The American Dream In Meizhu Lui's The Color Of Wealth

Since the establishment of the USA, people have been living their lives in pursuit of the American dream. Many Hollywood movies focus on this American dream, which consists of a variety of ideas that primarily focus on becoming rich and achieving happiness. These ideas were forced into people’s ideology, and they started to believe that anyone can become rich through hard work. It is not just Americans that were persuaded into this lifestyle; people from around the world were influenced by the movies they saw and the stories they heard, and so they came to the USA to pursue that American dream they heard about and believed in. But, can anyone become rich, which is an essential part of the American dream, through hard work only? As it turns out, although quite a …show more content…
In some cases, race alone is enough to deplete any chances to wealth, that a person may have, to barely anything. The distribution of wealth among whites and non-whites shows that whites control more wealth than non-whites, and that the number of rich white families is greater than the number of rich non-white families. Blacks, Hispanic, Asians, and other non-white people have less opportunity of being rich. One of the interpretations for this phenomenon is that whites have a higher per capita income than non-whites. Figure 1-3 in The Color of Wealth by Meizhu Lui shows the 1999 per capita income of whites versus that of people of color; the results are that whites made $24,819, while people of color made $13,736 (7). This approximately $9,000 difference in per capita income results in a divergence between whites and non-whites, leaving the latter at a disadvantage in regards to their chances to wealth. Moreover, the difference between the typically highest income families and the median income of families is affected by race. “In 2000, the typical black household in the highest income quintile had a net worth 8.7 times that of the median black household. Whites