The American Dream (part 2)

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” These words, written by poet Emma Lazarus, are now etched in stone at the base of the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of America.

For as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve been taught that America is a nation of immigrants. A nation that grew to power by combining the best aspects of many cultures. I believe the key phrase to describe this in schools was the “melting pot.”

Throughout my schooling, I was taught that America represented a glimmer of freedom for those escaping more difficult lives elsewhere. While I could go into the actual history of the struggles over generations that immigrants have endured, I want to focus on this ideal notion of America.

Ideally, America represented far more than an escape from the “old world,” it was a land of opportunity.

“Huddled masses yearning to breathe free” doesn’t necessarily mean that those who arrived were free. Many had to live through the difficulties of poverty and persecution in pursuit of that freedom. However, those people did not toil for nothing; they were following the American Dream.

Although there is no singular description of the American Dream, most people would agree on the same general idea: If you work hard and play by the rules, you can give your family a better life than you had.

Those “huddled masses” had to work and struggle and tighten their belts in the hopes that their efforts would spare their children the same struggle. In other words, each successive generation in America should be better off than the one that came before them.

In the past 50 years, our world has seen a lifestyle shift unlike any other in human history. The average American now has access to electricity, running water and a connection to the Internet. In 1903, when Emma Lazarus’s poem was added to the statue, electricity was still a novelty to be gawked at, indoor plumbing was still decades away, and an idea like the Internet would have been laughed at by any reasonable person.

I am a member of a large group of people in this country whose parents worked hard enough to grant me access to the wonders of a personal computer and a cell phone before I even finished school. Growing up, I was not worried about getting a job to afford my own housing and food, it was an expectation.

Instead of making sure I was prepared to “climb the ladder” in this society, I was taught preventative steps to make sure I didn’t fall any lower than where I started. Of course, we could get into a discussion of privilege here but let’s keep thinking of America as an ideal.

People are still trying to follow the creed of the American Dream so they can give their children better lives than they had. Those who prosper can give their children more than those who do not. The prosperous parents, concerned for their own children, do everything they can to provide for their kids to continue to follow the Dream.

Here is where the problems arise: we forgot the second part of the Dream.

The American Dream tells us to work hard to give our children a better life, but it doesn’t specify what to do after we’ve achieved that “better life.” That’s where the second part comes in: once you have built a good life, you must work to help those who have less than you.

My mother was an immigrant and so was my father’s father. I carry the name of my immigrant grandfather: Freitas. While common in Portugal, people in America have a very difficult time pronouncing it. I always recite the grammatical rhyme to clarify: “i before e, except after c… or pronounced as an ay as in neighbor and weigh.”

I find that most people either forget or never knew the second part to that saying. While not absolutely necessary to know, it turns spelling into a slightly easier task.

The American Dream is meant to be flexible and vague so it can be adopted by the diverse peoples that arrive in this country. However, forgetting the second part causes much bigger problems than a few spelling errors.

Right now, there is a huge inequality of wealth. In a country where status is earned with money, there are three distinctive groups that have emerged in the modern day.

1. Those without much money who struggle to provide for themselves and their families.
2. Those who have worked hard to build a prosperous life, possibly using the advantages given by their parents.
3. Those who have inherited massive corporations and hoard the vast majority of the total wealth.

The biggest fear for parents in category 2 is that their children fall into category 1. The hope for parents in category 1 is that their children work their way into category 2. However, since category 3 (the smallest sized group by a huge margin) possesses most of the wealth, all the people in the first two categories are focused on their own prosperity and that of their families.

People in category 2 often get defensive about proposed ideas to help fix the inequality of wealth but they are unaware that the majority of redistribution will hardly affect them at all. They believe they have worked hard for their success and others should too.

A class divide has formed in this country and the real culprit of the struggles remains unknown to the people. In other words, the people on top are laughing at all the rest of us fighting over scraps.

This is why the second part of the American Dream is so necessary: to help us see that life doesn’t have to only be competition. It teaches us that my success doesn’t have to come at the expense of your failure.

We have technologies that our parents’ parents couldn’t imagine. We have comforts that would gain the envy of all our immigrant ancestors. It’s time we pursue both parts of the American Dream:

1. Work hard and play by the rules to make it
2. Once you’ve made it, go help out someone who hasn’t made it yet

Realizing both parts of the Dream is our first step to breaking down the class barriers that divide us. America is the land of immigrants, of those who came from elsewhere to join an international population in the “new world.” Again, we’re looking at the ideal America here.

I was always taught that America was a “melting pot” that inspired new ideas. Maybe it can inspire a society to unite and fight back against an enemy that’s convinced us it doesn’t exist.