The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary: “Detached Houses: The Dream of Home Ownership”

Cullen explores the American Dream of Home Ownership along with its historical roots and related structural factors, including the growing transport infrastructure in the 19th century, the rise of the automobile in the 20th century, and the importance of suburbia in American life and culture.

The US was a frontier state for much of its early history. European settlers sought to procure increasingly more land during the push westward on the continent as both a source of wealth and a place to live. Under Thomas Jefferson, Congress passed land ordinances in 1785 and 1787 that “would have a decisive impact on the future landscape of the nation, ranging from the street-and-avenue patterns of many midwestern cities to the quilt-like landscape seen from an aircraft” (139). Congress under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln made it easier for free men to claim land out west (160 acres, specifically) through the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862. The government’s interest in influencing how land was acquired and developed was matched by the interest of land speculators who tried to gobble up large tracts of land from which to derive wealth.

The 19th-century growth of transportation infrastructure in major cities, including the cable car system in Chicago and the streetcar system in San Francisco, is partly responsible for the rise of suburbia, as it became easier for workers to commute into the city from outside urban centers. The 20th-century obsession with the automobile enabled families to push out even further, and by 1990 most Americans lived in suburbia. Unfortunately, for most of suburbia’s history, racial minorities weren’t welcome. For example, in 1960, Levittown—a famous housing development in New York—had no Black residents. Even so, Cullen argues that the Dream of Home Ownership remained especially strong for immigrant families in the 20th century, and these families were often able to fulfill this dream.

Chapter 5 Analysis

This chapter further explains the process by which the fight for racial equality in the US caused many whites to actively distance themselves from Black people. The author discusses his own family’s history of engaging in white flight—the phenomenon of white families moving away from neighborhoods when Black families started to move in. White flight went hand-in-hand with redlining—a racist practice by which financial services and other opportunities were denied to residents of neighborhoods that were disproportionately populated by Black Americans and considered dangerous. The author’s disappointment in his family’s (perhaps unconscious) participation in white flight to the suburbs isn’t enough to throw a wet blanket on the entire Dream of Home Ownership; his parents “bought a house not because they wished to make a political statement or, unlike some of their peers, because they had an overriding emotional predilection for home owning” but rather because “it was the best means to their end of upward mobility for their children” (155), which is a relatable goal.

Analogous racist practices were at play in white opposition to the desegregation of southern schools. (The infamous image of Alabama Governor George Wallace blocking the entrance to a University of Alabama facility in a doomed bid to halt forced desegregation of schools comes to mind.) Again, this process was visible in white objections to busing and governments’ attempts to better integrate schools by transporting students of different racial backgrounds to schools outside their home districts to try to make school campuses more diverse. Objections to such policies aren’t necessarily racist. (For example, political theorist Hannah Arendt, who openly abhorred the racism of the American South, objected to government-enforced integration of schools in her controversial essay “Reflection on Little Rock.”) However, these policies reflect a trend among American whites to socially distance themselves from Black Americans at an even pace with the gains made by the Black equality movement.