Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream

“No matter the method we choose to fight back, they are ready to chastise us. Our op-eds are too angry, our organizations too militant, our political demands too divisive, our votes wasted.”

Here, Smith laments America’s perspective of the Black community. When Black Americans stand up for their rights, speaking out against oppression, they are dismissed on the basis of extremism and emotionally-charged hyperbole, which limits the possibilities of real change and progress.

“There is a future that is not as grim as our past. But it is a future that depends on a bravery this country has never exhibited.” 

Smith believes that the cyclical nature of American history can be disrupted, proposing that the future of America is not tied to its grim past. He conditions this future, however, to a change in posture and attitude on a national scale, a change that he considers unprecedented within the context of American history.

“And then there is Donald Trump himself, who I am loath to write about but cannot void. He is as contemptible a figure as has ever existed, a receptacle for all the worst aspects of human expression.” 

Here, Smith is direct about his disdain for Donald Trump, a figure he begrudgingly must acknowledge in order to contextualize the present moment in American society. While the language Smith uses is figurative, referring to Trump as a “receptacle” for instance, Smith does not intend to hyperbolize his sentiments about Trump. For Smith, Trump truly does represent the very worst elements of humanity.

“When casting our ballot, we like to think of ourselves as steering the country in the proper direction, politically, socially, morally, and so on.” 

Smith addresses what he believes to be a great misconception of the American voter, which is the belief that somehow an individual’s vote for president contributes to a greater sense of navigating the country to where it must go. Smith suggests that the vote, isolated from context or long-term commitment to social change, is a farce.

“Pickup trucks and oak trees are apolitical only if no one you have never loved has had their body dragged behind one or hanged from the other.” 

This quote represents Smith’s belief that there is no real consensus about what America really is, because the illusion of a singular American experience requires one to ignore the grimmest aspects of its history. Icons and symbols, such as pickup trucks and oak trees, cannot be truly devoid of political context or connotation. Ignoring this reality implies also ignoring the history of Black Americans.

“Perhaps what is so discomfiting for some is that Donald Trump is all too American. He is the American id, rather than a reflection of the myth.” 

Here, Smith sheds light on the uneasiness that many Americans feel as they consider the implications of Donald Trump’s election. Smith argues that Trump’s ideas are innately American, a manifestation of American impulses, as opposed to a reaction to political disillusionment.

“Our faults are not American, only the progress—ending slavery is American, the institution itself was not. Extending the votes to white women via constitutional amendment is American, denying them the vote for more than a century of the nation’s existence was not. For the myth to hold, we can only ever view America as the sum of its best parts.” 

Smith points to the contradiction of only claiming American triumphs as part of the nation’s history. This is a form of revisionist history, where America is identified as a democratic nation, glossing over the horrors of slavery and the dehumanization of denying the right to vote to women.

“We unironically refer to ourselves as the ‘leader of the free world,’ when in a truly free world, the notion of a singular leader of said ‘free world’ would be ridiculous.”

Again, Smith paints American democracy as a farce, this time focusing on the notion of “the leader of the free world.” If the world were truly free, according to Smith, the idea of one nation, leading and policing other nations, would be an absurd premise. The unironic nomenclature reemphasizes the delusion that so many Americans believe to be true.

“The promise of a free, equal, and just America in which your destiny is completely in your own control sounds wonderful, and because it hurts too much to think that your future is controlled by anything more than your own actions, it is easy to fall under this spell, the illusion of democracy and freedom.” 

Smith argues that believing in an America that is equal and truly democratic is a coping mechanism, preferable to the alternative of realizing that so many people living in America are not in fact the main actors in their own lives. Americans believe the illusion because the truth is painful.

“It is unsurprising, then, to hear even those who have been most abused and dispossessed by America hum along to this country’s praise songs.” 

The allure of the American myth is so strong, so enticing, that even to those who have been most marginalized in the United States, the spell of American exceptionalism becomes a foundational reality. Believing in the principles of the American dream provides a sense of hope to those who have been so far removed from achieving wealth and prosperity, so their belief in what America has to offer persists.

“But I have no interest in being a patriot, nor do I wish to recast dissent as patriotism, because I am not concerned with the viability of ‘America.’” 

Smith’s primary concern is for the well-being of the people who inhabit America, not loyalty to the abstract notion of America as a nation, as if somehow the United States could exist without accounting for the experience of its most oppressed. Patriotism is not a value of his, particularly when there are so many who do not share in the benefits of the American Dream.

“Dr. King fought for the rights of black people to be full participants in a democracy that had yet to be built.” 

Here, Smith highlights the fact that Dr. King’s advocacy was for America to claim its own stated values, not change them into something that was entirely different from what the American project is. Dr. King’s invitation to White leaders was to acknowledge that true democracy had never actually been established in America, due to its treatment of Black people, as its most notable example.

“Attachment to the symbols of the myth leave us attached to the myth itself.” 

This quote in context refers to the sterilization and coopting of Dr. King’s message, which has led to Dr. King becoming a symbol for American progress. The trouble with this, Smith argues, is that by making historical figures into mere symbols, the myth of the American Dream creates a delusion. In reality, Dr. King’s work only existed because of how untrue the myth was.

“The problem is when progress becomes its own ideology—that is, when advocacy for incrementalism is seen as the astute and preferred mode of political transformation.”

Smith criticizes the notion that progress is sufficient to judge the United States as a nation. When progress is made, one increment at a time, people tend to point to these small successes as evidence that America has done enough. The alternative, Smith argues, is actually revolution. Incrementalism will never dismantle the systems of oppression that exist within a society.

“Violence confers respect, the only currency that matters when the resources are scarce and competition for them breeds contempt. Violence is protection, or rather, it is itself a method of survival.” 

Here, Smith is referring to the violence that occurs within his predominately Black neighborhood in Brooklyn. To Smith, the casual observer of his neighborhood will often note the violence as either a cultural deficiency or as a justification of the heavy policing that occurs within the community. Smith, however, links the violence to scarcity of economic resources, a fight for survival in a society characterized by inequality.

“Blackness is itself the evidence of wrongdoing.” 

The constant police presence in Black communities all over America is connected to the belief expressed in this quote, according to Smith. The presupposition of the police is that criminal activity must be happening in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

“The motto ‘to protect and to serve’—adopted by the LAPD in 1955 and later used by others around the country—has been a highly effective public relations tool, as it obscures the main function of their work, which since its inception has been to act in an adversarial manner toward already disenfranchised communities.” 

Smith believes that the motto of many police forces around the country—“to protect and to serve”—is nothing more than a marketing tool, a direct contradiction to the reality of what the police force represents to communities that are often excluded or marginalized from the supposed benefits of police work.

“Contrary to what personal finance charlatans would have us believe, poverty is not a mindset—it is the inevitable and necessary by-product of a system wherein life is only guaranteed to those who have wealth and wealth is distributed via ownership and not labor. Poverty is a capitalist’s main resource, as it ensures there will always be a class of people to exploit.” 

Here, Smith exposes the deceptive nature of American capitalism and its advocates, who suggest that poverty is merely a state of mind. Within the confines of American capitalism, Smith argues, poverty is a necessary element to a system in which the wealthy continually accumulate wealth by means of economic and social exploitation.

“America is attempting to regulate who belongs where on a planet it is making nearly uninhabitable.”

As Smith criticizes America’s obsession with borders, he also emphasizes that America acts more like an empire than a truly democratic nation. The irony in this regulation of borders exists in America’s role in worsening the global climate crisis.

“Before I moved to New York, my understanding of the city was shaped, like that of so many others, by the culture I consumed.”

Smith acknowledges that the picture of New York in his mind was his primary paradigm for imagining what his own New York experience would be like. Popular culture, as expressed for instance by Woody Allen films and the music of Biggie, was his mental frame of reference. Eventually, Smith would realize that these paradigms were impossible in capturing the complex nature of the city.

“We are charged to always keep this in mind: men are doing important work, and to interrupt them is to halt the gears of a functioning society.” 

Smith reveals his disdain for the gendered signs all across New York City which read, as if proclaiming: “MEN AT WORK.” The subtext of these signs, according to Smith, is that work performed by men is by nature serious and significant, more so than the work by those who are not men. This reminder of “MEN AT WORK” reinforces the notion that only men wield power and responsibility.

“Shirley Chisholm was never going to be elected president. Donald Trump was inevitable.” 

Despite Smith’s admiration and reference for Chisholm, he laments that she was never actually going to be elected, not by any fault or hers or her campaign, but because this is the way things operate in America—Black women don’t become president. Conversely, Donald Trump is a natural byproduct of a nation that was founded on the premise of White men’s land ownership facilitated by slave labor.

“Stakes is high, and what little time we have left can no longer be spent on preserving our mythical selves. We must be willing to lose our old story. We must choose us.” 

Smith uses the title of the book—which itself is taken from a 1996 De La Soul song and album—to plead with the reader. Smith brings up the idea of high stakes to emphasize the urgency of this present moment in the history of America, a moment in which there is an opportunity to choose community over the “old story” of an America that in reality has never existed.