The American Dream is Dead.
As we awaken… what now?
Since our Founding Fathers’ declaration of supposed equality, we’ve had to reconcile the cognitive dissonance between the Dream and the Reality. Between moon landings and mass lynchings.
In 2020 that ends, because the Dream is over and all that is left now is the Reality. We can no longer ignore the starkness of that dissonance. It’s all out in the open, like a freshly torn scab.
All men are created equal.
A government for the people, by the people.
A more perfect union.
The Death of the American Dream tolls with the hollow sounds of these words.
And so, we mourn.
There is a reason black men disproportionately get killed by police in America. There was a reason the woman in central park reacted the way she did. It’s not just the police. It’s all of us. It’s because we see the Black before we see the Man.
And then we take the Black, and all the qualities that conjures, to be the Man.
We do this in countless ways every day. And it’s not just blackness and the biases that conjures. It’s when glasses make you look smarter. It’s when wealth makes you look nobler. We use this mental shorthand continuously to navigate our reality. We are lone travelers through a sea of objects. It is why we predictably respond to branding, to colors, to imagery. We are all guilty of it. It is a human instinct, but it need not be a human condition.
Recent events have shown us that our sensory perception and subsequent interpretation of these objects around us is not a one way street. Tragically, when it comes to each other, our shorthand instincts color our responses in ways that increasingly devalue, misconstrue and endanger the true nature of the man or woman before us. So we see a Black Man. We interpret their Blackness as a threat or a danger. And so we act. We dominate the Blackness. And we kneel on its neck until it lies motionless.
And all the while, not knowing, not realizing, that this Man may have been our brother.
If only we had connected instead.
If only we had recognized how potent that could be.
If only we had nurtured that nascent connection.
Instead we ignored it as a figment of our overactive imagination. Or worse, as a symptom of weakness that is better left to the naivete of children.
After all, how could there be a connection with this Black Man? I know his Blackness to be true. My own eyes don’t lie. And that is the biggest tragedy. Perhaps it wasn’t the quality of the Blackness but the eye of the Beholder that poisoned this connection.
So what next now that the Dream is dead? Maybe, as Reverend Barber said, the hope is in the mourning. Maybe it is time to address the Reality in its true form. Not the label, not the superficial shorthand, but the true quality of the individual. Ourselves included. For better or worse.
But to even get this opportunity, this second chance, America, as a country, we must vote, yes…
But Americans, as individuals…
We must connect.
