The Fair Sex: White Women and Racial Patriarchy in the Early American Republic

2. Toward a Theory of Racial Patriarchy

Toward a Theory of Racial Patriarchy How, then, could we devise one of those useful falsehoods . . . , one noble falsehood that would, in the best case, persuade even the rulers, but if that’s not possible, then the others in the city? All of you in the city are brothers, we’ll say, but the god who made you mixed some gold into those who are adequately equipped to rule, because they are most valuable. He put silver in those who are auxiliaries and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen. —Plato, The Republic [T]he northern colonies . . . are well settled, not as the common people of England foolishly imagine, with a compound mongrel mixture of English, Indian, and Negro, but with freeborn British white subjects, whose loyalty has never yet been suspected. —James Otis III, “Rights of the British Colonists Asserted and Proved” Republics, ancient and modern, are built on hierarchy. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates concedes to his followers that to implement his scheme of republicanism, a “noble falsehood” will have to be told to persuade all members of society to accept their prescribed roles within the hierarchy that undergirds his ideal state. In this “myth of the metals,” hierarchy is naturalized metaphorically through the value of metals; gold, silver , bronze, and iron all represent the more and less valuable versions of human nature. In Plato’s view, the myth that one’s metal comes from God and one’s birthing from the Earth is “noble” precisely because it is told to promote what he considers to be in the common interest. The myth must be told because the “truth” is both inaccessible and unpalatable to the 2 12 masses: Human nature is profoundly unequal, and justice requires that the most valuable persons rule over those who are less valuable.1 Modern republicanism is also based on an underlying belief in natural hierarchy. And the founders of the American Republic also employed a mythology. The contours of the natural hierarchy and its supporting mythology were different than those of Plato’s Republic. In the American founders’ version, the natural hierarchy of humanity was based on differences in race, culture, class, and gender, which were seen to be indicative of political value or worth. I call this hierarchy “racial patriarchy.” Its supporting mythologies come from stories, not of birth, but of nature, in theories of the social compact. According to my theory of racial patriarchy, the development of white male supremacy and economic classes in the United States occurred through the articulation of race, class, and gender differences. These articulated differences were translated into institutional arrangements, which resulted in or were reflective of relations of dominance and subordination. Since it is not possible to establish institutions apart from discursive participation , I do not attempt to argue unidirectional causality. Instead, I suggest that ideas and institutions coexisted and were reflexive of one another. The theory also raises questions about the relative positioning of white women compared to other groups in the hierarchy, including white men, nonwhite men, and nonwhite women. The definition of racial patriarchy is fundamentally derived from critical race and gender theories, especially those that have deconstructed social contract theory. In particular, I have borrowed heavily from and sought to unify work done by Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, who have separately identified the sexual and racial contracts within Enlightenment social contract theories. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first provides a working definition of racial patriarchy, in which I review the theories of the sexual and racial contracts and the main political thinkers associated with the ideas that supported them. I emphasize the continuity of European and American thought on race and gender and expose the reconciliation of hierarchy and brutality with ideas of equality and universalism in Enlightenment thought on both sides of the Atlantic. The question of primacy with respect to the ordering of race and gender hierarchies is raised and left indeterminate, in recognition of the need to answer such a question in the context of specific thinkers and individual practices. In the next section, I examine the institutions and practices through which racial patriarchy was established and maintained in the early Toward a Theory of Racial Patriarchy | 13 American Republic. This section reviews work done by historians on the law of coverture and its effect in shaping white and nonwhite women’s...