ZOE C. WALKER, Ph.D.

In the wake of the Civil Rights era's landmark legal victories, the United States has measured its record on race through the lens of equal opportunity. As formal discrimination declined and a Black middle class emerged, the Dream appeared more attainable than ever. But worsening economic inequality has exposed the limits of that progress. Black Americans continue to face disproportionate exposure to state violence, barriers to quality healthcare and employment, and a persistent racial wealth gap. A substantial body of social science research traces these disparities to durable, structural racism. Yet public opinion tells a different story. When asked about their group's prospects, Black Americans describe the United States as broadly fair to those who work hard enough, despite the barriers imposed by discrimination.

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 This book explores the origins and consequences of the equal opportunity paradigm in Black public opinion. Drawing on original surveys and in-depth interviews with Black Americans, I show that Black people do not passively accept the myth of the American Dream. Instead, they actively adapt the myth to narrate their own stories of survival and success in the nation they call home. Through my original data collection, I find that Black Americans use two broad narrative frameworks to evaluate economic opportunity in America: resistance, rooted in racial consciousness and an awareness of structural racism; and resilience, rooted in American consciousness and the primacy of individual effort. Most Black Americans draw on both frameworks, producing a shared consciousness that bridges racial (Black) and national (American) identities. This shared consciousness drives some of the enduring divides in Black public opinion and contributes to heterogeneity in attitudes about welfare, redistribution, and government intervention. ​​​​​​​

 

When narratives of American progress cast Black advancement as validation of the social, political, and economic status quo, they simultaneously constrain the imaginative and political space available for reform. By making individual success the measure of collective progress, the narrative structure of the American Dream myth is also unequivocally political. It reconciles the tension between liberal individualism and racial egalitarianism (a tension that has long been at the heart of debates about race in American politics) at the expense of recognizing the structural barriers that sustain America's race and class divides.  Understanding how and why national narratives limit political possibilities is a prerequisite for any serious analysis of the gap between American ideals and American realities.

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