News/Commentary

NYT claims ‘Republicans of color’ are distorting the phrase ‘American dream’

August 24, 2022 | | Print Article

The New York Times is in hot water once again for an article that appears to blame “Republicans of color” for distorting the use of the phrase “the American dream.”

After recently being called out for giving non-white employees lower scores on their performance reviews than their Caucasian counterparts, the Times is once again taking on the topic of race in a negative way. This time, they are accusing Republican candidates of casting doom and gloom onto what was historically a phrase of hope and optimism.

The article “How a Storied Phrase Became a Partisan Battleground” was shared on Twitter with a controversial caption:

“Now, a new crop of Republican candidates and elected officials are using the phrase in a different way, invoking the same promise but arguing in speeches, ads and mailings that the American dream is dying or in danger, threatened by what they see as rampant crime, unchecked illegal immigration, burdensome government regulations and liberal social policies,” the article reads. “Many of these Republicans are people of color — including immigrants and the children of immigrants, for whom the phrase first popularized in 1931 has a deep resonance.”

So immigrants who see liberal policies as a threat to the very promise that brought their families to America’s shores are the problem?

“To politicians of old, ‘the American dream’ was a supremely optimistic rhetorical device, albeit one that often obscured the economic and racial barriers that made achieving it impossible for many,” the piece continues. “To the Republican candidates embracing it today, the phrase has taken on an ominous and more pessimistic tone, echoing the party’s leader, former President Donald J. Trump, who said in 2015 that ‘the American dream is dead.'”

And here we were thinking they weren’t going to invoke Trump for once. Now THAT would be optimistic.

“In the same way that many Trump supporters have tried to turn the American flag into an emblem of the right, so too have these Republicans sought to claim the phrase as their own, repurposing it as a spinoff of the Make America Great Again slogan,” the author speculates.

“Television ads for more than a dozen Republican candidates in statewide, House and Senate campaigns — more than half of whom are people of color — cite the phrase, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking firm. Several other House hopefuls, many of them Latinas, frequently cite the words in social media posts, digital ads, campaign literature and speeches,” the article notes.

Could it be that immigrants and their children, who know the weight of crushingly oppressive systems, have more skin in the game when it comes to protecting “the American dream” than those who take the country’s many privileges for granted? And could it be that they feel the urgency of the situation calls for such rhetoric, an attempt to wake up the privileged masses before it is too late? Or is the New York Times only interested in talking down to “Republicans of color” for how they choose to market their political campaigns?

Needless to say, this didn’t go over very well on Twitter:

Sierra Marlee
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