What Does the American Dream Mean to You?
July 12, 2013
If you’re willing to work hard, you can be successful and build a good life for you and your family. That’s what millions of Americans have believed for generations. But is it still true?
Our film Two American Families chronicles the Stanleys and the Neumans of Milwaukee as they struggle for two decades to make ends meet — only to fall further behind. It’s a familiar story to so many Americans over the past two decades.
What’s happening to the American Dream?
FRONTLINE teamed up with Moyers & Company to ask our online community what the American Dream means today, and how it’s changed.
Some of you told us that the American Dream remains a beacon of hope, but many more told us they believe that the dream is dead.
Then there are those of you somewhere in the middle, who believe the dream is still alive — but needs a lot of work.
What do you think? And what’s your story of getting by in the new American economy?
Here are some thoughts that caught our attention. And be sure to read a special note on the reaction to Two American Families from filmmaker Tom Casciato.
The American Dream Has Become Just Getting By:
Nancy Fellenz The American Dream used to be a home in the suburbs, a good job, raising your family. Now we have been relegated to survival mode.
Chris Murray If I can make to the end of my life without having to live out of a shopping cart, I'll call it a success. I'm honestly not joking and I have a law degree.
Chuck Baginksi The American dream is to someday get a job that pays enough to pay off your student loans before you die.
John Manager To me, there isn't much of one. After three years out of work, I'm just focused on survival. Got no time or money for dreams.
Steve Vogt The American Dream now means to simply have a job and to be out of debt. Simple as that.
Jan Smith I think at one time the American dream meant having a place to call your own, get a house paid for, have a job you liked, transportation, take a vacation now and then. Those things didn't seem so out of reach. Now it's about survival. I worry constantly the car will break down or anything at all will go wrong to prevent me paying the bills. And many people worry if they will eat or have a roof over their head at all. The American dream has been stolen.
The American Dream Is Just A Delusion:
@frontlinepbs the late, great George Carlin said it best: they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it.
— Canice Murphy (@canicemurphy) July 10, 2013
@frontlinepbs The American Dream holds ideals of upward socioecon mobility that no longer exist. Now it operates as The American Delusion.
— Linda Patlan (@kamitlan) July 10, 2013
@frontlinepbs The American Dream is a lie that's been sold for generations and is now getting slowly exposed.
— hans (@primaryHans) July 10, 2013
Willie Fuchs WOW!! What a wake up call for America! This was an amazing documentary. It reminds me of similar stories of what Americans experienced during and after the 1929 depression. John Steinbeck's, “Grapes of Wrath”, reflects much of what this documentary portrayed. Both families reflect the continuous battle which working class Americans deal with year in and year out. The American dream, for many families such as these two, has become the American nightmare. The promises by politicians, corporations, and the religious communities have been unfulfilled and replaced with more lies. The rich continue to get richer, while the working class bear the burden of bad business decisions, corporate greed, and the same old lies spouted by politicians. We can and do become victims of our illusions of the “American Dream.”
Karel Van Horn-Seldner The “American Dream” was never more than an ideological carrot waved in front of the working class. I would say this carrot waving was partially responsible for the recession - look at all those folks who got sucked into a sub prime mortgage, trying to secure their “American dream house.”
Deborah Elston The American Dream to me includes a healthy, hard-working, supported middle class. Unfortunately, this is gone. We now live in a time of CEOs making millions while the workers lose benefits, pensions and jobs. I am a college grad who will never attain what my parents did - both of whom did not even finish high school. Never in a million years did I think I would live to see the decimation of the American middle class and yet, that day has arrived...
The American Dream Is Alive (But It Might Need Work):
Jasper Bloodsworth To me the American Dream is the ever hopeful future. Something to keep loving and trying for. To me it isn't changing as much as it is going through real tough times.
@frontlinepbs American Dream means working, saving & teaching kids these values so that they & their kids will advance further. No shortcut.
— Jack (@jackantic) July 10, 2013
Raul Perez The American Dream is to me give my kids a better life than I had when I was growing up. I grew up on minimum wage and lunch tickets. Now I am a homeowner and a Navy Veteran that doesn't take anything for granted.
Wesley Ratko The concept of an American dream means meritocracy, where hard work and perseverance can mean financial success without the necessity of connections or a family name. I still believe in that, but I think it's harder now than it ever has been. It's under fire now from wealthy people who want to take as much as possible for themselves, without any consideration about the long term consequences of a diminished middle class. Greed is destroying the American Dream.
A Note from Two American Families filmmaker, Tom Casciato
The reaction to Kathleen Hughes’ and my film, Two American Families, has been extremely gratifying. Thoughtful reviews in The New Yorker, Salon, The Guardian, Variety and The Nation made it clear that people were moved by the stories of the Neumanns and the Stanleys. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about the families, we have learned, is how unremarkable their stories are to so many Americans who have lived these past two decades under the same circumstances. In fact, the most moving response I’ve seen was posted by a blogger I had never heard of at a site called penny prudence.com. She wrote of watching the film:
“At times I cried such that I could not speak. Why? Because Frontline could have filmed our family in Detroit, over the same period of time, and much of the story would have been the same … I was three-years-old the first time I saw my grandparents come through our back door with groceries … To this day, I can see the motion they make as the door pushes open, what they are wearing, what their glasses look like, how happy they are to see me standing there waiting for them. I ask ‘Grandma! Grandpa! Why do you have groceries?!’ and my grandfather, setting them on the kitchen table before picking me up, says ‘We accidentally bought too many and they’ll go bad!’ I knew, even then, that it wasn’t true, that my grandparents would never do such a thing, and that it meant things were bad – really bad. I knew this in a deep sense without really having the vocabulary to describe it.”
The comments shared in this post about the state of the American Dream — like the stories of the Neumanns and Stanleys — speak both to the economic difficulties ordinary Americans face, and the resilience with which they face them.
Nathan Tobey
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