American Dreams

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-31
Author(s):  
James C. Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Dream ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Fair Play ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
Old West

Chapter One discusses the rural roots of the men most responsible for Zev's racing career: oil tycoon Harry F. Sinclair, the owner; cantankerous trainer Sam Hildreth; and jockey Earl Sande, a budding national celebrity. Profiles in American newspapers during the buildup to the Race of the Century described the three men's rise from humble, rural roots in the American heartland using language that evoked romantic visions of the mythical American frontier and Old West. These stories of the achievement of the American Dream affirmed the notion of the United States as a place where anyone could succeed through hard work and fair play, even as the environment that had produced their ascent had, by the 1920s, become a distant memory for many, amid an increasingly bureaucratized, industrial postwar modernity in which the United States was a global superpower, trending toward oligarchy, and the world's greatest consumer of mass spectacle.

Fragments of the American Dream: Immigration, Race, and Medical Care in the Segregated South, 1929

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
John R Phillips
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Single Woman ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sunflower County

The cover photograph for this issue of Public Voices was taken sometime in the summer of 1929 (probably June) somewhere in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Very probably the photo was taken in Indianola but, perhaps, it was Ruleville. It is one of three such photos, one of which does have the annotation on the reverse “Ruleville Midwives Club 1929.” The young woman wearing a tie in this and in one of the other photos was Ann Reid Brown, R.N., then a single woman having only arrived in the United States from Scotland a few years before, in 1923. Full disclosure: This commentary on the photo combines professional research interests in public administration and public policy with personal interests—family interests—for that young nurse later married and became the author’s mother. From the scholarly perspective, such photographs have been seen as “instrumental in establishing midwives’ credentials and cultural identity at a key transitional moment in the history of the midwife and of public health” (Keith, Brennan, & Reynolds 2012). There is also deep irony if we see these photographs as being a fragment of the American dream, of a recent immigrant’s hope for and success at achieving that dream; but that fragment of the vision is understood quite differently when we see that she began a hopeful career working with a Black population forcibly segregated by law under the incongruously named “separate but equal” legal doctrine. That doctrine, derived from the United States Supreme Court’s 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, would remain the foundation for legally enforced segregation throughout the South for another quarter century. The options open to the young, white, immigrant nurse were almost entirely closed off for the population with which she then worked. The remaining parts of this overview are meant to provide the following: (1) some biographical information on the nurse; (2) a description, in so far as we know it, of why she was in Mississippi; and (3) some indication of areas for future research on this and related topics.

Americans Misperceive Racial Disparities in Economic Mobility

2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110241
Author(s):  
Shai Davidai ◽  
Jesse Walker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Mobility ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Economic Disparities ◽  
Lay Beliefs ◽  
Socioeconomic System

What do people know about racial disparities in “The American Dream”? Across six studies ( N = 1,761), we find that American participants consistently underestimate the Black–White disparity in economic mobility, believing that poor Black Americans are significantly more likely to move up the economic ladder than they actually are. We find that misperceptions about economic mobility are common among both White and Black respondents, and that this undue optimism about the prospect of mobility for Black Americans results from a narrow focus on the progress toward equality that has already been made. Consequently, making economic racial disparities salient, or merely reflecting on the unique hardships that Black Americans face in the United States, calibrates beliefs about economic mobility. We discuss the importance of these findings for understanding lay beliefs about the socioeconomic system, the denial of systemic racism in society, and support for policies aimed at reducing racial economic disparities.

scholarly journals Lin, Tony Tien-Ren (2020) Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 861-862
Author(s):  
Eric M. Trinka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Dream ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prosperity Gospel ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
The Us

In this nuanced ethnography of Latinx migrants in the United States, Tony Tian-Ren Lin presents a thick description of those drawn to Prosperity Gospel Pentecostalism (PGP). The monograph opens with thorough yet concise introductions to the origins of the PGP movement in the US and its contours among Latinx communities. Readers are given a crash course in the primary assumptions and patterns of praxis espoused by PGP adherents, which are oriented around the formulaic pursuit of blessing via a combination of faith and action.

What Americans Want from Public Schools

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Hochschild ◽  
Nathan Scovronick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
American Dream ◽  
The United States ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
State Governments ◽  
European Welfare State ◽  
The Government ◽  
Main Activity

AMERICANS CONTINUE TO FOLLOW the advice of Benjamin Franklin in making “the proper education of youth” the most important American social policy. Public education uses more resources and involves more people than any other government program for social welfare. It is the main activity of local governments and the largest single expenditure of almost all state governments. Education is the American answer to the European welfare state, to massive waves of immigration, and to demands for the abolition of subordination based on race, class, or gender. Although public schools in the United States are expected to accomplish a lot for their students, underlying all of these tasks is the goal of creating the conditions needed for people to believe in and pursue the ideology of the American dream. Our understanding of the American dream is the common one, described by President Clinton this way: “The American dream that we were all raised on is a simple but powerful one—if you work hard and play by the rules you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you.” The dream is the unwritten promise that all residents of the United States have a reasonable chance to achieve success through their own efforts, talents, and hard work. Success is most often defined in material terms, but everyone gets to decide what it is for himself or herself. The first man to walk across Antarctica talks about this idea in the same way as people who make their first million: “The only limit to achievement,” he said, “is the limit you place on your own dreams. Let your vision be guided by hope, your path be adventurous, and the power of your thoughts be directed toward the betterment of tomorrow.” The American dream is a brilliant ideological invention, although, as we shall see, in practice it leaves much to be desired. Its power depends partly on the way it balances individual and collective responsibilities. The role of the government is to make the pursuit of success possible for everyone. This implies strict and complete nondiscrimination, universal education to provide the means for pursuing success, and protection for virtually all views of success, regardless of how many people endorse them.

“I Believe in America”

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-87
Author(s):  
Paul A. Cantor ◽  
Paul A. Cantor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Dream ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Old World ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Francis Ford Coppola ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Corporate Organization ◽  
Difficult Transition

In his Godfather films, Francis Ford Coppola created American classics by dwelling on a classic American experience—immigration. In the story of the Corleone family, Coppola portrays Sicilian immigrants struggling to create a new and better life in the United States. They must navigate the difficult transition from the Old World to the New, and also from the past to the present, from a quasi-feudal way of life in Sicily to a modern America characterized by impersonal economic relations and corporate organization. Vito Corleone achieves the American dream by succeeding in business and providing for his family, but his hopes for his sons are dashed. Carrying on Vito’s struggle, Michael Corleone defeats all his enemies, and yet in the process he destroys his family. Coppola sees the American dream as a source of tragedy, and this chapter analyzes both Vito and Michael as tragic heroes.

What Went Wrong with the American Dream?

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Maxine Eichner
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Life Expectancy ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
American Children ◽  
Deaths Of Despair

This chapter considers a number of indicators relating to the well-being of American children and adults in order to examine the extent to which the American Dream is fulfilling its promise. For children, it considers levels of happiness, academic achievement, mental health, and economic mobility. For adults, it considers happiness, mental health, and life expectancy (including the rise of “deaths of despair”). All these indicators show that the United States is failing radically with respect to both children’s and adults’ well-being. These results are not surprising, the last section of the chapter shows, when we take into account the health of the nation’s families. Neither adults nor children can thrive without sound family ties. Yet indicators show that American families are in bad shape, and in considerably worse shape than families in other countries.

scholarly journals Natural(ly) men: masculinity and gendered anti-ageing practices in Finland and the USA

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 356-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
HANNA OJALA ◽  
TONI CALASANTI ◽  
NEAL KING ◽  
ILKKA PIETILÄ
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Aged People ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Global North ◽  
And Performance

ABSTRACTThe neo-liberal ideologies that point to individual responsibility for risks increasingly influence countries of the global North. The anti-ageing industry reflects this dictate and encourages middle-aged people to use their products and services to manage their ageing. However, given the negative connotations attached to the term ‘anti-ageing’, which is usually seen to focus on aesthetics and thus be a woman's concern, men may be likely to disavow being involved in such activities. The article uses interview data collected from men aged 42–70 from Finland and the United States of America to explore whether and how men adhere to the call to manage their ageing when such anti-ageing activities are seen to be potentially feminising. We find that these men reflected neo-liberalism in the sense that they felt that, although ageing cannot be prevented, it can be controlled. Also while they generally rejected anti-ageing products and services that they judged to affect aesthetics, they reported that they use those that they define as promoting health and performance instead. For them, masculinity is the instrumental focus on performance to the exclusion of beauty or attractiveness. Masculine anti-ageing bodily strategies must also be ‘natural’, involving hard work rather than the use of products, which they regard as never having been scientifically proven to enhance performance. Thus, in talk of their anti-ageing, men distance themselves from women.

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