The American Dream Theme Analysis

The American Dream is the idea that anyone living in America, regardless of where they come from, can attain success and happiness. But according to Mona Hanna-Attisha, this ideal was “never meant” to work for people like the citizens of Flint, Michigan, a majority-Black city that’s plagued by poverty, racism, and harmful governmental policies. For Mona and her family of Iraqi immigrants, who arrived in America after fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1970s, the American Dream was real—but Mona’s parents were already educated, successful, and somewhat integrated into Western culture by the time they arrived in the U.S. Thus, they never experienced the same kinds of injustices and disadvantages faced by Black Americans living in Flint, a city with a long history of anti-Black racism and segregation. Indeed, Mona suggests that people who are disadvantaged by outside factors such as poverty, racism, and government corruption have a much more difficult time attaining the American Dream. By contrasting Hanna-Attisha and her family’s experiences with those of Flint’s residents, What the Eyes Don’t See suggests that although the American Dream is attainable for some, it doesn’t apply to everyone.

Mona shows how the American Dream worked for her family in order to illustrate its promises—as well as its conditional nature. When Mona describes her parents’ successful transition to life in America, she’s careful to allude to the many advantages they had before they even arrived in their new community of Royal Oak, Michigan. Mona’s parents were well-educated—they were both scientists, and her father had an advanced degree from a university in Europe. Thus, her father was able to secure a good job at General Motors when they immigrated. And Mona’s paternal grandparents lived in another nearby suburb of Detroit—so not only did Mona’s belong to a large Middle Eastern diaspora community in Michigan, but they had also family members nearby to help them with childcare and offer support. The advantages that Mona’s parents had upon arriving in America were not afforded to their very own neighbors in the Detroit metro area. For countless Black families in Flint and the surrounding areas, years of segregationist housing policies and racist hiring policies at the local automotive plants meant that well-paying jobs, good educations, and safe, fair housing were not attainable. While Mona’s family was able to participate in the American Dream almost immediately upon their arrival, for generations of Black Americans in the Flint area, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were still long overdue.

As Mona describes how American industry and greed failed Flint and its people, she illustrates how people stymied by disadvantages beyond their control are often unable to achieve the American Dream. In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, Flint was the epicenter of American industry, as all the major automotive plants had factories in and around Flint. For many Americans who arrived in Flint hoping to seize on its prosperity, there were lucrative jobs to be found, affordable homes to be bought, and the rapid emergence of a thriving middle class. But for millions of Black Americans who came to Flint seeking refuge from racially motivated violence and restrictive Jim Crow (segregation) laws in the South, Flint was not all it seemed to be. Racist hiring policies, segregated schools and housing, and the phenomenon of “white flight” (white families fleeing any neighborhood where Black neighbors moved in) made it clear that Flint’s—and, by extension, the U.S.’s—opportunities were not equally available to everyone. As the automotive plants moved out of Flint for cheaper locales, so too did many of the plant’s employees. Black Americans who’d fought tooth and nail for homes and jobs were left in a city whose industry had abandoned it. For decades to come, local and state officials neglected Flint and left the city to fall into disrepair as public health declined and violent crime rose. So, the people who lived in Flint when the city government switched Flint’s water source—many of them low-income and Black—had already experienced the failures of the American Dream. A debilitating blow like the water crisis just showed Flint residents even more clearly that they’d been lied to about the attainability of the American dream.

“Where is the American Dream?” Mona asks toward the end of the book. “It’s not there,” she concludes. While the U.S. touts itself as a place where freedom and equality are universal and where anyone can chase their dreams, the reality is that the U.S. still suffers from racism and other forms of injustice. For people like the residents of Flint, there are many barriers—both old and new—to attaining the American Dream. Flint’s complicated past means it’s a place that’s often overlooked or seen as unworthy of investment in programs geared at education, affordable housing, and public health. But for the American Dream to be real, it must be something anyone can pursue. It shouldn’t be only attainable “by way of a miracle.” Until there is real, lasting change in Flint—and communities like it all over the country—there is arguably no such thing as the American Dream.