Whiteness, Nationalism, and the U.S. Constitution: Constructing the White Nation through Legal Discourse

Abstract

Overt expressions of White nationalism and White supremacy are once again mainstream in U.S. politics. Social movements advancing racist and nativist policies often do so through the language of constitutional rights, appealing to the Founding Fathers to advance exclusionary politics. Studying the legal discourse of conservative activists reveals the ideological work of law in buttressing White proprietary claims to the nation. This article investigates the Constitution as a key text and symbol in the current struggle over the hegemony of White supremacy in the United States. Examining the interpretive work of constitutional educators and online commenters, this study performs a discursive analysis of the racial ideology embedded within a conservative constitutional discourse. Tracing this constitutional discourse across multiple platforms and political projects, I find that this constitutional discourse maintains a commitment to White supremacy while disavowing its explicit logic of racial superiority. To conclude, I suggest that rights claims function as territorial claims and can serve as vehicles for restricting, rather than expanding, state membership. As such, geographers interested in populism and nationalism should attend to the way in which rights claims are enrolled in nationalist politics.