The American & Canadian Nightmare

My dad’s face filled with excitement as he found the movie Top Gun playing on television. He rushed to turn up the volume, and my family and I watched as a young Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards went from rebellious underdogs to beloved “all-American” heroes. With COVID-19 cases increasing each day in the United States, playing board games and watching clichéd ‘80s movies have become the norm during this past winter holiday at home. My dad reminisced on his time watching Top Gun as a teenager: it introduced him to “American exceptionalism,” glamorizing all that the States had to offer. It’s hard not to feel a bit patriotic when you watch the movie—it gives you something, or more specifically, somewhere to dream of. It tells you that, in the US, there’s opportunity, glamour, and your chance at living out “the American Dream.” Despite my parents immigrating from India to Canada, where my brother and I were raised, the US compelled my dad in a way that Canada couldn’t. The glorified ideals of the US—freedom, liberty, opportunity, and equality—entice like no other. They tempt many, including my own family, with the chance at living out “the American Dream.” Movies like Top Gun may have made for compelling propaganda in the ‘80s—encouraging immigrants to seek out opportunity in the “land of plenty”—but the underdog-to-hero trope that these films love to play out is much more complex and unrealistic than it is made out to be.

At the beginning of the Trump era in 2016, my family and I relocated to Washington, D.C. Like many children of immigrants, it was instilled in me that hard work was the key to success—it would be the defining factor in whether or not I could fulfill “the American Dream.” My parents had applied this same mentality to their own work and were part of a select few to have done exceedingly well in both Canada and the US. So of course, I believed them—and a part of me wants to believe them today, too. But the reality is, there were a variety of external factors that impacted them—both aiding in their success and hindering it. My parents had the advantage of attending high schools with International Baccalaureate programs primarily taught in English, eliminating a potential language barrier in their future move to the West. But, unlike white immigrants, their race would predicate facing systemic barriers in the workplace and beyond.   

The myth of “the American Dream” isn’t a particularly new phenomenon. But it took the Trump administration to uncover what many had failed to recognize: the US is not the land of opportunity, where you can rely only on hard work to get you to the top—it actually never was. Despite ex-president Trump’s incessant claims that he would revive “the American Dream,” the United States is not, and never has been, a meritocracy. Due to the colonization of the Americas, the US has been built on a culture of exploitation—namely, that of Black and Indigenous communities. While white settlers may have been able to become economically prosperous, it was at the expense of these communities, making “the American Dream” a fictitious idea for Black and Indigenous communities since the birth of the country. This historical exploitation now manifests through systemic issues including barriers to homeownership, education, and much more. “The American Dream” was never attainable nor real for these communities, and to suggest that it has become more accessible over time would be a gross misunderstanding of the systemic problems that plague US society. 

Despite the US’ history of exploiting minority communities, “American Dream” rhetoric continues to be targeted at immigrants—of which nearly 55 percent are BIPOC.  Many immigrants come seeking asylum, hoping to contribute to the workforce or seeking the chance for a better life. But hard work is hardly the only factor that determines potential material success. Immigrants’ socioeconomic and legal status can contribute to their inability to accumulate assets or build from the ground up. For example, many Mexican immigrants have low levels of wealth attainment compared to their US-born counterparts. Low-income Latino immigrants experience legal exclusion in the workforce by way of legal-status precarity or lower wages. Furthermore, structural racism in education, financial institutions, and the labour market hinders many immigrants and people of colour from seeking alternative job opportunities or accumulating credit in the future. An immigrant’s wealth not only shapes their starting point, but also informs their future social mobility.  Hard work is not the only factor that can help one escape poverty or even move to the next income bracket; a combination of luck, education, opportunity, safety, and much more is needed—things that are largely inaccessible in the US for many. 

Now, as I’ve moved back to Canada to pursue higher education, I can’t help but think that “the Canadian Dream” might just be the next hit propaganda term for the Western world. As a Canadian, my education here costs a fraction of what I would have paid had I gone to school in the US, healthcare is outwardly much more accessible, and Canada is seemingly more welcoming to immigrants and refugees compared to Trump’s “build a wall” rhetoric. On the surface, Canada is considerably more progressive than the United States, but this illusion is perhaps even more dangerous. In reality, international students in Ontario pay nearly four times the cost of domestic students in tuition, healthcare isn’t free of medical racism, and nearly 40 percent of Canadians say they believe there are “too many visible minorities coming to Canada.” In many ways, Canada’s systems are just as broken as those in the US, and claiming otherwise only promotes the idea that nothing should be changed.

“The Canadian Dream,” similar to “the American Dream,” is not alive and well. Much of the data claiming that social mobility is sufficient in Canada compares the country to its struggling neighbour to the south. As a national average, Canada’s social mobility was ranked at 14 by the World Economic Forum in 2020, considerably better than the US, which is ranked at 27. But further analysis points out that although access to technology, healthcare, and education are generally strong in Canada, access to fair work opportunities is not. The national average statistics are rather misleading, as they put emphasis on areas termed “mobility springboards” like Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto and fail to recognize the unequal distribution of opportunities that lead to material success across the country. Coastal British Columbia and most of Manitoba outside Winnipeg are examples of areas with little social mobility. This can be attributed to scarce opportunities, single industries, or income sources. Another key to higher social mobility in areas like southwest Ontario is their high concentration of universities and colleges—which isn’t seen in areas around coastal BC. To look solely at national average social mobility is to ignore peoples in Canada that aren’t living in areas with mobility springboards—disregarding a good amount of the Canadian population.

With mainstream media outlets claiming “the American Dream” is now “the Canadian Dream,” it will be easy for Canada to become complacent regarding its current systems. But, as the data shows, the “Canadian Dream” is a myth as well. Perpetuating the idea that hard work is all it takes to be successful in Canada is harmful to BIPOC and immigrants. 

In elementary school, I remember being told by my peers that I was going to hell for practicing Hinduism. I was told by others that the best way to respond to them was to prove them wrong and to be successful, and that incidents like these were bound to happen. As I look back, I’m disappointed in myself. I was led to believe that dealing with microaggressions and sometimes outright violence was just a small price to pay for “making it” in Canada or the US. This mentality has been etched into the minds of many BIPOC and other immigrants and was recently termed the “Dream Tax” by comedian Hasan Minhaj. Many Canadians, even those who may be achieving the traditional definition of success outlined in “the Canadian Dream,” experience cultural otherness and discrimination from other Canadians. Coping with microaggressions, discrimination, or even overt racism in exchange for the chance at living out “the Canadian Dream” is an upsetting idea—one that is perpetuated by the implications of “the Dream” itself.

The ideology of “the American and Canadian Dream” not only fails to acknowledge the circumstances of many immigrants and BIPOC but also reinforces systemic racism in our society. It is based on the idea that hard work is the only necessary prerequisite for making it to the top and neglects the nuances of lived experiences. Many of the so-called “underdogs” in the US and Canada that rise to the top have a leg up in some way. For too many, “the Dream” has only ever been a nightmare—working against them and condemning those who aren’t able to succeed. Thinking otherwise only makes us more ignorant to the systemic issues that plague societies in both the United States and Canada. It is imperative that the ideology of “the Dream” is dismantled. Only then can we move forward constructively.