Community Inquiry Project Proposal

My Proposal:

Area that I live: Englewoood, Chicago

Demographics:
 • White 0.34%
 • Black 97.37%
 • Hispanic 1.06%
 • Asian 0.11%
 • Other 1.12%


I will be interviewing:

• Ida, former resident.
• Aaliyah, current resident
• Willa, current resident (grandma)

I do not think the American Dream is present in my neighborhood. The American Dream is to live a better life than your parents did but here, everyone lives the same lives their parents did, if not worse. With the growing rate of violence in my community, the living conditions of people are becoming worse. I think that Im going to find exactly what I stated above, the American Dream is an unrealistic thing in this community. Not a lot of people here works "hard" and the ones that do, it never seems to pay off.

The American Dream

The article I read, Hector Ramirez: From teen welder to business owner, was about Hector Ramirez, who came to America illegally from Tijuana at the age of 13, after being smuggled across the border by a smuggler or “coyote”. Like most immigrants, he left his homeland for the U.S. in order to be better rewarded for his hard work and to not be denied certain opportunities just because of financial situations. Ramirez often dreamed of buying all of these nice things such as motorcycles and then heading back to his homeland but instead, he stayed in America, working hard at his job every day that he could in order to gain financial stability which is something he had never experienced. Though there was a great risk in staying in America illegally, Ramirez stayed and worked hard at everything he did, from being legalized to getting into a business and this all proved to be successful because Ramirez is now a business owner himself, making enough money to give his five children things he never had and things they never would have even looked at if he had stayed in his homeland. This relates to the American Dream because in the USA, hard work yields success. To outsiders looking in, even the simplest life here is often better than one that can be achieved in other countries because America has a plethora of opportunities which is not only limited to the people of a certain class and with a lot of hard work, any one, no matter who it is, can become something great and have a better, more fulfilling life. Also, the American Dream is an aspiration of people to live better than what their parents did and due to his hard work, his kids were able to have things he didn't when he was younger, giving them a better, more satisfying life.

Simply put, this article is a prime example of the American Dream because it shows how in America, determination and hard work pays off. 

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