When one visualizes possessing the American dream, one may see a beautiful brick multi-story house with multiple cars in the garage, a loving family, a family pet, and a successful career. The idea of the American dream is not new; the American dream can be traced back to the first colonists that arrived in Cape Cod. Many came to the colonies in order to freely practice religion, seek peace and prosperity, and to start a new life through hard work. These migrants had the original American dream. Similarly, there have been numerous waves of immigration in America’s history by people who have attempted to claim their American dream. As America has grown older and society and culture has changed, the American dream has enticed more people and
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When they were signed in the 1700s, these two documents that created the idea of the American dream, a dream of equality and opportunity, denied this creation to slaves although they were “men”(US 1776). The United States government labeled slaves as two-thirds human, and they were denied their liberty until after the Civil War. This shows that the United States was founded on a hypocrisy that has denied many individuals the right to pursue their American dream. This hypocrisy was embedded into the American dream when the forefathers created the notion that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable for all men while still not giving an equal opportunity to slaves. In his famous poem Let America Be America Again, Langston Hughes stated, “The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME / Who made America, / Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, / Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, / Must bring back our mighty dream again” (Hughes). While revealing the “contradictions between the dream of equal opportunity and a much grimmer reality”(Moser and Watters), Hughes states that it was slaves and African-Americans that contributed to building America and they would also have to be responsible for getting the “mighty dream
When they were signed in the 1700s, these two documents that created the idea of the American dream, a dream of equality and opportunity, denied this creation to slaves although they were “men”(US 1776). The United States government labeled slaves as two-thirds human, and they were denied their liberty until after the Civil War. This shows that the United States was founded on a hypocrisy that has denied many individuals the right to pursue their American dream. This hypocrisy was embedded into the American dream when the forefathers created the notion that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable for all men while still not giving an equal opportunity to slaves. In his famous poem Let America Be America Again, Langston Hughes stated, “The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME / Who made America, / Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, / Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, / Must bring back our mighty dream again” (Hughes). While revealing the “contradictions between the dream of equal opportunity and a much grimmer reality”(Moser and Watters), Hughes states that it was slaves and African-Americans that contributed to building America and they would also have to be responsible for getting the “mighty dream