Citizenship and the American state: exploring the boundaries of legal racial exclusion

Providing a compelling analysis of race, ethnicity, and culture, this manuscript unpacks the whiteness as citizenship model in the American context. This paper argues that citizenship rights have historically been dispensed to mean 'whiteness'. That is, whiteness has been the definition of the 'real American' where racialized others are kept outside of the full rights and privileges of citizenship. Examining instances where individuals challenged whiteness in court, this manuscript deciphers how whiteness as a social classification excluded certain peoples based on their 'racial fitness' while including others as exemplary members. Likewise, this work also examines how territorial expansion altered notions of whiteness – especially in regard to Mexican Americans. Drawing reference to concepts such as the 'Pocahontas Exception', this work also examines how the whiteness as citizenship model allowed certain individuals with Native American ancestry to identify as 'white' while using the 'one-drop rule' to deem persons with African ancestry as 'black' thereby relegating them to second-class citizenship. As such, this manuscript argues that whiteness is endemic to the American democracy. Its connection is sealed through citizenship not only through the rights it grants but in the standing it confers.