are three times less likely to be offered a job interview than someone with a Christian- sounding name, like Joe, even if you have the same level of experience and qualification. If you are a women living in the United States, you only earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Working hard does not factor in this case, because no amount of extra hours and commitment can change your ethnicity or your gender. This, of course, assumes that you received the same quality of education as your fellow interviewees. Children in the poorest school district in the US are estimated to be an average of 4 grade levels below those in the richest areas, and, for those from the poorest 25 per cent of households, the rate of attainment of Bachelor degrees is
just nine per cent. The fundamental principle of the American Dream is that, if you have the brains to be the next Albert Einstein, the talent to become the next Lionel Messi, or the artistic flair to paint like Picasso, you will achieve that potential as long as you work hard and aim high. But, if the budding physicist happens to live in a poor school district, the chances are he or she will never receive the quality of education necessary for them to flourish. If the talented footballer has to give up a place at an academy to go to work because their parents cannot afford the rent, they will never receive the coaching that turns raw talent into true ability. If a young child goes to a school that has been forced to cut all
The ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ are indiscriminate in their ability to thwart even the best and brightest of our world
funding of their art department, they will never realise they have a passion and flair for painting. While a willingness to work does contribute to success, it is usurped as the most important factor by the roll of the dice that determines starting circumstance. The idea of the American Dream completely strips chance from the equation, and as a result remains but a spec on the horizon for those immediately disadvantaged. The American Dream does briefly consider the hardship of starting circumstance, but then proceeds to prescribe a simple solution, utterly detached from reality. Democracy, goes the American Dream, ensures all individuals no matter their wealth, their race, their gender, are equally able to advance their interests. So what if your school is underfunded, your democratic right allows you the agency to change that. Except it doesn’t. In 2011, eight states passed laws that meant you needed a government-issued photo ID in order to vote. While approximately ten per cent of Americans as a whole do not have such ID, that rises to 25 per cent for the African- American population. Already disadvantaged, the very mechanism by which they are to gain equal footing instead condemns African-Americans to even greater subjugation. Even if you do vote, your district can be gerrymandered in such a way that negates any impact of your vote whatsoever. In theory, democracy advances equality, but in practice, it perpetuates the opposite. he grand illusion of the American Dream is that you succeed on your own, or you fail on your own. For a country built by a ragtag group of immigrants from all corners of the earth working together, this represents a profound contradiction. Accomplishment today takes a mixture of ambition, effort, and luck. If those who believe in the American Dream are so desperate for a truly meritocratic society, it is about time they start acknowledging that luck does play a role in success, for it is only when you recognise bias, that you can seek to remove it. T
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