Aristocracy in America: Tocqueville on White Supremacy*

Jennie C. Ikuta

Trevor Latimer

October 2019

Abstract

This article builds upon recent contributions to the growing literature on Tocqueville and race by

exploiting underappreciated parallels in Tocqueville’s thought between European feudalism and

American racial subordination. We show how four key features of Tocqueville’s conception of

feudal aristocracy—heritability, membership, privilege, and exclusion—provide the foundation

for an implicit account of white supremacy. In this way, we demonstrate that Tocqueville

conceived of the United States as a racial aristocracy; specifically, an aristocracy of whiteness.

By reconstructing Tocqueville’s structural account of white supremacy, we dispel the myth that

he held a “prejudice” or “anomaly” theory of racism. Tocqueville’s views on race, therefore,

have more in common with those of W. E. B. Du Bois and Charles Mills, for example, than

Gunnar Myrdal. Finally, we explore the advantages of conceiving of whiteness as a form of

aristocracy rather than property.

Key words: race, racism, Tocqueville, white supremacy, aristocracy, whiteness

* Forthcoming in the Journal of Politics. Please do not cite or circulate without permission.

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In this article, we synthesize and extend a number of important recent contributions to the

growing literature on Tocqueville and race by exploiting parallels in Tocqueville’s thought

between European feudalism and American racial subordination (Benson 2017; Janara 2004;

Kohn 2002; Maletz 2015; Noll 2014; Olson 2004; Tillery 2009, 2018; Turner 2008). While the

literature thus far is insightful and compelling, it underemphasizes the extent to which

Tocqueville’s conceptualization of the relationship between white and Black Americans borrows

its theoretical structure from a stylized account—haphazardly developed in Democracy in

America and more systematically in The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution—of feudal

aristocracy.

The notion that Tocqueville describes American race-relations in terms of aristocracy is

not completely unprecedented. For example, Olson (2004) observes that Tocqueville understood

whiteness as a form of social standing; similarly, Janara (2004) emphasizes that the “fear of

falling” characterizes white status politics in Tocqueville’s thought. These observations are

informative but piecemeal, and neglect to explain, with systematic precision, how American

race-relations are aristocratic. To explain the aristocratic nature of American race-relations, it is

necessary to explicate Tocqueville’s description of feudal aristocracy and show how its central

features also characterize racial aristocracy. Put differently, scholars writing on race in

Tocqueville’s thought understate the value of feudal aristocracy as a framework for grasping the

features and mechanisms that uphold white supremacy in the United States. This article provides

an analytical, systematic account of racial aristocracy as a parallel to feudal aristocracy, thereby

yielding a comprehensive structural account of American race-relations in Tocqueville’s thought.

We argue, furthermore, that for Tocqueville, racial aristocracy defines and regulates the

relationship between white and Black Americans in virtually the same way that feudal

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aristocracy defines and regulates the relationship between nobles and commoners in Europe. In

Tocqueville’s thought, racial aristocracy and feudal aristocracy are structurally isomorphic, with

whites as nobles and Blacks as commoners. The parallel between feudal aristocracy and racial

subordination is remarkably robust, yet the differences between the two aristocracies help

explain why the latter has been far more durable than the former. In our account, then, racial

aristocracy accounts for the persistence of white supremacy.

To be sure, Tocqueville never developed an explicit theory of white supremacy. We

speculate that this is because Democracy in America was a book about America for France

(Lamberti 1989), which, according to Tocqueville, did not have a comparable “race problem.”

Tocqueville told Henry Reeve that Democracy “is ultimately written primarily for France ... for a

country in which the cause of equality has triumphed, precluding any possibility of a return to

aristocracy” (Zunz 2010, 582). For Tocqueville, then, racial aristocracy was an American

problem with little practical relevance for his French audience.

But the fact that Tocqueville had a theory of white supremacy, even if it remains implicit,

is remarkable, as he is traditionally interpreted as an “anomaly” theorist of racism (e.g., Myrdal

1944). Anomaly theorists “see racism as anomalous, a mysterious deviation from European

Enlightenment humanism” (Mills 1997, 26-27). Similarly, Rogers Smith’s (1993) claim that

“Tocqueville treated racism as mere prejudice”—what he calls the “Tocquevillian thesis”—has

shaped much of the discipline’s perception of Tocqueville’s work. According to our reading,

however, Tocqueville rejected both the anomaly thesis and the Tocquevillian thesis. This will

come as no surprise to scholars of Tocqueville and race, but it is worth stating explicitly for the

field at large.

Moreover, contemporary scholars typically describe the America Tocqueville observed as

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a Herrenvolk democracy, a democracy for whites and whites only (Roediger 1991; Fredrickson

1981, 1987; Olson 2004; Tillery 2009), rather than a racial aristocracy. On its own, however,

Herrenvolk democracy is conceptually inadequate because it does not distinguish between

relations of exclusion, subordination, and domination; between haughty indifference,

paternalism, and despotism (on these alternatives, see Fredrickson 1987). The concept also fails

to capture status anxieties present in white America. If there were a genuine Herrenvolk, it would

not need to go to such lengths to demean, dominate, or eliminate members of the “lesser” races.

Part of the reason the color line became so sharp in the United States is that some whites actually

doubted their mastery; for this reason, constructing and maintaining the Herrenvolk required

exclusion and subordination of all nonwhites by nearly all whites.

In this article, we show that Tocqueville provides a unique and compelling specification

of Herrenvolk democracy, complete with a detailed structural account of racism. In his own way,

Tocqueville helps us see how America’s white democracy is embedded within a racial

aristocracy. His theory of racial subordination therefore differs from contemporary accounts to

the extent that it adopts feudal aristocracy as its model. Instead of building his account of

American racism from scratch, Tocqueville repurposes an older—and to him, more familiar—

form of structural domination.

Tocqueville’s account is all the more remarkable because it anticipates some of the

insights of prominent theorists of white supremacy and structural racism, for instance, Du Bois

([1935] 2007; [1940] 2007), Fredrickson (1981; 1987), Mills (1997), and Omi and Winant

(2015). Specifically, Tocqueville’s racial aristocracy model of white supremacy anticipates

Mills’s racial contract as well as Omi and Winant’s theory of racial formation. Our account

shares much with Mills’s racial contract; like the racial contract, “a contract between those

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categorized as white over the nonwhites, who are thus the objects rather than the subjects of the

agreement” (Mills 1997, 12), racial aristocracy emphasizes the domination of whites over non-

whites.

Nevertheless, Tocqueville’s implicit theory of racial aristocracy has several unique

advantages, which we summarize here and expand upon throughout the article, especially in the

sections entitled “French Revolution vs. Reconstruction” and “Whiteness as Property vs.

Whiteness as Aristocracy.” First, whereas the language of ‘contract’ in Mills’s account centers

the contracting, white parties, conceiving of American race-relations in terms of aristocracy

draws our attention toward the broader hierarchical social structure in which the ostensibly

egalitarian contract is situated. Second, reading Reconstruction’s failure to destroy American

racial aristocracy against the French Revolution’s success in decimating feudal aristocracy

provides new resources to help explain the durability of racial subordination in the United States.

Third, in contrast to some of the most influential commentators on whiteness, who see whiteness

as a form of property, which is typically alienable and individualistic (e.g., Harris 1993; also see

Tillery 2009), our account emphasizes how whiteness is collectively constructed and maintained.

By clarifying the connections between four key features of aristocracy—heritability,

membership, privilege, and exclusion—this article provides a unique account of the key

mechanisms of white supremacy. Our account also specifies what the abolition of white

supremacy entails: dismantling a structure characterized by heritability, membership, privilege,

and exclusion.

Our argument proceeds as follows. In the next section, we clarify the scope of the paper

as well as what we and Tocqueville mean by aristocracy. We then consider, in “Race and

Aristocracy, Aristocracy and Race,” how Tocqueville would have understood the conceptual

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relationship between race and aristocracy. The following section shows, with clear textual

evidence, that Tocqueville saw racial subordination as a kind of aristocracy. In “Feudal

Aristocracy, Racial Aristocracy,” we introduce Tocqueville’s stylized conception of aristocracy

as social structure, and show how its four key features are mirrored in his discussion of Black-

white relations in America. In two sections on implications and extensions, “French Revolution

vs. Reconstruction” and “Whiteness as Property vs. Whiteness as Aristocracy,” we expand upon

the aforementioned advantages of conceiving of racial subordination as a form of aristocracy.

We conclude by considering some implications for contemporary American politics; specifically,

we suggest how the notion of racial aristocracy enables us to conceptualize and justify white

Americans’ subjective feelings of loss, and we reflect upon the requirements for abolishing white

supremacy.

Two Clarifications

First, our argument is concerned with how Tocqueville conceptualized the subordination

of African-Americans, not with every aspect of white supremacy. We therefore exclude

Tocqueville’s equally fecund discussion of Native Americans. Because white supremacy

subordinates different groups differently—as Tocqueville observes, Blacks and Native

Americans “are alike only in their misfortunes” and even “their miseries are different” (DA

366)—an account of settler colonialism and the tyranny suffered by Native Americans is beyond

the scope of this article; Native Americans were slaughtered or displaced, not kept as underlings.

Second, Tocqueville refers to aristocracy in at least two different senses: one emphasizes

property, the other birth. In Democracy, Tocqueville claims that “it is not just privilege that

establishes an aristocracy and not just birth that constitutes it; it is property in land, passed on

from generation to generation” (DA 34). In The Ancien Régime, however, Tocqueville says: “by

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the Middle Ages, the nobility had become a caste, by which I mean that birth was its

distinguishing characteristic” (AR 80; also see DA 3). This distinction between property and

birth is crucial for our argument. Historically, both feudal and racial aristocracies are rooted in

property, but neither depends on property for its maintenance. Feudal aristocracy is rooted in

landed property, transmitted through primogeniture. However, towards the end of the ancien

régime, as Tocqueville observes, many nobles sold their lands while retaining membership in the

nobility. This suggests that landed property was historically and contingently associated with

nobility, but not necessary for the maintenance of feudal aristocracy. Similarly, as we will soon

see, racial aristocracy has its roots in property—in the ownership of Black bodies—but does not

depend on it. Racial aristocracy outlives its roots in racial slavery, which suggests that property

in Black bodies does not exhaust the meaning of white supremacy.2 In short, the parallels

between feudal and racial aristocracies with respect to property ownership suggest that property

is a contingent, rather than a necessary, feature of aristocracy.

Race and Aristocracy, Aristocracy and Race

We now turn to the conceptual and linguistic relationship between aristocracy and race in

early modern French discourse, of which Tocqueville, given his background, was undoubtedly

aware. In the sixth edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1835) race is “lignée,

tous ceux qui viennent d'une même famille” (a bloodline, all those who come from the same

family). One example in the entry explicitly connects race and nobility: “Il sort, il vient d'une

2 The ownership of Black bodies raises important questions about slavery and capitalism.

However, because this article focuses on aristocracy as a social structure—and not capitalism as

a mode of production—a discussion of slavery and capitalism is beyond the scope of this article.

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noble race, d’une race de gens de bien” (He comes out of, he comes from a noble bloodline, from

good stock). Suffice it to say that in Tocqueville’s day, the distinction between aristocracy and

race was not particularly sharp.

Discussions of aristocracy and race in early modern France echo the linguistic overlap. In

his review of conceptions of race in metropolitan France, Aubert (2004, 442) suggests that

“sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French discourses of social order exacerbated the belief in

the inherent superiority of certain groups of individuals or ‘races’ by consistently emphasizing

the transmissibility of physical characteristics and moral virtues through ‘blood’ (sang) from one

generation to the next.” The French historian Arlette Jouanna famously called this “the idea of

race” (Aubert 2004, 443). It is therefore unsurprising that members of the old nobility defended

their privileges by emphasizing the purity of their lineages. To be sure, nobles did not portray

their obsession with ‘blood’ in precisely these terms; they typically claimed to be concerned with

genealogy as a form of history (Ellis 1986).

Nevertheless, the nobility’s anxiety regarding mésalliance—the marriage of a social

superior to a social inferior—indicates that more was at stake than family history. The practice of

intermarriage between the old and the new nobility—between the noblesse d'épée and the

noblesse de robe—was considered a threat to noble purity. This was nothing compared to

mésalliance between nobles and commoners, however. This kind of mésalliance was especially

problematic because it admitted commoners to the ranks of the nobility, which was defined by its

membership. Mésalliance compromised the exclusivity of membership in the nobility, thereby

altering its very identity. Interestingly, because children were thought to inherit the qualities of

their parents, a child of mixed ancestry would inherit “good” qualities from her noble parent and

“bad” qualities from her commoner parent. However, since “women were sometimes said to

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transmit the quality of their husbands, the marriage between a noble man and a lesser woman

could be tolerated” (Aubert 2004, 446). This meant that the child of a noble man and a common

woman might make his or her way into the aristocracy.

Note, in a brief aside, the discomfiting parallel with the American South: according to its

perverse social norms, the rape of enslaved Black women by white men was sometimes tolerated

whereas sexual relations between Black men and white women—especially those resulting in

children—were the racial aristocracy’s worst nightmare. Akin to the tolerance of unions of noble

men and common women, children in the American South whose fathers were masters and

whose mothers were enslaved sometimes received special treatment on the plantation (cf.

Douglass [1845] 2009, 17). Two of Sally Hemings’s children, Beverly and Harriet, were allowed

to leave Monticello during Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime. Two more, Madison and Eston, were

freed in Jefferson’s will (Thomas Jefferson Foundation 2000). Children born to a Black father

and a white mother, in contrast, were a serious threat to whites—the nobility of the racial

aristocracy—because under American law, the status of the child followed that of the mother.

Textual Evidence

Before moving to our detailed comparison of feudal and racial aristocracy, we review the

explicit textual evidence demonstrating that Tocqueville viewed American racial subordination

as a kind of aristocracy. Tocqueville begins the section on the “Situation of the Black Race in the

United States; Dangers to Whites Created By Its Presence” with an important discussion of

ancient and modern slavery. According to Tocqueville, whenever slaves are emancipated, they

are scorned by their former masters; “real inequality resulting from fortune or law is always

replaced by an imaginary inequality rooted in mores” (DA 393). For the ancients, this

“imaginary inequality … was of limited duration,” because the “freedman so nearly resembled

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the freeborn that it soon became impossible to tell the former apart from the latter” (DA 393-94).

For “the Moderns,” however, “the immaterial and transitory fact of slavery combines in the most

disastrous way with the material and permanent fact of racial difference” (DA 394). Ancient

slavery was legal and heritable, but modern slavery is legal, heritable, and racialized: “the Negro

passes the outward sign of his ignominy to all his descendants at birth. The law may destroy

servitude, but only God can obliterate its trace” (DA 394).

Tocqueville’s discussion of the prejudices produced by racial slavery is familiar to casual

readers of Democracy in America. What he says next is not, however. He worries that for his

French readers, “those of us fortunate to have been born among men made similar to us by nature

and equal to us by law, it is very difficult to understand the unbreachable abyss that separates the

American Negro from the European.” How does Tocqueville propose to explain “the

unbreachable abyss” between whites and Blacks? He says “we can form a remote idea of it if we

reason by analogy” (DA 394, our emphasis).

The analogy is with feudal aristocracy: “In the past there existed among us great

inequalities whose origins lay solely in legislation. What could be more factitious than a purely

legal inferiority! What more contrary to man’s instincts than permanent differences established

between obviously similar people” (DA 394-95)! Toqueville continues, as if the analogy were

somehow still in doubt, “when I consider how difficult it is for an aristocratic body of any kind

to merge with the mass of the people, and the extreme care that such bodies take to preserve for

centuries the artificial barriers that separate them from that mass, I despair of seeing the

disappearance of an aristocracy founded on visible and imperishable signs” (DA 395). This

passage clearly implies that there are multiple kinds of aristocracy, one of which is racial. We

know that the aristocracy he refers to is racial because the very idea of aristocracy was

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introduced in order to give Europeans “a remote idea” of race relations in the United States. We

also know that “the visible and imperishable signs” Tocqueville mentions are external markers

categorized by the white nobility as “Black.”

Tocqueville develops this argument in subsequent writings on Algeria: “If, in 1789, the

French nobility—who by then were distinguished from the other enlightened classes of the

nation by hardly anything but imaginary signs—obstinately refused to open their ranks to these

classes, and preferred to have all their prerogatives wrested from them at once, rather than

voluntarily giving up the least part of them, how could the colonial nobility, who have skin color

as a visible and indelible trait, prove to be more tolerant and moderate” (2000, 200, our

emphasis)? Once again, Tocqueville links “imaginary signs,” as markers of nobility with “skin

color as a visible and indelible trait,” suggesting that noble birth and white skin are heritable

markers of feudal and racial aristocracy, respectively.

Tocqueville invokes the parallel between feudal and racial aristocracy once again in the

chapter on honor in the 1840 Democracy. Tocqueville maintains that under feudalism, “the

nobility formed a separate body amid the people, which it dominated from the inaccessible

heights to which it had repaired. In order to maintain this distinctive position, from which it

derived its strength, it not only needed political privileges but also required virtues and vices

tailored to its own use” (DA 726-727). The fact that nobles and commoners had their own caste-

specific codes of honor “stemmed from the very constitution of an aristocratic society” (DA

727). Tocqueville adds that the “same thing can be seen … in all countries that have had an

aristocracy” (DA 727).

This description of feudal aristocracy is unremarkable on its own. However, Tocqueville

concludes his observations with what looks like a non sequitur, but is actually an astonishing

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invocation of the feudal-racial analogy: “So long as a single vestige of aristocracy remains, such

peculiarities can be found: to debauch a colored girl does little harm to the reputation of an

American, but to marry her would dishonor him” (DA 727, our emphasis). For the example to

make sense as an illustration of aristocratic honor, Tocqueville must be assuming that the

“American” here is white, and as such, belongs to a special caste with its own code of honor.

Tocqueville implies that the reputation of someone belonging to a different racial caste would be

harmed by debauching a colored girl and would not be harmed by marrying her. In short,

Tocqueville's description of “the very constitution of an aristocratic society” is only intelligible if

white Americans constitute the nobility in a racial aristocracy.

Feudal Aristocracy, Racial Aristocracy

In this section we show how four key features in Tocqueville’s account of feudal

aristocracy—heritability, membership, privilege, and exclusion—reappear in his account of race

in America. To be clear, we are interested in the structure of Tocqueville’s account of

aristocracy; the historical detail he provides is therefore valuable insofar as it illuminates

aristocracy’s structure. One might say that Tocqueville provides a simplified model—in the

social scientific sense—of aristocracy as a form of social organization. In brief: akin to noble

lineage under feudal aristocracy, under racial aristocracy, “whiteness” is a heritable marker that

indicates one’s membership in a socially advantaged group; this membership then confers

privileges, and excludes non-white persons. In the following, we take up each of the four features

in turn, alternating between feudal and racial aristocracy.

First, as we already mentioned, Tocqueville insists that by the Middle Ages, heritability

had become the nobility’s distinguishing characteristic: “birth alone decided those who would

stand at the head of this body” (AR 80). In Democracy in America, Tocqueville invites his

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readers to look back to the Middle Ages when the “right to command was part of a man’s

inheritance, handed down from generation to generation” (DA 3). In the following, we use

“heritability” to capture both “birth” and “inheritance.”

Just as nobility is inherited through birth under feudal aristocracy, whiteness is inherited

by birth under racial aristocracy. That whiteness is the marker of superior social status under

racial aristocracy is illustrated in Tocqueville’s description of an interaction between a young

white girl, her Black slave, and a Native American woman. The young white girl, “with her

every movement, displayed a sense of superiority that contrasted oddly with her weakness and

her age. She seemed somehow to condescend to her companions even as she received their care”

(DA 370). Despite her youth and physical weakness, the white child is aware of her superiority

over those who are older and physically stronger; her whiteness is a source of power that

overrides the authority that her caretakers have ostensibly been charged with. That she is aware,

at her age, of her superior social status indicates that whiteness is inherited rather than earned.

The scene also shows that the traditional bases of power—namely, age, wisdom, and physical

strength—are superseded by race, and more specifically, by whiteness. The young girl’s

inherited whiteness constitutes the basis of her power; it trumps that of wiser, older, and

physically stronger non-white persons.

But Tocqueville goes one step further in his treatment of the role of heritability under

racial aristocracy. Not only do whites inherit their whiteness as a basis of social superiority, but

Blacks also inherit their Blackness as a basis of social inferiority. As Tocqueville points out,

because Africans arrived in the United States only through the slave trade, “it follows that all

who now reside there are either slaves or freedmen” (DA 394). Blackness is therefore bound up

with the memory of slavery and with notions of social inferiority. In both inheriting and passing

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on dark skin, Blacks inherit and pass on the historical markers of social inferiority. While

Tocqueville’s description of feudal aristocracy emphasizes the nobility’s inheritance of their

superior social status, his description of racial aristocracy emphasizes both whites’ inheritance of

superior social status and Blacks’ inheritance of inferior social status. To the extent, then, that

feudal and racial aristocracies differ, they differ insofar as the markers of heritability are

invisible or visible—and hence, transitory or durable. The implication is that Tocqueville saw

racial aristocracy as more durable than feudal aristocracy, for the marker of heritability under

racial aristocracy was inscribed in an arbitrary but physically visible difference that was

effectively permanent.

An additional layer of complexity in Tocqueville’s views about the relationship between

membership and the markers of heritability can be inferred from his 1832 conversation with

François Guillemin, the French consul in New Orleans. This conversation suggests that “white”

skin is merely a presumptive marker of membership in whiteness and that physical appearance

does not guarantee membership. Membership in whiteness consists in social recognition as

white, whereby existing members determine the relevant heritable markers of membership in

whiteness and adjudicate borderline cases. Furthermore, the “white aristocracy” (Tocqueville’s

term, see Zunz 2010, 280) authorizes its members to change their minds regarding the

qualifications for membership, subject to the requirements of white supremacy. According to

Guillemin, there are women who are “as white as the most beautiful Europeans who … resemble

Europeans in complexion and grace and have received an excellent upbringing,” which suggests

that that they could ‘pass’ as white (Zunz 2010, 279-80). However, “because African blood is

said to flow in their veins” (Zunz 2010, 280; also see Beaumont 1999, 63), they are socially

recognized and therefore categorized as Black. Accordingly, they are forbidden from “marrying

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into the white race, which monopolizes all power and wealth” (Zunz 2010, 280). In short,

although white skin operates as a badge of membership, existing members of the “white

aristocracy” have exclusive authority over the terms of social recognition. The white aristocracy

would use this authority to grant membership in whiteness to a series of immigrant groups (e.g.

Irish, Italians, Jews) in the twentieth century (see Roediger 1991; Ignatiev 1995; Painter 2010).

It bears repeating that in Tocqueville’s account, whiteness—akin to nobility—is socially

constructed. As Omi and Winant accurately put it, “Although the concept of race invokes

seemingly biologically based human characteristics (so-called phenotypes), selection of these

particular human features for purposes of racial signification is always and necessarily a social

and historical process” (Omi & Winant 1994). In both feudal and racial aristocracies, there is

‘mark’ or a ‘sign’ that identifies members of the privileged caste. However, members of the

privileged caste determine what counts as a mark or a sign; this is what it means for nobility and

whiteness to be socially constructed. In a feudal aristocracy, the mark is a noble family name,

while in a racial aristocracy, it is whiteness. Whiteness, like nobility, is political: the boundaries

of whiteness expand and contract according to the requirements of white supremacy.

Membership—which is inextricably bound up with heritability—is the second defining

feature of aristocracy. Birth under special conditions confers a social status defined by

membership in a social group, the identity of which is determined by the status of its members.

Under feudal aristocracy, through the inheritance of a noble title, a noble family name, or the

particle de (see Doyle 2009), legitimate offspring inherited membership in the nobility as a

collectivity. That membership in the nobility is inherited is crucial because its privileges and

immunities are conditional on membership. Membership in the nobility confers noble status, and

by virtue of their status, nobles are socially superior to commoners. Tocqueville indicates that the

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nobility is an exclusive club of lifetime members with the proper pedigree when he cites a report

referring to the nobility as a “fraternity that accepts only those who can prove four quarters of

nobility” (AR 78). Moreover, as Tocqueville insists, cases in which nobility is obtained

improperly—absent noble parentage—are exceptions that actually “debase the nobility” (AR 86).

Just as to inherit a noble family name is to inherit membership in the nobility, to inherit

“white skin” is to inherit membership in whiteness. Under racial aristocracy, white skin is a

presumptive marker of membership in a socially advantaged group and superior social status.

Akin to the ‘fraternity’ of the feudal nobility, there is a fraternity of whites under racial

aristocracy. Tocqueville remarks that in the South, “the entire white race constituted an

aristocratic body headed by a number of privileged individuals” and the “leaders of the American

nobility perpetuated the traditional prejudices of the white race in the body they represented”

(DA 403). In both instances, membership in a socially advantaged caste is awarded by reference

to a socially constructed yet heritable marker. Those who inherit membership in whiteness

constitute a noble caste with respect to non-whites, but are equal to one another and practice

democracy among themselves. Democracy therefore refers to intracaste relations among whites,

while aristocracy refers to intercaste relations between whites and non-whites.

Whiteness as membership is especially salient when whiteness overrides inequalities in

wealth and creates, as Olson (2004, 16) puts it, “cross-class alliances” and identifications.

Tocqueville’s remarks about how democracy alters relations between masters and servants in the

1840 Democracy are particularly instructive in this regard. To see our point, it is important to

recognize that Tocqueville’s discussion concerns relations between white masters and white

servants. In fact, he explicitly excludes the slaveholding South and Black/white master-servant

relations in the North from his analysis. By excluding from consideration cases in which

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African-Americans occupy a subordinate status—either as slaves or servants—Tocqueville’s

description of how democracy alters master-servant relations is racialized. This is unsurprising,

given that for Tocqueville, American democracy is a white democracy—“Indians and Negroes

… are American but not democratic” (DA 365)—but it is worth emphasizing for understanding

whiteness as a form of membership.

According to Tocqueville, white servants “are willing, in return for wages, to submit

temporarily to the will of people like themselves” (DA 675, our emphasis). Because of the nature

of the Northern economy, “[white] men change places constantly,” so a “servant may at any

moment become a master, and he aspires to do so. Hence the servant is not a different man from

the master” (DA 673, our emphasis). Here, Tocqueville implies that whites identify with one

another in a way that cuts across class lines. Because only the “temporary effect of a contract”

places white masters in positions of superiority and white servants in positions of inferiority,

aside from this temporary contract, “they are two citizens, two men” (DA 674). Tocqueville is

suggesting that white masters and white servants are fundamentally equal; moreover, given the

exclusion of African-Americans from his account, we can infer that whiteness constitutes the

basis of equality uniting master and servant. In fact, Tocqueville maintains that there is an

“imaginary equality between them despite the actual inequality of their conditions,” indicating

that whiteness is a fiction, albeit a powerful one in which “master and servant no longer see any

profound dissimilarity between them” (DA 674). Democracy alters master-servant relations so

that equal membership in whiteness overrides class inequality.

Tocqueville provides an additional example of whiteness as membership in his

notebooks, in which John Quincy Adams recounts his dinner with a southern congressman in

1831. The congressman, Adams says, “could not refrain from expressing his surprise at the sight

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of white servants waiting on us. To Mrs. Adams he said, ‘I find the use of white servants

degrading to the human race. If a white comes to change my plate, I’m always tempted to offer

him my place at the table’” (Zunz 2010, 243). The congressman’s remarks imply that whiteness

is a form of membership in which all whites share a special connection, one they do not share

with Blacks. The congressman’s surprise makes clear that race defines who should be

subordinate to whom; it also indicates that he identifies with other whites so thoroughly that he is

“always tempted to offer him my place at the table.” If equality characterizes the relationship of

whites to other whites, then being served by an equal constitutes a violation of whiteness. In

short, membership in whiteness means that every white American is equal to all other white

Americans, and all whites occupy a socially superior position with respect to non-whites.

Whiteness as membership means that poor whites are socially superior to all non-whites.

Tocqueville’s conversation with Mr. Guillemin in 1832, as referenced above, provides

confirmation: “Even a beggar, should he happen to be white, can order a colored man out of his

way and into the mud” (Zunz 2010, 280).

Third, privileges are conferred by virtue of inheriting membership in a socially superior

caste. Under feudal aristocracy, the nobility grants its members privileges, including entry into

certain careers, intermarriage with nobles, military command, exclusive hunting rights (AR 36),

feudal dues (AR 35), immunity from taxation (AR 84), and noble pride. Moreover, because

membership in the nobility is inherited, so are its privileges; certain social privileges belong to

the patrimony of the nobility, passed from one generation to the next. In Tocqueville’s words,

“every privilege, once obtained, adhered to the blood; blood and privilege became inseparable”

(AR 84).

Analogous to how membership in the nobility confers privileges, Tocqueville suggests

18

that membership in whiteness confers privileges as well. In the American context, racial slavery

is the historical basis for white privilege and the subordination of African-Americans. However,

Tocqueville insists that abolishing racial slavery does not eliminate racial privilege or

subordination; in fact, he argues that as laws become more racially progressive, mores become

more racially regressive. Just as greater equality between nobles and commoners with respect to

wealth, power, and education rendered the nobility’s remaining privileges more important and

salient, greater legal equality between whites and Blacks magnified the social privileges of

whites. While Tocqueville fails to recognize the extent to which legal inequalities persisted even

in the North (see, e.g., Keyssar 2000), his point regarding the inverse relationship between laws

and mores remains valuable.

Tocqueville makes clear that even after slavery has been abolished, whiteness confers

privileges, or social advantages, while Blackness confers social disadvantages. Crucially,

Tocqueville insists that these racialized disadvantages are distinct from the legal status of Black

people as free. In states that have abolished slavery, free Blacks cannot vote without fear of

white violence, expect a fair trial for “all [their] judges will be white” (DA 396), carry arms

(Zunz 2010, 256), give evidence against whites in court (Zunz 2010, 272), associate with one

another in public (Zunz 2010, 256), or attend theaters, churches, and schools that whites have

claimed for themselves. As a corollary, whites have the privilege of safely exercising their legal

right to vote, a fair trial (and when trials are unfair, they unfairly advantage whites by excluding

evidence given by Blacks against whites), and access to white-only spaces. In other words, even

as African-Americans gain greater legal equality, this does not translate into social equality; legal

equality is compatible with social inequality, or to put it bluntly, white supremacy. In fact,

according to Tocqueville, legal equality tends to exacerbate social inequality when difference is

19

racialized; while the law had previously subordinated Blacks by enslaving them, once freed,

whites feared a world in which they were not superior. As Tocqueville puts it, “white men in the

North shun Negroes all the more assiduously as the legal separation between them diminishes”

(DA 412). Although Tocqueville claims that whites’ fear of racial equality is “an imaginary

danger” (DA 412), it nonetheless explains why they cling to certain privileges; namely, those

that perpetuate Black subordination. Among others, these privileges include marriage and pride.

We now show that the privileges of marriage and pride are foundational for both feudal and

racial aristocracy.

The privilege of marriage within the nobility is important because it is the mechanism

that binds heritability to membership. As Tocqueville remarks, “if you want to know whether

caste, together with the ideas, habits, and barriers that it invariably creates, has been definitively

eliminated … look to marriage” (AR 81). By ensuring that membership in the nobility remains

restricted to legitimate children of noble parentage, matrimonial exclusivity maintains the

nobility as a caste. Marriage between nobles and commoners undermines caste because it grants

membership in the nobility to individuals lacking noble family names and permits access to its

privileges to a wider range of persons. Indeed, the prohibition on intercaste marriage is required

by the very idea of caste.

The prohibition on intercaste marriage in the ancien régime finds its parallel in the

prohibition on interracial marriage under racial aristocracy. Just as the feudal nobility prohibited

intercaste marriage in order to restrict membership and thereby preserve their superior social

status under feudal aristocracy, Tocqueville observes that white Americans have prohibited

interracial marriage in order to restrict membership in whiteness and preserve their superior

social status under racial aristocracy. Note that the prohibition is not juridical: “marriage between

20

Negroes and Whites is lawful in the North” (DA 395). However, “public opinion would brand

the white man who married a Negress with a mark of infamy, and it would be very difficult to

cite a single instance of such a union” (DA 395).

Tocqueville proceeds to identify two reasons why Southern whites refuse to marry free

Blacks: “fear that he might come to resemble his former slave, the Negro, and fear that he might

sink below the level of his neighbor, the White” (DA 412). These fears are bound up with one

another in the construction and maintenance of white membership and white supremacy. As

Tocqueville indicates, interracial marriage is a threat to white membership; whites fear that

interracial marriage will identify them with Black Americans, thereby marring their membership

in whiteness and resulting in a loss of social standing. Racially ambiguous offspring that cannot

be clearly categorized as “white” are the physical manifestation of these fears; they undermine

the heritability of membership in whiteness and the privileges it confers. The fear of losing

membership in a socially superior caste prevents white Americans from marrying free Blacks in

the North, and Tocqueville predicts that the same will be true in a post-abolition South. Just as

the French nobility rejected intercaste marriage in order to preserve themselves as a caste, white

Americans reject interracial marriage in order to maintain heritability of whiteness as a condition

of membership, privilege, and exclusivity. In short, white Americans reject interracial marriage

in order to preserve white supremacy.

The second foundational privilege characterizing feudal and racial aristocracy is pride.

Now although Tocqueville mocks the sense of pride generated by membership in the nobility, he

does not deny its importance. Quoting an intendant’s briefing to his successor in 1750,

Tocqueville writes, “the nobility of his region is reasonably decent but quite poor, and as proud

as it is poor. … After dining and attending mass together, these nobles return home, some on

21

their Rosinantes, others on foot” (AR 78).3 The intendant illustrates how pride in one’s

membership in an advantaged social group compensates for objective economic disadvantages.

Membership in the nobility provides a “public and psychological wage” (Du Bois [1935] 2007,

573), or a baseline below which one cannot fall. More generally, Tocqueville suggests that when

members of a socially advantaged group become increasingly similar—or even inferior—to

socially subordinate groups in political or economic domains, they will continue to distinguish

themselves and insist on their superiority.

The pride white Americans feel for their whiteness closely mirrors the pride French

nobles feel for their titles and ancestry. In the notes to The Ancien Régime, Tocqueville observes

that the nobility, despite offering “some important concessions … called for ways to preserve the

noble order in all its purity” (AR 238). Their immense concern with status is reflected in their

request that “nobles be granted a distinctive mark that would facilitate identification by outward

appearance” (AR 239, our emphasis). By contrast, the American aristocracy’s “distinctive mark”

was “stamped from the beginning” (Kendi 2016). Moreover, Tocqueville describes pride being

“markedly increased in the [white] American by the individual pride born of democratic liberty.

The white man in the United States is proud of his race and proud of himself” (DA 412). Once

we see—with Tocqueville—that American democracy refers to a white democracy, it is clear

that democratic liberty is fully compatible with white pride; in fact, democratic liberty generates

white pride.

The fourth and final defining feature of aristocracy is exclusion. If being noble means

3A Rosinante is “a worn-out or out-of-condition horse.” Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd

ed. (November 2010), http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/167611.

22

being a member of an advantaged social group whose privileges are inherited by one’s progeny,

being a commoner means being excluded from membership in the nobility and its accompanying

privileges. As Tocqueville puts it: “Anyone who was not born noble was excluded from this

closed and separate class and occupied a position in the state that could be high or low but

always remained subordinate” (AR 80). Note how caste exclusion entails subordination.

Commoners could become rich and politically powerful—as Tocqueville observes, they were

sometimes wealthier and more powerful than nobles—but in the absence of noble birth, they

were excluded from membership in and subordinated to the nobility.

Exclusion is equally important under racial aristocracy. Earlier, we took issue with the

idea of Herrenvolk democracy because the idea of white democracy, on its own, does not specify

the structural relationship between whites and nonwhites—it does not entail subordination. The

idea of racial aristocracy is instructive because the subordination of excluded groups is built into

the very concept of aristocracy as caste. Understanding white supremacy as an aristocracy of

whiteness therefore clarifies how exclusion leads to subordination. If being white means being a

member of a socially advantaged group whose privileges are inherited by one’s children, being

Black means being excluded from membership in whiteness as well as subordination to whites.

The fact that “no amount of money can buy [free Blacks] the right to sit next to his former

master in a theater” (DA 396) indicates that Blacks may become wealthy—as wealthy or

wealthier than whites—but in the absence of membership in whiteness, they remain excluded

and subordinate in a racial aristocracy. In this way, the reproduction of whiteness entails the

reproduction of anti-Blackness. Conceiving of the relationship between white and Black

Americans as a racial aristocracy is therefore analytically productive; the idea of aristocracy

helps unpack the structure and dynamics of racial subordination.

23

Let us now summarize our argument in this section. Tocqueville conceives of aristocracy

in terms of heritability, membership, privilege, and exclusion, and these features account for the

durability of aristocracy. Membership in whiteness and the nobility is durable because whiteness

and nobility cannot be gained or lost; whites and nobles are lifetime members of their respective

castes. Moreover, because membership is heritable and durable, so are privileges for nobles and

whites, as well as exclusion and subordination for Blacks and commoners.

French Revolution vs. Reconstruction

The similarities between feudal and racial aristocracy invite a brief consideration of the

parallels and divergences between the Revolution in France and Reconstruction in the United

States. We claim that each can be interpreted as an existential challenge to aristocracy and that

the divergence in responses to each challenge helps explain why feudal aristocracy in France is

dead while racial aristocracy in the United States endures.

The French Revolution is still subject to considerable controversy, but it is difficult to

deny the importance of the privileges of the nobility. On August 4, 1789, the National Assembly

decreed the abolition of “the feudal system entirely.” It went further on June 19, 1790, decreeing

“that hereditary nobility is forever abolished.” Similarly, the Thirteenth Amendment (1865)

eliminated the legal status of slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) guaranteed “equal

protection of the laws”; and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) declared that the right to vote

“shall not be denied or abridged … on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

In both cases, the legal privileges of the aristocracy (nobles in France, whites in the United

States) were swept away.

The parallels end there, however. In France, despite some cosmetic reversals under

Napoleon, the nobility never truly regained its privileges. In the United States, by contrast, the

24

racial aristocracy eventually regained all of its privileges, with the exception of chattel slavery.

Toward the end of Reconstruction, white Americans across the North and South closed ranks,

thereby consolidating themselves as a white caste within a racial aristocracy.

Our Tocquevillian explanation for the divergence stresses structural differences in the

two cases: the feudal aristocracy comprised a small minority of the population in France whereas

the white aristocracy in the United States constituted a large majority. Once the Revolution

delegitimated the privileges of the aristocracy, the nobility could not appeal to the masses for

support. Feudal aristocracy was unstable because by the eve of the Revolution, its basis was

solely ideological. Although aristocrats were wealthy and powerful, they were not financially or

politically powerful enough to maintain control once the ideology justifying noble privilege was

challenged. By contrast, whites in the United States were wealthy, powerful, and numerous. As a

result, even though the ideological basis of white supremacy was challenged by Radical

Republicanism and the Civil War amendments, that challenge lacked robust majoritarian support

and was eventually brought to heel.

The presence or absence of majoritarian support then led to divergent consequences with

respect to the material foundation of the two aristocracies. For example, whereas some of the

property of aristocrats was confiscated and sold to commoners in France, plantations were not

distributed to freed slaves (Foner 2014, 128). In France, commoners formed a majority that

seized the opportunity created by the Revolution to weaken the aristocracy materially; as a result,

the purchasers of confiscated land in France acquired a vested interest in the Revolution with

which to resist retrenchment (Popkin 2010, 136). Blacks and their radical allies, however,

formed a politically impotent minority in the United States. Had plantations been seized and

transferred to freed slaves and poor whites, a similar coalition might have acquired a vested

25

interest with which to oppose white supremacy. As it happened, however, the planter class was

“able to employ its prestige and experience against Reconstruction” (Foner 2014, 255).

Differences between the Revolution and Reconstruction with respect to class alliances

should be considered alongside those of demography. As Patrice Higgonet (1981, 258) has

argued, in France, “when political circumstances forced it to choose between property and

community, the bourgeoisie chose an entente with the ‘plebs’ in the name of community in

preference to an entente with nobles in the name of property.” Had something similar occured in

the United States, one would have seen an entente between Blacks and poor whites against white

elites. However, because the aristocracy of whiteness was meekly challenged rather than

decapitated, poor whites were eventually lured by the trappings of aristocracy toward an entente

with fellow whites. For the poorest whites, the trappings of aristocracy were primarily

psychological, as described by Du Bois. While the feudal aristocracy also had its psychological

wage, the difference was that in France, the group of potential recipients of the psychological

wage was far too small to support a majority coalition with the bourgeoisie. In the postbellum

United States, in contrast, the psychological wage bought off enough poor whites to maintain the

dominance of white elites.

This comparison between the Revolution and Reconstruction helps clarify the sense in

which our account of racial aristocracy remains structural even as it incorporates psychological

elements. White supremacy qua racial aristocracy is the tyranny of the majority par excellence.

When the structurally dominant caste constitutes a majority it can use democratic procedures to

maintain an aristocratic social structure—a white democracy embedded in a racial aristocracy.

One might say that the capacity to subordinate a minority while espousing democratic ideals is

racial aristocracy’s greatest—and most nefarious—privilege. As a numerical minority, French

26

aristocrats could not do so once the ideological spell was broken. We ourselves wonder what

Tocqueville would have written in Democracy in South Africa, a country in which the

aristocracy was racial, as in the United States, but also a numerical minority, as in France.

Whiteness as Property vs. Whiteness as Aristocracy

We mentioned in the introduction that Cheryl Harris has argued for understanding

whiteness in terms of property. According to Harris, property is a “right” that extends beyond

material goods such as “land and personality” (1993, 1725) to include “all of a person’s legal

rights” (1726), the expectations protected by law (1729), as well as “the exclusive rights of

possession, use, and disposition” (1731). Because the law defines who counts as white and

specifies the benefits received by virtue of being white, Harris argues that whiteness is a “legally

recognized property interest.” It is also an “an aspect of self-identity and of personhood” (1724).

Moreover, property extends beyond tangible goods such as “jobs, entitlements, occupational

licenses, contracts, subsidies,” to include intangible goods “such as intellectual property,

business goodwill, and enhanced earning potential from graduate degrees” (1728).

Characterizing whiteness as property helps us see that whiteness consists in material and

immaterial proprietary advantages possessed by whites but not Blacks. Whiteness is property

because it encapsulates a socially legible form of identity as well as the benefits conferred by

virtue of that identity.

Our issue with Harris’s account is that because property is paradigmatically

individualized, it underemphasizes the collective dimension of whiteness. If whiteness is indeed

property, as Harris contends, we claim that it should be understood as a collective form of

property. By mentioning that “whiteness became an exclusive club whose membership was

closely and grudgingly guarded” (1736), it is possible that Harris means to imply that

27

membership in whiteness is “closely and grudgingly guarded” collectively rather than

individually; however, she does not say so explicitly. Our account makes explicit that property in

whiteness is maintained collectively. As Beaumont (1999, 215, our emphasis) writes in an

appendix to Marie, “each time the enfranchised Negroes evince the intention, directly or

indirectly, of making themselves the equals of whites, the latter at once rise up together to

repress so audacious an attempt.” Of course, systems of property rights are collectively

constructed and maintained, usually to the benefit of some groups and not others. However,

Harris’s claim, as we read it, is that whiteness is property rather than a system of property. Every

property regime depends upon a particular social structure for its maintenance; in this case, that

social structure is racial aristocracy. Membership in whiteness underwrites the proprietary and

material aspects of whiteness.

As a form of collective membership, whiteness therefore generates obligations for

individual members toward other members. Individuals who are socially recognized as white—

even if they do not consciously identify as such—can be called upon to police the boundaries of

whiteness. The epithet “race traitor” makes all too clear that membership in whiteness demands

loyalty; to betray whiteness is to betray other whites.

The first advantage of conceiving of whiteness as aristocracy rather than property, then,

is that aristocracy is straightforwardly collective. The second advantage is that whereas property

is typically alienable, membership in an aristocracy—feudal or racial—is not. This is not because

membership per se is inalienable; membership in voluntary associations, for example, is clearly

alienable. Membership in whiteness is distinct because its basis consists in something

involuntary: social recognition as white. It is virtually impossible for white people to give up

being white because it is not, on some level, fully up to them; and even if they wanted to, few do.

28

Like membership in the nobility, membership in the aristocracy of whiteness is granted at birth;

similarly, exclusion from the aristocracy of whiteness begins “while still in [the] mother’s

womb” (DA 367). Whiteness and Blackness are socially ascribed identities over which

individuals have little control. Moreover, just as membership in whiteness is inalienable, so are

its privileges. The ease of obtaining desirable housing, respectful treatment by law enforcement,

and the feeling that people of one’s own skin color are represented in popular culture cannot be

sold, traded, or abandoned. Under racial aristocracy, the obligations of whiteness—for

maintaining exclusion and supremacy—are inalienable as well.

The Tocquevillian alternative to whiteness as property—whiteness as membership in an

aristocracy of whiteness—avoids the inalienability problem. According to this view, whiteness

consists in membership in a socially superior group, and membership provides exclusive

symbolic and material entitlements. On this point, consider how Du Bois continued his famous

remarks about the “public and psychological wage” compensating white laborers: “They were

given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely

with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools” ([1935]

2007, 573, our emphasis).

In short, while Harris mentions group membership as a feature of whiteness as property,

there are distinct advantages in conceiving of whiteness as a form of membership in a racial

aristocracy. Previous scholars have embraced the notion of whiteness as property because it

illustrates how whiteness generates entitlements. Whiteness as aristocracy goes further, capturing

the ways in which access to the entitlements of whiteness is collectively controlled. One can

claim the privileges of whiteness only as a socially recognized member of the white aristocracy.

Just as a noblemen were entitled to hunt large game by virtue of membership in the feudal

29

aristocracy, white people are socially entitled to e.g., “the appearance of financial reliability”

(McIntosh 2016, 153) by virtue of their membership in the white aristocracy. We conclude that

there are good analytical reasons to conceive of whiteness as a form of aristocracy rather than

property.

Conclusion

Understanding racial aristocracy as a type of aristocracy is valuable because it enables us

to locate the key source of racial subordination in American life: membership in whiteness.

Locating the source of racial subordination in membership in whiteness is significant because it

indicates what eradicating white supremacy requires: the abolition of membership in whiteness

(see Olson 2004). Progress toward racial equality in America should therefore be evaluated

according to the extent to which membership in whiteness is rendered impotent. Attending to

membership in whiteness helps mitigate undue focus on secondary indicators of racial progress

such as wealth or education. If it was possible for commoners in the ancien régime to become

wealthy and educated but remain socially inferior, then the economic and educational

advancement of African-Americans is fully compatible with the maintenance of racial

aristocracy.4 This is not to say that such advancements are unimportant; however, unless they are

4 The value of wealth is one key difference between our and Mills’ account. While Mills

acknowledges that “There are other benefits accruing from the Racial Contract—far greater

political influence, cultural hegemony, the psychic payoff that comes from knowing one is a

member of the Herrenvolk … the bottom line is material advantage” (33). In contrast to Mills’

view that “the economic dimension of the Racial Contract is the most salient” (32), we do not

30

accompanied by the dismantling of whiteness as a heritable source of privilege and exclusion,

white supremacy will live on.

The framework of racial aristocracy also allows us to consider the consequences of

dismantling racial aristocracy in America, particularly in explaining and justifying subjective

feelings of loss among whites. One limitation of contemporary public discourse is that it fails to

conceptualize and justify white loss. The language of democracy, for example, cannot make

sense of recent empirical research indicating that white male Americans who voted for Donald

Trump in 2016 did so because of status anxieties; namely, out of fear that they were losing their

privileged position in the social order (Mutz 2018). The framework of racial aristocracy, on the

other hand, helps us account for whites’ fear of losing superior social status and the actions taken

to preserve it.

Beyond its descriptive value, the framework of racial aristocracy may also be useful in

justifying white loss. It is notable that in the United States, policies promoting inclusion or

diversity—affirmative action, for example—are typically understood as expanding the range of

persons who benefit without acknowledging the losses of those who were formerly privileged.

These losses are, as Hooker (2017) argues, symbolic. That these losses are symbolic does not

render them any less real than if they were material or economic, however. Indeed, when

describing the transition from feudal aristocracy to democracy in France, Tocqueville often

observes that the French nobility understood their privileges as something they would have to

give up, and hence, something to lose, in a new democratic world. Racial aristocracy as a

think that wealth is the defining privilege of white over Black Americans. Closing the racial

wealth gap would not, on its own, abolish the racial aristocracy.

31

framework enables us to see that dismantling racial aristocracy for the sake of racial democracy

will require certain real losses for whites, and that these losses are justifiable because they are

losses of illegitimate privileges.

Moreover, our analysis suggests that, in all likelihood, as long as white people remain a

numerical majority and as long as most white people remain willing members of the aristocracy

of whiteness, racial aristocracy will endure. Our interpretation of Tocqueville suggests that the

path forward will be frustratingly slow. Absent unforeseen changes in the racial attitudes and

practices of white Americans, laws and mores will continue to uphold the privileges of

membership in whiteness. In order to dismantle the racial aristocracy, non-whites must forge a

reliable majority coalition in defiant opposition to white supremacy, aided by immigration and

demographic change. White supremacy will be dismantled politically by taking power rather

than by changing minds.

To be clear, the formation of a reliable coalition is not guaranteed, though it might be

facilitated, by demographic change; as we have shown, the boundaries of whiteness are

malleable, expanding to include Italians and Jews at different historical moments in order to

sustain white supremacy. A non-white numerical majority is neither necessary nor sufficient for

dismantling racial aristocracy; nevertheless it is, in our view, our best hope. For non-whites to

gain majority status, it is imperative that all commoners in America’s racial aristocracy resist the

allure of membership in whiteness (i.e. racial ennoblement) and work alongside those few whites

(the race traitors) who are willing to participate in the destruction of their own racial dominance.

White supremacy would be given new life if our era’s most ‘promising’ candidates for racial

ennoblement—Asian-Americans and Latinx Americans—turn their backs on their partners in the

struggle against white supremacy.

32

In short, America needs to complete the revolution it abandoned in the 1870s. The

revolution against racial aristocracy that began during the Civil War failed because the

aristocracy, although briefly chastened, remained intact. This outcome was not predestined,

however. Had Radical Republicans used their brief hegemony to expropriate the planter class

and distribute seized land to former slaves, things might have turned out quite differently, much

as they did in France.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our anonymous reviewers, the editor of this journal, and participants at

the following workshops and conferences for their feedback and support: the Association for

Political Theory (2017), the American Political Science Association (2017), and the Western

Political Science Association (2017). We would also like to thank the participants of a National

Endowment for the Humanities seminar entitled “Exploring American Democracy with Alexis

de Tocqueville as Guide” for inspiration.

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Biographical Statements

Jennie C. Ikuta is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at The University of Tulsa, Tulsa,

OK 74104. Trevor Latimer received his doctorate in Politics from Princeton University,

Princeton, NJ 08544 and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Georgia and

Dartmouth College.