Civic Ideals

1. American Citizenship: A Blend of Conflicting Ideals

In the ensuing pages, I show that through most of U.S. history, lawmakers pervasively and unapologetically structured U.S. citizenship in terms of illiberal and undemocratic racial, ethnic, and gender hierarchies, for reasons rooted in basic, enduring imperatives of political life.

Challenging the orthodoxy. Conventional narratives often portray American political culture as singularly defined by liberal democratic ideals, emphasizing liberty, equality, and republicanism. However, a comprehensive examination of U.S. citizenship laws reveals a more complex and often contradictory reality. For over 80% of U.S. history, laws explicitly denied full citizenship to most people based on their race, original nationality, or gender.

Multiple traditions at play. Instead of a monolithic liberal democratic ethos, American civic identity has consistently been shaped by a blend of three distinct, often conflicting, traditions:

• Liberalism: Emphasizing individual rights, consent-based government, and market economy.
• Democratic Republicanism: Stressing popular sovereignty, civic virtue, and self-governance.
• Inegalitarian Ascriptive Americanism: Asserting that "true" Americans possess superior traits based on race, ethnicity, religion, or gender, justifying hierarchical social and political orders.

Persistent inequalities. These ascriptive traditions were not mere "latent predispositions" or temporary exceptions; they were blatant, pervasive, and unapologetically embedded in legal structures. The history of American citizenship is not a steady march towards universal equality, but a serpentine path marked by periods of reform followed by significant reversals, demonstrating the enduring power of these illiberal and undemocratic elements.

2. Nation-Building: The Political Imperative Behind Civic Myths

Thus political leaders need compelling stories to convince their constituents of these things.

The need for a "people." The fundamental task of any aspiring political elite is to forge a population that perceives itself as a unified "people" worthy of being led, and to justify their own leadership. This imperative drives leaders to craft "civic ideologies" or "myths of civic identity" that foster a sense of shared belonging and purpose. These myths often blend various ideological elements, prioritizing political effectiveness over logical consistency.

Myths as political tools. Civic myths, while often containing factual elements, are inherently selective and frequently contain elements that are not literally true. They serve to inspire deep and enduring allegiance, making the existence of a shared national identity seem an unshakable truth. Leaders leverage these narratives to:

• Foster a sense of common identity (e.g., shared language, ancestry, religion, history).
• Highlight tangible benefits of collective governance (e.g., economic prosperity, military defense).
• Legitimize their rule and policies.

Inherent tensions and dangers. Because no community is simply "natural," and diverse interests exist, these myths are often contested. Leaders are tempted to exploit harsh implications of their myths to vilify outsiders or internal rivals, leading to policies that damage enemies and distribute power in biased ways. This inherent tension explains why citizenship laws are often anomalous and contradictory, reflecting compromises among powerful factions and their favored, often partly false, civic myths.

3. Colonial Roots: Feudalism and Early Ascriptive Hierarchies

But those rules were from the outset a strange yet murkily compelling mass of legalistic mythmaking, better designed to serve King James and Sir Edward than most of James's subjects, especially the American colonists.

Subjectship, not citizenship. English colonial identity was rooted in feudal conceptions of "subjectship" rather than modern citizenship. Sir Edward Coke's ruling in Calvin's Case (1608) established perpetual allegiance to the monarch based on birth, regardless of location or consent. This system, while unifying the British realms, was a "legalistic mythmaking" that prioritized royal power over individual rights or territorial nationality.

Colonial diversity and conflict. British North America was far from a homogeneous society. It was a contested "New World" inhabited by diverse Native American tribes, rival European powers (Spanish, French), and a growing population of enslaved Africans and indentured European servants. These conflicts, particularly with Native Americans and rival empires, intensified the colonists' need to define their collective identity.

Crafting a restrictive identity. Faced with these challenges, colonial elites developed a sense of common identity that was more restrictive than British law formally required. They embraced:

• Protestant supremacy: Viewing themselves as God's chosen people.
• Anglo-Saxon superiority: Believing in an innate capacity for liberty.
• Racial hierarchy: Denying political membership to Native Americans and enslaved Africans, often justifying their subjugation through dehumanizing narratives.
  These ascriptive, inegalitarian conceptions, often clashing with imperial policies, laid the groundwork for future disputes over who truly belonged in America.

4. Revolutionary Paradox: Universal Rights Amidst Enduring Inequality

But though Lockean liberal views of political membership as originating in consent, not nature, helped legitimate the revolutionaries' cause, they left many questions unanswered; and some answers they implied were hard to accept.

A blend of ideals. The American Revolution, while proclaiming universal natural rights and republican self-governance, simultaneously relied on and reinforced ascriptive notions of identity. Leaders like Thomas Jefferson invoked "Saxon ancestors" and a divinely favored Anglo-Saxon mission to justify their cause, blending Enlightenment liberalism with ethnocultural claims of superiority. This allowed them to rally support without fully confronting the contradictions inherent in their rhetoric.

Selective universalism. The Declaration of Independence's assertion that "all men are created equal" stood in stark contrast to the continued enslavement of African-Americans, the displacement of Native Americans, and the political subordination of women. While some radicals like James Otis and Benjamin Rush advocated for broader equality, their voices were largely muted. The revolutionaries found it politically expedient to ignore or rationalize these inconsistencies, focusing on the immediate struggle against British "tyranny."

Republicanism's double edge. Republican ideals, emphasizing civic virtue and homogeneity, provided further justification for exclusion. While promoting popular government, they also sanctioned the exclusion of "undesirable others" to maintain a "virtuous" citizenry. Women were relegated to "republican motherhood," a domestic role deemed vital for raising future citizens but denying them direct political participation. This selective application of republican principles ensured that the new American identity, though revolutionary in some aspects, remained deeply hierarchical.

5. Jacksonian Era: The Ascendancy of the White Republic

Both major parties gave unprecedented prominence to partly overlapping, partly opposed inegalitarian ascriptive versions of Americanism, blended in with their different mixes of liberal republican principles.

Explicit racism takes center stage. The Jacksonian era, often celebrated as the triumph of American democracy, was simultaneously the "High Noon of the White Republic," characterized by an explicit and pervasive embrace of white supremacy. Both Democrats and Whigs, despite their political differences, increasingly relied on ascriptive ideologies to define American identity, often justifying policies of racial and gender subordination.

Scientific racism and Manifest Destiny. New intellectual defenses, particularly "scientific racism," gained prominence, providing a pseudo-scientific basis for black and Native American inferiority. Figures like Josiah Nott and George Gliddon's Types of Mankind (1854) became bestsellers, asserting fixed racial differences and white intellectual superiority. This ideology fueled:

• Indian Removal: Justified as a benevolent act to clear the path for a "superior race."
• Slavery's perpetuation: Defended as the "natural and normal condition" for blacks.
• Territorial expansion: Framed as the "Manifest Destiny" of the Anglo-American race to rule the continent.

Whig nativism and Protestant Americanism. While Democrats championed white supremacy, Whigs often embraced a romanticized Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americanism. They sought to preserve cultural homogeneity against the influx of Catholic immigrants, advocating for policies like the literacy test. This nativism, though distinct from Democratic racism, also contributed to the era's exclusionary climate, demonstrating how different ascriptive traditions could reinforce a shared commitment to white, Protestant dominance.

6. Dred Scott: Constitutionalizing Racial Subordination

Though legally Taney had no need to make those incendiary broader assertions, he clearly wanted to block off every possible legal route for recognizing either constitutional citizenship for blacks or federal power to ban slavery.

A pivotal legal blow. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) decision represented the legal culmination of Jacksonian racist constitutionalism, attempting to definitively settle the questions of black citizenship and federal power over slavery. Taney's ruling asserted that no black person, slave or free, could ever be a U.S. citizen "within the meaning of the Constitution."

Closing all avenues to citizenship. Taney systematically denied every possible route to black citizenship:

• Birthright citizenship: Argued that only persons born into a class with sufficient rights under federal law could be citizens, excluding all blacks.
• Naturalization: Claimed Congress could only naturalize the foreign-born, and even then, not illegally imported blacks.
• Founding era intent: Falsely asserted that no blacks were considered citizens at the nation's founding, thus excluding their descendants.
  To achieve this, Taney even reversed his previous stance on Native Americans, elevating their status to "foreign Governments" to avoid conceding naturalization power over native-born non-whites.

Reinforcing hierarchy. The decision also denied Congress the power to ban slavery in the territories, effectively making slaveholding a constitutional right nationwide. Taney's opinion, while legally convoluted and historically inaccurate, powerfully enshrined racial hierarchy into the nation's highest law. It explicitly distinguished white women and minors as "part of the political family" from blacks, who were deemed outside it, solidifying a vision of America as an unequivocally white man's republic.

7. Reconstruction's Promise: A Brief, Contested Egalitarian Shift

But in rhetoric and law, egalitarian liberal republican precepts became more central than ever.

A new birth of freedom. The Civil War, driven by the irrepressible conflict over slavery, created a unique political context for radical change. The Union's victory and Lincoln's assassination fueled a moral fervor that, for a brief period, propelled Republicans to enact sweeping reforms aimed at establishing a "free labor republic" with greater racial equality. This era saw the most extensive restructuring of American citizenship laws since the Constitution's adoption.

Constitutional and statutory transformations. Reconstruction produced:

• Thirteenth Amendment (1865): Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude.
• Civil Rights Act of 1866: Declared native-born blacks U.S. citizens and guaranteed basic civil rights.
• Fourteenth Amendment (1868): Established birthright citizenship for all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and subject to its jurisdiction, making national citizenship primary and guaranteeing privileges and immunities, due process, and equal protection against state action.
• Fifteenth Amendment (1870): Prohibited denial of voting rights based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
  These measures, along with the Freedmen's Bureau, aimed to dismantle the legal structures of white supremacy and integrate blacks into the political and economic life of the nation.

Obstruction and limitations. Despite these monumental changes, Reconstruction was fiercely contested and ultimately undermined. President Andrew Johnson actively opposed radical efforts, restoring lands to former Confederates and tacitly approving new "Black Codes" that constrained black freedom. White racism, economic anxieties, and a resurgence of states' rights republicanism limited the scope and enforcement of reforms. The failure to redistribute land to freedmen proved particularly disastrous, leaving blacks economically vulnerable and perpetuating a system of coerced labor.

8. Gilded Age: The Resurgence of Ascriptive Americanism

It was, in short, the era of the militant WASP, whose concerns to protect and enhance his cultural hegemony were vastly more pronounced in citizenship laws than efforts to aid capitalism.

Reversal of egalitarianism. The Gilded Age witnessed a profound repudiation of Reconstruction's egalitarian and inclusive ideals, replaced by a widespread embrace of renewed ascriptive hierarchies. This era was not solely defined by industrial capitalism, but by the militant assertion of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) cultural hegemony, deeply embedded in citizenship laws.

Exclusionary policies and scientific justifications. Legislators and courts actively constructed new systems of racial and ethnic subordination:

• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): Banned Chinese laborers and denied naturalization, explicitly based on racial inferiority and perceived unassimilability.
• Dawes Act (1887): Aimed to destroy Native American tribal cultures by allotting communal lands individually, with citizenship granted as a tool for assimilation, but often resulting in land loss and continued wardship.
• Jim Crow laws: Southern states codified segregation and disfranchisement, effectively creating a second-class citizenship for African-Americans, often justified by new evolutionary theories of racial hierarchy.
  These policies were supported by intellectuals like Josiah Strong, who championed Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy and America's "divine mission" to lead the world, often at the expense of "inferior races."

Judicial complicity. The Supreme Court, while occasionally upholding procedural rights, largely acquiesced in these discriminatory practices. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court upheld "separate but equal" segregation, relying on the notion of "racial instincts" and the futility of legislation against social prejudices. This era solidified the legal framework for racial and ethnic exclusion, demonstrating the enduring power of ascriptive Americanism over liberal democratic principles.

9. Progressivism: Modernization and Enduring Hierarchies

Though scholars dispute what progressivism was, few deny that both major parties and American politics generally changed during the first two decades of the twentieth century in ways that comprise a distinct Progressive Era.

A complex reform movement. The Progressive Era, while marked by efforts to modernize government, address industrial ills, and expand democracy, did not fundamentally dismantle the ascriptive hierarchies established in the Gilded Age. Centrist progressives, like Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Croly, sought to build a unified, scientifically guided nation, but one culturally ordered by northern European dominance.

Selective inclusion and continued exclusion. While progressives championed reforms like women's suffrage and some direct democracy, their vision of citizenship remained largely hierarchical:

• Immigration restrictions: Continued to target "undesirable" groups from southern and eastern Europe, as well as Asians, through literacy tests and national origins quotas, justified by fears of racial dilution and threats to "Anglo-Saxon" civilization.
• Jim Crow: Segregation and disfranchisement of African-Americans persisted and expanded, often with the tacit approval of progressive leaders who prioritized "social order" over racial equality.
• Native American policies: Continued to focus on forced assimilation through vocational education and land allotment, aiming to "exterminate the Indian as an Indian" rather than genuinely empower them.

The role of science and "tutelage." Evolutionary theories and scientific expertise were often invoked to justify these inequalities. Racial and gender differences were presented as natural and immutable, requiring "tutelage" for "inferior" races and distinct "domestic spheres" for women. This blend of scientific rationalization and ascriptive beliefs allowed progressives to pursue modernization while maintaining traditional social hierarchies, demonstrating the adaptability of ascriptive Americanism.

10. The New American Empire: Race and Colonial Rule

God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration.

Imperial expansion and racial destiny. The Spanish-American War (1898) marked America's emergence as a global imperial power, driven by a new confidence in its technological and cultural superiority. This expansion was justified by a fervent, racially charged "Manifest Destiny," proclaiming the "divine mission" of the "Anglo-Saxon race" to civilize and govern "savage and senile peoples" around the globe.

Hierarchical colonial citizenship. The acquisition of new territories (Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii) led to a complex, four-tiered system of citizenship:

• Excluded: Filipinos, deemed too racially distinct and troublesome, were denied U.S. citizenship and pointed towards eventual independence under U.S. guidance.
• Colonial Subjects: Guamanians were designated permanent colonial subjects without U.S. citizenship until much later.
• Second-Class Citizens: Puerto Ricans were granted "citizenship of Porto Rico" and later U.S. citizenship, but without full constitutional rights or federal voting representation.
• Full Citizens: Hawaiians and Alaskans, with larger white populations, were on a path to statehood and full citizenship.

Judicial sanction of racial hierarchy. The Supreme Court's "Insular Cases" (1901) upheld Congress's power to govern "unincorporated" territories without extending full constitutional rights, effectively creating a legal basis for colonial subjectship based on racial fitness. This doctrine, rooted in the belief that "uncivilized races" were "absolutely unfit" for self-governance, solidified the idea that American citizenship could be selectively applied based on racial and cultural criteria.

11. The Enduring Challenge for Liberal Democracy

The U.S. is not an inherently and automatically liberal democratic nation, as many glorifying histories would have it. Americans are, rather, a people with powerful liberal and democratic traditions and achievements of which they can justly be proud, but with many clashing traditions and institutions that many citizens still greatly value.

The persistent power of ascription. The history of U.S. citizenship laws reveals that illiberal, undemocratic ascriptive myths have consistently coexisted with, and often overshadowed, liberal and republican ideals. These ascriptive views, rooted in racial, ethnic, religious, and gender hierarchies, have periodically resurged, especially when liberalizing reforms threaten established social orders or when a compelling sense of national identity is lacking.

The inadequacy of current theories. Modern liberal democratic theories, while normatively commendable, often neglect the fundamental political imperative of nation-building—the need for leaders to foster a compelling sense of shared national identity. This oversight leaves them ill-equipped to address the enduring tensions within democratic pluralism, such as conflicts between individual and group rights, or between integrated and segregated equality.

A path forward: The "Party of America." To build a morally defensible and politically viable civic identity, Americans must:

• Confront history honestly: Acknowledge the nation's complex past, including its injustices, rather than relying on sanitized myths.
• Embrace shared purpose: Define a national identity as a humanly created historical enterprise, committed to expanding freedom and opportunities for all citizens.
• Sustain critical patriotism: Value American identity as distinctive and meaningful, but maintain a critical stance, recognizing that loyalty is deepest when it harbors searching doubts and strives for continuous improvement.
  This approach, akin to a "Party of America," offers a way to harness the power of collective identity for liberal democratic ends, without succumbing to the dangers of ascriptive nationalism.

Last updated: February 28, 2026