Dominic Spilotro
12/4/2019
English 3
Defiance of The Dream
How can society be asleep in something as impactful as their everyday life? A life lived in the belief that regardless of what to occur you will be safe runs parallel to the definition of a dream. Everyone running along one continuous path, being denied if they were to take a step of this metaphorical path of life. This path is evident in the school systems and universal thoughts pondered widely throughout society, “Very few Americans will directly proclaim that they are in favor of people being left on the streets. But a very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the dream. No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction”(Coates 33). The Dream has set everyone off on this path, killing any potential hopefuls who were destined to thrive on their own personal dream.
The Dream, go to high school, go to college, get an honorable, “successful” career, and consider yourself successful after you follow all of the steps. Any person who tries to defy this path is punished and locked back into the path which is their districts education system. The Dream, although it may not be a physical item, it is a concept created to make a generalized goal amongst a large population. This goal becomes the bane of creativity in fear of falling off the path, “The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers. The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing”(Coates 50). The Dream kills everyone’s creativity to some capacity, no matter the race, class, or religion the person is apart of. Through the steps of completing the Dream, people cut their body’s Dream, conforming to the image society wants to judge them by, not by who they truly are.
One of the largest steps concerning completing the Dream comes through the form of getting into college. College is the primary example of how the Dream kills off any aspect of personal genius through the form of generalization. Colleges base whether or not you are good enough for their school based on two sets of numbers: your GPA and SAT/ACT score. A pending lawsuit in California looks to be one of the potential solutions for the college admission process by potentially making test scores optional. With the goal of leveling the playing field, “The plaintiffs say the college entrance tests, the SAT and ACT, are biased against poor and mainly black and Hispanic students. By basing admissions decisions on those tests, they say, the system illegally discriminates against applicants on the basis of their race, wealth and disability, and denies them equal protection under the California Constitution”(Hartocollis). The statements made through the lawsuit aim at making the acceptance and rejection process through American Universities more in depth looking for people outside of what they do in the Dream ridden classroom.
Coates and the plaintiffs’ perspective over the line that the Dream limits many similar hardworking people over the unnatural disadvantages given to their person through birth. The plaintiffs argument comes through the idea of inequality due to income, “They argue that the use of standardized tests has led to the creation of a vast test-prep industry that privileges affluent families who can afford to send their children to tutoring”(Hartocollis). This idea about the income differences parallels to Coates concept of how the Dream is in our everyday life; “All along I knew that there were some, those who lived in the Dream, for whom the conversation was different. Their “safety” was in schools, portfolios, and skyscrapers. Ours was in men with guns who could only view us with the same contempt as the society that sent them”(Coates 85). The notion of natural separation is what fuels the Dream and its motor of generalization.
Throughout Between the World and Me, Ta- Nehisi Coates was the gate-keeper to this ugly yet beautiful reality in which people are thrown away and drawn in by one simple divine idea. This book told me stories and reveal perspectives of life that I have never considered before in my young life. Ideas such as the Dream became reality checks in which I have never considered during the time I have been alive. The book became the largest form of self realization that I could encounter. I realized that I too am part of this Dream, the path that everyone must follow to succeed, following in the footsteps laid before me not thinking a second thought. The Dream is very real and it will continue to be real for a large amount of time due to the teachings that society has put in place, and the regulations that put the Dream into stone. The future is changing though, allowing people to question greater divine power put in place by societies before us. This power will inflict our future and hopefully allow us to ask the question: how will I govern my own dream?
