The American Dream: Most Influenced By Culture

The American Dream is most influenced by Culture. Reasons such as tradition, ethnicity, and treatment of others help mold the American dream. Using details from pieces such as “America the beautiful”, Oath of allegiance, “New Colossus”, Reagan's and Obama’s farewell speech, and “I hear America singing” will stress the importance of culture when discussing the American dream and how it is percepted. Different people from different places affect how we see the American dream. In view of culture being a main influence on the perception of the American dream, tradition is a big contributor to understanding this concept. The first point to be made is (a)tradition. In the second stanza of “America the beautiful”, it reads “O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern impassioned stress”. This line is explaining the start of a new tradition. On this day we celebrate the friendship of the pilgrims and Natives who continuously bumped heads, it was then set to be a tradition celebrated
In Obama speech on the ‘American Dream’, he stated: “we’re becoming more separated by geography and ideology; race and religion; wealth and opportunity.” The point he is trying to get at is, a thing like race has culturally divided our great nation which creates issues for everyone fighting for their American dream. Being divided by ethnicity has great disadvantages because, in the eyes of the general public, certain races are higher than others in the chain of society which gives specific races a higher advantage of reaching their American dream. In an article written by CNN’s Jack Cafferty, “The study finds that while 84% of Americans have higher incomes than their parents did at the same age, those born at the top and bottom of the income ladder are likely to stay there.” and “When it comes to race, African-Americans are less likely to top their parents' income and wealth than whites