Who had Access to the American Dream White man holds skewer of shish kabobs and smiles while leaning over outdoor cook surface.
In the background, boy, woman, and another man look on, smiling. All are white.
Discussion on Who had Access to the American Dream
For this discussion, I’d like you to think about race and the suburbs of the 1950s. As you read, the suburbs were created after World War II, so they are an invention of the late 1940s and 1950s. Recently, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about his life experience as an African American as one of being shut out from a dream of America that looks very much like the 1950s suburbs.
Who had Access to the American Dream Essay Paper Instructions and Writing Instructions
Check out the excerpt below:
I have seen that dream all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies….
Fear ruled everything around me, and I knew, as all black people do, that this fear was connected to the Dream out there, to the unworried boys, to pie and pot roast, to the white fences and green lawns nightly beamed into our television sets.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, Random House Publishing Group, Kindle Edition, p. 11; 29.
In this discussion, please think about:
What’s the evidence in our reading that would support Coates’ idea that the suburbs intentionally created two different Americas: one for white people, and one for everybody else?
Can you think of counter-examples from the reading, where it seems like 1950s America did include people of color in its American Dream?
Where do you think we are now? Do you relate to what Coates’ is saying, or do you have a different experience? Do you feel like you have access to a “picket fence” suburban America? Why or why not? Use specific examples to support your ideas.
