Race, Rhetoric and the American
Dream
Athens to New York
Prof. Pearson
Outline
• The American Dream
• Race and the American Dream
• Is the Contemporary Divide a Historical
Artifact or a Reflection of current affairs?
• African-American Analyses
• How to Explain? How to Respond?
• Next Steps
The American Creed
• Equality
• Individualism (self-reliance,selfdetermination)
• Religious Piety or Secular Virtue
• Competition based on Fair Play
• Intergenerational Progress
The American Dream
“...The promise that all Americans have a
reasonable chance to achieve success as
they define it -- material or otherwise -through their own efforts, and to attain
virtue and fulfillment through success.”
Source: Hochschild, Jennifer L. Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class and the Soul of the
Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, c.1995
The American Dream, cont.
• Rooted in Enlightenment-era ideas of
progress
• Assumes that people will be judged on the
basis of individual, not collective identity
• Has always been complicated by realities of
caste and class hierarchies
• Last 30 years has seen some effort to
remove artificial barriers, but.....
The Challenge to the American
Dream
• “...First, too often blacks and whites see a
barrier, if not an enemy, when they look at
each other. Many middle-class AfricanAmericans see white placeholders denying
them their earned and deserved success, or
granting it only on uncomfortable, even
humiliating, terms. A few poor blacks see
whites as purses to be exploited... and other
poor blacks are finding [this] harder to
dispute...
Challenges, cont.
• “Many whites see middle-class blacks
making excessive demands and blaming
their personal failures on a convenient but
non-existent enemy. Even more whites see
poor blacks as menacing, degraded
strangers.”
Jennifer Hoschshild, Facing the American
Dream, Princeton University Press, 1995
The Divide
• Polls show that most Americans who
identify themselves as white believe that
there has been substantial progress on race
and gender, and that anyone can participate
in the Dream.
• Most Americans who identify themselves as
black say that they are still hierarchized and
collectivized. U of Chicago poll: 70 percent
say that US economy, politics and laws are
A Historical Artifact or a
Contemporary Reality?
• Real disparities exist in, for example,
employment, infant mortality, health
status, wealth accumulation, incarceration
that are not explainable by education and
income levels.
• To some degree, blacks, as a vulnerable
population, anticipate changes in larger
culture: e.g., teen pregnancy.
Historical Artifact or
Contemporary Reality?
• Real examples of old-fashioned
discrimination still occur: e.g., Texaco
• Other instances are less overt, but still
insidious: e.g. Tums case, problems with
EEOC rules
• Argument over whether
disparity=discrimination
• Argument over intent vs. effect
The Question is: What is Fair?
African American Analyses
• Most conservative definition of civil rights
assumed that the removal of legal barriers
was enough. Saw experience of European
immigrants as model.
• However, many CR advocates saw links
between racism, sexism militarism, and
economic exploitation
Martin Luther King, Jr.
• “We are called upon to help the discouraged
beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day
we must see that an edifice which produces
beggars needs restructuring.”
Source: http://www.spc.uchicago.edu/ucrpc/papers/working-paper.html
• “I don’t want to be integrated out of
power.”Source: Cone, James. Malcolm and And Martin and America. Orbis Books, 1993
Malcolm X
• “So it’s the ballot or the bullet. Today our
people can see that we’re faced with a
government conspiracy. This government
has failed us.” Source: Malcolm X. “The Ballot or the Bullet,” The Norton
Anthology of African American Literature. NY:WW Norton and Co., 1997, p.99
• Ideology of black nationalism draws
partially from analysis of European ethnic
assimilation process.
What Neither Analysis
Anticipated
•
•
•
•
•
Double-edged impact of integration
Advent of crack
End of American economic expansion
Social Saturation and the Populated Self
Commodification and co-optation of black
culture, protest movements
The Message
• 1982
• Grandmaster Flash
and the Furious Five
• Sampled by Puff
Daddy, who removed
political and social
content
• Some critics think that
the transformation of
this song reflects co-
Grandmaster Flash
•
•
•
•
“A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smiling on you but he’s frowning too
Because only God knows what you’ll go
through
• You grow in the ghetto living second rate
• And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate
The Message
The place that you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You’ll admire all the number book takers
Thugs pimps and pushers and the big money
makers
Driving big cars/Spending 20s and 10s
And you want to grow up to be just like them
The Message, cont.
“Smugglers gamblers, burglars, gamblers
Pickpockets, peddlers, even panhandlers
You say, “I’m cool, I’m no fool,”
But then you wind up dropping out of high
school
Now you’re unemployed, all nonvoid
Walking round like you’re Pretty Boy Floyd
The Message
“Turned stickup kid but look what you did
Got sent up for an 8-year bid
Now your manhood is gone and you're a
Maytag
Spend the next two years as an undercover fag
Being used and abused to serve like hell
Till the day you were found hung dead in a
cell...” Source: Grandmaster Flash, “The Message,” Noton Anthology of African American
Literature. NY: WW Norton Publishing. 1997. p.64
How to Explain? How to
Respond?
• Persistent structural
inequality
• Racist, sexist, classist
culture creates
divisions and selfdestructive behavior
• Culture of poverty
• ‘Bell Curve’ argument
• Redistributive
strategies
• Alternative ideologies
e.g. africentrism,
feminism, womanism
• Welfare reform
• Re-impose hierarchies
Charles Murray
• Bell Curve: 1994
• Murray’s culture of
poverty arguments
influential
• Bell Curve argument
largely rejected, but
important to
understand
Next Steps
• Study the immigrant experience
• America’s contemporary economic
challenges