery, but there were ways around it and everyone knew it. No one ever said any persecution of the black man is wrong for years and why not, because it was more convenient for us to ignore it. Now the people from Latin American countries have come in homes of freedom, and better lives. We tell them they have to speak English, since they are in America, but I do not recall being taught the language of the Native Americans. Since they were here first should you not have to learn that language?
The social conditions throughout the era were extremely poor. Legal discrimination was around and African Americans were denied democratic rights and freedoms. The southern states would pass strict laws to normalize interactions between white people and African Americans. For example, Jim Crow signs were placed above regularly visited places by everyone, such as water fountains, public facilities, door entrances and exits, etc. Even the most basic rights such as drinking from a water fountain was taken away from African Americans. They would also have separate buildings for African
The American Dream exists in the hearts of all Americans and is a concept that drives many people from all over the world to the borders of a welcoming America. It holds the promises of infinite possibilities in a limited world. Escaping from societies where societies where racism and poverty are often prevalent, immigrants come to America to grasp a part of the infamous American Dream. Nonetheless this dream also exists in the hearts of many Americans already present in America. Perhaps it burns the brightest in the hearts of African Americans, whose past is tainted with execution based on their race. Yet, the American Dream is not applied or only conditionally available for those that seek it the most- minority or immigrant populations. The
The phrase “The American Dream” is an incredible thing. The promise of that dream has convinced hundreds of millions of people that, as a citizen of this country, you can accomplish anything if you work hard enough. Whether you want to be a doctor, athlete, or even a president, those things should all be within your reach, regardless of your class or race! America is the nation where dreams can come true. Unfortunately, for a large number of people that believe this, this is a concept that does not apply to them. Many Americans find opportunities are denied to them because of their race. Others can be found living in poverty and far from anything that would be considered desirable. Statistics show that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earned 9 percent of all U.S. income in 1979. Did you know that the same 1 percent earns 24 percent of all U.S. income today? That is a staggering example of the income inequality in America. The American Dream is that if you work hard and have the ability you will succeed, but that has become an impossibility for millions of disadvantaged Americans because the income inequality has been steadily increasing since the 1970s and racism and poverty are constant barriers to their success and financial security.
Everyone grows up with the thought of an American dream in mind . Unfortunately that American dream is only limited to the people who are not of color. Sadly the people of color and the american dream don 't match up to well. I feel that this is because it can’t be easily obtained due to improper education and never being given the opportunity to show what they’re made of. Maybe if we weren 't categorized by our living arrangements, or the amount of our wealth, or better yet being presumed as these incompetent animals who aren’t good for nothing. Then we too would be able to achieve our own american dreams ,but as people of color the chances of that are not likely living in a world that feeds us with this improper mindset.
There are various individuals throughout the world who believe that the American Dream cannot be achieved by all people. Those who agree with this view believe that our culture contains too many roadblocks and obstacles. Some of these obstacles include prejudice, poverty, and social inequality. Another view on this matter is that others believe that America is the “Land of Opportunity”. They also believe that if you can believe it, you can achieve it. Back in the early 20th century, The American Dream meant something to people; nowadays it is a term that various people loosely throw around. The American Dream is not realistic because it is not attainable to everyone like Cal Thomas presumes and although education, budget cuts and lack of employment may seem of some concern to only a small group of people, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about the status of the economy.
The American Dream is an aspiration that millions of people reach for in their lifetimes. The idea that living in America will assure happiness and success is a reason why many people migrate to this country. In actuality, the many people searching for it may not fulfill this dream lifestyle that America hypothetically offers. Like in the poem Harlem, by Langston Hughes, and the songs “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “Racing in the Street” by Bruce Springsteen, the main characters are battling with the idea of the American Dream and the life that it offers. Harlem describes what happens when you put a dream off and this dream may as well be the American Dream. “Darkness on the Edge of Town” describes what it feels like to lose the life the
The American dream started out as everyone being equal and everyone being able to have equal opportunities. Or as Truslow Adams said “ is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement, regardless of social class or circumstances of birth”(King 572-573). This is the way America was planed to be like, no one zeroed out and everyone equal. In one way or another this has never been completely true, there has always been some sort of inequality. Right from the start we had slavery, degrading African Americans and not giving them equal rights, as a white man would have. That lasted for a long time and then the great depression was next, creating income inequality, killing the economy and ruining the job field for the average working man, and now a day...
the “American Dream” a dream that is unreal. The American dream was intended for people of
Promises made to the African-American community by the American government were also left unrecognized. Prior to the era of civil rights movement African-Americans had already been struggling under the white power dating back to the years of ...
The American Dream is so important to our country and especially for our generation to take seriously. The American Dream is the opportunity to reach the goals one sets for themselves. It is about having your dream job and life you have always fantasized about. The dream is also about having freedom and equality. The American Dream was much easier to attain a few decades ago compared to today. However, it is still possible. The economy was better fifty years ago than it is today. People are in greater debt now and the United States is in higher debt than it was fifty years ago. The American Dream is still possible despite the lack of improvement within social mobility in American society over the past years. The American dream is achievable by being able to live a middle-class lifestyle and that lifestyle is obtainable through hard work and perseverance, even in light of obstacles such as racism. “The American Dream is still achievable, however, the good news is that people at the bottom are just as likely to move up the income ladder today as they were 50 years ago” (O’Brien 1). The ability to attain the American Dream is hindered by race, the middle class, and giving up facing adversity.
Living in the 21st century, American’s are given many opportunities that were not easily attainable in past lives. In the 1800’s to the early 1900’s, African American’s were not allowed to think for themselves and achieving the idea of the “American Dream” was out of the question. The American Dream is the set of ideas that every U.S. citizen should have equal rights and opportunities to go after their dreams. The idea is also asked, “How far are you going to go to achieve your dreams?” This paper describes two different story lines where one reaches the idea of the American and one does not.