The long life of my grandfather Victor, who recently died at 93, had me reflecting on the notion of the American dream. As I prepared to speak at his funeral, I realized that my Victor was, in a very real sense, a victor of the American dream. He immigrated from Jamaica to Brooklyn in the late 1960s after a wealthy Jewish family sponsored his wife to enter the country to work as a live-in maid. My grandmother made the painful decision to leave her own children to take care of other people’s children. At that time, U.S. immigration policy was more focused on helping families immigrate together, so my grandmother saved up and brought her husband and four children to join her in America. (Her name was Gloria and she was definitely the guts and glory of my family’s story.)
Neither of my grandparents had high school diplomas, but they worked hard and achieved something truly rare in our current U.S. economy and society: mobility. My grandmother cleaned homes and helped put all her children through college. My grandfather didn’t have degrees, but he had a gift for numbers and a tenacious work ethic. He worked his way up at a bank and became a junior vice president in the credit division. The two of them bought a home in what was then the Jewish and Italian community of Flatbush, Brooklyn, becoming one of the first Caribbean families to integrate and make Flatbush a mecca for Caribbean families and businesses.
Despite my problems with the concept and construct of the American dream, I have to admit that my family achieved that dream. I confess that I have never felt any sort of pride or nostalgia for the American dream. I am keenly aware that the American dream was built on the foundation of genocide, enslavement, and exploitation. I am also aware that the 1960s were an American nightmare for Blacks, but I have to question whether my grandparents could have achieved today what they achieved in the 60s. It’s far less likely that Black immigrants with no diploma could bring their family to America, build a financial career, own a home, send their children to college, retire comfortably, and pass down inherited wealth to their children and grandchildren. Even with all the tremendous bigotry and obstacles they encountered, my grandparents had a better shot at the America Dream in the 1960s than they would today.
Here are just a few reasons why:
Our current immigration policies focus on exploiting fear, not embracing opportunity. This mix of anti-immigrant policy and political rhetoric assumes that immigrants will take and destroy, not contribute and build. This, of course, runs counter to the facts that show, over and over, that our cultural, agricultural, scientific, and manufacturing industries have all been built and buoyed by immigrant talent and labor. And yet in 2016 our president waged a winning “America First” campaign (which was really a “White America First” campaign) that focused on blaming the financial woes and fears of poor whites on immigrants—not on broken economic and education systems that fail poor whites and people of color alike.
Speaking of broken systems, our economic policies are short-sighted and predicated on having few winners and many losers. Far too many of these policies, including federal tax reforms, focus on growing wealth among the wealthy instead of investing in building a more inclusive economy that works for all not just the wealthy and privileged few. The results are a widening gap between the haves and have nots of America. We see our broken economy further divide major urban cities that are are home to soaring wealth and sinking poverty. California, the fifth-largest economy in the world, leads the nation in poverty, with 4 in 10 residents living in or near poverty. Black Californians are particularly affected. While we represent less than 7 percent of the state population, Blacks make up 40 percent of the state’s homeless population.
The most glaring example of growing poverty is our growing homeless count. We see this visible poverty in the campers, tents, and tarps housing our people. What’s less visible, however, are the systems perpetuating and increasing homelessness. Our housing market and policies make rent or homeownership unaffordable for most. This, in turn, fuels gentrification, forced migration, and homelessness. I know many colleagues in the nonprofit sector who are native Angelenos and despite having college degrees (and related college debt!) are now living an hour or two outside of a city they can no longer afford. As my colleague at United Way often says, the reality is there are people in our city working 60 hours a week who are on the brink of being homeless. More than 60 percent of Angelenos are considered rent-burdened which means they spend over 30 percent of their household income on rent each month. Many spend 50 percent of their income on rent. It’s no wonder that in Los Angeles county, one in three households report struggling every month to meet basic needs.
If education is a marker of progress (it certainly was for my family), then our public education systems are moving backward not forward. Our public schools are more separate and unequal now than they were in the late 1960s. There is no greater example of this than the story of Flatbush Brooklyn becoming Black. Due to bussing and neighborhood integration, my grandparents’ children attended a racially and economically mixed public school. That school, Tilden High in Flatbush Brooklyn, was considered high-performing, with many notable graduates. As the 1970s and ’80s brought more Caribbean migration to Flatbush, white families fled and the school languished. By 2005, when it was closed and reconstituted due to persistent failing performance, Tilden’s student demographics had long been almost entirely Black, Brown and low-income. The link between education opportunity, integration, and achievement is undeniable, and the preservation and acceleration of school segregation upholds a separate and unequal status that harms our most vulnerable Black and Brown children.
These four factors paint a sobering picture of just how far America has really come since my grandfather immigrated to this country in the 1960s. Today, no matter how hard people work, most will not achieve that level of economic mobility. Victor and Gloria were ordinary people, but opportunity made them extraordinary. That’s how two immigrants from Jamaica were able to help build a community and economy, and raise two generations of college graduates, homeowners, and professionals.
Celebrating a life while mourning a loss is a strange feeling, but it is also catalyzing and cathartic. I feel even more excited about the 2020 fight to propel my state and country forward, and I’m honored to be working with organizations bravely tackling the systemic problems that prevent so many from being victors of opportunity.
I’m inspired by my colleagues at United Way of Greater Los Angeles who are focusing on making Los Angeles a more inclusive and fair region. They are investing in innovative solutions and policies to build more affordable housing, equitable school systems, and foundations for those experiencing homelessness to access jobs with livable wages. I’m fired up by the work of two LAUSD grads who are supporting a movement of Educators for Excellence. These former teachers are supporting a new wave of teachers who are running campaigns for issues and candidates that will prioritize excellence and equity in our public schools. And I’m deeply committed to 30 Black-led and Black-serving organizations that are part of the Black Census & Redistricting Hub, a project of California Calls. This work is ensuring that our most vulnerable Black families and communities are counted and represented in the 2020 census and redistricting processes, which will define how California builds its infrastructure, spends public dollars, and determines political representation for an entire decade.
These social justice champions are fighting for more victors and more real victories. As I continue to reflect on the legacy of my grandfather and the promise of 2020, I commit to do more than celebrate his extraordinary life. I commit to fight for more dreamers and more real victories. The best way to honor one dream is by working to birth another dream, a better dream.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” ―Arundhati Roy
* Artwork by Shauna Dixon, a public high school student