This week, I feel like discussing how we reach our American dreams: Liberty.
The ability to do and think as we please without restraint, or as little
restraint as possible. It’s very potent in its capabilities, but it can easily
be used to affect others negatively. Some of the texts we’ve gone over in class
show the negatives of liberty, so that’s what I’ll cover this week.
First, the most obvious display of abusing liberty is criminal behavior, something we looked in-depth into in Unit 1. In “American Values and Organized Crime: Suckers and Wiseguys”, Lupsha explains how most criminals in the early 1900s found their way on the criminal path. They saw the success of industry titans like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and (of course) wanted to replicate or at least try to reach that level of success. Some saw these monopolies’ underhanded tactics and tried to repeat and modify them, while others looked into the rat race of America, “suckers” working hard to live a modest life. Either way, they sought to succeed in the land of opportunity without working for it. Or, at least, not working the same way everyone else did. Why work for the things you want when it’s there for the taking?
Second, I would like to re-introduce the plight of the Native Americans, something we briefly covered at the start of Unit 2. (Technically this was before the age of Prohibition, the main time of Lupsha’s discussion, but I’m looking at things in the order we were introduced to them.) Since the founding of the colonies and up until Manifest Destiny, the white men of the United States saw the natives as savages. The white men saw it fit to take away from the Native Americans for their gain, making excuses to justify their abuses against these people; The vanishing Indian, the aforementioned Manifest Destiny, unfair land claims, and so on. Greed makes people do terrible things.
Last but certainly not least is the African American population of America, treated as less than white men despite living in the same towns. Many had no choice but to take the abuse, as they couldn’t afford to leave the States (and potentially never would). Those who could afford to stake their claim formed towns in yet-to-be-claimed territory west of the current states. All-black towns, notably in the state of Oklahoma, including the prosperous Tulsa. But even these distant towns were threatened by white “justice”, as we’ve seen in Johnson’s “Black Wall Street”. In just one night at the end of May 1921, the city turned from relatively peaceful and well-off to burning buildings and bodies in the streets. Prejudice is cruel.
In summary, my outlook on liberty was darkened by these readings. Granted, achieving whatever American Dream I so choose is great, but the fact that others can take this idea and weaponize it is deeply troubling. Not that we can cull these ideals, not without degrading our lives as Americans.