The American Dream: Inequality In Our Society

What is the American Dream? As Weber explains it’s the “basic belief that hard work and ability will pay off with personal success” (Weber 146). The American Dream, however, doesn’t acknowledge the years of inequality in our society. It makes it acceptable that even in one of the world’s most industrialized nations, that children still die from malnutrition. Only in America, can you drive ten minutes from a wealthy neighborhood to a poor community. Only in America is it acceptable to help other countries children for starvation when their own are dying after a major disaster like Katrina. If the American Dream was true and worked like it describes, no one in America would be unemployed because of their race. No one would be unable to attend a school because of the threat of being lynched. The American Dream is synonymous with color blindness, it accepts that there are issues but ignores the historical, social, and institutional forms of oppression that contribute …show more content…
Too many times people in society have “struggled up the mountain, measure ourselves against it, failed up there, [and] lived in its shadow” (Clare 24). It is unlikely, unless through rare chance, that a poor black kid raised in Chicago by a single mother would have the same opportunity that a white kid from a suburban two-parent household would have. The “American Dream” relies on “Equality of opportunity, [a] reasonable anticipation of success, Individual responsibility for success, and success as [a] virtue, failure as sin” (Weber 156). It places blame on an individual instead of us as a society. We must take responsibility for our part in ignoring the discrimination in society and in the laws passed. Eventually, with this acceptance of the racial, class, and gendered differences in our society the American Dream, or a form of it, can become a reality for many