Interview Transcript
Question: What is the founding American myth?
Jorie Graham: Well, our lack of - I think that we probably do have something that we do share as a myth that certainly Europeans would point to as a very grounding foundational American ambition, and that is the idea that everyone can make themselves from scratch, anew, in this country.
And that seems like one of the reasons that people in the imagination of America, as it exists in the rest of the planet, it continues to dwell in many people in other cultures that if they were to come to America they could escape the religious or class or cultural entrapment that they might feel in their own cultures and be able to reinvent themselves as if from scratch in the American wide-open freedom.
Of course, we know that that is an illusion, but it’s a very operative illusion.
Recorded on April 3, 2008
The American Myth of Rebirth
Poet
What is the founding American myth?
April 10, 2008 | In Politics & Policy
Discuss
Jiger Patel on July 5, 2009, 3:25 AM
Any explanation showing it is a myth?
Orion Jones on July 5, 2009, 5:42 PM
No, there’s not much evidence presented in this interview clip, but the claim that social mobility in America is a myth can be measured statistically. If you follow a sample of families from different class strata you can measure the rate at which they pull themselves (by their bootstraps) into a higher social class.
Besides the study I linked to, it is known that education level has a lot to do with success later in life i.e. you need to read and write at a high level. If social mobility is to be achieved, the poorest schools (which I reason serve the poorest families) must be able to educate children out of poverty.
But then again, wasn’t it Henry Ford who said “Think you can, think you can’t: either way you’re right”. Well, at least let’s say that not every rags to riches story was sheer will power.
Btw, I have never read Horatio Alger, but I understand his novels were like the American Dream in print.
Cheryl Higgins on July 5, 2009, 9:34 PM
thanks for this. it can be hard to separate the truth from the fiction.
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