A New View of America |
In his book Our Kids: the American Dream in Crisis, Professor Robert D. Putnam examines how the American Dream has revolutionized our the years. He tells the story about how the American Dream is diminishing and how an “opportunity gap” has formed between Americans. In the first chapter of the book, “The American Dream: Myths and Realities”, Putnam introduces his thesis on the transformation of the American Dream. He says “How this transformation happened, why it matters, and how we might begin to alter the cursed course of society is the subject of this book” (Putnam 1). Putnam uses the small town of Port Clinton Ohio as a representative microcosm of America in the 1950s and America today. He describes this transformation as a “split-screen nightmare, a community in which kids from the wrong side of the tracks can barely imagine the future of that awaits the kids from the right side of the track” (Putnam 1). He refers to this difference in opportunity as the “opportunity gap” that has formed over the past half-century in America. Putnam explores this gap by analyzing the life stories and backgrounds of multiple people who grew up in Port Clinton and where they ended up today. He claims “For exploring equality of opportunity, Port Clinton in 1959 is a good time and place to begin, because it reminds us how far we have traveled away from the American Dream” (Putnam 2). After analyzing the stories of Port Clinton’s generation of the 1950s, Putnam comes to the conclusion that inequality in America has come about from the inequality of income and wealth and the inequality of opportunity and social mobility. He claims the result of this distinction is two Americas and that we currently live in this reality. Putnam says “Three different dimensions of class segregation show just how pervasively American society has become divided along class lines during the past forty years” (Putnam 37). These three dimensions include neighborhood separation, educational segregation, and intermarriage class barriers. In this one chapter of Putnam’s book, it is concluded that the cursed course of society has led Americans away from the American Dream. America in the 1950s was a dream compared to the nightmare reality of America today. The equality of income and wealth as well as the equality of opportunity and social mobility has decreased along with many other factors of society that used to thrive. These changes have affected the amount of opportunity for the youth in this country and have shattered the American Dream.
|
Another person who believes the American Dream has become a nightmare is Kevin Maggiacomo: