An Analysis of the Different Kinds of Success in Jennifer Hochschild's "Facing up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of a Nation" Essay

In Facing Up To The American Dream Race, Class, and The Soul of a Nation by Jennifer Hochschild, she explains that there are various kinds of success embodied in the American Dream. She claims that success can be absolute which means that achieving the American Dream implies "reaching some threshold of well-being, higher than where one began but not necessarily dazzling."(p.16) Success can also be relative in which achieving the American Dream consists of becoming better off than some comparison point. Finally, success can be competitive. With this definition of success achieving the American Dream occurs by achieving victory over someone else."My success implies your failure."(pp16-17) Hochschild goes on to explain that the achievement of success, whatever the definition, is essentially the main tenet of the American Dream. The pervasiveness of the American Dream throughout ALL of America's historical periods (for more on that seeA History of the American Welfare System)has created a fantasy of success. Hochschild asserts that these fantasies, "are innocuous so long as resources roughly balance dreams for enough people enough of the time."(p 27) Unfortunately, this is not the case and so many people are unable to achieve the success that they dream of. Since America's foundations are built on this success ideology, those who are unable to achieve it are seen as failures and are marginalized by the rest of society as a result.(see The Meaning of Words Part I and The Meaning of Words Part II)"The better the dream works for other people, the more devastating is failure for the smaller proportion of people left."(p 29) In the commercialized hip-hop of today the image of success put forth is competitive. Albums increasingly contain references to the superiority of the artist over another person or group of people because of his (and sometime her) material wealth.Yet, the writers of current welfare reform legislation fail to notice these aspects of the real world. Americans...

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