Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream

The opening image of the book is election night in 2016, as Smith prepares to comment on the historic election of Hillary Clinton, the first woman to become president. Smith was prepared to acknowledge the gravity of the moment while also reminding election coverage viewers on the Democracy Now!’ TV program that “representational progress, while important, does not necessarily translate to material progress” (3). These remarks never came to fruition, of course, because on that night Donald Trump was elected president.

In the aftermath of the election, Smith nodded politely to White liberals who had vowed to leave the country, to Canada perhaps. These folks could not stomach an America presided over by Donald Trump but had seemingly tolerated the oppression of Black people long before the Trump campaign had ever existed. Smith writes, “The good liberal white folks tell us there is a resolution to our grievances that can only be achieved if we are willing to put aside our anger, frustration, pain, grief, and despair, and trade them for…what, exactly, isn’t clear” (8). To Smith, therefore, the disillusionment of White liberals meant very little.

Smith then turns to his own experience, as a Black man living in New York, as he processes his move from Virginia.