The Impossible Dream

 That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.

 -Joe Darion 

I never wanted to be the President of the United States.

Those dreams seldom crossed my mind. I was satisfied with my goals of writing novels, going to the NBA and winning the Super Bowl. So I sat myself down preparing to check each one of those off of my list, I wrote as often as I could, stirring together tales so marvelous, magical that J.K. Rowling would feel intimidated; I played plenty of basketball, I remember every time Duke lost as a child I would go outside and shoot 100 shots, no matter the hour; and I played enough football that nowadays my legs feel about 20 years older than the rest of my body. I already had big ambitions, a United States President? No that wasn't for me.

I ponder now in retrospect, if it had anything to do with how far away it seemed from me. Clinton was a white man with graying hair; Bush, Jr. was a white man with graying hair who, at age 14 or so, I was confident I was smarter than. This distance is something I'm sure some of my peers never had to deal with. They were, at age ten, already prepared to become Senators and Representatives. Me on the other hand, those ambitions seldom reached my hyper-active imagination. Becoming a wizard was totally feasable, travelling to Narnia? only the right wardrobe away, but president never appeared as a blip on my metaphorical radar.  No thought ever went into the process: what strides people made, what led one to  becoming a person deemed as "presidential." The irony in this is, of course, I followed in my mother's footsteps to becoming a political science major once I got to college.

There are always moments that I swear will stick. The ones so vivid, so meaningful that I just know that I will remember them for a lifetime. On the contrary, I don't remember very many of those moments. They are so exciting, so magical that the imagination takes over making it hard to differentiate the reality from fiction. Why is it that the peculiar memories stick with us? What about them gels to our psyches refusing to go away? I have plenty of moments that have clung to the edges of my brain and one of them comes to me at this writing juncture. 

The scene is fresh in my mind. I was in Macy's back home, only a few short years ago after the election of America's first black president. The shopping trip was normal. Nothing unexpected happened, honestly, but I took away from that trip something that I hadn't embraced for the previous twenty years of my life: a different perspective. She was a plump kind lady, her complexion only a few shades lighter than mine and a wide, toothy smile that made you want to smile back. Her name could have been anything, but let's call her Hope. Hope asked me curiously what school I attended. Usually these kinds of questions from cashiers are a bit intrusive to me, but she had that wide, toothy smile. I told her I was going to be a Morehouse Man; she told me I was going to be the next Obama.

I never want to be the President of the United States

When I have kids, however; their pigment will have some of their father in it. People will recognize the Ghanaian and African-American blood that flows in their veins well before they ever hear them cry, whimper, speak, or laugh. Maybe that dream, the one I never had will be something they can obtain. I genuinely appreciate my president for that. He may not be the best, he may even be considered a failure by some, but thanks to him, my kids might meet Hope and she can tell them at a young enough age that they are going to be the next President of the United States.

That's my definition of the American Dream. I have been asked so many times here: "Is the American Dream alive?" The question caused me to think, what did I really believe insofar as this "dream" is concerned. Although I don't think the chance for one to go from street sweeper to John D. Rockefeller is something all that prevalent in American society, what I just wrote about is. There is something in American soceity that wills people to dream beyond their means, their capabilities, their resources and become something perversely opposite of what their socio-economic standing would suggest.

It's a line of thinking that's become more clear as I see the lack of such a similar dream here. Please don't mistake me, there are plenty of ambitious and driven members of German society, but there isn't that same mindset. If in two alternate universes I had a little black girl, one in Germany and one in America, my dreams for her would be very different, respectively. She could be CEO, President, first woman in the NBA in America; in Germany she could be a great teacher, lawyer, doctor. This is not, to say that Germany is less fit for these things...no we are comparing apples to apples here; it's that those boundaries have been tested, strained, pushed much more openly (by necessity) than they have here. I am also not pre-supposing that those boundaries won't be conquered by the time I have that little black girl, but they haven't been yet and I am writing in the present, not the future. 

I must concede part of this stems from the distrust that they have of positions of power thanks to a murky, misguided past their grandparents and great-grandparents fostered, or stood by idly to watch. Americans open their arms to the successful, we love our CEOs (even when we are jealous of them), we are genuinely proud when someone makes it: we root for Hillary Clinton, we cheer for Jeremy Lin, we scream for Oprah because they were at some point the underdogs. We may even be spiteful of their success:potential ratio (the amount of success we would predict someone to have based on their capabilities; George Bush, Jr.'s success:potential ratio is extremely high because his "success" greatly surpasses his potential) by claiming we could do exactly what they do ten times better, we pretend to be skeptical of them, we pretend to mistrust them; yet above all, we allow them to live and ultimately many of us aspire to be just like them. Even the starkest Obama hater will plead for the president's help every time North Korea pretends to want to start a game of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with America. Even the biggest Kobe Bryant hater will nod in respect when he hits a clutch game-winning shot. Perhaps even the biggest Kim Kardashian haters will--no I can't find anything for this one.

The point is, we dream big and we give credit to those who dreamed before us. So although I cannot say that the American Dream is alive in the sense that I can throw a pickaxe over my shoulder before I head to California next year and hope to strike gold, I can confidently say that if Clarence Thomas can become a Supreme Court Justice, then so can I.

Dream big Germany, it's something we Americans do quite well.