An Appeal to America (Let’s Redefine the American Dream)

I’ve been struggling for months now, trying to translate what I’m feeling into words.

It’s been a struggle because I’ve never been here before. I’ve never felt that sense of helplessness that I know so many others feel, and have felt, on a daily basis.

That might surprise you because I’m an African American male. I didn’t grow up rich. I grew up in the working middle class section of Silicon Valley. But I’ve got an undergraduate degree from Stanford and a doctorate from Harvard. I have a supportive wife, three beautiful kids, a nice home, and I own my own company. I thought all of that would give me a sense of control over my own future.

Yet, I am increasingly starting to feel that none of that entitles me to a sense of control in this global drama that is unfolding.

I know what you’re thinking—“welcome to the club!”

I have to tell you, now that I’m part of the club, I really don’t like it.

The “We’re not in control” club

As I look around, there seem to be a whole lot of people in this club. Unfortunately, there is a lot of pain too and I sense it everywhere. People are really suffering and, this time, no one seems spared. Education, class, race, gender, family connections—none of it seems to matter. Membership has swollen, and there are more people lined up around the block who may not know it yet, but they’re about to join the club too.

So, how did I get into this club?

More importantly, how can I get out of here—and fast? That’s my question.

By now, we all know the cast of characters in this story—the unscrupulous mortgage lenders; the greedy Wall Street financiers; the Ponzi schemers. The list goes on and on. But at some point, if we look hard enough, we’ll find our names written down there too.

We got here because of a series of decisions that we all had a role in. If we weren’t making bad decisions, we were supporting them. If we weren’t supporting bad decisions, we were ignoring them. We got here because we lost sight of the real essence of the American Dream. We got here because too many of us got caught up in “microwave moments,” moments where we believed we could have everything we wanted and we could get it all instantly overnight.

If you leave something in the microwave too long, it’s going to explode.

E Pluribus Unum

It’s easy to understand some of the ways Americans got here.

We’ve run into our biggest problems by misappropriating one of the signature American narratives: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

Although there’s some debate about its origins, that phrase has come to embody the grand American narrative that out of many peoples and colonies and regions there emerged a great and unified nation with a common purpose—freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But the first problem has been our mistaken sense of “common purpose” and our twisted collective pursuit of what has become a distorted definition of happiness. Out of many, we’ve been encouraged to follow one American Dream--but that dream has drifted away from welcoming the world’s tired, poor, huddled masses to a vision of liberty and justice for all, and instead has been redefined in increasingly shallow, materialistic terms. The American ideal of prosperity has been taken to extremes, as our society has become a steady stream of cultural messages telling us to spend more, eat more, and watch more television. It’s at the heart of a consumer mentality that makes you feel like you are not “part of the many” if you aren’t driving a fancy car, trying to move into a bigger house, or striving to keep up with P Diddy--or that tells Americans that our economy is driven by consumption, so we’re adding to its problems if we’re not consuming as much as we can. A vision of quiet abundance has spiraled into a cesspool of excess.

And there’s a second problem with the notion “out of many, one”—and it’s that we’ve come to believe that out of many, there’s going to be one big winner. Becoming that one has now evolved into another piece of the American Dream. Everyone wants to win the lottery, be the Idol, the Survivor—and for many of us, we don’t just want that, we believe it’s part of our destiny. In our personal lives, that dream of being the biggest winner—with winning defined in materialistic terms--fueled the overconsumption described above. As a foreign policy, the vision of American exceptionalism—and the commitment to America standing above the many as the world’s one big winner—has threatened to be just as disastrous. It’s been abused by those who tell us American power comes from our military might, so we ought to find more ways to kill. It’s been abused by those who tell us that our “way of life” is predicated on our ability to take pre-emptive strikes to destroy both existing and future threats—no matter how circular the argument. It’s left us with the caricature of America as a brash cowboy that’s tested the respect of people who should be our friends and strengthened the disgust of people who’ve become our enemies.

E pluribus unum has come to define American interest, and in it, the interests of Americans. It’s a beautiful concept, but it’s been badly abused.

Rewriting the Narrative

Here’s a ray of hope: The current economic crisis gives us all an opportunity to take a step back and start to reject the ideas and narratives that have encouraged opportunistic, self-destructive, herd-like behavior. It’s a chance to redefine the American dream. We can start by rewriting the grand narrative of e pluribus unum into ex uno plura—the new version: out of one, many.

One person’s success can elevate the collective hope and aspirations of many.

And here’s a great secret: for once, Black Americans have a head start here, because for us ex uno plura is much more than simply a rhetorical play on words. It is a mindset that is deeply ingrained in the souls of Black folks. In Black America, we’ve always held on to the notion that out of the success of one, many may rise—or, in other words, when one of us succeeds, we all succeed. Sometimes, we’ve taken that literally: after Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland to freedom in the North, she went back nineteen times over the next ten years for her mother, father, sister, brother, and more than 300 others she’d left behind. But Blacks have also always embraced the metaphorical idea of collective success.   When Joe Louis stepped into the boxing ring, we all stepped out with a victory. When Jackie Robinson was up to bat, we all hit a home run. When Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial, she made us all sound good. In the 1980s, when I was growing up, it was still an event for us to gather around the TV and see Black quarterback Doug Williams win a Super Bowl or Black figure skater Debi Thomas win an Olympic medal.   And when President Obama was elected, Black people celebrated from here to Kenya. 

For so many generations of Black Americans, success has been a form of social and political protest. Any one person’s success has been a success for all of us. As the visionary Black educator Anna Julia Cooper said in 1892 of her position as a Black woman:   “When and where I enter…then and there the whole race enters with me.” And if you remember the old idea of race uplift, adding to our collective success and progress was always seen as an individual responsibility. Not everyone could be the first Black astronaut or the first Black Supreme Court Justice, but if you dressed well, spoke well, were an elder in the church, held down a respectable job, made it to college—any one of these things could be doing your part.  

Here’s how this could work today: DO YOUR PART. If each person decides to change the way he or she lives, we all can regain a sense of control. If each person decides to spend a little less, save a little more, cheat a little less, and trust a little more….if each person chooses to worship celebrities a little less and empower the poor a little more….if each person thinks of himself a little less and walks in the shoes of her neighbor a little more….out of each individual positive decision, we can uplift many.

The American dream has always been that hard work and perseverance can improve the life chances of many who are voiceless.

So, here’s my appeal to America: “Ex uno plura.”

Let’s redefine happiness.

Let’s redefine our common sense of purpose. Perhaps there’s hope that my appeal to America can one day become an American appeal to the world.

We have to succeed, not for our own sake. We have to succeed for those who came before us and for those yet to come.