User:Tsweeney617/American Dream

The American Dream
Home and family have been seen as the place that someone feels the safest. Whether that be just being surrounded by loved ones or making new loved ones along the way. The American Dream beckoned to people around the world to create a life like what the average American citizen had. This was the idea that you can get anything you want, a time of prosperity and growth, not only in the workplace but also at home. During the post-war era, new technologies were being made so the economy was booming and new jobs were readily available. The American Dream set certain ideals in which freedom would allow opportunities for prosperity and success. There was an idea of potential upward social mobility that was said to be achieved by hard-work because of the lessening barriers stopping Americans from being successful. The deeper meaning of this dream was said that anyone regardless of where or what class they are born in they can attain their own version of success in society. It's exactly what it sounds like, a dream, and it was different for everyone and how they dreamed their life could be. This was an ideal life for everyone because it was a chance for families to experience the upward social mobility that the upper-class might've been experiencing before. The American Dream became this standard that was embedded in the American culture years down the line. America as it says "the land of the free, home of the brave" was this new frontier that beckoned to those seeking a new chance. A poll was done in 2010 by John Zogby and Sandra Hanson suggesting that most Americans believed in the American Dream as a whole but that it was more of spiritual happiness rather than material goods. Not only was it becoming increasingly difficult to achieve the American Dream but it was becoming increasingly difficult for the working class to achieve this ideal home standard.

Scholars often point out that postwar families turned to marriage and parenthood because they were eager to put the hardships of war behind them and enjoy life at home. Scholars feared that postwar young men and women would put a hold on starting a family because many of the demographic trends they were seeing shifted the traditional gender roles. But the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that this wouldn't be the case, Americans experienced a surge in family life which ultimately rested on distinct roles for men and women. While American leaders were advocating for this "American way of life" what they didn't account for was that while increasing numbers of Americans gained access to this domestic ideal-- not everyone who aspired to it had equal access to it. Policymakers assured society that the combined forces of democracy would bring the "fruits of life" to all and asserted that racial strife was diminishing. Suburban communities were at the centerfold to all of the fears surrounding racial strife, emancipated women, class conflict, and family disruption. In order to alleviate these fears Americans "turned to the family as the bastion of safety in an insecure world," which in turn bolstered the American home. Suburban areas were slowly welcoming ethnic Americans with white skin and blended into the homogeneous suburbs. But people of color were excluded from these suburban communities as well as denied the same benefits of American prosperity. Residential segregation was a huge factor in these suburbs, even if people of color could afford them. The government supported certain aspects of the civil rights movement but did little to end "the residential segregation that kept Americans of color at the bottom of society . The Federal Housing Authority and lending banks were helping racial segregation in the suburbs prevail because of their redlining policies largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market from the 1930s-1960s for black families. This was a tactic used by real estate that would place barriers for these families looking to purchase homes in the suburbs. These "red zones" were primarily people of color because these were the areas that they were forced into . The upward social mobility and the opportunity for home ownership that most white Americans had access to was denied to people of color thus forcing them to reside in substandard urban housing .  The American way of life was something that everyone strived for and embodied the nuclear family as a cultural ideal, but at the same time political leaders were hiding its poverty in rural and urban areas and masked its racial oppression. Many scholars of the postwar era made connections between Cold War politics, suburban development, race relations, and the domestic ideal that links political and familial values.

Attitudes about the American Dream
A lot of people still believe in the American Dream and all that is said to offer. But what actually was the American Dream adding up to be for people? Zogby and Hanson’s findings suggest that Americans believed that the true meaning behind it was actually more about spiritual happiness than material goods. Fewer Americans believed that the American Dream wouldn’t progress anymore because it became was a way to show your class and wealth. What was failed to mention was that African Americans especially were institutionally discriminated against in all aspects of prosperity and being given a chance to succeed. Attitudes about the American Dream started off very high, but once it was learned that it was all about what you owned and where you got it, it became a class game. Attitudes shifted surrounding this dream and whether or not it was a real thing. Everything that it was said to offer was very attractive in theory but working towards it was much harder than it was made out to be. But for the middle and upper class, it was not as hard because they had a head-start. "American workers are not revolutionary because America is the land of opportunity: the American Dream directs workers toward individual mobility rather than collective protest".

Research done about the attitudes towards the American Dream started as an idea that anyone that was determined and hard-working would get ahead in life, but as we see growing wealth gaps, ongoing race and gender inequality, and expanding poor immigrant populations show less support for this “dream.” It was said that every hard-working American had the right to prosperity but what they failed to mention was that it wasn't all-inclusive. Inequality then became justified because if they were not prospering even in the American Dream then maybe they weren't working hard enough and that explained their poverty (Kluegel and Miyano 1995). Zogby conducted a series of surveys through iPOLL through the University of Connecticut showing trends in public opinion about the American Dream and whether it was attainable in their eyes. Her findings suggest that between 1995 and 2003, survey respondents came to agree a bit less than the American Dream is impossible to achieve, but a majority of these respondents said that it would be harder for future generations to achieve the American Dream. Along with these findings, the participants were also asked to examine whether or not they felt the poor were given plenty of opportunities for the American Dream to be alive for them.

Housewife Activists in Southern California
A case study done about postwar conservativism in Los Angeles, CA suggests that women were much more influential in the conservative movement than thought by previous scholars. In California especially there was a very feminine world of grassroots activism. Women in the middle and upper-class took advantage of their wealth and privilege to become militant anticommunist crusaders in the 1950s. Not only did they have great influence in their communities but they also played a crucial role in incubating McCarthyism. Government officials saw how powerful these “housewife activists” were in their communities in combatting communism that even J. Edgar Hoover said that “he believed women could support FBI efforts to find communists in American society”. By the 1950s the “get-our-governments-off-our-backs” brand of conservatism reached the Southern California suburbs. Russel Kirk, in The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Conservatism, declared that the reason women should be declared the more conservative sex is because women had a practical understanding of the worth of family and the community. Hoover largely expressed that women found a way to “instill love of country.” In light of historians findings about postwar conservatism, previous thoughts about the understanding of women, gender, and conservatism is questioned. Historian Lisa McGirr referenced these women participating in more political activism as “kitchen table activists.” This era was about women showing that they were not foot soldiers to their husbands or slaves to patriarchy. (Helen Courtois, "Christian Women of America Are You Crackpots?" distributed by the Keep America Committee] October 1950, Hoover).

In postwar America however, the American Dream looked a lot different for people of color and what was progressively stopping them from reaping the same benefits white middle/upper-class families were receiving. During the 1950’s and early 1960s working-class African American women sought resources for themselves and their families from public institutions. Scholars such as Rhonda Y. Williams examined how poor black women’s organized activism in the late 1960s and 70s and focused on how institutions did not develop formal political platforms or engage in militant collective protests

American Dream Home
Work in America was meant to be seen as tasks done by men that earned money while a woman's task was in the home. This set up the ideal American Dream Home because there was a separation of work and home. There was a work/ family balance that meant for men that they needed to be singlehandedly devoted to their employer and not do work at home. It was a norm for women to work clerical jobs until they were married and then kids and household duties would be their "work". Marriage laws were put in place that denied employment to married women. This was also the same for African Americans being very limited on types of professions and where they could live, mentioned previously as redlining. The origins of the typical ideal worker fed into the American Dream and created what we saw post-war. It was because "cultural re-imagination of workplace masculinity served to protect families during a time of economic instability".

In this ideal home situation the mother would be the sole care-taker of the house and the children while the husband was the breadwinner of the family. The nuclear family in a nuclear age made home this place of security, "a private nest removed from the dangers of the outside world". This established our idea of family being a place where you feel safe and comforted. The details of homes physically and financially were different but all Americans of all racial, ethnic, and religious groups participated in the rise of marriages and the baby boom during this time. Families were expanding and wanting to go out to the American Dream suburbia. For more white families that was possible but for African Americans they were facing an even bigger issue: redlining. This was designed to prevent them from living in certain areas of the city and pushed them to live in communities that were statistically African American populated and in more unsafe areas of the city. Redlining was one of the many ways that African Americans were prevented from attaining the American Dream Home. Racial and class divisions were concealed beneath an aura of unity in the aftermath of the war. "Post war was presented as a united nation, emerging triumphant from a war fought against racist and fascist regimes". The way of life that was presented in the American Dream suburbia was characterized by affluence which was epitomized by white middle-class nuclear families.

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