Race in American Political Thought

Abstract

The race concept and race relations have been central themes in American political thought from the colonial period to the present. It is easy to understand why this has been the case. After all, deep commitments to white supremacy and the inferiority of both indigenous Americans and Africans fueled the early development of the colonies that would bind themselves together in rebellion against England in the 18th century. Moreover, the charter documents of the American republic enshrined racial categories and what the political scientist Rogers Smith calls “ascriptive hierarchies” into our constitutional order. In other words, for most of its history, America was a Herrenvolk democracy—where whites enjoyed full citizenship rights and people of color were relegated to various forms of subordinate status. The first writings to make the race concept and race relations themes in American political thought were produced by intellectuals and activists engaged in political projects that sought to either justify or tear down these hierarchies. Although the aims of these primary texts were often overtly political, many raised questions and generated insights that have remained central to the study of these issues in the academy. Ironically, scholars of American political thought largely ignored these primary texts in the first five decades of the 20th century despite the fact that American higher education was in the midst of a great transformation that ushered in the rise of the modern research university. This situation changed dramatically in the wake of the Second World War and the social movements for racial justice that transformed American society in the middle of the 20th century. Indeed, since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 marked the end of the formal end of the Herrenvolk phase in American history, political scientists, philosophers, and intellectual historians have formalized the study of race and race relations within their respective disciplines. The vast majority of this post-1965 scholarship has appeared in university press books and a few notable journal articles. The scholarly consensus that has formed over this period holds that there is no scientific basis for the race concept, that differences between racial and ethnic groups are socially constructed, and that building peaceful and just societies requires some recognition of these group differences.