Discussion: Ta-Nehisi Coates Says The American Dream Is A Lie. Is He Right?

Discussion for article #238721

Is He Right?

Yes.

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Lol. Another case of a simple answer to …

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I would disagree to the extent that, at one time, it WAS a viable goal. That gave America the strength to reach all sorts of markers. Now, it’s gone, totally. And I get that but this article seems to me to be making some assumptions, one of them being that this is a beneficial thing. I don’t get that at all.

If we did that, instead of a Dream, we could finally be a country.

Without the “American Dream” , from an economic standpoint, we’re just descending into a Western version of Brazil. And the whole part of “a more just society without a civil religion” just sounds like some libertarian pie in the sky. We’re now extremely divided and those differences are becoming set in stone. With little social mobility, “a just society” is very hard to achieve.

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Goddamned right he is.

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TPM:

Ta-Nehisi Coates Says The American Dream Is A Lie. Is He Right?

Abso-fuckin’-lutely, says this 50 year old white guy. I don’t know if conservative boomers killed it off, or if it was always a lie, but I know it was pretty damn dead well before I graduated high school in '83.

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More unbiased scholarship is needed on domestic American governmental surveillance, censorship and harassment of the population from the end of WWII to the present but particularly in the labor movement and the arts in the early decades of the 20th century as exposed by William J. Maxwell’s mind-blowing account (2015, Princeton University Press) of 50 years of FBI policing of African American writers and poets.

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Since he is an example of the “American Dream,” he is calling himself a “lie.” He’s got to get over thinking like a victim and get on with life, but he won’t. Victimhood sells.

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No he is not, by far!

The American dream isn’t something that is handed over to you just because you were born here or have immigrated here. The American dream is something you have to work hard for and conquer. You reap what you sow and yes, sometimes the weather destroys your hard work, and that’s life.

I see everyday around me people of all races and origins live the American dream, working hard to achieve the dream. Ask them if that’s a lie.

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Hear, hear!!!

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This whole thing just went over your head. To you, this all about his personal ‘victimhood’ as you call it!

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We know one think both David Brooks and Ta-Nehisi Coates are living the American dream. I guess they are both living a lie.

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The “American Dream” remains nothing but the marketing of American capitalist ideology for the masses, just like buying stock makes one an owner of a company (in any meaningful sense). To the degree that the masses bought into it, it appeared to have legs - at least for white folks. But since the peak of the “American century,” circa 1966, and especially since the decimation of American industry - actually far more than decimation - it’s been harder and harder to sell. Certainly the collapse of 2007-2009 ended it for most anyone that still had illusions.

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Let’s draw a distinction on what we are talking about here.

First, the past. Yes, to the extent that prior Americans
gloated about the physical expansion of the US—railroads, construction,
farming, mining, etc—it was gained by the criminal and racist exploitation of
black workers, not by some divine fairy dust sprinkled on a favored nation.

Second, the future. That dream is not yet realized, and who
knows who will do the hard work to achieve it. Moreover, it will likely not be
through such racist exploitation. That brutal work has already been done. The
future dream will likely be based on thought and creativity. So, for that
future dream, blacks have a good chance of missing out due to lack of inclusion
in education and upwardly-mobile society in general. But it is not hopeless.

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What Coates is selling is the notion that every person of color is a victim. In Coates case selling that snake oil has allowed him to live the American dream because his product is selling. Straight American capitalism at its best.

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“The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
–Geo Carlin

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Great Post. Mr. Coates has a right to his opinion but I think he is wrong. When I first started teaching in the early seventies my Hispanic girls all wanted to get married and have babies. Twenty years later they all wanted to go to Cornell.
Work hard, get educated and your life will be a success.

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Slave labor was important in building 1/2 of America right up to 1865. That is when the South lost the civil war. After that not so much. The robber barons learned how to exploit labor in ways that would make slave owners cringe. They exploited everybody they could find regardless of race or religion. Then we had the muckrakers and “enlightened” industrialists like Henry Ford realized they needed customers. Working with unions they raised wages so workers could buy cars. Although there were bumps in the road like the great depression America prospered, especially after WWII. .Then the Wall Street elites decided they would do better if they were the world’s bankers. They outsourced American industry to create consumers in the 2nd world and to insure a bigger bang for their personal bucks. America has been in decline ever since. Racism exists, but it is only a small part of America’s problems. it isn’t the center piece.

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I would say he is not right, but I certainly understand his analysis. What he fails, in my opinion, to realize, is that the American Dream is just that, a dream. It should be considered a philosophical goal, like justice. We have a legal system, not a justice system. Justice is the brass ring for which we strive, knowing that we will never truly reach it. The American Dream is the goal for which we strive, knowing that we, as a country, may never really achieve it. However, the danger lies not in the failure to achieve it; on the contrary, the danger arises when, like justice, we stop reaching for it at all.

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In all due respect to Dr. Coates, he’s just repeating what any demographer or economist tell us about income stagnation over the years and most people remaining in in the same social stratus into which they were born.

My wife and I moved a little past our parents. Out kids maybe a bit more as they’re in the professions, but corrected for inflation their buying power with 6-digit incomes is no more than mine was in, say, 1980. They’re still paying college loans. Their kids will likely need loans, too.

i’m not clear on how he conflates the shameful treatment of blacks with all this, but maybe it will be clearer when I read the whole article. These summaries in news articles can be just awful and inaccurate.

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