While the American Dream is a great concept, unfortunately it is not something for everyone; too often minorities get the short end of the stick. In order to help minorities, I feel we need to have programs to help them understand how to manage their finances and get to a level of stability in order to achieve their goals. We can also help by volunteering in community programs.

I came to this realization because of my own environment and personal struggles with finances. For example, earlier last week I saw a homeless man, whom I’ve seen often, asking for money. I gave him about $5 since I felt really bad for him and felt he needed the money way more than I did. This middle aged man also happens to be black; in fact a lot of homeless people in my area are part of a minority. Being curious, I looked up some facts and discovered that a lot of people experience homelessness at the young age of around 13 to 17 years, when they should be in school or in the comfort of their own home with family. When I was sitting in English class, we were learning about the American Dream and I read this article, The Evolution of the American Dream by Eva Bod, which states that “recognizing that the American Dream of working hard to achieve success was not possible for all members of society…the American Dream was not fascism, but a struggle over equality”. In other words, this is saying that even though some members of society might be the hardest of workers they still might not be able to find success at all or as quickly as others will; this is most likely due to the fact that more privileged people have it easier (i.e. white men, men in general). This supports my stance since non-privileged people working jobs might not be paid enough money, which might result in them not having enough rent and being evicted from their house/apartment.

I recommend that we—all members of society; lower class, middle class, upper class, help bring awareness to how bad homelessness in America really is. We can take proper precautions by donating/volunteering in charities such as the Salvation Army, Food bank and Care for the Homeless. I also believe we should make posts in the media and protests to show the government we really care about this issue. I also believe we should better educate people on finance programs (i.e. SNAP, WIC, ERAP, EAF, etc.) for the homeless to help them save up money and hopefully find stability in their life. If we want to get the American Dream back on track this is what we should do.

Keyanna Stewart is a 12th grader at The College Academy.  Born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx, she enjoys playing video games, hanging out with her friends and painting.