I remember it like it was yesterday. As I walk into a friend’s house for the first time after a football game at Reitz High School, I see things that I 've never seen before. Suddenly I am in a whole new world that I never knew existed. Growing up not having much at all, I assumed that my life was normal. However, after moving into a different part of the city, I went to house after house like my friends that was nothing like mine. These people had everything you could ever want and more. I remember telling myself that I wanted to live like that one day. I know I am not the only one who has ever grown up in a background like mine to experience a culture shock like I did. To me, this was the American dream. If I work hard enough, I don’t have to live like I did growing up. I can live like these people. I don’t have to worry about struggling or living paycheck to paycheck like my parents. I can have more, do more, be more, if I just put my mind to it. But is it really that simple? I was completely ignorant on the subject, but I was always told it was as simple as doing the right things, working hard, and being a good person. I found that was not always the case. As much as I would’ve liked to it to be that way for everyone, it doesn’t work like that. Don’t get me wrong, I 've been extremely fortunate in terms of getting where I want to be.
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It wasn’t however because of work ethic or equal opportunity, but more because of connections I developed, really by chance. This is how success is achieved in this country. Not by equal opportunity, but by connections and meeting the right person at the right moment with the right skills. We see it in the text, Rereading America. Jay Z didn’t succeed because of equal opportunity but because he had a God given talent and met the right people (Packer 359). A lot of people aren’t that lucky. As a result, there are a lot of people who never get to a level they want to be at because they don’t have the same opportunity’s as the top dogs in this country. The top one tenth of a percent in the United states have 22% of the US wealth (Columbo, et al. 346). The fact that this figure stands shows that they are able to pass down the right opportunities in order to keep the status quo. In Don’t send your kids to the Ivy League, we see the process of elite schools and how important it is to know the right people to get in (Deresiewicz 201). It is a cycle in most cases, and I believe the American Dream isn’t what its cracked up to be. It is true for some, complicated for others, and myth to most. With all that can be said about what the American Dream is not, I thought it would be appropriate to share first a positive example. Per dictionary.com, the American Dream is defined as “the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity traditionally held to be available to every American”. Therefore, I want to break it down with this first example. Meet Barack Hussein Obama. The one nobody would have picked to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, all while breaking a racial barrier that has existed throughout the history of this country. Obama was born in Hawaii to a white mother and a father of Kenyan descent. They were both very intelligent people, but he left the family when he was two years old. His mother later remarried another man who happened to be of Indonesian descent. Obama says he remembers being raised as a white child, a black child, an Indonesian child, and a Hawaiian child. While this was confusing for him growing up, he said that it helped him to understand different cultures later on in life. His mother however, ended up divorcing again and went back to school and left Barack with his grandparents. While with them he attended an elite school in Hawaii. He was not an outstanding student, but he was involved in sports and he did well enough in school. During high school, Obama tried marijuana and cocaine recreationally. If you stop right here, you would never believe
It wasn’t however because of work ethic or equal opportunity, but more because of connections I developed, really by chance. This is how success is achieved in this country. Not by equal opportunity, but by connections and meeting the right person at the right moment with the right skills. We see it in the text, Rereading America. Jay Z didn’t succeed because of equal opportunity but because he had a God given talent and met the right people (Packer 359). A lot of people aren’t that lucky. As a result, there are a lot of people who never get to a level they want to be at because they don’t have the same opportunity’s as the top dogs in this country. The top one tenth of a percent in the United states have 22% of the US wealth (Columbo, et al. 346). The fact that this figure stands shows that they are able to pass down the right opportunities in order to keep the status quo. In Don’t send your kids to the Ivy League, we see the process of elite schools and how important it is to know the right people to get in (Deresiewicz 201). It is a cycle in most cases, and I believe the American Dream isn’t what its cracked up to be. It is true for some, complicated for others, and myth to most. With all that can be said about what the American Dream is not, I thought it would be appropriate to share first a positive example. Per dictionary.com, the American Dream is defined as “the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity traditionally held to be available to every American”. Therefore, I want to break it down with this first example. Meet Barack Hussein Obama. The one nobody would have picked to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, all while breaking a racial barrier that has existed throughout the history of this country. Obama was born in Hawaii to a white mother and a father of Kenyan descent. They were both very intelligent people, but he left the family when he was two years old. His mother later remarried another man who happened to be of Indonesian descent. Obama says he remembers being raised as a white child, a black child, an Indonesian child, and a Hawaiian child. While this was confusing for him growing up, he said that it helped him to understand different cultures later on in life. His mother however, ended up divorcing again and went back to school and left Barack with his grandparents. While with them he attended an elite school in Hawaii. He was not an outstanding student, but he was involved in sports and he did well enough in school. During high school, Obama tried marijuana and cocaine recreationally. If you stop right here, you would never believe