Will Biden's Term Mark Reviving American Dream Concepts?

Rana Atef

Could the American Dream be alive again? The latest speeches of victory of the newly elected US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris define main concepts that could distinguish the mood of the upcoming period in the US. Highlighting concepts of justice, unity, and democracy and a call for rising once again from the ashes of the COVID-19 outbreak crisis.

Those concepts could be tightly connected to the widespread concept of the American Dream which marked the lifestyle of the Americans for dozens of years. Although it was criticized a lot and encountered to be an American Nightmare, it was widely borrowed and adopted in many cultures which are later reflected as "Americanization."

What is the American Dream?

This term was coined by the renowned James Truslow Adams in his book "Epic of America" (1931). He described it as "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement."

So, it was like an open door policy for everyone in the nation to represent himself/herself. Skill, talent, creativity, and hard work are the main measures for evaluating the person regardless her/his origins.

When Did the Early Notions of the American Dream Come out in its Latest Form?

The early notions of the American Dream could be dated back to the constitution of the US which contained the mutual rights of the American citizens on the American lands, which later supported by the abolishment of slavery after the American Civil War.

After the end of the American Civil War that left the nation as a wartorn one, the necessity of finding mutual basics to re-build the society and rise from the ashes once again contributed to upgrading the early notions of unity and equality to bring the late known the American Dream.

American society was pided into various sects: indigenous, blacks, whites, women, north, slaves, freed slaves, and south. There is a need to bridge and blend all those groups together to create one unified and great nation.

The American Dream in the Light of Biden-Harris Discourse

The US now is passing through a critical phase, it's difficult as well as the civil war. The challenging COVID-19 force American society to re-phrase its concepts once again and re-shape its values once again.

The conflict between the Americans is no longer north and south or white and black, it is now red and blue which encouraged Biden to direct an open speech to all American to accept the whole sects of the American nation, to leave the ashes of the past and have a new vision for a better future for all Americans.

Harris asserted this concept in her latest speech of appreciating the sacrifices of the ancestors, to heal, to re-create, and to unite.