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3 Racialized Nationalism and The West Wing Now that we’ve abolished discrimination from our laws, we need to abolish it in our hearts and minds. —President Josiah Bartlet, “The Two Bartlets” from its very constitutional beginning, race and citizenship were contested issues for the United States. In Article 1, section 2 of the Constitution , significantly, the measure of taxation was calculated “by adding the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” Indeed, the authors of many of the nation’s founding documents wrestled with the persistent conundrum of slavery. Further conflating whiteness and citizenship, the Naturalization Law of 1790 mandated that “any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for two terms, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof.”1 Over the next two centuries and beyond, deliberations over race and nation occupied the attention of U.S. presidents, congressional leaders, and Supreme Court justices. Moreover, for most of U.S. history, white identity has been the basis for a series of exclusionary policies and the overall cultural and political hegemony of the community. Much of the conflict surrounding issues of nationalism challenged and/or reified assumptions that power was rightly held by white men.2 As Ian F. Haney López explains, “The existence of Whites depends on the identification of cultures and societies, particular human traits, groups and individuals as non-White.Whites thus stand at the powerful vortex of race in the United States; whiteness is the source and maintaining force of the systems of meaning that position some as superior and others as subordinate.”3 04.ch3.87-117_Parry-Giles 12/12/05 4:44 PM Page 87 As with gender, the history of U.S. nationalism cannot be separated from matters of race and ethnicity.AsAnthonyW.Marx argues,“Not only did states reinforce race to unify the nation,but race also made nation-states” into these symbiotically “linked processes.”4 Recall that there are, we believe, two in- fluential and opposed ideals at work throughout U.S.history.One is grounded in what Gerstle calls “civic nationalism,” which promotes “the fundamental equality of all human beings”; the other, termed “racialized nationalism,” posits the nation in “ethnoracial terms.”5 On matters of race, European heritage , especially from Northern and Western Europe, was equated with “natural white superiority,” a “color line” that seems to be “drawn by God or biology .” Elaborating further,Marx contends that “slavery,proscriptions against miscegenation, colonialism, imperialism, manifest destiny, racially exclusive forms of citizenship or nationalism, and exploitation were all justified by whites as preordained in nature.”6 Such assumptions were foundational to many policies affecting the treatment of African Americans in U.S. culture. The commitment to federalist principles in the United States helped southerners repeatedly turn to states’ rights to justify the continued enslavement of African Americans.7 Even northerners who abhorred slavery did not conceive of blacks in citizenship terms. Paul Goodman writes that “so unprepared were whites for black citizenship that the suffrage laws enacted during the Revolutionary era failed to specify whites only until a wave of black voting triggered a wave of exclusions, in Maryland in 1783 . . . in Connecticut in 1814 . . . in New York in 1821 . . . in Pennsylvania in 1838.” Many northern states (e.g., Massachusetts) discouraged free blacks from settling. Other, newer states such as Ohio attempted to ban blacks—a prohibition that, although ineffective, inspired many free blacks to flee to Canada.8 As the idea of abolition gained political power,presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren sought to silence abolitionists , characterizing them as “antislavery radicals.”9 In order to deal with free blacks, the American Colonization Society (ACS) formed in 1817 to recolonize blacks in Africa or the western regions of the United States, a plan that attracted the support of southerners as well as Thomas Jefferson,James Madison,John QuincyAdams,Henry Clay,andAbraham Lincoln.The United States followed Great Britain and abolished the slave trade, legislation that took effect in 1808. Just as Great Britain created Sierra Leone to help halt the slave trade,so,too,did the United States establish Liberia, a colony in Africa, and relocated some thirteen thousand free blacks there.10 Southerners supported colonization because of fears that free blacks would incite a slave revolt...

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