Land of the free home of the brave, an all encompassing American dream has been set out as the goal for all Americans today. A simple equation of education, hard work, dedication and skill is to be summed up into a simple escalation on the social ladder. This simple equation should yield results so that any American can lead the life of a true united states citizen. Yes, these claims are catered to the general public but what comes into question is the reality of it.
Social mobility is defined as “the movement of individuals from one social position into another. Intergenerational social mobility is a measure of the extent to which parents and their children have similar or different social and economic positions in adulthood. Upward mobility is said to occur when an individuals class is higher than that of his or her parents; downward mobility is the opposite” (Pearson). The concept of social mobility is easier said than done, and living in America does not make this idea come to life any easier.
The amount of time, effort, and skill one puts in, are just a very small portion to the massive ladder one has to climb on to higher social status. Let us begin with the definition of immobility, “a situation in which individuals are unable to move from one economic or social class into another. Usually immobility means that people remain in the same social and economic situation that they are born into (in other words, in the same class or income group as their parents” (Pearson).
Most would think that as long as you put in the hard work and dedication you can be number one and make top dollar, but the reality is even if you work your hardest if you do not have the social ranking, you will not have the opportunity to even be at that level. There are many reasons to this social immobility, one major key being the lack of money. The reality of money is that it makes most things easier, from attaining the best education to what toilet paper one buys, if you’ve got the money everything is just easier, of course materialistically speaking.
Hence the lack of money rooting from the parents leads to a series of unfortunate events, without taking race or gender into account. From this lack of financial stability stems the lack of support in anything that could harm “the now”. What I mean by this is that the lack of financial stability forces a person to work and live in “the now”, therefore delaying anything that is for the future. In a family situation the lack of support for the child to work toward a higher education, would ultimately prohibit them from gaining any asocial mobility after this point.
Another key factor in affecting social stratification is that along with the lack of money, and lack of support come much responsibility. The responsibility branches out from the families need for more help thus placing pressure on the child to get a job and work many hours to help support their family and keep basic necessities running. Now as we get into the core of the issue, it comes down to race, class, and gender when trying to achieve anything with in todays society.
Starting from when your mother is in labor, which hospital does she go to, what kind of health care will she be provided based off of the health care coverage etc. From the beginning of your existence one’s life is somewhat predisposed; if you are from an upper-class family, you live in an upper-class neighborhood, and on the other side of the spectrum if you are from a lower-class family, you live a lower-class neighborhood. And from these two factors life is to continuously follow this path unless one is to work hard per say, yet this is not the case.
The land of opportunity is not equal for all, since the beginning of America, those who put in the work (Africans) received nothing and as time passed they continuously received less no matter the amount of effort, and skill put forth. The whiteprivileged man is the one who truly and effortlessly climbs up the social ladder, achieving the American dream. “Equality of opportunity would exist in a world where all children have similar chances to succeed in life, regardless of whether they were born in wealthy or poor families.
If everyone, regardless of their social background, has similar chances of success in life as an adult, we could say that opportunities are truly equally distributed, and only merit and hard work are rewarded” (Pearson 10. 3). “In a World” … the statement stated in the beginning of every unrealistic movie, clarifying the fact that we have yet to live in a perfect world where social mobility would be a simple equation of effort, skill, and dedication.
Let us come back to the ‘All American Dream’, this dream was meant for you and me, and anybody in between, rich, poor, black, white, Christian, Muslim, whatever one identifies as should not be he barrier between them and achieving a better way of life. The root and the only place to start adjusting this social ladder is by working toward equal opportunities for all children across social classes so that they may move on up and bring better life to their own children and leave an everlasting impact on generations to come raising the value of education, hard work and skill.
