How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

Coined by historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book The Epic of America, the phrase “American Dream” encapsulates the national ethos of the US. Disheartened by the economic upheaval of the Great Depression, Adams critiques the modern era’s focus on material wealth and its drive for economic gain. Instead of measuring American greatness by its material comforts, Adams posits, America might instead be measured by its ability to enforce a social order that provides a better life for everyone and ensures opportunity in measure with ability and achievement. Historians have since attributed this belief that the US is a land of opportunity to narratives of American exceptionalism and have used it to explain the country’s popularity with immigrants.

Critics of the ethos argue that the idealized version of America presented through the American Dream ignores the social and economic realities that have shaped the US, for it does not acknowledge factors such as enslavement and its legacy, including Jim Crow laws and the racist manifestations of violence in the modern era. Historiography that adopts the American Dream narrative also ignores the ruinous effects of colonialism and the widespread genocide of Indigenous people.