The Reward Ain't Worth the Cost
By Nyles Pollonais
While listening to NPR’s Code Switch, I heard a reference to the American Dream that reminded me of Casey Gerald’s There Will Be No Miracles Here. Someone called the dream bullshit, again. Author Karla Cornejo Villavincencio, Equadorian migrant, Yale and Harvard alumna, like Gerald, an undocumented person likens the dream to “a pyramid scheme [in which] we are at the bottom. I am someone who is like one of the top sellers at Mary Kay because I am recruiting so many people, and I just need to warn them. They need to take care of their mental health, because that is going to be the casualty and the price they pay for the American Dream.”
Like Villavincencio, Texas native Gerald refused to be ‘complicit in misleading his own people’ with his own poster-boy like image of Black male potential after receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School, creating his own non-profit, and accumulating many other accolades. At some point in their academic and professional careers both Villavincencio and Gerald realized that being perfect is not the same as being whole and that society has to learn to accept every variety of the ‘free’ colored body, not only the ones they choose to accept like the successful, the laborious, the addicted, or the undocumented.
Reckoning with the Dream
I couldn’t be the only one who felt like folks were running toward something with no proper definition nor end. Upon first glance at their successes, Casey Gerald and Karla Cornejo Villavincencio seem to be the epitome of American success. They had defied the odds by overcoming obstacles in their adolescence, they had persevered in the face of adversity to reach prestigious universities, they had successfully attained their education at Ivy level institutions and went on to further their careers as societally-defined successful ‘marginalized’ individuals, yet still detected something was amiss.
I believe they knew, like many immigrants and Black people in this country, that it takes more than a can-do spirit and elbow grease to reach the American Dream, if it's even real. It costs your mental health, your physical health, your religion, your morals, and in many cases it may even cost your life. I have seen this effect in my family, friends, and myself. By writing such a tailored story for the First Generations Speak series, I refused to give definition to the characters for reasons of privacy, but in consequence regurgitated the same story that we had all been fed about the American Dream from birth. Whether it was from a place of seeking approval or requiring privacy, my refusal to fully define my family’s whole pursuit of the American Dream played into the narrative that only certain individuals are worthy of acceptance, or of the dream, itself.
I feel you. After reaching such a social status, such economic and academic achievement, you could turn around and tell those behind you it’s not worth it, essentially. That’s the mannerism of a true leader. Like both authors, I have seen the consequences of attempting to achieve the American Dream firsthand, and have wondered if the pursuit was worth it. American Dreaming while Black is almost as dangerous as running while Black, shopping while Black, or sleeping while Black.
Dreaming while Black is a conundrum being it that Black People and POC, in this context have barely been able to sleep for centuries. Seriously, is it dreaming or hallucinating from sleep deprivation at this point? The years my family members have spent in this country are packed with more than enough blood, sweat, and tears to buy the American Dream. So why is it that I still feel like even if we can afford it, it’s out of stock? James Baldwin said it best almost 48 years ago during a debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University, “I am not an object of missionary charity. I am one of the people who built the country—until this moment there is scarcely any hope for the American Dream, because the people who are denied participation in it, by their very presence, will wreck it.
Where Do I Stand in Relation to The Dream?
It’s been nearly 2 years since I first heard Gerald reference Kendrick Lamar’s Section 80 on The Nod Podcast. The Pulitzer Prize winner rapped, “I’m not on the outside looking in. I’m not on the inside looking out. I’m in the dead fucking center looking around.” The first time I listened to it I was building a company, and I thought I was on the inside. The second time I listened to it I was working production living between states, and I thought I was on the outside. Now, during a pandemic, I see that I am in the dead fucking center looking around. I may have an intersectional experience with immigration and blackness, but the point is, it doesn’t take a special background or education to be able to look around and see that most of us are chasing the same mirage that seems to keep moving farther and farther away. And while upward class mobility, once thought a defining characteristic of the American Dream, fades as we witness skyrocketing rates of inequality affect society’s most-vulnerable, hopefully, with protests and a pandemic, change will come. I find stories like The Undocumented Americans and There Will Be No Miracles Here necessary because they profess the need to break away from the status quo within the status quo. “You know….we did a lot of things that we wouldn’t advise anybody we loved to do,” a friend and former classmate told Gerald in a Dream.
I did not ask for the guilt, and I will leave it. The burden placed upon the shoulders of the younger generation by the elders are common practice within black and immigrant communities and should be mentioned when discussing the American Dream. That burden is accompanied by a strong sense of personal gratitude to the parents or caretakers. Phrases like “everything I do, I do for you” can make the gratitude evolve into a sense of obligation. “You start to think that you can pay them back with your grades, conduct, and posture. Then it becomes more toxic, like denying your own queer feelings...” responds Villavincencio in a conversation with journalist Andrea González-Ramírez.
We all want to make it, to get the American Dream, and often we can feel incomplete if we are unable to do that. It's commonplace to notice people offering their mental and physical health as compensation to pay for the dream, even if it wasn’t their purchase. But if both Villavincencio and Gerald, from such different backgrounds, could come to the same conclusion that the reward is not worth the cost, then our communities and families are responsible for creating different expectations, hopes, and dreams for themselves and their children.
Wake Up Mr. West!
This idea of the American Dream extends as far as Hollywood has been able to reach. It spans geographical distances and generations alike, positing the logic that if you work hard enough… well, you get the gist. Black people and immigrants alike know that this simply isn't the case after years of constant denial, lynching, redlining, social codes, deportations, incarcerations, detentions, deaths, and more. Academics too are finding the words to express the same feeling. Learning from our academics, free people, and writers, I suggest that we depart from any metaphor mentioning “dreaming.” It takes the autonomy from the actor allowing the circumstances of the dream to define the direction of the dreamer.
Instead, I submit a new American Social Objective: an individually defined measure of success personal and subjective to the goalsetter wherein any level of achievement is a benefit to society as a whole; i.e a goal to become the best librarian in the town, or the goal to serve as the best city council member of your district. Instead of reaching for some veiled definition of social success you aim to better yourself, your community, and your circumstances. We, as a global society, must change how we define success and lives worth living while challenging how we value the lifestyles of others.
You get a dream, you get a dream, and you get one too! All this uncovering of the truth about the American Dream has forced me to reckon with my own expectations and outlook. I know that I have something to look forward to, but it may not be the success from the path most taken. I asked my buddy about his experience with the American Dream this past weekend. We came from the same neck of the woods, went to the same high school, [almost] got the same grades, had the same single mother story, just took different paths after graduation. My bud had just come from a birthday party where he forgot it was the guy's birthday until 9pm that night and I had just finished settling my grandma into her latest accommodation. We talked on the stoop as we always do, throwing some nostalgia all over the place, as I asked my buddy over a joint, “out of 100 percent of people, how many do you think actually achieve the American Dream?” He responded, “Well, maybe 15 percent.” I was neither surprised nor shocked, rather intrigued that he’d come to such a similar estimate to my own. We did not linger on the topic for long as we moved on to ideas of what would help us live comfortably as adults.
He mentioned that in the future the only concern he’d want to have would be having to pick up an extra shift wherever he might be working to pay the bills. I took a hit, thought, if only it were that simple. Maybe it is that simple…
Meet the Writer
Nyles Pollonais graduated from New York University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He is a writer, entrepreneur, musician, and future educator who spends most of his time focusing on political theory and current events. He encourages you to take a look at his company, Binary Aeon, and the work they're doing to protect individual data rights and online privacy.
