Facing Up to the American Dream

Know about the book -

Facing Up to the American Dream is written by Jennifer L. Hochschild and published by Princeton University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0691029202 (ISBN 10) and 9780691029207 (ISBN 13).

Hochschild combines survey data and vivid anecdote to clarify several paradoxes. Since the 1960s, white Americans have seen African Americans as having better and better chances to achieve the dream. At the same time middle-class blacks, by now one-third of the African American population, have become increasingly frustrated personally and anxious about the progress of their race. Most poor blacks, however, cling with astonishing strength to the notion that they and their families can succeeddespite their terrible, perhaps worsening, living conditions. Meanwhile, a tiny number of the estranged poor, who have completely given up on the American dream or any other faith, threaten the social fabric of the black community and the very lives of their fellow blacks. Will the still optimistic majority of poor African Americans eventually follow the alienated minority into neighborhood and even society-wide destruction? Does the new black middle class vindicate the American dream, or does the frustration of its members make apparent the limits of a vision never intended to include African Americans? Hochschild probes these questions, and gives them historical depth by comparing the experience of today's African Americans to that of white ethnic immigrants at the turn of the century. She concludes by claiming that America's only alternative to the social disaster of intensified racial conflict lies in the inclusiveness, optimism, discipline, and high-mindedness of the American dream at its best.