[FONT=Times New Roman]The American Nightmare: The Reality of Racism in the United States[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]“No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver--no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.” (Malcolm X)[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]The American Dream is the supposed freedom that allows American citizens[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]- regardless of race, sex, or class--to pursue their goals in life through hard work and free choice; however, when comparing the idea to the reality of American society, it can safely be said that this concept known as the American Dream is nothing but a romanticized view of American society as made evident by the lives of African Americans and other racial minorities.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]When first analyzing the idea known as the American Dream--sometimes re-[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]ferred to as simply “the Dream”--it is necessary to understand the history of the United States itself. With its roots in the signing of the Declaration of Independence by the colonists participating in the Continental Congress, it can be said that the idea of the Dream is summarized in the beginning of the document: that all men are created equally and are endowed with inalienable rights, including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” However, the Declaration already contradicted itself with the reality of American political and social life at the time, dominated by land-owning white males, along with the fact that at the time of the foundation of the United States the slave population was around to half a million. (Steven Mintz) Many founders, including Benjamin Franklin, were utterly opposed to slavery. Nonetheless, when Thomas Jefferson finished the first draft of the Declaration that included a paragraph condemning the continuation of the slave trade, delegates from both southern and northern states objected to its inclusion and eventually omitted it (Foley, 813). [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]Basically, the American Dream divided two different camps--those who were pro-slavery, and those who held abolitionist tendencies--that both had different interpretations of what (and who) the American Dream could include. From then until the end of the American Civil War in 1865, black slaves were denied any opportunity of living this Dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and were conditioned during the post-Civil War and Reconstruction years to miserable conditions with little rights even after slavery. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]The Civil Rights era that began decades later to the end of the Civil War promoted very progressive domestic changes to the lives of oppressed groups, including African-Americans, Latin-Americans, American Indians, women, and homosexuals. Challenging the status quo was brought out through methods varying from peaceful protest and civil disobedience to civil unrest and all-out rebellion. For African-Americans specifically, the civil rights movement held roots with the inherited disadvantages of growing up as a black person in the post-Reconstruction United States. When viewed retrospectively nearly all historians have concluded that Reconstruction--referring to the policies in the post-Civil War U.S. which held the purpose of reforms that would provide equality for former slaves--was a failure (McPherson, 481). Specifically, a system based on institutional racism was implemented in the South in the post-Reconstruction years to as early as 1965, known as the Jim Crow laws, which were enforced by southern state and local authorities in order to maintain segregation policies that were present in all public facilities on a “separate but equal” status. Other characteristics of society’s racist norms were the economic exploitation of blacks and other minorities, and the mass racial violence against minorities in their respective geographical settings (one major example being the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization founded in 1865 by Confederate veterans). One race riot that took place in August 1908--in the midst of a time when racial tensions were very high--in Springfield, Illinois resulted in the organization of the NAACP. (Krohe 1973) In essence, no real “American Dream” could be lived out by African-Americans as they were constantly terrorized and harassed by the general public, as well as being put in a severe economic disadvantage that converted their lives from that of slavery to wage slavery. To say that the abolition of slavery by itself led on to more improved lives for former slaves should therefore be considered historically incorrect, and that the civil rights movement led by the oppressed people themselves against an institutionally racist society held much higher overall progress for true equality than normal government policy ever could. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]In the first half of the twentieth century, one of the most influential civil rights activists was W.E.B. Du Bois, was the first African-American to earn a PhD in 1895 from Harvard University (Du Bois 132-53). Besides being involved in the demand for civil rights, he was always a strong adherent to the philosophy known as Pan-Africanism, a philosophy which advocates for the unification of native Africans and the African Diaspora. Another adherent to Pan-Africanism was Marcus Garvey, an early black nationalist orator. He probably best describes the concept of Pan-Africanism in this quote: “Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… let us hold together under all climes and in every country…” (Amy Jacques-Garvey 1986) When viewed in context with the idea of the American Dream, it can easily be said that neither Pan-Africanists nor Black Nationalists actually see an American Dream that is attainable in a country founded on such racism and inequality, and that the alternative to peaceful protest for reform was black self-determination. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]Nevertheless, prominent African-Americans that subscribed to such beliefs [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]did not fail to harbor appreciation from later peaceful reform civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr. (Hynes). King’s work to end racial segregation and discrimination in a racially-divided United States through non-violent methods such as civil disobedience still makes him an icon to this day and continues to have an overall legacy that provokes the famous events of sit-ins, boycotts, newly racially-integrated schools and other public places, and of course the 1963 March on Washington. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]Another leading leader during the tumultuous period in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was Malcolm X, one of the chief spokesmen for the Nation of Islam. Although both men could be seen as highly influential public oratory speakers, King and Malcolm X each had different methods in approaching the racism problem: while the former advocated for peaceful protest, the latter stressed the futility of the “integrationist program” and argued that “there was no precedent for the absorption of Negroes into the greater white American mainstream in fact or in history.” (Spellman)[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]While each of these men had their share of differences when approaching racial inequality in the United States--between integration and self-determination--both shared the view that there was a huge racial divide in this country that, as made evident by the quote at the beginning of this paper, made any kind of idea like the American Dream unrealistic. There was no equal opportunity for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” when entire racial minority groups that lived well below the poverty line had to fight to survive in order to obtain “life” itself. The civil rights movement promoted revolutionary ideas of racial equality and justice as well as influencing later civil rights leaders and groups such as Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party in the 1970s.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]In conclusion, the American Dream’s existence can be disproven and in fact can be labeled the exact opposite--The American Nightmare--given the past history and the reality of the lives in which African-Americans and other racial minorities live in. Even in the twenty-first century studies have shown that the average black family’s income is little more than half of a white one family’s. (NPR) A more “white-sounding” name is more likely to get one hired to a job than a “black-sounding” one (Bertrand). When compared to reality, the American Dream is nothing but an absurd, if not outright false, idea, a bourgeois fabrication that convinces those who have found success that everyone can have the same success. With the history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination--along with the racist drug war, police brutality and racist legislation--racial communities were forced and are still being forced to play catch-up with whites, and are now feeling that sting, as it is impossible to catch up. But just looking at the lives of not only African-Americans specifically, but racial minorities in general, as well as immigrants and the working class as a whole, exposes the myth that is The Dream. As George Carlin once famously said, “It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”[/FONT]
Marxism and the American Dream
