Exceptional America by Mugambi Jouet

Author:Mugambi Jouet
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520293298
Publisher: University of California Press

Living in a Dream

Belief in the American Dream does not serve only to rationalize inequality. It can also have a positive social influence by inspiring ambition. The prospect of fulfilling the American Dream can be a source of hope for the poor, immigrants, or the struggling middle class. But such idealism can hinder realism if taken too far. A large share of people with modest incomes believe they will realize the American Dream. More than one in three citizens with an annual income under $25,000 expect to do so. Further, 44 percent of those making $25,000 to $50,000 share this belief.86 These findings are remarkable in light of the relatively limited economic mobility in modern America.

Many destitute Americans aspire to make it out of their current situation without questioning the economic system. In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich described her experience working with an impoverished maid who saw no problem with cleaning lavish mansions for a pittance. “All I can think of is like, wow, I’d like to have this stuff someday,” the maid said. “It motivates me and I don’t feel the slightest resentment because, you know, it’s my goal to get to where they are.” Ehrenreich, a writer, had conducted a social experiment by taking on the kinds of lowly jobs the working poor live on. Despite pinching pennies, she could barely subsist on the roughly $7 an hour she earned toiling as a maid, waitress, nursing-home aide, and Walmart associate. Nonetheless, she saw that only a small fraction of the working poor truly resented their miserable predicament and were interested in doing something to change it, such as unionizing.87 David Shipler made a similar observation in his study of America’s working poor: “Rarely are they infuriated by their conditions, and when their anger surfaces, it is often misdirected against their spouses, their children, or their co-workers. They do not usually blame their bosses, their government, their country, or the hierarchy of wealth, as they reasonably could. They often blame themselves, and they are sometimes right to do so.”88

Again, not all ordinary Americans are politically apathetic or eager to vote against their own interest.89 Numerous working-class and middle-class citizens want the government to reduce wealth inequality and provide meaningful public assistance programs. The economic downturn of the Bush and Obama years led scores of Americans to grow pessimistic about their chances of becoming affluent. Half of the public thinks that the main reason why some people are rich is because they have had more advantages. A similar share believes that the main reason why some people are poor was circumstances beyond their control.90 Many Americans thus doubt that they live in a meritocracy. But unbridled faith in the American Dream remains influential in shaping the worldview of a significant part of the population.

Seymour Martin Lipset emphasized that America’s lack of an “aristocratic or feudal past” has made its citizens “less class conscious” than Europeans.91 However, voting patterns might be more marked by social class in modern America than in Europe.

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