The Closeting of the American Dream

Drawing from Ursula K. Le Guin’s parable of the “child in the closet,” this chapter describes how a dynamic of broadening equality and shifting extraction has played out across US history, as American conceptions of universal political rights have evolved. The “American dream,” a powerful expression of principles of equal opportunity, was only popularized in the twentieth century, yet its ideological origins can be traced to the republic’s founding documents. From the outset, bestowing rights and opportunities upon white male property owners depended on the subjugation of other groups. Over time, however, the American dream’s ideals—rooted in Jeffersonian philosophies of political equality—have provided moral leverage to push forward resistance and reform. Popular conceptions of the American dream have shifted, in turn, from desires for a freedom-loving and virtuous community to aspirations for individual material success. As the tenor of the dream has changed, so too have the moral arguments used to excuse the exploitation that permits the extending of opportunities more broadly. Racial entitlement, for instance, has been replaced by meritocratic entitlement, reflecting popular understandings of individual advancement and efficient markets as superior routes to economic growth benefitting all. Such a perspective distracts from the ongoing erosion of social mobility and the offloading of the costs of opportunity creation onto new and international groups. Recognizing these changing patterns of resource extraction and opportunity hoarding helps make sense of modern-day inequalities and the reasons they persist amid the uneven advancement of America’s founding ideals. It also offers insight into how the current system might allow for something different from a Faustian bargain of underwriting dreams of glory and self-growth for some upon the collateral suffering of an increasingly amorphous and obscure group of others. An alternative path would require not just positive liberties of economic security, but also a change in the prevailing cultural beliefs of who is deserving and undeserving of grace.