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THE AMERICAN DREAM.
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Discusses theory that the dream is a myth.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Discusses theory that the dream is a myth. Argues with Jeffifer hochschild's contention that the ideology of the dream is perpetuated to further the interests of the dominant while group. Absence of fairness. Racial prejudice and discrimination against African-Americans. Class differences. The American Dream as a tool for success.
Paper Introduction:
Jennifer L. Hochschild's Facing up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation is a flawed study that makes several important points about racial prejudice as a barrier to success for African Americans but fails completely to place these findings in the broader context of the ways American society actually works. Her basic claims are "that the American Dream is a central although contentious ideology of Americans, and that it is threatened for all Americans in ways that the disaffection of most middle-class blacks and the fury of a few poor blacks most clearly reveal" (Hochschild 1996, 3). The ideology of the Dream, as Hochschild defines it, is the promise "that everyone, regardless of ascription or background, may reasonably seek success through actions and traits under their own control" (Hochschild 1996, 4). Success is not defined,
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This is aperfectly acceptable and common reason for not using the term. Because theDream ideology "depends so heavily on faith in its ultimate fairness andbenevolence," Hochschild argues that this disaffection with the Dream amongmiddle-class African Americans "may lead other Americans intodisillusionment with the ideology" while the fragility of poor blacks'belief in the Dream may "lead other poor Americans into a rejection of theAmerican dream that will make affluent alienation seem trivial" (Hochschild1996, 87, 88). In her, persuasivelypresented, view the American Dream must be preserved because there is novisible "alternative for the United States that is both plausible andpreferable" (Hochschild 1996, xviii). Afterall, if there is an underclass, there must also be an overclass andHochschild studiously avoids addressing the implications of the existenceof such a class. But this conclusion,while it presents a pleasant ideal, points up some of the central problemsin Hochschild's book--including the fact that she has simply failed to givea convincing account either of class or of the function of the AmericanDream itself. 3). She makes a number of salient points, such as the Dream's inherentassumption regarding the inexhaustible supply of resources, but does notseriously address the question of whether the dream has been manipulated toserve the ends of any particular group, i.e., class. Hochschild argues that, for want of asuperior alternative, this ideology needs to be preserved in order to keepAmerican society on the track that provides the greatest amount ofopportunity for the greatest number of people. 3). This also led the averagewhite American to question the need for the persistent demands being madeby African Americans which seemed to them to be mere "whining." AfricanAmericans also overestimated the average level of well-being amongthemselves, but nowhere near so drastically. Although there have been enormous improvements in thestatus of a large number of African Americans since the advent of the CivilRights movement in the early 196 s these differences and the expansion ofopportunities for black people in general has been much smaller than whiteAmericans tend to assume. While Hochschild does admit inpassing that "institutions and practices ranging from democratic governanceto corporate capitalism would not have developed as they did absent astrict racial hierarchy and a hidden but vital class structure," she failsto address the ways in which the development of these institutions isrelated to class (emphasis added, Hochschild 1996, 248). Hochschild's principal discoveries are the difference in degree offaith in the American Dream between poor and middle-class African Americansand between black and white citizens of both classes and the manner inwhich racial prejudice and discrimination contribute to and perpetuate thedeclining faith in the Dream. Certainly the surveysof African Americans discussed by Anderson discovered that people conceiveof class in terms of sharp differences in earnings and distributethemselves according to a more realistic division. Black Americans, however, see the advances, andtheir very limited nature, far more realistically. Hochschild. Hochschild's obvious, but not explicit, rejection of any hint ofMarxism in her approach to questions of class leaves her without anysubstantial analysis of what constitutes class difference in America.Hochschild has chosen to use the term "class" "to refer to points along acontinuum of stratification rather than to dichotomous categories of ownerand worker" (Hochschild 1998, 276 n.16). Sinopoli also suggests that the lack of many constructive suggestionsabout how to reinstate faith in the American dream may also derive from thefact that Hochschild's "political views are more or less social democraticand she realizes that Americans are not well-disposed to go down this road"(Sinopoli 1998, 437). Thus, while Hochschild makes her caseabout the importance of racial prejudice as a divisive and debilitatingfactor in American society, her analysis leaves much to be desired when itcomes to the importance of class and the nature of the fundamental problemswith the American Dream that operate above and beyond the realm of racialquestions. Indeed, it is not even certain that people's innate understanding ofclass is truly based on this notion of a continuum. Success is notdefined, however, as mere economic triumph but also "must be associatedwith virtue" (Hochschild 1996, 4). But,while it is certainly important that her readers understand how therespondents to the surveys viewed class, the underlying problem is thatthis notion of class--as mere positions on a continuum--denies the basicfacts of class in America. In a nation where 5 percent of the populationowns over 8 percent of the wealth the stark differences in class--evenbetween the middle, working, and poor classes--is more important than heranalysis would lead the reader to believe. In a Conservative symposium held to mark thethirtieth anniversary of Daniel Moynihan's famous report on the breakdownof African American family life in the inner cities scholars repeatedlynoted that Moynihan had been right, after all, in predicting that thisdisintegration of family life would be perpetuated, ensuring an endlesscycle of poverty. Middle-class black people, according to theirsurvey responses, showed far less faith in the American Dream than did poorAfrican Americans. This remark is so stunningly naive that, as the readerexamines her examples, it almost seems like deliberate misstatement. "Black and Blue." New Yorker, 29 April, 62-64.Hochschild, Jennifer L. Corrected edition with new Preface. But what does become apparent isthat by avoiding the term because of its popular association with thenotion of "the badly behaved poor" Hochschild is also able to avoid thestructural implications of the term (Hochschild 1996, 321 n. Indeed Hochschild revealingly refers tothe claim that the American Dream is "a fantasy" rather than, as hundredsof commentators have called it, a "myth." A fantasy is self-generated, ofcourse, and while one might attempt to involve others in one's fantasy thisterm implies little about the carefully constructed nature of the AmericanDream which has been endlessly analyzed by scholars Hochschild does notcite. Thisis due to the fact they find "their lives much more problematic than domiddle-class whites" for a number of reasons including their greateridentification with the poor members of their own race and the basicinsecurity that derives from their clear understanding of the precariousnature of their success--in view of the likelihood that changes in theeconomy will affect them first and that they, and especially theirchildren, will always face the persistent racial animosity of most whiteAmericans (Hochschild 1996, 93). Hochschild found thatwhite Americans are profoundly misinformed about the nature of blackAmericans' position in society and many are not even aware how many blackAmericans there are, as the average white American was shown to believethat African Americans made up 33 percent, rather than the correct 13percent, of the population. But it is also due to the blaming-the-victim reactions thatmany white Americans have to the violence, drugs, and immoral behavior ofinner city residents. In the case of the Dream's function Hochschild is actually quitedisingenuous as she opens with a discussion of the flaws inherent in theDream. In this, as Hochschild notes, they have not conformedto the pattern followed by American immigrants who came looking for theopportunity implicit in the Dream and believed the Dream's reality had beenconfirmed once they achieved the incomes, educational levels, and generalwell-being associated with their rise to the middle class. 3). She says that "advertisers and cartoonists are notauthorized interpreters of American culture, but their expertise lies incapturing concisely what the rest of us strive to articulate" (Hochschild1996, xviii, xxiv). To what extent, the reader must ask,has it ever been true that class in America was merely a matter of locatingpeople's place in "along a continuum of stratification" or that relationsbetween the "categories of owner and worker" were of relatively littleimportance? The choice of term might not be so revealing but for the remarks inthe Preface she added to the paperback edition of the book. ReferencesAnderson. Her verygeneral prescription is that the American Dream must be "construed as anideal, a broad, generous, inclusive vision that encourages people to be thebest they can be however they define that best, [so that] transformativepluralism and open channels of mobility are direct and plausible extensionsof Americans' core tradition" (Hochschild 1996, 249). Jennifer L. Your question does not, however, concentrate on African Americansper se but on class. Even if the American Dream may be a myth perpetuated in order tofurther the interests of the dominant group this does not, of course, meanthat many Americans do not subscribe to the ideology as Hochschild definesit. HereHochschild draws "reassurance" that her perception of the shared ideologyis correct from advertisements and cartoons (some added in this edition)that seem to her to express belief in the Dream--as opposed to activelypromoting it. Moynihan's report has long beenattacked as "racist" by those who held that his analysis of a 'culture ofpoverty' meant that African Americans were inherently committed to suchbehaviors, and it has been lauded by those (as in this symposium) who seeit as a call for African Americans to save themselves through moral reform. And it follows logically that if Hochschilddoes not see more than the slightest hint that the Dream is also a tool sheis not going to address the other aspects of this manipulation--such as theexistence of the class for whom the manipulation is done or of the class(advertisers, bank officers, and Money journalists among them) that managesthis manipulation on their behalf. But one speaker noted that the real problem had been that Moynihan, afraidof political repercussions from and for President Johnson, had left out ofhis report the essential "link between unemployment and family breakdown"--in other words, he had left out the solutions to the problem (Mickey Kraus,quoted in "Sex, Families", 36). In Ethics 1 8 (January): 435-37."Sex, Families, Race, Poverty, Welfare: A Symposium Revisiting the Moynihan Report at Its Thirtieth Anniversary." 1995 American Enterprise 6 (January-February): 33-37.NOTE TO CLIENT:Once again, the questions asked and the materials provided do not seem tomesh at all. Facing up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation. Her basic claims are"that the American Dream is a central although contentious ideology ofAmericans, and that it is threatened for all Americans in ways that thedisaffection of most middle-class blacks and the fury of a few poor blacksmost clearly reveal" (Hochschild 1996, 3). The materials are on African Americans and, marginally, classdifferences among them and differences in classes between whites andblacks. The general claim is that we have known for 35 yearswhere the crux of the problem lies. But what this leaves unexamined is theextent to which this notion of American classlessness is a part of theAmerican Dream of which she speaks. But it is in the differences between poor and middle-class AfricanAmericans' perceptions of the American Dream and the decline of the Dreamideology among all African Americans that Hochschild locates the principalthreat to an ideology that, she says, has traditionally served to"stabilize rather than destabilize American society" so long as the poorcould "be enticed to believe in the same process of upward mobility, withthe same consequent commitment to the nation at large, as the no longerpoor" (Hochschild 1996, 87). As Anderson reported,"1 percent of African Americans assign themselves to the lower class, 41percent to the working class, 35 percent to the middle class, 6 percent tothe upper middle class, and 3 percent to the upper class" (Anderson 1996,64). But her neglect of this possible major aspect of the Dream makes heranalysis somewhat suspect. 1998. Hochschild offers a modified form of thiskind of behavior. She recognizes the problem, knows which alternatives arepreferable, holds that they are not plausible, and tries, unsuccessfully,to show that adherence to the shared ideology of the American Dream willsomehow avoid the social breakdown that is inevitable so long as so manyAmericans, black and white, accept the plausible rather than the preferablecourse. 1996. 1996. In part this is due, as Hochschild demonstrates, to whiteAmericans' erroneous conception of the increased prosperity of blackAmericans. Her reasons for this are, shesays, "pragmatic" because "that is how most data are organized and how mostAmericans think of social divisions" (Hochschild 1998, 276 n.16). Why it should be theresponsibility of the political scientist to adjust her analytical terms tothe self-perceptions or self-descriptive claims of the members of thesociety she is studying is not clear. Amongher examples are: a Citicorp/Citibank advertisement showing an ethnicallydiverse group of new citizens pledging their allegiance to the UnitedStates over the words "From sea to shining sea, the will to succeed is partof the American spirit"; an Apple computer advertisement in which the words"dream big" are partially imposed over an image of the globe; and anadvertisement for Money magazine that points out the lower unemployment andcrime rates and the better living conditions (home-owning, more collegeeducation, and longer vacations) in, respectively, Switzerland, England,Australia, Canada, and Denmark followed by the words "But more dreams cometrue in America" (Hochschild 1996, 22, xxiii, xx). The writing off of the poorestsegments of society with the continuation of "racial and class enclaves"is, she notes, "plausible but not preferable" while the "redistribution ofwealth downward and the development of a sense of community beyondascriptive lines are, in [her] view, preferable but not plausible"(Hochschild 1996, xviii). As shenotes, unlike white people, "for whom socioeconomic status is closelyassociated with subjective quality of life," black Americans do not reportsame kinds of experience with material success (Hochschild 1996, 93). She says, forexample, that "it is no coincidence that Disney movies are so durable; theysimply update Locke's fantasy" (Hochschild 1996, 24). And shemight have added that the popular notion of the underclass designation aslimited to inner-city African Americans--and excluding, for example, thewhite Appalachian underclass--is a further reason to dump the term. She first notes that white and blackperceptions of the position of African Americans in the society arestrongly divergent. Butshe goes on to say that the term is not useful because "it evokes the imageof a class structure in a society that denies that the nonpoor are arrayedin classes" (Hochschild 1996, 321-322 n. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Sinopoli, Richard C. It is true that Hochschild does argue, in passing,that the nature of the Dream seems to imply that institutions are somehowresponsible for alleviating the threats to the Dream ideology that sheperceives. Hochschild's Facing up to the American Dream: Race,Class, and the Soul of the Nation is a flawed study that makes severalimportant points about racial prejudice as a barrier to success for AfricanAmericans but fails completely to place these findings in the broadercontext of the ways American society actually works. Yet there is barelya hint of the possibility that Disney and other vested interests have,since the earliest settlement of America, manipulated the image of theAmerican Dream for their own ends. Review of Facing up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation by Jennifer L. Yet she also allows that, despite the "scale of the federalbudget and the reach of policy instruments" which would make it relativelyeasy "to provide the resources and structures needed for decent schools,homes and jobs in distressed neighborhoods if Americans chose to do so,"Americans are indeed unlikely to approve this course of action (Hochschild1996, 248). While the operation of racial prejudice as a barrier to blackadvancement and its debilitating effect on those black people who haveadvanced economically, are made clear Hochschild's suggestions regardingcourses of action are rather weak, largely because, Sinopoli notes, "asvirtually all writers on the subject recognize, attitudes and beliefs arefar more difficult to change than are laws" (Sinopoli 1998, 437). The ideology of the Dream, asHochschild defines it, is the promise "that everyone, regardless ofascription or background, may reasonably seek success through actions andtraits under their own control" (Hochschild 1996, 4). (Hochschild 1998, 276 n.16). More importantly a full 55 percent of whitecitizens believed that the average African American was as well off as theaverage white person in terms of jobs and education while 4 percent madethe same errors regarding housing and incomes. Her reluctance to take on the question of class also comes through inher willingness to avoid the use of the term "underclass" which, as sheargues, "offends many blacks and encourages whites to distance themselvesfrom the problems of inner cities" (Hochschild 1996, 321 n. It may make sense to look at class as people conceive of it insupposedly classless America. Nor does Moynihan fit into such general discussionsof class, nor did you provide anything usable on Moynihan.Please note that no first name was supplied in your materials for"Anderson" Hochschild offers convincing explanations of the differencein belief in the Dream between poor and middle-class black people.
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