Spaces and Exchanges (Terminale STMG) American Dream

Notion: Spaces and exchanges

The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of who they are, where they come from, can succeed in America. This dream is achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking and hard-work, and it doesn’t require to be American to reach it. Also, America’s free-enterprise system enables people to be focused on their own success. It favors free-entrepreneurship. We may wonder if the American Dream is still alive to this day.

The actual idea of the American Dream is about the economic perspective of it. Some people represent this dream perfectly: Oprah Winfrey is a well-known talk show host and an actress. When she was young, Oprah was living with her grand-mother, without running water, sometimes dressed with a potato sack because her grand-mother had no money. She was also sexually abused at the age of 9 and became pregnant by the age of 14, her son died soon after his birth. Then, her mother sent her to live with her dad, who was a strict man that made her education a priority. She never gave up and is now the only Afro-American on Forbes’s list because of her wealth and is the biggest philanthropist in the world.

John D. Rockefeller is also a perfect example of the AD. Poor, Rockefeller started to work at the age of 16, as a bookkeeper. He then started to learn all he could about the business, and started a produce business later in the year. During his life, he wanted to control all of the oil business in the world. At the end of the 19 century, his company refined around 90% pf the world’s oil. John D. Rockefeller was the world’s first billionaire.

But at one point, the AD was about freedom. A BBC report introduce us with Isabel Belarski, an elderly lady who landed in the US at the age of 10. Her family had fled Stalin’s purges as they were Jewish, and found liberty in the United States.

The report then moves to Brooklyn, where some people talk about high expectations being dashed.

Twi young people are being interviewed about their lives in the USA. For them, their parents have worked hard for nothing: they have no medical benefits, low wages. They are struggling even if they are doing everything to get above those struggles. The report concludes by saying that today’s new arrivals have less faith in the American Dream of getting ahead.

Because of the policy of the USA, it is more and more difficult to enter the country without a visa. A cartoon drawn by Cox and Forkum shows us a huge wall between Mexico and the USA. We can see a Mexican family in the foreground. On the wall, a poster shows the statue of liberty with a big exaggerated smile and a slogan that promotes America. The country seems attractive, but the family cannot cross the border: he need to go through the customs, but they have filled their immigrant quota. He is told to try again another time. It highlights the fact that America used to be an Eldordo for people all over the world, but it is harder to enter the country and achieve the dream today.

We saw a CNN report about the surge of immigrants arrest under Trump. Ice doesn’t need a warrant to arrest someone now, it is then easier to arrest people. The problem with this policy is that it destroys many families because some fathers and mothers are back in Mexico, and the children still in America.

To this day, the American Dream is still achievable for people that have the chance to get a visa or for Native Americans. But for undocumented immigrant, there is this fear of getting deported, or just to not cross the border to get in America.

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