I think it is useful, when discussing the American dream, to remember this, from the man who popularized the phrase, historian James Truslow Adams:
It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.This was echoed in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail":
… when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage ….
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