Well said, Ms Libes. I'm guessing almost all groups/ethnicities have been the target of oppression at one time or another throughout history. My mother's grandparents were native Irish victims of the Potato Famine and before that the British oppression of the Irish Catholics. They came here in the mid-late 1800s and established several small businesses in the Chicago area and later Alleghan Michigan. All 10 of their sons enlisted in the Armed Services during WWI.
What is important is that these groups, like those of your parents and those from other oppressive regimes or cultures overcame that in this country and did not wallow in their victimhood. Teaching our young people that there is anywhere near the level of oppression here that exists in many other countries is absurd.
I’m an old White Guy, someone who once would have been referred to as a WASP (don’t know if that’s still a concept), so I guess in a way I’m at another end of the spectrum Ms. Libes describes. My family has been in private education (both ElHi and collegiate) for half the time we’ve been a country; my paternal grandfather started teaching math at UPenn in 1894 and ending up Chair of the English Department and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. We also number among us three Independent school heads, one church preschool director, one college drama department head, and me (retired independent elementary school history teacher and division head) along with a fair assortment of lawyers, ministers, doctors, bankers and the like along the way.
I mention all that because I am proud of all of us, justifiably I believe, but more because of the sense of our history that we imbibed ‘along with our mothers’ milk’ due to the sheer love and appreciation of it in the hearts and minds of three plus generations of Americans (most of the family came over as a result of the Irish potato famine).
At the same time, teachers’ salaries being what they were when I was growing up, there were eight of us, so we lived with relatively tight belts, although I was certainly not unconscious of the wealth of many of my classmates at the independent school at which Dad taught and was later head (the only way he could have afforded my tuition even in that distant day).
Certainly when I was growing up in the aftermath of WWII (I was born exactly five months to the day before the Enola Gay opened up her bomb bay door over Hiroshima) there was a common feeling that we lived in a great country. The racial rumblings from the south which would become a roar before I was out of school were not clear to us along Philadelphia’s Main Line until I was well into high school, and the disaster of Vietnam was still only a vague dissonance from far away.
So I have lived through the apparent transformational period Ms Libes describes. I am certainly fully aware of reasons why Americans might now think us less than whatever promise we may once have believed. But that lack of appreciation is hardly new. You would have heard much the same kind of talk during the Great Depression, alongside the rise of populism during the Gilded Age and the time of the so-called Robber Barons, during the Civil War and the last two decades which preceded it, and intermingled with the election of Andrew Jackson. Indeed, one might have heard something like it during the presidential campaign of 1800, still one of the nastiest in our history.
We are a grand and exceptionally risky experiment, the first of its kind; perhaps the most extraordinary experiment in human government ever attempted. And we haven’t been at it for very long. I could have talked to a man who fought in the Civil War. A man who fought in that war could have talked to a man who fought in the Revolution and was present at the Founding. We are that young. We tend to forget that.
To me, and I’m sure it is the result of having taught our history for over 40 years, the problem is that we keep thinking that wherever we are now is some sort of finished product, etched in stone for all time. Despite all the rants about it, we don’t seem to have achieved American exceptionalism. What we forget in thinking that way is that our exceptionalism is not a given, but rather a promise bequeathed to us by a group of flawed but hopeful men in a hot closed room in a world very different from ours. We are not now, nor can we ever be a finished product. Alone among all the governing methods we’ve tried since ‘the kingship descended from Heaven in ancient Sumer, democracy doesn’t work that way. It is always open ended. We can always improve it if we believe we can. But to do so, we have to understand far better than I fear most of us do what we were designed to be - that nation in which We the People could together find enough of the courage, the honesty, the understanding, the tolerance, the humility, the compassion, the wisdom, the humor, the hope, and the sheer common sense to govern ourselves from the bottom up. That is the promise we inherited, and we need to measure our progress by the amount of those traits in our public discourse. It is, in the end, as Lincoln understood, up to us.
Great essay. A close friend who was born in Uganda once told me “the only people who don’t believe in the American dream are Americans.” Your essay does serve as a reminder that having strong adult role models and support is important, and I would not understate how many barriers to opportunity exist for kids born into intergenerational poverty. Access to higher education in the United States lags behind many other nations. But certainly for anyone who makes it to college the only real barrier is the challenge of hard work.
A nice article. One small correction, though. I grew up in Moscow, and it's just not true that petty crime was unknown in Soviet Union. It was pretty bad, in fact. Azerbaijan, with it's small-town, Muslim traditions (even in the capital) could have been different.
If we could light a little Jewish Spark to inspire our own American culture to remember that education is almost everything. If the second generation doesn't get well-educated or trained, they're going to stagnate. The first generation works hard, the next generations work smart.
You found a pathway. You're probably exceptional.
I think the America First inclination of the politically motley crew we elected will help to rebuild the middle class that was hollowed out by globalism and trade agreements. That way people see multiple pathways to a good life.
I think everyone needs a pathway to homeownership.
I imagine we'll still trade well with friendly nations going forward, but not enemies.
Yes, we have to be able to make more than lattes and Big Macs to have a life and I refuse to accept that we've had to pay people family wages to do those jobs because there was no family wage working class job making something less ephemeral. That's disgusting.
Looks like we're going to change that. Move people up. Also, prepare people (who can) to move out of public housing and subsidies going forward so we can afford the next lot. Anything else is the road to serfdom.
Still, to get a life, you have to invest in yourself. The socialism comes in amongst you and your family members and perhaps your immediate community, but it doesn't scale up from there. Let's get off that progressivist train people.
What has been lost in America ambition, self-discipline, and work ethic, three thing that have always been determinate to the American Dream's realization. Government handouts always end up destroying them. What I would be greatly interested in is how your parents and you managed to build those characteristics in spite of coming from a socialist background.
Those who lived through, survived, and escaped the Soviet Union develop all of the qualities you mention above. The Soviet system was not exactly about government handouts either and actively discriminated against you if you were Jewish, for instance. You really did have to work to get ahead. Living under socialism forces you to develop those characteristics—if anything, capitalism provides a nice, cushy lifestyle and incentivizes people to grow complacent.
They farm class resentment for their power and money making operation. And then when average American families get pissed that the liberal professional laptop class is living a life that the bottom 70% cannot touch, they, the liberal upper class, scold those other families that they they are just ungrateful for all the cheap Chinese crap at Walmart and all the frozen processed food they can afford with SNAP benefits.
The American Dream is dead only because the version portrayed on TV is less and less accessible to more and more American families.
> So let’s scrap this notion that America is inherently discriminatory and start teaching younger generations that America really is the land of opportunity.
False dichotomy. Sure, opportunity still exists it's just that it gets harder and harder for ordinary people to get ahead. America IS inherently discriminatory -- against white people, males and non-perverts. Actually I'd not be surprised if the author, given her 'unruly black hair' and immigrant status might not have qualified for Victimhood herself in the eyes of Columbia.
I guarantee you that with my anti-Marxist stance and white, European heritage, I did not succeed because I qualified for "Victimhood" status. That's the issue here with your argument. You can't be "ordinary" if you want to get ahead. You have to do something extraordinary, and fight for yourself too—but the system is structured such that anyone can do these things.
> I did not succeed because I qualified for "Victimhood" status
I'll take your word on it. I only suggested that such a thing was not impossible. Ms. Libes, from what I read I think I can say that I greatly respect your accomplishments and I don't disagree that 'anyone' can, at least in theory, succeed in America. It's a question of degree. I only say it is not as true as it was a few decades ago and it is not as true, perhaps, as the myth makes it out to be. Even you might have faced some obstacle that you could not overcome -- good luck is an essential part of success rather more often that we tend to want to admit. But yes, America is the land of opportunity even now and people like yourself are examples of that. You have my genuine respect.
Understanding upward mobility requires an understand of the job market. If the range of jobs in the economy is static then the only possibility for someone to achieve upward mobility is when someone else experiences downward mobility. And middle class parents have a lot of power to insure their children do not experience downward mobility. So for upward mobility to be more available there needs to be more jobs created at the middle class level (and fewer working class jobs). This is what happened after WW 2 when there was a vast expansion of white collar jobs and a lot of upward mobility, although it is important to note that wide spread discrimination severely limited the opportunity of Black people to take advantage of this expansion of middle class jobs. If the range of jobs is static (or even if it is not) there needs to be more opportunity for working class families to have jobs with an adequate and stable income, access to affordable housing and medical care among other factors. A worker at McDonalds in Denmark has access to these essentials of the good life even if they are not "middle class".
I admire your article and personal history. One reason for that is that I grew up in Bosnia during the 1990s war and later moved to Sweden, where I live today. At the same time I want to be objective and write that your text is mainly about your personal experiences and situations. But where is more evidence and empirical studies supporting your claims?
Well said, Ms Libes. I'm guessing almost all groups/ethnicities have been the target of oppression at one time or another throughout history. My mother's grandparents were native Irish victims of the Potato Famine and before that the British oppression of the Irish Catholics. They came here in the mid-late 1800s and established several small businesses in the Chicago area and later Alleghan Michigan. All 10 of their sons enlisted in the Armed Services during WWI.
What is important is that these groups, like those of your parents and those from other oppressive regimes or cultures overcame that in this country and did not wallow in their victimhood. Teaching our young people that there is anywhere near the level of oppression here that exists in many other countries is absurd.
I’m an old White Guy, someone who once would have been referred to as a WASP (don’t know if that’s still a concept), so I guess in a way I’m at another end of the spectrum Ms. Libes describes. My family has been in private education (both ElHi and collegiate) for half the time we’ve been a country; my paternal grandfather started teaching math at UPenn in 1894 and ending up Chair of the English Department and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. We also number among us three Independent school heads, one church preschool director, one college drama department head, and me (retired independent elementary school history teacher and division head) along with a fair assortment of lawyers, ministers, doctors, bankers and the like along the way.
I mention all that because I am proud of all of us, justifiably I believe, but more because of the sense of our history that we imbibed ‘along with our mothers’ milk’ due to the sheer love and appreciation of it in the hearts and minds of three plus generations of Americans (most of the family came over as a result of the Irish potato famine).
At the same time, teachers’ salaries being what they were when I was growing up, there were eight of us, so we lived with relatively tight belts, although I was certainly not unconscious of the wealth of many of my classmates at the independent school at which Dad taught and was later head (the only way he could have afforded my tuition even in that distant day).
Certainly when I was growing up in the aftermath of WWII (I was born exactly five months to the day before the Enola Gay opened up her bomb bay door over Hiroshima) there was a common feeling that we lived in a great country. The racial rumblings from the south which would become a roar before I was out of school were not clear to us along Philadelphia’s Main Line until I was well into high school, and the disaster of Vietnam was still only a vague dissonance from far away.
So I have lived through the apparent transformational period Ms Libes describes. I am certainly fully aware of reasons why Americans might now think us less than whatever promise we may once have believed. But that lack of appreciation is hardly new. You would have heard much the same kind of talk during the Great Depression, alongside the rise of populism during the Gilded Age and the time of the so-called Robber Barons, during the Civil War and the last two decades which preceded it, and intermingled with the election of Andrew Jackson. Indeed, one might have heard something like it during the presidential campaign of 1800, still one of the nastiest in our history.
We are a grand and exceptionally risky experiment, the first of its kind; perhaps the most extraordinary experiment in human government ever attempted. And we haven’t been at it for very long. I could have talked to a man who fought in the Civil War. A man who fought in that war could have talked to a man who fought in the Revolution and was present at the Founding. We are that young. We tend to forget that.
To me, and I’m sure it is the result of having taught our history for over 40 years, the problem is that we keep thinking that wherever we are now is some sort of finished product, etched in stone for all time. Despite all the rants about it, we don’t seem to have achieved American exceptionalism. What we forget in thinking that way is that our exceptionalism is not a given, but rather a promise bequeathed to us by a group of flawed but hopeful men in a hot closed room in a world very different from ours. We are not now, nor can we ever be a finished product. Alone among all the governing methods we’ve tried since ‘the kingship descended from Heaven in ancient Sumer, democracy doesn’t work that way. It is always open ended. We can always improve it if we believe we can. But to do so, we have to understand far better than I fear most of us do what we were designed to be - that nation in which We the People could together find enough of the courage, the honesty, the understanding, the tolerance, the humility, the compassion, the wisdom, the humor, the hope, and the sheer common sense to govern ourselves from the bottom up. That is the promise we inherited, and we need to measure our progress by the amount of those traits in our public discourse. It is, in the end, as Lincoln understood, up to us.
Great essay. A close friend who was born in Uganda once told me “the only people who don’t believe in the American dream are Americans.” Your essay does serve as a reminder that having strong adult role models and support is important, and I would not understate how many barriers to opportunity exist for kids born into intergenerational poverty. Access to higher education in the United States lags behind many other nations. But certainly for anyone who makes it to college the only real barrier is the challenge of hard work.
A nice article. One small correction, though. I grew up in Moscow, and it's just not true that petty crime was unknown in Soviet Union. It was pretty bad, in fact. Azerbaijan, with it's small-town, Muslim traditions (even in the capital) could have been different.
Thank you for this story.
If we could light a little Jewish Spark to inspire our own American culture to remember that education is almost everything. If the second generation doesn't get well-educated or trained, they're going to stagnate. The first generation works hard, the next generations work smart.
You found a pathway. You're probably exceptional.
I think the America First inclination of the politically motley crew we elected will help to rebuild the middle class that was hollowed out by globalism and trade agreements. That way people see multiple pathways to a good life.
I think everyone needs a pathway to homeownership.
I imagine we'll still trade well with friendly nations going forward, but not enemies.
Yes, we have to be able to make more than lattes and Big Macs to have a life and I refuse to accept that we've had to pay people family wages to do those jobs because there was no family wage working class job making something less ephemeral. That's disgusting.
Looks like we're going to change that. Move people up. Also, prepare people (who can) to move out of public housing and subsidies going forward so we can afford the next lot. Anything else is the road to serfdom.
Still, to get a life, you have to invest in yourself. The socialism comes in amongst you and your family members and perhaps your immediate community, but it doesn't scale up from there. Let's get off that progressivist train people.
What has been lost in America ambition, self-discipline, and work ethic, three thing that have always been determinate to the American Dream's realization. Government handouts always end up destroying them. What I would be greatly interested in is how your parents and you managed to build those characteristics in spite of coming from a socialist background.
Those who lived through, survived, and escaped the Soviet Union develop all of the qualities you mention above. The Soviet system was not exactly about government handouts either and actively discriminated against you if you were Jewish, for instance. You really did have to work to get ahead. Living under socialism forces you to develop those characteristics—if anything, capitalism provides a nice, cushy lifestyle and incentivizes people to grow complacent.
F**k lefties for this. Really.
They farm class resentment for their power and money making operation. And then when average American families get pissed that the liberal professional laptop class is living a life that the bottom 70% cannot touch, they, the liberal upper class, scold those other families that they they are just ungrateful for all the cheap Chinese crap at Walmart and all the frozen processed food they can afford with SNAP benefits.
The American Dream is dead only because the version portrayed on TV is less and less accessible to more and more American families.
Thanks very much for this essay.
In my opinion, your narrative captures a real opportunity to reframe our political dialogue from victimization sweepstakes to self-empowerment.
> So let’s scrap this notion that America is inherently discriminatory and start teaching younger generations that America really is the land of opportunity.
False dichotomy. Sure, opportunity still exists it's just that it gets harder and harder for ordinary people to get ahead. America IS inherently discriminatory -- against white people, males and non-perverts. Actually I'd not be surprised if the author, given her 'unruly black hair' and immigrant status might not have qualified for Victimhood herself in the eyes of Columbia.
I guarantee you that with my anti-Marxist stance and white, European heritage, I did not succeed because I qualified for "Victimhood" status. That's the issue here with your argument. You can't be "ordinary" if you want to get ahead. You have to do something extraordinary, and fight for yourself too—but the system is structured such that anyone can do these things.
> I did not succeed because I qualified for "Victimhood" status
I'll take your word on it. I only suggested that such a thing was not impossible. Ms. Libes, from what I read I think I can say that I greatly respect your accomplishments and I don't disagree that 'anyone' can, at least in theory, succeed in America. It's a question of degree. I only say it is not as true as it was a few decades ago and it is not as true, perhaps, as the myth makes it out to be. Even you might have faced some obstacle that you could not overcome -- good luck is an essential part of success rather more often that we tend to want to admit. But yes, America is the land of opportunity even now and people like yourself are examples of that. You have my genuine respect.
Understanding upward mobility requires an understand of the job market. If the range of jobs in the economy is static then the only possibility for someone to achieve upward mobility is when someone else experiences downward mobility. And middle class parents have a lot of power to insure their children do not experience downward mobility. So for upward mobility to be more available there needs to be more jobs created at the middle class level (and fewer working class jobs). This is what happened after WW 2 when there was a vast expansion of white collar jobs and a lot of upward mobility, although it is important to note that wide spread discrimination severely limited the opportunity of Black people to take advantage of this expansion of middle class jobs. If the range of jobs is static (or even if it is not) there needs to be more opportunity for working class families to have jobs with an adequate and stable income, access to affordable housing and medical care among other factors. A worker at McDonalds in Denmark has access to these essentials of the good life even if they are not "middle class".
I admire your article and personal history. One reason for that is that I grew up in Bosnia during the 1990s war and later moved to Sweden, where I live today. At the same time I want to be objective and write that your text is mainly about your personal experiences and situations. But where is more evidence and empirical studies supporting your claims?