The Idea of Equality in America Emma Rodman a Dissertation Submitted
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The Idea of Equality in America Emma Rodman A dissertation submitted in partial fulfllment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2020 Reading Committee: Jack Turner III, Chair George Lovell Michael McCann Rebecca Thorpe Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Political Science ©Copyright 2020 Emma Rodman ii University of Washington Abstract The Idea of Equality in America Emma Rodman Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Jack Turner III Political Science In American political thought, it is commonly supposed we make political communities more democratic by making them more equal. In this dissertation, I show that this common supposition is a mistake: efforts to enact equality in America in fact frequently undermine democratic inclusion. In three case studies, I show that some registers of equality produce and naturalize hierarchy, and have a sabotaging relationship to democratic participation and inclusion. Invocations and enactments of equality in the eras of the Founding, the antebellum early republic, and post-Reconstruction all reveal a surprising disjoint between equality and democratic inclusion. Using archival sources, published primary sources, and original datasets of text materials, I offer a complex and historically grounded new framework for understanding the tension between democratic inclusion and the American idea of equality. To understand this seeming paradox requires appreciating both the polyvocality of the concept and the relationship between the different forms of equality. While I show that some important conceptions of equality in American political thought are themselves inegalitarian at core, it is more iii often the case that conceptions of equality compromise one another. As different valences of equality have gained prevalence at different moments in American history, seeking equality in one area – political, economic, or social equality, for instance – has not necessarily supported equality in other areas. My reading of the historical record shows, in fact, that expanded equality in one area often comes at the expense of equality in other areas. Read together, the three cases lay out an alternative history of the concept of equality spanning from the late colonial era to the early 20th century. They show how different types of equality discourse emerged and operated as anti-democratic forces. Perhaps most troublingly, when read together the cases show how later iterations of equality discourse are just as prone to instantiating hierarchy and producing new forms of anti-democratic exclusion as the earlier iterations they sought to correct. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter One Equality in the Declaration of Independence 9 Chapter Two The Abolitionist Origins of Social and Moral Equality 76 Chapter Three “Not Equals But Men”: Social Equality and Manhood in the Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois 137 Epilogue 199 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS That I came to write this dissertation at all remains a constant wonder to me. I can only account for it by refecting on the remarkable amount of luck, encouragement, and support I have received along the way. Long before I arrived for graduate studies at the University of Washington, I had the good fortune to be nurtured (and humored) by an exceptional set of educators at Boise High School and Haverford College. Scott Arnold, Sidney Waldman, Josh Dubler, and Susan McWilliams all offered me the right mix of intellectual freedom and support. Sitting in his class on American politics as a freshman at Haverford, Wilson Carey McWilliams impressed me more deeply with his intelligence, wit, and expansive warmth than anyone I had encountered – then, or since. His excessive praise allowed me to convince myself that I might be able to go to graduate school, and the title of my dissertation is an homage to his book, The Idea of Fraternity in America. At UW, I was lucky enough to fnd a true intellectual home for the kind of interdisciplinary and critical work I wanted to do. This is refected in the mix of socio-legal scholars, political theorists, and American politics scholars on my dissertation committee, all of whom have encouraged me to read these subfelds together in fruitful ways. Chip Turner has been a source of unstinting support and good advice, and I feel deeply fortunate to have him as my chair. He believed in the project from the very beginning, and his enthusiasm gave me the confdence to tackle something as large as the idea of equality in America. Michael McCann, George Lovell, and Becca Thorpe all shaped the genesis and development of the project, both in the examples of their own exceptionally smart work and in their generous support and suggestions. I also want to thank the kind and brilliant Chandan Reddy, who served as my graduate school representative, but who has also been an insightful and supportive reader of the project. I am especially grateful to all these members of my committee for their support at the end of the writing process, when I was both trying to complete the dissertation and manage a breast vi cancer diagnosis. Much of the intellectual development of this project also happened for me in seminars, discussions over coffee, and reading groups with other UW faculty and fellow graduate students. For their infuence at various points on my thinking, writing, and reading, I am especially grateful to Michael Blake, Marco Brydolf-Horwitz, Sean Butorac, Larry Cushnie, Christine Di Stefano, Megan Ming Francis, David Lucas, Jamie Mayerfeld, Chelsea Moore, Mark Smith, Seth Trenchard, and John Wilkerson, among others. Invitations to present early work at political theory colloquia at Nuffeld College, Oxford University and Claremont McKenna College were instrumental in developing both my ideas and my faith that others outside UW would be engaged by the project. Early in the process, Heather Pool saved me at a moment of foundering by pointing to the work of Eric Foner on freedom as a way to help me conceptualize what I was doing. I was also greatly aided by early research funding for the project from the Department of Political Science at UW, the Institute for Humane Studies, and a grant under the National Science Foundation. As the project developed, Lisa Gilson's unparalleled close reading and unwavering faith sustained it at many, many crucial moments. As both a brilliant colleague and dear, dear friend, she is unmatched. A dissertation completion fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation gave me a year away from teaching to think and write, without which the project would not be what it is. It also allowed me to hire Allyson McKinney, whose intelligence, care, and good cheer made her a superb research assistant. Friends so close they have become de facto siblings sustained me throughout the whole of the project, as they have through so many other trials. I cannot imagine better people to have in my corner than Aziz Khan, Ryan Eastridge, Keith Weissglass, and Kate Salazar. Finally, I simply could not have made it through the incredibly diffcult last stretch without Phil Yaure. His tireless willingness to talk, think, encourage, and console – and run our home through my writing and illnesses – have made fnishing this dissertation possible. vii My father, William Rodman, passed away long before the genesis of the project, but I feel certain he would have approved of both its stalwart commitment to meaningful democracy and its implicit anti-establishment tenor. A Vietnam draft-dodger, solitary wanderer, and self-taught polymath, I would have liked to be able to talk with him during this project about many things, but particularly about the relationship between isolation and democracy. Though his friends and neighbors have been spared his constant bragging about my doctorate, I have no doubt that my mother, Cathy Rodman, will step up to fll this gap. Ever my most biased cheerleader, I could not ask for a more unconditionally supportive and loving parent. Her long hours of physically demanding work as a grocery checker fnancially supported my development and education, while her unswerving and grandiose belief in my capabilities gave me all kinds of notions which the facts of the world alone would not have supported. She has read each chapter of my dissertation with care, and helped to assure me that this project would have a home in the wide world of intelligent people outside academia who want to understand the possibilities for equality in America. I owe her an unpayable debt, and I dedicate this dissertation to her. viii INTRODUCTION In 1955, twenty fve philosophers, theologians, political scientists, and anthropologists, among others, met at Columbia University to begin a year long project. Their goal was “to defne, and not just vaguely defend, our concept of equality” in America. From the outset, they thought that defning equality – fguring out what it really meant, what its underlying principles were – would be “descriptive of both the achievements and future goals of American democracy.” As the Columbia project developed, the scholars sought a practical formulation of equality which could both inspire faith in American democracy as an ideal and also be used to direct policy and political life in America toward more democratic forms. Motivated explicitly by the troubling ideological appeal of equality under communism, the scholars argued that defning what equality meant in America was linked to the survival and fourishing of American democracy, both at home and abroad.1 In one sense, the Columbia project is merely an historical curiosity: a product of the strange mix of post-war optimism and Cold War ideological concern that animated the 1950s. Our time is different. It is hard to imagine, for instance, a similar intellectual project being covered today with regular and lengthy reports in the New York Times, as the Columbia meetings were.2 Yet, the concern of the Columbia scholars about the meaning of equality in America is an abiding one.