Le rêve américain (document en anglais)

The American Dream confronted to the black issue

“Life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

James Truslow Adams, 1931

First, the American Dream is a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work. The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776 which proclaims that all men are created equal.

From the colonial era, the King of England was using the American Dream to stimulate immigration and settlement of North America. It boasted the vastness of the territory, synonym of almost limitless opportunities, as well as easy access to the land, which was the aspiration of many peasants in the metropolis. One who did succeed in becoming owner in fact acquired the right to vote for members of the House of Commons.

With the industrial revolution, many Americans had managed to enrich themselves during the XIXe century. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were leaving at this time the old continent to escape religious persecution (jews of Eastern Europe), poverty (Italian) or the famine (Irish).

For many immigrants, the Statue of Liberty was their first view of the United States, signifying new opportunities in life. The statue is an iconic symbol of the American Dream.

However, XVIIᵉ and XVIIIᵉ century migrants were often difficult living conditions when they arrived in America: attacks Native Americans, diseases, climate, etc. For the English Puritans, New England is idealized as the "promised land" where they could take a fresh start and build a new society, away from persecution in Europe.

Moreover, the XXe century is marked by the struggle of minorities (blacks, native Americans, women) to participate fully in the American dream, having the same rights as other Americans. Martin Luther King gave his famous speech “I have a dream” for the abolition of these discriminations.

“It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”

George Carlin

From birth in 1787, the Constitution of the United States is ambiguous on the situation: if it proclaims liberty and equality, it recognizes the existence of slavery.

An opposition between the North and the South appears about it: the war to the segregation. Certainly, the North East States quickly put an end to slavery-like practices, but this evolution is deemed impossible by the southern States new recently acquired by the Union. It is a large workforce to highlight the new agricultural plantations. Little by little, the opposition is developing between Northeast abolitionist and slave-holding South in which 90% of the slaves concentrated. This war turned in favour of the North, and slavery was abolished: we are in 1865.

Then, there were amendments about the slavery, in special an amendment which prohibits denying or restricting the right to vote to citizens for issue of race, color or previous condition of servitude. These are political rights, economic rights are forgotten: the former slaves will have no land, have no

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