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2016 Midterm1
(assignment) |
LITR 4340
American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Zach Thomas
Part Two: An America for All of Us
If anything has been over taught in middle schools and high schools, it
would be the concept of “the American Dream.” Personally, my schooling has
taught me that you can be anything you want to be as long as you have the drive
to do so! Not that that theme is inherently wrong, but this is not always the
case for immigrants and minorities. People don’t always get the help they need
in order to achieve. Fortunately, there has been better opportunities for
immigrants and minorities in the last ten years, but we still have a long way to
go.
Firstly, the immigrants who came to the New World for opportunities were
given them, either by hard labor or of knowing someone in the country. However,
there are struggles that are new and sometimes debilitating for new immigrants
in America. In Carrie Block’s, An
American Tale, she writes that, “in search of the ‘American Dream’ only once
here the realization that this dream, may only be that, a dream.” I would agree
with Carrie on this concept of the never-ending rat race of capitalism. For many
immigrants though, this way of life was normal: to work your fingers to the bone
for a paycheck. At least in America they were receiving pay, but the American
Dream left out the cost-of-living in the New World.
Secondly, there are similarities of immigrant stories of American life,
but minorities are tested further. The dominant culture has either conquered the
land of the minority or kidnapped the people groups to be force-fed this new way
of living. Both forms of minority groups are changed not out of want, but are
changed by the greed of the dominant culture. Jo Ann Pereira speaks of this in
her analysis of Olaudah Equiano, which she states, “this narrative gives us an
idea as to how an African American’s journey actually began and the struggles,
pain and suffering he experienced all along the way to get to America and obtain
the ‘American Dream.’” I would concur that this is an astute argument since the
“American Dream” was never necessarily Equiano’s dream. Most of his early
adulthood was spent either in European or American soil trying to buy back his
own freedom. Instead of truly experiencing the ever-fleeting ideal of the
“American Dream,” Equiano was forced to be a white man’s property in order to do
the work they should have been doing. In the beginning, Equiano faced more of a
nightmare than a dream giving false hope to the immigrants.
Lastly, how can we truly define the many cultures that are represented
within the body of American culture? The New World is filled with immigrants and
minorities all searching to understand the world through experience and
knowledge. So to say that there is a dominant culture is seemingly absurd,
right? Marisa Turner in her final titled,
Defining America, shares my same confusion as she writes, “I believe that no
culture is greater than the other, at least not in America. Who gets to make
this decision?” That is a tough question to answer, Marissa. Since America is a
“melting pot” of cultures and beliefs, should there not be a communal decision
made on who is dominant? Does any specific culture even need the right to say
they are the dominant one? Because the dominant culture of Europeans in search
of conquering the ideal America made that happen. The “American Dream” should
really involve more acculturation as we are in need of diversity in all
areas—academically, socially, economically, medically, etc.
“The American Dream” really needs to come back to reality or be
reassessed. For immigrants and minorities, they don’t want to pursue a dream
that never becomes a reality. Our workforce is primarily made up of minorities
and immigrants who stimulate the economy and we would be utterly bankrupt
without them. The dominant culture stresses capitalism to keep raking in profit
without benefitting these employees who scrape and save to survive. The
unfortunate theme is that the “American Dream” is often only beneficial to white
Americans who can afford what that entails.
