From Hollywood’s Golden Age to McDonald’s golden arches, the American Dream has enticed fresh-faced adolescents and immigrants with suburban utopias, only to imprison them with crippling debt.
Coined by historian James Truslow Adams in 1931, the American Dream took root alongside the 76.4 million births after World War II’s economic expansion. Ever since, life, liberty — and, most importantly, the pursuit of a paycheck that covers rent — have become the faces carved into America’s modern Mount Rushmore. As an Iraqi immigrant myself — whose homeland evokes mustached dictators and, as my second-grade pen pal wrote, the Genie from “Aladdin” — I’ve marveled at this hollow Babylon wrapped in red, white and blue.
For millions of Americans, this empire began crumbling with the Great Recession of 2008, as soaring student debt and shrinking economic mobility eroded its promise, a struggle later amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the recession and pandemic’s devastation surpassed race and generation, young adults and the 8.8 million immigrants who arrived in the 2000s have faced the steepest climb. To a minority, the Dream still exists — we see it in our Kennedys, our Trumps, our Gateses and Rockefellers — but it doesn’t wait, and it certainly leaves no white space for us to wedge between those 13 stripes.
Despite my black passport and my mom’s headscarf, I never thought of myself as an outsider. I grew up la vie en rose, mornings eating PB&Js and plopping down before Disney Channel: Hannah Montana prancing through her beachhouse while I sat cross-legged on damp carpets. By third grade, Disney felt too “kiddie.” Instead, I was reading a chapter book on Chinese immigrants, unable to understand why the little girl had to put the Honey Nut Cheerios back on the shelf. Somewhere between Malibu and aisle seven, the Dream started to look past its expiration date. Even in this land of promise, not every story could be tucked into bed, kissed goodnight and sent off with a happy ending. Babylon’s towers were already crumbling, and the desert flowers were starting to wilt.
Millions of impressionable minds, including my parents’, had soared toward the American Dream, scorched by a reality brighter than any ambition could endure, free of cookie-cutter cul-de-sacs: The American Dream is now a myth.
Partly rooted in selective memory, this myth reflects a tendency to preserve the good while forgetting the bad, remembering the picket fences but ignoring who was kept outside of them. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, came of age during this unprecedented economic growth. Between 1945 and 1973, the U.S. real gross domestic product grew at an average annual rate of 3.9%, while the median household income doubled in real terms and homeownership skyrocketed. College was inexpensive, social mobility was high and even a middle-class job often guaranteed a stable life with benefits.
By contrast, the cost of college has tripled since the 1980s, housing prices have far outpaced wages and today’s young adults face median incomes barely higher than their grandparents at the same age. Nearly 45 million Americans now carry student debt, totaling nearly $1.8 trillion, and while Baby Boomers enjoyed a 40.5% homeownership rate at the same age, Gen Z’s share has plummeted just 32.6%.
Homeownership isn’t the only pillar to shift. Millennials and Gen Z are marrying later and having fewer children, sewing their own white stars into the same faded blue sky. Gender roles have loosened, ethnic barriers have mostly fallen and LGBTQ-identifying Americans can live more openly. The American Dream’s social flag — the mid-20s marriage, kids, a golden retriever named Buddy and a backyard just wide enough for barbecue gossip — is frayed at the edges, but not beyond restoration. The rigid post-war ideal of a white, suburban, nuclear family no longer towers over the imagination, and older generations shouldn’t scowl at the newcomers.
We’ve awoken from the Dream and its manicured lawns, neighborhood diners, malted milkshakes and Saturday-morning cartoons — but the flag still flies, its poles now lifted by the hands of new generations, struggles and dreams. Above it, the sky still holds room for new stars, strange constellations and dreams we haven’t dared to name, and it’s up to us to reach for them.
