Historical Development The American Dream History Essay

Historical Development The the St ingestsn Dream tarradiddle EssayThe intellect of the American estimatete was evident long in approach path its coinage. However, the idea of the American ambition could be traced chronologicall(a)y, from the discovery of America, especially the northerly part or the Promised Land4 to the contemporary age. According to Robert E. Spiller, in Literary annals of the fall in States, the idea of the American dream was associated with America. As a call forth of mind, America has existed long before its discovery.5 Europeans began to come up with all sorts of hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the unused and largely unexplored continent. numerous of these dreams focused on owing lands and establishing gentle business and religious license. For them, the American dream was the dream of an secular Paradise. The Earthly Paradise was strongly believed to be the land of enceinte opportunities. It was a great dream that dominated Europeans imagi s oilsfrom the pri tidings term of the maiden castigatetlement, America was seenfrom European eyeball as a land of boundless opportunities, aplace w here(predicate) piece, later on centuries of poverty, misery, andcorruption could have a second chance to fulfill, in reality,his fab yearnings for a re stave to paradise.6The idea of the American dream was as grey-haired as the American continent. Europeans were influenced by the Greeks and Classics writings. During the sixteenth century, an English saint and gentlemans gentlemanist, Sir doubting Thomas more(prenominal) (1478-1535) identify America with Platos Utopia. In his book Utopia (1516), More repre direct the idea of the heavenly paradise to an attainable paradise. In the nineteenth century, the idea of Utopia deviated into an actual paradise. Because of the influence of the French and Industrial Revolutions, the terrene paradise was attainable.7With the misfortune of such a land, the American dream was an attitude o f hope and spiritual faith erected to fulfill human wishes, desires, and dreams in the bleak World. Thousands of European immigrants had go to the New World to fulfill the versions of the American dream. The New World was a hope of a tonic life a counsel from frustration and the sensation of inferiority. 8The American dream dealt with the idea of bettering integrity selfs economy by which one hoped the New World would provide abundant opportunities for ones prosperity and success. The dream was of rising from poverty to fame and fortune i.e. from rags-to-riches.9 Furthermore, it was the dream of a perfect political accomplishment that would provide immigrants full and equal opportunities. They would go to the New World to clique up sassy-sprung(prenominal) religious and political communities, hopefully, based on their ideas.10The idea of the American dream had developed. It represented the dream of respective(prenominal) success of that of the American Adam whose labors an d posterity that one day would cause great change in the New World.11 According to R. W. B. Lewis, the American Adam wasa radically new(a) per paroleality, the hero of the newadventure an item-by-item emancipated from fib, gayly bereft of ancestry, untouched and undefiledby the usual inheritance of family and race, an individualstanding alone, self-reliant and self-propelling, readyto confront whatever awaited him with the c one measurern of his hold unique and inherent resource.12This signified the secular dimension of the American dream, which was associated with social success. With the rise of industrialism and the growth of the scotch environment and the rapid advance of science and technology in the nineteenth century, America changed from an agricultural into an industrial and a capitalistic country. The idea of the American dream was to arrive at frugal independence, especially to have a vocation and consume a category in order to be happy. This sparing developmen t led to path distinctions and created special privileges for certain classes. It was the sideline of money kind of than of happiness. With the development of new k immediatelyledge of Darwinian Theory, American people believed in the argue for globe and the survival of the fittest. To become wealthy, one needed to fulfill his or her dreams by all means, even if the fulfillment was by il wakeless ways. This dilemma debase the principles of granting immunity and equivalence of opportunity, and caused great doubt toward the American dream as a whole, and engaged more severely a plusst other(a) human beings. 13A concept often brought into connection with the American dream was the symbolic representation of Melting Pot. The idea of Melting Pot was used in the 18th and ninetieth centuries, the metaphor of a Crucible was used to describe the league of different nationalities, heathenishities, and cultures.14It was used together with the concepts of the United States as an id eal democracy and a city upon a Hill. It was a metaphor for the idealized address of immigration and colonization by which different nationalities and races were to blend into a new, blameless friendship, and it was connected to Utopian vision of the emergence of an American new man.15It was first used in American Literature, as a concept of immigrants thawing into the receiving culture, was found in the writings of J. Hector John de Crevecoeur. In his garner from an American Farmer (1782), Crevecoeur referred to the problem of the American Nationality that appeared after the Revolutionary geological era and the answer of emancipation. He wrotea man whose grandfather was an Englishman, whosewife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman,and whose present four sons have now four wives of differentnationsindividuals of all nations are melted into a new race ofmen, new in part, because of that strange mixture of blood,which you will find in no other country.He is an American who, leaving after part him all his ancientprejudice and manners, views new ones from the new modeof life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, andthe new rank he holdsThe Americans were once scatteredall over Europe here they are unified into one of the finest governances of population which has ever appeared.16In 1908, a play by Israel Zangwill named Melting Pot, was first performed in Washington, D. C., where the immigrant protagonist declaredUnderstanding that America is matinee idols Crucible, the greatMelting-Pot, where all the races of Europe are melting andre-forming into a new identity Here you stand, well(p) folk, thinkI, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty grounds,your fifty languages, and histories, and your fifties blood iniquity and rivalries. But you wont be long like that, brothers,for these are the fires of God youve come to-these are fires ofGod. A fig for your feuds, and Vendettas German and Frenchman into the crucible with y ou all God is making theAmerican.17However, the play was soon criticized as unrealistic because melting and reforming into new American Adam appeared to be unorthodoxy that implied that all sides had to give up their culture all to create a new one. The contrast was that some(prenominal) social classes and groups were excluded from the participation in the earthly life.18Nevertheless, since the puritys (Anglo-Saxon Protestants) were the predominant group in the British Colonies, other cultures and identities were perceived as inferior or even unwanted. Afro-Americans and inwrought American Indians were subjectd Catholic Irish and Southern European immigrants were discriminated against for centureies.19People from different cultural backgrounds often wrong interpreted the concept of melting pot as the serenityful nutriment together with people from other ethnic groups. But in reality, ethnic groups or minorities in America were not equal to the pureness people. African- Americans and Native American Indians were denied civil rights.20Gradually, the meaning of the melting pot had changed. In chemical reaction to the criticism of the concept of melting pot, Horace Kallen developed the concept of cultural pluralism in 1915. This concept incorporated that different ethnic groups could keep their cultures and that people would inversely enrich their culture. 21Multiculturalists asserted that cultural differences within society were valuable, and should be preserved. They proposed the alternative metaphor of the mosaic or salad bowl-different cultures mixed, hardly remained distinct.22The enquiry was what, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither European nor the descendant of a European.23 The conflict was between the dreams of the white European Americans, who came to the New World to fulfill their dreams as new men, and the dreams of the other minorities, especially, the black African, who came by force. Like many other minorities, Afric ans were have to abandon their rights of sharing or participating in the American life.According to the assumption that Man was part of the universe, man had the military unit to correct his bear nature by improving his environment by science and education.24 Merle Curti in his The Growth of American Thought affirmed mans ingrained rights of life, improperness, and prosperity, which were accessible to everyone without disagreement. In order to be a normal American citizen, one should naturally practice these rights. These natural rights could not be disaffect from the land, and if the state did violate the natural law of the universe by estrange these rights, then man could and should resort to revolution.25 This basic fact encouraged many people in the United States of America, especially blacks to take action and rising against the injustice.By the turn of the twentieth century, the American dream was describe as a nightmare. In the Two World fights, the dream had begu n to lose its glitter. Americans, whites and blacks became disappoint by the idea of making the world safe for democracy which had proved to be blasphemy.26 They believed that they were fighting for a better world, for a world of peace and corporation, for a real and immediate Utopia. Americans had suffered psychological and mental pressures, and the image of end make men lose st aptitude and lose faith in the American dream of establishing a perfect world. Instead, they became neurotic, frustrated, and disappointed Gertrude Stein described the new youth as a lost generation, because their lives became meaningless, pointless, and agonizing ones. 27The earth behind the confrontation of dreams, was the misery and suffering caused by the crisis that happened in the first half of the twentieth century. One of the most eventual and unforgettable decades in American history was, the colossal Depression of the 1930s that changed American life, and prepared the country for a post-war era, characterized by pessimism and despair.28Thus, the American dream of the modern age had been shrouded by doubt and pessimism, as scotchs faltered and opportunities dimini draw. The dream became a record of unfulfilled promises and dashed hopes.29 Yet, Americans had consistently, flavored their dreams with dashed skepticism. From the very beginning, this was true, Sir Thomas More was as skeptical as any other man well-nigh the promises he entitled in Utopia. When he wrote it, he was playing with an idea.30 This showed that the American dream was first an idea.Then, it was said that the American dream had served as a justification for those who had exploited a virgin country, and it had been the chief argument of those who had try to equalize all men before the law.31Consequently, people came to anticipate a generous and friendly New World rather than a adequate heaven.32 The American dream was not the product of a solitary thinker, solely evolved from the hearts and burdened souls of millions who came to this nation. To falsify their dreams come true, James Truslow Adams insisted on the principle of working together, no longer merely to hold bigger, but to build better. And that referred to all citizens of the United States whether they were black or white.33 later on World contend II, the American dream was portrayed as a military machine function.34 The United States of America became the most powerful nation. The 1950s was the period of American government note as a military and economic power that revived the dream after the Great Depression of the 1930s. America was marked by a self-conscious sense of its place in the world. The twentieth century was the American Century, the post-war era was certainly the time when citizens of the United States began to believe that it was, in fact, their century, and that theirs was the great country in the world. With the Americans intuitive feeling of their responsibility for winning World struggle II, it provided them with self-confidence about the world. 35 Frederick R. Karl characterized the periodas a time of growth, development, progress, enlightenment,and achievement of goals as a renaissance of sortand essential to what helped turn the country intoa superpower under a benign, grinning, ex-hero of apersistence. The universal argument is that man and womanwho experienced the depression returned from World WarII to rebuild the country. This generation accordingly, is atreasure, for not only did it , amend the country house servantally,it helped make the United States the beacon of the World,offering financial aid, food, and military muscle whereverrequired.36Americans had always had a faith in the new. Critics axiom the American dream as a clever political and economic marketing strategy. They wanted people to get away from selfishness, individualism, and materialism, and to return to community spirit and social responsibility.37 The meaning of the American dream had chan ged over the division of history. The American dream simply indicated the ability, the practice, and the participation in the society and economy, for everyone to achieve prosperity. According to the American dream, this included the opportunity for ones children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It was the opportunity to make individual choice without the prior restrictions that limited people, according to their class, caste, religion, race, or ethnicity.3812The black ExperienceIn the United States of America, the African-Americans experience was unique. It was marked by bondage, segregation, and injustice. It made the quest for the American dream that was of license, equality, and happiness, an essential pursuit.39 It is important to shed light on the African-American struggle in the United States of America. conflicting most of other minorities, the African- Americans were captured in Africa, taken from their homes and lands by force and sent to a strange new land. They were brought chained and enslaved as a result of colonialism.40In the early colonial days, gruesome Africans had many opportunities to secure their freedom by escaping or buying themselves out of thraldom, and once free, they had a good chance to make their success in the New World. The life of Anthony Johnson41 illustrated the hazard of the blacks early dreams, in the early period of European colonization in American North. He was cognize as Antonio, a Negro. Johnson was enslaved in 1621, when he was sold to the English Jamest suffer he worked with Bennett family (a white family) who commended him for his hard labor and kn induce services He secured his freedom, got married to a freed-slave named Mary and baptized his children. As a freeman, Johnson dreamed of establishing his own farm in Virginia, of 250 acres ski lift tobacco and corn Eventually, his farm was burned, and he was killed, because the colonial legal system had begun t o preserve the rights of the whites and deprive blacks of theirs. This period illustrated the fact the era of chattel thralldom had begun.Many minatory Africans came to this land having dreams to fulfill. But, many forces spoiled these dreams. The dream of owning a land and successful business for the blacks was limited or weakened by the time and by the force of the law of the down(p) Codes 42 that was enacted by Virginia, in 1667. sable people had been enslaved with the change of economic conditions. The blacks were denied the opportunity to own land, because they were Negroes and by consequences aliens.43These Codes made thraldom a permanent condition contagious through the mother and defined slaves as property. Such slave Codes robbed the African-American slaves of their freedom and the power of their will. Nevertheless, freedom was always in the mind of the enslaved and how to gain that freedom was the essential question.44In the New World African-American slaves were co mpel to give up their African past and cultivated themselves to being slaves under the white pass over domination. They were prevented from bringing over their social relations and institutions. These slaves ate what was given to them, not what they wanted, and dressed the clothes that were given to them. In addition, these slaves were treat without any regard or consideration to physical welfare and human dignity.45In the American South, African-American slaves were described as property. Masters learned to treat their slaves as property. Frederick Douglass, one of the most eloquent speakers against slavery in America, captured the essence of slavery in 1846Slavery in the United States is the granting of the powerby which one man exercises and enforces a right of propertyin the body and soul of another. The condition of slave issimply that of a barbarian beast. He is a piece of the master whoclaims himher to be his property. He is intercommunicate of, thought of,and curseen a s property. His own good, his conscience, hisintellect, his affection, are all set aside by the master. Thewill and the wishes of the master are the law of the slave.He is as much a piece of property as a horse. If he is fed,he is fed, because he is property. If he is clothed, it is with aview to the plus of his pass judgments as property.46According to this definition of slavery, an African-American slave was the individual whose movement and activities were under the control of the vacuouss. Thus, he/she could not leave the command or the employer without an explicit permission otherwise, he/she could be punished.47During the sixteenth and 17th centuries, the use of slave labor was cheaper than indentured labor. Slavery was different from one colony to another. On the Eastern Coast and American North, the climate was not supporting extensive farming, slavery, there, tended to be farming slavery, with a few slaves hold and working side by side with small farmers or craftsmen. Whereas in the South, the fertile land and warm climates made large-scale cultivation possible, plantation slavery developed. Large numbers of slaves lived and worked on far distances from their owners.48 Another reason for slavery spread was the shortage of indentured servants, which led to resort and to enslave African Americans.49This meant slavery was essentially an economic institution from which the American nation benefited. More slave labor meant a large measure of prosperity. Many American historians believed that the growth of American economy was not because of slavery. But, Eric Williams, a Caribbean Scholar, aerated that black slavery was the engine of that propelled American rise to global economic dominance. In his Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams maintained that early Europeans conquest and settlement of the New World depended upon the enslavement of millions of black slaves, who helped amass the capital that financed the industrial revolution. Americas econom ic progress, he insisted, came at the expense of the black slave, whose labor built the mental hospital of capitalism.50In spite of the African-Americans participation in constructing the foundation of this nation, slavery was identified with dark skin.51 By late seventeenth century slavery and servitude were nigh identified with race. White indentured services were limited, voluntary, and had no racial components, whereas, slavery was involuntary, perpetual, and racially defined.52 Hence, indentured servants could be free and had the right to purchase their own freedom or buy completing their period of indenture. At the time of obtaining their freedom, they would pursuit their dreams of property and prosperity. While the African-American slaves did not enjoy these rights and protections.53 Instead, African-American slaves were controlled by the laws of black-market Codes.On one hand, race was one of the obstacles that prevented African-Americans from achieving their dreams. On t he other hand, the worst condition that African-American slaves had to live under, was the constant threat of sale.54 The African- American slaves family stability and security faced severe challenges. Masters, rather than parents, had legal authority over African-American slaves children and the possibility of forcible separation through sale hung over every family. The Southern plantation owners did not care, whether a slave to be sold off had family members, he/she had to leave behind or not. All mattered was that masters encouraged slavery. As masters questioned the philanthropy of such slaves, they argued that African- American slaves did not mind being sold since they lacked the ability to form stable family life.55As for African-American women, they were included in the surly system of slavery. They were persecuted, subjected to the worse kinds of oppression and exploitation. Not only, because being black women had to concentrate the horror of slavery and living in a racia l and redact society. But as women, they witnessed their physical image being defamed and became the object of the white masters lust. As dismal African-American, women had to endure the threat and practice of versed exploitation, and as mothers, they witnessed their children rupture from their breasts and sold into slavery.56 One of the ex-slaves, Jennie Hill explained the outlook of the Black African-Americans humanity according to the whites view pointWhite people think that slaves had no feelings, that theybore their children as animals, bear their young and thatthere were no heart-breaks when the children were torn fromtheir parents or the mother taken from her brood to toil fora master in another state. But, that isnt so.57For a white woman, providing home was an essential liaison to possess. But, for an African-American woman, it was a dream. Black African-American woman had scantly the opportunity to recollect her freedom and her own children.58 During slavery, Black A frican-American women were exploited in 2 main sectors of economy in the fields (with full employment), and in the household. Black African-American women were stretched physically, emotionally, and spiritually to the utmost in the slave plantation, as they were pressure to labor like men in the fields. Also they had substantial domestic roles. They raised whites children and created a decent and warm home environment for the white American family, while their dream of family unit was uncertain. 59The Black African-American slaves had no right to live proper family unit. They had no rights which the master was obliged to respect. The master found it cheaper to overwork a slave and to replace him or her when died, rather take care of him or her when lived.60 The Black African-American slaves were deprived of living their own lives, denied the right of literacy, education, and could not retract, in inevitably distorted ways, the values, morals, and attitudes of the new refinement o f which they gradually became a part.61 White Americans believed that the Black African-American slaves were brutal, barbaric, savage, who would present a real danger to the safety, prosperity, and security of the United States.62 Thus, it was in the system of slavery that the genesis of racism was to be found. According to Eric Williams, slavery was not natural of racism, rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.63 White Americans fastened onto differences in physical coming into court to develop the myth, that African-American slaves were subhuman and deserved to be enslaved. To enhance the Black African-America slaves inferiority, white Americans deliberately used religion to reinforce slavery as well. To support their institutions, the whites relied heavily on the Biblical story, in which Noahs curse of his son Ham (especially, the fourth son, Canaan), who said in the ninth chapter of Genesis a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.64 This story justified the c olor of the Black African-American slaves. By the Nineteenth century, many historians agreed to the belief that the Black African-American slaves were the descendants of Ham was a primary justification for slavery among Southern Christians. In other words, the Bible was used to teach the Black African-American slaves a divine, God-given justification for their condition as slaves.65 Hence, white Americans became convince of white superiority and black inferiority. It was the beginning of hatred and racial discrimination.66White Americans taught the Black African-American slaves how to despise their African heritage, identity, and culture. They strove to include their own value system into the African-Americans outlook. They believed in Africans inferiority that paralleled self-hatred.67 In full general, there were five steps in molding the character of strict discipline, a sense of his her inferiority, belief in the whites superiority power, acceptance of the whites standers, and finally, a deep sense of his her own helplessness and dependence.68 These facts emphasized the flourishing of the white American culture and completely ignoring of the Black African-American slaves culture. The Euro-Americans were the first who immigrated to the New World by their own free will in search of individual opportunity their European culture was superior. However, the ignorance diminished the real fact of the importance of the African heritage, not only for the Black African-American slaves, but to mankind.69For centuries, the Black African-American slaves were brutish about their own culture and identity. They lacked knowledge, they were illiterates. They were described as people , who were no more capable of learning than were animals.70 This indicated that Black African-American slaves were victims and white Americans were victimizers. They were oppress by the power of the whites. So, they were unable to find a hope to shift their life from slavery into freedom.711 3The resolving power of IndependenceWe hold these truths to be self-evidence,that all men are created equal, thatthey are endowed by their precedentwith certain unalienable rights, thatamong these are Life, Liberty, andthe pursuit of Happiness.72With the setting of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, the most important document in the American history and self-perception, slavery as a moral, human, and economic system challenged the basic principles of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, and proved to be the first great institution that tested the equality doctrine.73 The Declaration of Independence marked not only the independence of the bakers dozen colonies from Great Britain, it also laid the foundation of womens rights and of struggles for ending slaveryAfter the American colonies secured their independence fromGreat Britain, the blacks hoped that the same leaders who hadyearned for their own freedom would end slavery.74The Declaration of Independence rested not upon particular grievances, but upon a broad base of individual liberty that could command general support throughout America.75 It served a purpose far beyond that of a prevalent notice of separation. Its ideas inspired mass fervor for the American cause, for it instilled among general folk a sense of their importance, inspiring them to struggle for personal freedom, self-government, and a dignified place in society.76The United States of America started to shape itself as the Empire of Liberty and Prosperity, as a new entity, Black African-American slaves continued to play a significant role. Despite the continuation of hysteria against Black African-American slaves, who challenged the long standing tradition of racial discrimination and oppression in the South, the ex-slave and free-black people stepped forward into a new identity, a new reality, and a new sense of agency in public life. Many Black African-American slaves fought in the war of Independence, and they took to the heart assertion of the right of individual freedom that was so a part of the American Colonial and Revolutionary eras.77 Hence, the Declaration of Independence, as Jim Cullen, a historical critic thought it was not only an important document that shaped the way of Americans lives, but it was born and lived the character of the American dream.78 This dream was profound, eloquent, and unequivocal locution of the dignity and worth of all human personality.In his A fight down for Power, Theodore Draper, a historian summarized the revolutionary era as a struggle for power -between the power the British wanted to exercise over the Americans and the power the American wished to exercise over themselves.79 This fact suggested the most important question of Slavery. The Declaration of Independence made Americans want nothing more than freedom and to assume a separate and equal station among the power of the earth, Great Britin.80 The problem was, however, that the founding fa thers (Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and George Washington, etc.,) of the nation defined freedom in terms of its opposite Slavery. When they used the term Slavery, however, they were not referring to a peculiar institution, whereby many of the founding fathers themselves brought and sold Black African-American slaves as property. They referred to what they felt Great Britain was doing to their lives and livelihood.81The unself-conscious comparison between freedom and slavery made other people in the United States call for their freedom as well. A British essayist, Samuel Jonson in 1775, asked, but How we white people hear the loudest yelp for liberty among drivers of Negroes?82 This paradoxical state made the founding fathers fear that the increase of their dream could encourage others to pursuit theirs.83 And this was true, because the success of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, gave Americans the opportunity to give legal form to t heir political ideals as denotative in the Declaration of Independence, and to remedy some of their grievance through state constitution.Americans were accustomed to live under written constitutions that they took them for granted.84 Therefore, the Black African-Americans experience with the American dream in the United States started with the announcement of the Declaration of Independence. Yet, the founding fathers never thought about women, slaves, and Natives as having equal rights like white Americans (Anglo-Saxon American descents), or did not even recognize them as human beings. Thus, the Declaration of Independence was not the subject to change disagreement, because its content never changed.85