Page 29 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 29
Conflicting Narratives of the American Dream:
Obama’s Equality of Opportunity and Trump’s
“Make America Great Again”1
Michael A. Peters
You have to describe your country in terms of what you passionately
hope it will become, as well as in terms of what you know it to be now.
You have to be loyal to a dream country rather than to the one you wake
up to every morning. Unless such loyalty exists, the ideal has no chance
of becoming actual.
Richard Rorty, (2008) “Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought
in Twentieth-Century America”
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.
I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depres-
sion to serve in Patton’s army during World War II and a white grand-
mother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth
while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America
and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black
American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners -
an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers,
sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue,
scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never for-
get that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.
Senator Barack Obama, (2008) “A More Perfect Union”2
Introduction
Richard Rorty (1998), the American pragmatist philosopher, begins
his book “Achieving Our Country” with the comment, “National
pride is to countries what self respect is to individuals: a necessary
condition for self improvement” (p. 3). He provides a narrative re-crafting
of the dream in pre-Vietnam America by reference to Walt Whitman and
John Dewey. According to Rorty, Whitman and Dewey shaped the secu-
lar dream of America based on the notion of exceptionalism without re-
ference to the divine – a society where all Americans would become mo-
1 This essay is an updated and substantially rewritten paper based on Peters (2012) with a new
section on Trump and the American Dream.
2 For the full speech and video see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-
race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html.
27
Obama’s Equality of Opportunity and Trump’s
“Make America Great Again”1
Michael A. Peters
You have to describe your country in terms of what you passionately
hope it will become, as well as in terms of what you know it to be now.
You have to be loyal to a dream country rather than to the one you wake
up to every morning. Unless such loyalty exists, the ideal has no chance
of becoming actual.
Richard Rorty, (2008) “Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought
in Twentieth-Century America”
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.
I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depres-
sion to serve in Patton’s army during World War II and a white grand-
mother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth
while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America
and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black
American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners -
an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers,
sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue,
scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never for-
get that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.
Senator Barack Obama, (2008) “A More Perfect Union”2
Introduction
Richard Rorty (1998), the American pragmatist philosopher, begins
his book “Achieving Our Country” with the comment, “National
pride is to countries what self respect is to individuals: a necessary
condition for self improvement” (p. 3). He provides a narrative re-crafting
of the dream in pre-Vietnam America by reference to Walt Whitman and
John Dewey. According to Rorty, Whitman and Dewey shaped the secu-
lar dream of America based on the notion of exceptionalism without re-
ference to the divine – a society where all Americans would become mo-
1 This essay is an updated and substantially rewritten paper based on Peters (2012) with a new
section on Trump and the American Dream.
2 For the full speech and video see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-
race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html.
27
