The Racial Constitution of the Public: Four Exercises in Historicizing the American Polity

This dissertation establishes a conjuncture between critical race theory and continental political theory which centers on the question of 'what is racial politics in the United States?' In other words, I attempt to provide an account of what qualifies racial politics as both racial and political in the American polity. My point is that politics can, but need not concern domination and resources in the same way that race can, but need not be about phenotype and bodies. This is the case because the form rather than the content of an activity characterizes it as 'political,' just as the structure rather than the substance of an identity characterizes it as 'racial.' This logic applies to race and politics taken separately or together. I argue that politics is specified by those forms of conflict which constitute the public, while race is specified by that form of distinction which distinguishes between 'whites' and 'non-whites.' Hence the central thesis of this dissertation is that the racial politics of the United States is specified by the constitution of the public in terms of the white/non-white distinction. I call the specifically political meaning of race or the racially specific meaning of politics in the American polity the racial constitution of the public or the public constitution of race..;Each of the analytic 'exercises' of this dissertation examines the historical contribution of a set of events to the racial constitution of the United States public. These four exercises aim to exemplify what 'the racial constitution of the public' has more concretely meant in United States history. My first exercise contends that the constitutional founding institutionalized conflicts between state governments over racial slavery, whereas the civil rights movement institutionalized conflicts between blacks and whites over constitutional rights. In the second exercise, I argue that the 1830-1840s removals of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole from their traditional territories replaced these southeastern Indians within the geographical, juridical, and racial order of the federal system. My third exercise turns to the Japanese internment of World War II, accounting for initial decisions to intern and later decisions to release Japanese Americans as racial identifications of national friends and enemies. The fourth exercise argues that the 1960-1970s racial power movements---that is, the black power, Chicano, red power, and Asian American movements---shared a manner of claiming non-white identities, appealing to common senses of community, demanding institutional changes, and attaining public visibility.;My findings concern what the events of the aforementioned exercises mean when interpreted within the conceptual framework of the racial constitution of the public. As for the framework itself, I define 'the racial constitution of the public' in terms of those forms of conflict which instantiate and institutionalize the public with respect to white/non-white distinction. The forms of conflict which constitute the political specificity of this concept involve the generation and organization of public spaces, whereas the distinction between white and non-white which constitutes the racial specificity of this concept pertains to inclusive as well as exclusive public identifications. Taken as examples of distinctive modes of racially constituting the public, the events of the historical chapters take on the following political and racial meanings. The constitutional founding and the civil rights movement, as examples of revolutionary action, grappled with the question of whether black and white conflicts would be treated as 'legitimate' in post-revolutionary times. As instances of land appropriation, the removals of the southeastern Indians dealt with the spatial dimension of race in replacing these polities within the federal territory which came to be known as 'Indian Country.' Our example of the state of exception, the Japanese internment, concerned an emergency project of making national friends out of populations identified as racial enemies at the beginning of the war. Finally, the racial power movements, as moments of hegemonic judgment, had to do with contentious appeals to potential senses of community which would carve out counter-public spaces vis-a-vis the United States public.