We like stories with heroes and heroines who lead, succeed and inspire. There’s a natural appeal to seeing individuals overcome their environment, whether real or fictitious. Their ultimate success reminds us of the same agency we have to direct our own lives upwards. The shining moment of their success can be so bright, in fact, that it can blur what came before their fame.
As I watched the Grammys on Sunday night looking for my favorite artists to appear, it often felt like a blur as a whirlwind of artists took the stage. From Pharrell, who never appears to age, to the Daft Punk duo, who never appear as humans, I was struck by the moment with the rest of my housemates. Few artists ever rise high enough to receive a golden gramophone from the Recording Academy, and their personal effort has rightly earned the praise they receive. In that moment alone on stage, they exude the virtues of American individualism: ambition, talent, drive.
These are characteristics we’re all familiar with in our own lives in some form. Since it’s what I’m most familiar with, I can speak as a middle-class kid who went to college. Looking back to high school, I can remember the hours I dedicated to studying, the sports I participated in and the service trips I led. Individually, I jumped through the right rings for college, putting together a resume that certain colleges like UNC approved.
But what I can’t (or am not supposed to) fit into that squeezed single page are the communities that facilitated my opportunities: a quiet home in the suburbs to enable my studying; supportive parents with two cars to drive me to team and club practices; schools with resources for science and arts. Those around me took this in stride in pursuit of passing a good life onto me.
Like all of those born into such a life, I can never fully grasp the extent of my good fortune; at the very least, however, I can recognize the communities in it to be at its heart. It’s a privilege for me to know and learn from as many ethical and educated people as I have met in my life, and it’s a challenge to see all of this privilege’s effects.
These developed community networks, with their involved parents and safe neighborhoods, are so insulating that they can lend to a false sense of normalcy. But if we cast a wider net to those outside them, we can realize how unusual they are.
The growth of opportunities in developing communities throughout our country that yield even the minimum, much less the hallowed heights, of the American dream have been largely arrested. Economic mobility has not remarkably changed for the past four decades, as a landmark study released this January found. Simply put, people who grow up in poor communities tend to stay in poor communities.
At award shows like the Grammys and in the resumes that flash our names, we see individuals. But if we are to restore this “Land of Opportunity,” we will need to see the communities that make us who we are.
