The American Dream

Examples of The American Dream in the following topics:

• Class Structure in the U.S.

  • An example of someone who achieves the American Dream might be a person who is born to poor parents but is smart and hardworking and eventually goes on to receive scholarships for a college education and to become a successful businessperson.
  • Modern sociologists argue that in the vast majority of cases, people do not achieve the American Dream — instead, people born to poor parents are likely to stay within the lower class, and vice versa.
  • Many Americans recognize a simple three-tier model that includes the upper class, the middle class, and the lower or working class.
  • According to the "American Dream," American society is meritocratic and class is achievement-based.
  • Discuss America’s class structure and its relation to the concept of the "American Dream"

• Social Mobility in the U.S.

  • Strong social and economic mobility is considered part of American Dream, though there is relatively low social mobility in the U.S.
  • The American Dream is often associated with a series of novels written by Horatio Alger in the late 19th century, most of which told the story of a young person born to a lower class family who achieved higher status through hard work and virtue.
  • Socioeconomic mobility in the United States refers to the movement of Americans from one social class or economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying.
  • The belief that there is significant social mobility in America, or in other words, that Americans can and do rise from humble origins to riches, is called the American Dream.
  • For women, another explanation for the glass ceiling effect in the American work force is the job-family trade off.

• Conclusion: Change in the 1960s

  • Citizens from all walks of life sought to expand the meaning of the American promise.
  • The African American civil rights movement made significant progress in the 1960s.
  • Although the African American civil rights movement was the most prominent of the crusades for racial justice, other ethnic minorities also worked to seize their piece of the American dream during the promising years of the 1960s.
  • Many were influenced by the African American cause and often used similar tactics.
  • By the 1960s, a generation of white Americans raised in prosperity and steeped in the culture of conformity of the 1950s had come of age.

• Expansion and the Mexican-American War

  • Throughout the nineteenth century, Americans continually moved further west into new territory.
  • With the end of the wartime alliance between Britain and the Native Americans east of the Mississippi River, American settlers moved in great numbers into the rich farmlands of the Midwest.
  • While land ownership was something most Europeans could only dream of, contemporary accounts show that the average American farmer owned his land, fed his family far more than European peasants, and could make provisions for land for his children.
  • This pattern was followed throughout the West as American hunters and trappers traded with the Indians and explored the land.
  • American Progress is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west.

• The Nature and Meaning of Dreams

  • Numerous theories, both psychological and neurobiological, have been proposed to explain the elusive mystery of the purpose of dreaming.
  • For centuries people have pondered the meaning of dreams.
  • Over the years, numerous theories have been put forth in an attempt to illuminate the mystery behind human dreams.
  • While there has always been great interest in the interpretation of human dreams, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung put forth some of the most widely-known modern theories of dreaming.
  • It was in his book The Interpretation of Dreams (published in 1900) that Freud first argued that the motivation of all dream content is wish-fulfillment, and that the instigation of a dream is often to be found in the events of the day preceding the dream, which he called the "day residue."

• Producing an Emotional Appeal

  • This story stresses the value that the hospital had on improving the child's health.
  • s "I Have a Dream" speech .
  • In the speech, Martin Luther King Jr. weaves current events into the fabric of American history, underscoring the tragedy with biblical rhetoric.
  • He frames his vision for the future with the famous phrase, "I have a dream."
  • s "I Have a Dream" speech.

• Introduction to Small Business and the Corporation

  • Americans have always believed they live in a land of opportunity, where anybody who has a good idea, determination, and a willingness to work hard can start a business and prosper.
  • In the 17th and 18th centuries, the public extolled the pioneer who overcame great hardships to carve a home and a way of life out of the wilderness.
  • In 19th-century America, as small agricultural enterprises rapidly spread across the vast expanse of the American frontier, the homesteading farmer embodied many of the ideals of the economic individualist.
  • But as the nation's population grew and cities assumed increased economic importance, the dream of being in business for oneself evolved to include small merchants, independent craftsmen, and self-reliant professionals as well.
  • Today, the American economy boasts a wide array of enterprises, ranging from one-person sole proprietorships to some of the world's largest corporations.

• Civil Rights of Immigrants

  • At present, the two largest immigrant groups in the United States are Latinos and Asian-Americans.
  • The Dream Act is an example of recently proposed legislation that would allow children born to parents who are illegally in the U.S. to attend public universities and become citizens .Although the Dream Act has not passed as federal legislation, a California version was passed in 2011.
  • The California DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act is a package of California state laws that allow children who were brought into the US under the age of 16 without proper visas/immigration documentation who have attended school on a regular basis and otherwise meet in-state tuition and GPA requirements to apply for student financial aid benefits.
  • While illegal immigration is the most controversial issue in American politics, immigrants who enter the country legally also face civil rights challenges.
  • Mexican-American immigrants have organized many political demonstrations to protest the exploitation of workers, discrimination in education and employment, and heavy-handed criminal justice enforcement against illegal immigrants.

• Psychological Approaches to the Self

  • The psychology of the self is the study of the cognitive or affective representation of one's identity.
  • In modern psychology, the earliest formulation of the self derived from the distinction between the self as "I," the subjective knower, and the self as "me," the object that is known.
  • Heinz Kohut, an American psychologist, theorized a bipolar self that was comprised of two systems of narcissistic perfection, one of which contained ambitions and the other of which contained ideals.
  • To Jung, the Self is both the whole and the center.
  • He also believed that the Self was the source of dreams, and that the Self would appear in dreams as an authority figure that could either perceive the future or guide an individual's present.

• Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement

  • The Civil Rights Movement aimed to outlaw racial discrimination against black Americans, particularly in the South.
  • The African American Civil Rights Movement refers to the social movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against black Americans and restoring voting rights to them.
  • The Civil Rights Movement generally lasted from 1955 to 1968 and was particularly focused in the American South.
  • After the period of Reconstruction, the American South maintained an entrenched system of overt, state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression.
  • The student sit-ins protesting segregated lunch counters (1960); the Freedom Rides (1961) in which activists attempted to integrate bus terminals, restrooms, and water fountains; voter registration drives; and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), in which civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.