AD Essay

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American Dream Essay

The American Dream is the ideal that every U.S citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. It is nearly impossible to achieve this in America if you are part of a marginalized community. Due to racist policies in the criminal justice, education, and housing systems, it is much harder for people of color to achieve the American Dream. Black children go to increasingly segregated schools, experience significantly less mobility than whites and are far more likely to be incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. The American Dream has always been defined by upward mobility, but for black Americans, it’s harder to get into the middle class, and a middle-class lifestyle is more precarious.

The American Dream according to James Truslow Adams, “In the Epic of America” 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 or achievement”. However, how can this be the case if America does not allow people of color to reach their full opportunity. According to Sean McElwee, Policy Analyst at Demos, “Black children go to increasingly segregated schools, experience significantly less mobility than whites and are far more likely to be incarcerated for nonviolent crimes”. The School to Prison Pipeline is a system in which students who are forced out of school for disruptive behavior are usually sent back to the origin of their angst and unhappiness, their home environments or their neighborhoods, which are filled with negative influences. According to PBS, a black child is 3.5 times more likely to be suspended than whites, and of students involved in “in-school arrests, 70% are black or Latino. This illustrates the systemic racist institutions people of color are placed in that deter them from reaching their full potential. For black and latino children who are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems, the American Dream does not exist.

Since people are products of their environment, housing segregation inhibits people from achieving the American Dream because often times those in destitute living conditions come from marginalized communities. In order to access this, one needs shelter, food, jobs, healthcare, and an education. Not everyone is given the same opportunities to gain these things, and those that do have higher chances at succeeding. In NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) housing,  46% identify as black and 44% identify as Hispanic, whereas in the Upper East Side, 89.3% identify as white. NYCHA living conditions are often unsanitary and according to The Guardian “A cold home is bad for your health and increases the risks of cardiovascular, respiratory and rheumatoid diseases as well as the worsening mental health.” And since people of color live in these conditions, they are subjected to perform worse academically due to their substandard health.

Lack of integration in public schools deteriorate the American Dream.  Schools in these neighborhoods have students that are predominantly, if not completely people of color, and those schools lack proper funding. Today, many black children still attend schools in racially and economically isolated neighborhoods, while their families still reside in lonely islands of poverty: 39 percent of black children are from families with incomes below the poverty line, compared with 12 percent of white children, according the U.S. Census Bureau,  28 percent of black children live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared with 4 percent of white children. Children coming to school in poor health or with unstable housing are absent more frequently and cannot benefit from good instruction. Children who walk or ride to school through violent neighborhoods, or who return to these neighborhoods after school, are stressed and less able to focus on studies. Children with more frequently unemployed parents suffer from insecurity that affects learning. These children cannot reasonably be expected to achieve on average like children without these disadvantages, no matter how high quality their instruction. Equality requires that the cycle of low achievement leading to poverty and poverty leading to low achievement be interrupted. Graduates of both races need cultural literacy to compete in middle-class society and the workforce. It is not that the American Dream does not exist for marginalized people, it is simply that it can not, because of racist policies in the criminal justice, education, and housing systems.