Shattering the North American Dream: Testimonies and Experiences

Abstract

Let America be America again.[...]Let America be dream dreamers dreamed -[...][where] equality is in air we breathe.1Canadians could be people who recognize that our country is state in process rather than nation with one absolute goal. It could be state where questioning, ambiguity, privacies, responsibility both to ourselves and to others, multicultural dialogue and shifting of borderlines, are allowed to become habits of mind.2AS DISCUSSED AT LENGTH IN THE INTRODUCTION, USA IS country that, despite its arbitrary frontiers,despite its bewildering mix of race and creed, could believe in something called True America and could invest that patent fiction with all moral and emotional appeal of religious symbol.3The religious, social, and political ideals inscribed in U S Constitution - idea that 'all men are created equal' - and US motto of 'life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness' lie at heart of American Dream. While these American ideals suggest upholding of rights of individual, Canada's principles of 'peace, order and good government' imply ideas of control and protection, role essentially performed by state itself. Moreover, whereas Canadians often question whether country has national identity at all, Americans self-confidently define themselves in terms of their own national history and tradition, founding myth often referred to as US creed.While ideology of American Dream is paradigmatic in American national history, discourse of official multiculturalism in Canada - enshrined in law by Multicultural Act of 1988 - has developed into similar myth of equality and tolerance. The motto 'unity in diversity' implies official acceptance and acknowledgement of different cultures in pluralistic society. As Linda Hutcheon has noted, since British North American Act was passed in 1867, Canada has grown from so-called nation of cultural solitudes - British and French - only two groups officially recognized into society whose multiracial, pluri-ethnic nature [...] is an undeniable reality.4Envisioned as nation where each crisis constitutes provisional milestone in history of country free of weight of bloody history and reverent constitutionalism, Canadian experimenf has been lauded by critics such as B.W. Powe in his book A Canada of Light!' Partly hymn to Canada's unrealized potential, partly polemic against politicians who have betrayed those possibilities, Powe's visionary work of political philosophy dares to re-imagine national identity. In it, Powe draws passionately inspired portrait of Canada as communication state - counternation of loose ties and subtle associations where dialogue, ideas, debate, and exchange of information are currency that holds Canadians lightly together. In this sense, A Canada of Light points to urgent realization of new and liberating way of what it means to be Canadian. Countering George Grant's pessimistic Lament for Nation,6 which defined intellectual climate in Canada for decades, Powe argues that Canada's constant search for and questioning of its identity could possibly turn it into model for twenty-first century.South of 49th parallel, Japanese American historian Ronald Takaki documents the story of America as diversely peopled nation, 'dedicated to proposition that all men are created equal' - the promise of twentyfirst is promise of changing colors of American people.7 While W.E.B. Du Bois observed that the problem of twentieth century was the problem of color line, Takaki claims that expanding ethnic diversity of next century, a time when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation to create larger memory of who we are as Americans and to reaffirm our founding principle of equality. …