Quarantine Journal #3

Asleep to the Dream

Historically, America prides itself as a place of freedom and expression. A place where people could live a free, prosperous life for themselves and their descendants. For citizens of the United States, the American Dream is a common value that lies at the very heart of the nation. “The American Dream is the aspirational belief in the US that all individuals are entitled to the opportunity for success and upward social mobility through hard work” (Dictionary.com). But in America, are all individuals entitled to the same opportunities for success? What does it mean to “make the world a better place?” A continuing theme in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me is the belief in the dream, and the impact of the dream on his life as a man of African-American descent. “A very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream” (33). The ideas that Coates expresses throughout the book serve the opinion that as a black man living in the United States, not everybody is entitled to or promised the same opportunities for success. A news story, that involves the same ideas expressed by Coates’s book, explains the story of an African-American family that was asked to move tables at a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Naperville. A family celebrating a birthday was asked to switch tables by staff because customers did not want to be seated next to black to black people (New York Times). The United States is built on the value of the American Dream and equal opportunity for all but is “asleep” to the unequal treatment of black citizens because of the discrimination that African-Americans face every single day.

The United States is “blind” to the treatment of minorities in our nation because white Americans do not pay attention to the unjust treatment of minorities and see the world as a perfect place. In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates recalls about an interview he had with a reporter when he first began to understand the idea of the dream and the protection of one’s body “I realized then why I was sad. When the journalist asked me about my body, it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most gorgeous dream” (11). Coates is sad because he sees that the reporter is living in a fantasy where she believes and views the world to be perfect place. He says that she is asking him to “awaken” her because she does not see the unjust treatment of minorities. In the case with the black family at the restaurant, white people get away with the abuse that they throw towards black people because they are blind to the fact that the world is not great. They are asleep to the fact that they are just as deserving to a body and to the dream as every other white American. But the white man continues to lead a false belief that demonstrates a skewed portrayal of the world.

The United States prides the equal opportunity for success as granted in the belief of the American but is “asleep” to the perspectives of African-Americans because the way that minorities are treated deprives them of the experience of the “American Dream.”“The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies” (11). Coates explains how the dream “has never been an option” because the actions and derogatory actions made towards African-American’s give them different, unequal opportunities that are granted to white Americans. We are blind to the treatment of minorities and don’t think about the affects of our derogatory actions. Many Americans believe that the world is equal and everybody is treated the same because of this false dream, but in reality the world is not a happy place and won't be unless minorities are granted the same opportunities as Caucasian-Americans. The people in the family that was asked to move tables because of their skin color are deprived of the same opportunities that are granted to every other American citizen. They are not allowed to live the same dream because they are treated with unequal, discriminatory actions that limit them from the same rights as their own neighbors.

In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. said that he had a dream. He dreamed that people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (Archives.gov). While many Americans follow a different dream, the equal treatment of minorities is still to be accomplished. Everyone is entitled to the same opportunities as everybody else and something so simple as the color of one’s skin should not be the limiting factor on who deserves to live the American Dream. Since we are asleep to this treatment, asleep to the restrictions on the dream, racism will continue. Until we understand that the dream is not reality, that not everybody is granted equal opportunity, racism will persist. The event that took place at the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Naperville relates very closely to me as I live in a nearby city less than an hour from me. It is so different to see this treatment occur so close to my home. It makes me realize just how asleep I Have been. Before reading Between the World and Me the American Dream seemed to be something that every single American had the freedom to pursue. That everybody has the right to equal opportunity. I know understand just how skewed our society is. I see know, better than I ever have before, that the world is not a wonderful place. And unless we “wake up” and realize the fantasy of this dream racism will continue to plague the United States of America.