[Americans have] a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American—I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don't make it, my children will.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[Americans have] a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American—I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don't make it, my children will." in the context of "Barack Obama, in a 1991 law school paper called "Race and Rights Rhetoric", as quoted in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama (2017) by David Garrow, and reported in "Young Obama Said the American Dream Is to Be Donald Trump", Vice (12 May 2017)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.