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Whose Dream is it Anyway?Small Town USA drills America, home of dreamers and refuge for the weary, into me. I chase fireworks under the Fourth of July night sky. A country singer croons from the park’s gazebo, “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free (Greenwood 1984).” The preacher on Sunday conjures fire and brimstone to condemn the American Dream. “The American Dream,” he drawls, “Is prideful. God does not bless America so that we can be rich—God blesses America so that we can be free.” What this rural Baptist church fails to address is that many threads are needed to sew a security blanket of freedom. Since the birth of the United States, white men have been the default blank canvas to which our ideals are compared. It is a privilege of the good old boys club to go without acknowledging this fact. There are varying kinds of freedom, not all of which are accessible to everyone. Freedom of religion, monetary freedom, freedom to love, freedom to exist, freedom to be seen and heard. The American Dream is freedom, but freedom in every capacity. Norman Rockwell paintings encapsulate the quintessential, American as apple pie, American Dream. Rockwell’s depictions of genial police officers, happy couples, and well-coiffed wives on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post set the standard for what, today, is envisioned as the American Dream; white picket fence, three kids, big house in the suburbs. It is not the elements present in Rockwell’s works that are so revealing—it’s what’s missing. The lack of people of color, women outside of traditional gender roles, non-Christian religions, and same sex relationships in Rockwell’s most loved paintings exhibit the climate in which they were published. It also demonstrates how the representation of an era affects how it is remembered. In “Harlem,” Langston Hughes waxes over the question, “What happens to a dream deferred (1951)?” African Americans’ dreams were deferred after they failed to experience true freedom after slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment. Dreams were deferred after Jim Crow was established. Dreams were deferred by white flight. Dreams were deferred after leaders of the Civil Rights movement were murdered. Dreams are deferred by the fear and danger that accompanies being black in America. According to the law, everyone is equal in America, but actions speak louder than words. Gunshots are deafening. So are the quiet, gasping last breaths of Eric Garner. White children are taught that the police are here to help while it is an almost universal experience for black children to be taught how to deal with the police so that they are not shot. What kind of a life is living in fear of those meant to be protectors? The Declaration of Independence calls for, “...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (US 1776),” and although these rights were originally extended only to white men, life should be the most basic unit of freedom for everyone. No matter how jarring and shocking murders of African Americans at the hands of the police may be, the out and out hate crimes committed by American civilians have a unique sting. On June 17, 2015, Charleston, South Carolina was whipped with a reminder of the sometimes dormant, sometimes explosive hate that many harbor in their hearts. Dylann Roof’s racism was never a secret. A melting pot of warning signs, Dylann Roof did not murder nine people because he was mentally ill or had a bad home life—he murdered nine people because he hates black people. On his website, Dylann Roof wrote, ““I wish with a passion that n——s were treated terribly throughout history by Whites, that every White person had an ancestor who owned slaves (Ghansah 2017),”” demonstrating the brutish and undeniable racist hatred he possesses. Dylann Roof, most of all, hates successful black people who have overcome the systemic barriers blocking the American Dream. In a conversation with Roof’s former principal, Gansah discusses the downward social mobility of Roof’s working class family and the threat he sees successful African Americans as (Gansah 2017). This attitude of envy and outrage towards a minority that white folks have, for centuries, watched struggle is common among the white working class, a social demographic that played a key role in President Trump being elected (Examination 2018). The leagues of voters in this demographic who emerged to cast their ballots for Trump represent the faction of the American public whose animosity towards minorities is the most powerful component in determining what will make America great again. The days that Trump supporters harken to as “great” were darks days for women of all races and social classes. For much of history, American or otherwise, women were accessories, maids, mothers. What purpose does the second sex serve, but to serve the first? Following World War II, white women were forced back into the exclusive roles of wives and mothers while feminists who had tasted freedom mulled over what they wanted and what was missing from their lives. Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, asserts that, “...women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are inasmuch danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps...they are suffering a slow death of mind and spirit.” Lack of autonomy stifles desire, ambition, passion. The lives that white women were pasted into, scenes from “Better Homes & Gardens,” numbed the mind. Women of color suffered the opposite fate of white women; they had to work to support their families due to the pay gap that existed between races. Angela Davis explains in Women, Race, and Class that, “The enormous space that work occupies in Black women’s lives today follows a pattern established during the very earliest days of slavery. As slaves, compulsory labor overshadowed every other aspect of women’s existence.” Women of color, specifically black women, until the mid-twentieth century lacked the luxury of not making a career outside of the home as white women did. Black women often worked in jobs for which they were paid little and received little respect for, such as domestic service. Black women rarely found allies in white women and were, in fact, often victimized by them. Due to the social and economic oppression of women and color, achieving their American Dream was the hardest of all. By the time she is of legal age, virtually every woman will have experienced some degree of sexual harassment. Often written off as harmless joking, sexual harassment is more powerful than just what is said. The audacity that it takes to yell at fourteen-year-old girls from a truck, send dick pics, or touch a stranger’s thigh on the bus, as well as the prevalence of these events, speaks volumes about the general attitude towards women society today has. Without a name, full background story, and family tree women are viewed as objects. Even with the aforementioned qualifications, every industry employing women in the United States is rife with instances of sexual harassment. Women still experience gender based put-downs and unwanted sexual attention in professional settings, from Hollywood to academia, sciences to the military. Between 2005 and 2015 filed eighty percent of the sexual harassment charges made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, demonstrating that the majority of this burden is placed on women. Women still receive lower salaries than white men. In 2015 the Pew Research Center found that white women made four dollars less for median hourly earnings than white men (patten 2016). Women of color receive lower salaries than their white female counterparts. The same study by Pew Research Center found that black and latina women make four and five dollars less than white women respectively (Patten 2016). In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf asserts that, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction (1992).” While this quote is specifically about writing, its sentiment applies to any endeavor a woman takes on. A room of one’s own is everything that is needed to grant a woman independence in her life. A room of one’s own is equality in education. A room of one’s own is equal opportunity. A room of one’s own is acknowledgement of the glass ceiling. A room of one’s own allows women to chase the American Dream.Despite the inequity of the achievability of the American Dream, the dream is alive in some form for most Americans. The luxury of choice following World War II led to the rise of more brands, convenience, new gadgets, better cars, bigger houses. The rise of consumerism in the United States added a new layer to the American Dream and created a new litmus test for monetary success. No longer was success defined only by big ticket items, success was communicated through the frequency at which new items were bought. TV dinners, Tupperware parties, fast fashion, and every heavily packaged snack available were status symbols.This shift toward households built on disposability accommodated the privileged few who could afford it in the 1950’s, but today rapid consumerism is standard in every social class. Lunchables are the envy of every elementary schoolers lunch. Starbucks and giant soda cups in the morning are status symbols in high school. It doesn’t matter how cheaply made the on-trend clothes from stores like Forever 21 and H&M are; they can be thrown away and traded out with months, weeks of wear. This is a picture of the American Dream today—more things, more often, and at lower costs to the consumer. Who doesn’t stand to gain from this system? Those who this system abuses, and this is a system fraught with exploitation. In the United States, instances of undocumented immigrants being exploited in the meatpacking industry are common. Factories that employ large numbers of undocumented immigrants routinely pay their workers less and violate Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards. Injuries in these workplaces are common, and many undocumented immigrants lack access to adequate insurance to pay for the injuries sustained. Employers also take advantage of their employees’ undocumented status due to a 2002 Supreme Court case that ruled, “undocumented workers had the right to complain about labor violations, but that companies had no obligation to rehire them or to pay back wages (Grabell).” Labor conditions at the Case Farms Chicken Plant are dangerously similar to those described in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a book written at the turn of the century to shed light on the unsavory conditions immigrants faced in meatpacking factories. Safety hazard complaints are ignored, workers complaining of injuries are brushed off, and the vulnerability of undocumented employees is taken advantage of (Grabell). Over a century after The Jungle was written, immigrants are still subject to what Sinclair calls wage slavery; being bound to a job with subhuman conditions, and yet not able to leave because of a lack of other prospects. The search for the American Dream for one group can limit another’s ability to even grasp for it. Another consequence of American consumerism is environmental detriment. Factories waste massive amounts of water in production, depleting groundwater supply. In 2016, 22% of United States greenhouse gas emissions came from industry alone. The food wrappers, toys, and cheap clothes that are rapidly discarded are often petroleum based. Plastics that are not recycled end up polluting natural habitats or, most often, in landfills. Plastics never disappear, but as they are exposed to sunlight they photodegrade into smaller and smaller particles. These particles are ingested by animals and their sometimes toxic components are bio-magnified as they travel up the food chain. These pollutants can end up in seafood that humans—Americans—eat. Is the ease, status, and affordability of one luxury of the American Dream worth a planet’s worth of harm?H&M is a good example of the offenses on both counts of environmental degradation and mistreatment of workers that many fast fashion companies surrender to. Polyester is used in most garments that H&M makes. Polyester is a plastic, and, much like the plastic bags and soda rings that haunt the oceans, polyester clothing can never break down. While most garments may end up in landfills or donated, polyester clothing still acts as a pollutant due to microfibers. Microfibers flake off of clothing, for example, in the washing machine and are laid to rest in water supplies (Perry 2018). In aquatic ecosystems, microfibers are ingested by plankton and travel up the food chain, having the same gastrointestinal effects on larger marine animals as larger plastics do. The same polyester that harms animals in its resting state harms human beings in its production. All of H&M’s clothing production occurs outside of the United States because the cost of cheap, foreign labor is necessary to keep clothing prices low. Of course, this may be good news to American consumers but to the workers overseas, low wage jobs in factories are a means to an end. Nazma Akter says of labor conditions in Bangladesh,“It is very tough; they cannot go for toilet breaks or to drink water. They become sick. They are getting the minimum wage as per legal requirements but they are not getting a living wage (Parry 2017).” The low wages paid are simply due to supply and demand; developing nations have more abundant supplies of unskilled labor and can therefore pay less. The working conditions in these factories mirror those at the turn of 19th century in the United States. Low wages, unsafe working conditions, child labor, and lack of responsibility from employers may be relics of the past in the United States, but US consumers still stand to gain from mistreatment of workers in other countries. It is not the right of the wealthy—Americans achieving their dreams—to crush non-Americans in the pursuit of stuff. Who does the American Dream belong to? Not the land, the laborers, those who come to America solely in search of a dream. Not those whose backs this country was built on, not those who American history hushes. Despite its inherent problems, the American Dream is what Americans as a whole strive for. Success, freedom, and comfort are what Americans consider when choosing college majors, career paths, and accepting job offers. These considerations of the American Dream have changed little in the last half century, but new challenges have arisen for every dreamer. Costs of higher education have surged since Baby Boomers entered the workplace. The necessity of college degrees has also risen. Getting a job with a livable paycheck is more difficult today than it was fifty years ago. This puts a strain on the economic freedom and monetary success of the 99%. Everyone is aware of the obstructions in the way of his or her freedom; if attaining the freedom that is necessary to achieve the American Dream was a simple task for each person, America would be a utopia by now. It is not that simple. The power to and responsibility of creating an equal society lies with those who gain the most from inequality. Until the day the scale is tipped, marginalized groups will continue to fight for freedom and build their own American Dreams, brick by brick. ................
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