Page 8 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

Making the Dream Real
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By Richard R. Buery, Jr.1
The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement . It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it . It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position .2
Perhaps no idea is as central to America’s sense of self as the American Dream . Our founding Revolution was fought to advance this Dream of a nation without a permanent ruling class . The most quoted phrases in our founding documents speak to this ideal . One of the critical distinctions between America and most Western democracies is that ours is not an ethnic nationalism: one can be ethnically German, Polish, Irish, or Italian, but one cannot be ethnically American . Indeed, many of these nations enshrine a “Right to Return” in their laws, which allows anyone who shares the dominant ethnic heritage of those countries to claim citizenship .3 But—the ravings of some racist revisionists notwithstanding—being an American is not about shared ethnicity . Instead, we are defined first and foremost by our adherence to our founding philosophy: everyone deserves the equal protection of the laws;4 we should be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character;5 and where you end up in life should not be determined by where you began life .
Of course, this American Dream has always been just that: a dream . America has never fully afforded its citizens the equal protection of the laws . A quick review of our civil6 and criminal justice7 systems makes that abundantly clear . We have a sad history of judging people not only by the color of their skin, but by their ethnic origins, their gender, their sexuality, their religious beliefs, their disabilities, or other irrelevant aspects of appearance or personhood . And it has always mattered where you began in life . Those born with economic advantage have consistently outperformed those without .
And yet the brilliance of America is that our history can be understood as the advancement of the American Dream . The reality of life in America has grown closer to the Dream of America decade after decade, generation after generation . America has fought wars to advance this idea,
1 DeputyMayorforStrategicPolicyInitiatives,TheCityofNewYork.MydeepestthankstoDeanDeborahArcherand Professor Andy Scherer for organizing the Symposium. Susan Reed provided excellent research assistance.
2 James Truslow adams, The epic of america 214-215 (1931).
3 Jerry Z. Muller, Us and Them, foreign affairs, Mar./Apr. 2008, at 9-14, available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/
articles/europe/2008-03-02/us-and-them.
4 U.S. consT. amend. XIV.
5 Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream (Aug. 28, 1963), available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ mlkihaveadream.htm.
6 See, e.g., alan w. houseman & linda e. perle, cenTer for law and social policy, securing equal JusTice for all: a Brief hisTory of civil legal assisTance in The uniTed sTaTes (3rd rev. 2013), available at http://www.clasp.org/resources- and-publications/publication-1/Securing-Equal-Justice-for-All-2013-Revision.pdf.
7 See, e.g., michelle alexander, The new Jim crow: mass incarceraTion in The age of color Blindness (2010).
Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality