Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“The Forethought”

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

“The Afterthought”

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3 Summary: “Accountability”

Smith opens the essay by revealing that, prior to his move to New York, his expectations of the city were formed by what he consumed in pop culture, such as Woody Allen, Biggie, and the quasi-utopian world of The Cosby Show, where the Huxtables seemed to embody “the American Dream, and it could feel as though they were keeping space for the rest of us to come grab hold of it too” (105). The Huxtables were a symbol for what a “colorblind” America could look like, a world in which “white people had no responsibility for black success” (106), which made the idea of Bill Cosby assaulting or harassing 60 women an impossible, alternate reality.

And yet, as Smith reminds the reader, Bill Cosby will likely die in prison as a result of those accusations (although his only conviction is tied to the Andrea Constand case). Smith then goes on to list many other notorious men who have been accused, some convicted, of sexual assault: Brett Kavanaugh, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, R. Kelly, and Donald Trump. Smith then reminds the reader that these types of assaults are happening everywhere, all the time, and that countless men will never actually be held accountable for their actions.

Smith reflects on the signs he sees all over New York that read: “MEN AT WORK.” The implication of these signs, according to Smith, is that “men are doing important work, and to interrupt them is to halt the gears of a functioning society” (113). Working-class or not, these are men, who buy into the idea that their work is important because men perform it. We live in a gendered hierarchy, one that extends to all social classes.

This systemic structure, where men occupy the highest echelon of society, results in a multitude of violent outcomes, such as the killing of trans women, homicide, and rape. Smith wonders where true accountability exists in a world defined by a cycle of violent crimes, followed by the punishment of prison. According to Smith, “prison provides an out that prevents any true healing, for the perpetrators or the victims” (131). Prison is not a means of accountability or restoration, but of pushing the perpetrators of violence and assault to the furthest fringes of society, out of view.

Part 3 Analysis

Smith makes a very deliberate choice when he focuses on Bill Cosby as the example of perverted manhood. The symbolic status of Cosby by means of his public persona and fictional character, Cliff Huxtable, collides with the fact that 60 women, spread across various cities, accused Cosby of sexually assaulting or harassing them, many of whom also claimed to have been drugged. Smith’s intentional use of Cosby as a fallen symbol of the Black community reinforces his belief that symbols are often harmful when trying to understand reality. Just as he criticizes the use of Dr. King as a symbol of American exceptionalism, he also downplays the importance of Cliff Huxtable as a symbol.

Yet Smith also alludes to other archetypes of powerful men accused of sexual assault. He includes Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump in the same list, making no real distinction between which cases have been criminally tried and which haven’t. The larger point Smith is trying to make is that prison is not a clear and definite sign that justice has been done. As Smith puts it, “prison is a form of punishment that is an evasion of both of these principles [justice and accountability]” (115).

The American justice system is by nature punitive, according to Smith, rather than restorative. Both victims and perpetrators alike are stripped from the possibility of healing, and instead we are left with a world that operates under the confines of a strange binary: The bad people are separated from the good people, once the bad people are sent off to prison. And according to Smith, the law is a highly fallible metric for determining what is good and what is bad.

Accountability and justice cannot be achieved, because as a society we operate on a strictly reactionary basis. If someone becomes a perpetrator by means of their actions, they are punished with prison. Meanwhile, we assume that rape, “or at least the potential of rape, is a part of our societal makeup” (119), which leads to us teaching people how to avoid being raped but not ever prioritizing time to prevent rape in the first place. Here again Smith emphasizes that in order for America to enact real change, it must be willing to destroy and subvert its systems, in this case the criminal justice system.