Is the American Dream Dead?

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The term is obviously heavily racialized, and that its baggage the rise of the quouoe middle class in this country. Even people like burney sanders and and oftentimes elizabeth warren will refer nostalgically to this glorious time of the middle class at was a very specific definition of middle class. A 20 17 institute for policy studies report found that while middle class black famili's wealth had dwindled in the last 30 years, wealth among middle class white households was up ten%. So there's been this middle class wealth gap between black and white that is a hold over and a result of decades of policies that have excluded black people from concept of middleclass.

“Building a wall won't save America's crumbling middle class,” Elizabeth Warren tells us. “Sanders healthcare will raise taxes on the middle class,” a CNN headline reads. “There’ war on the middle class,” a Boston Globe editorial laments. The term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality. But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it's a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor and poverty. This week we are joined by Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, scholar and Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center.