"American Dream"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses welfare in America through DeParle's work, "American Dream". It explains that the three female characters in the book demonstrate a variety of factors impacting the welfare system including the repercussions of slavery, difficulty finding and holding good jobs and social stressors. It offers quotes from the text to qualify points made.

From the Paper:

"DeParle explained how the history of slavery could affect so many people nearly 140 years after the institution had ended. At the beginning of the 20th century, 10% of all Blacks in the United States lived in Mississippi (DeParle, p. 26), a state that found ways to extend economic control over Blacks for many decades after the end of the Civil War. Jim Crow laws had kept Blacks from education, from voting, and for the most part, from getting ahead financially. Many were sharecroppers and dependent on the landowners to determine what their earnings for the year were (DeParle, p. 29)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• DeParle, Jason. American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. New York: Viking, 2004.

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