Tocqueville, Du Bois and Myrdal on the Permanence of Racism: Building the Case for Reparations.

Students of political thought traditionally read Tocqueville’s writings as a strong endorsement of the institutions and political culture he encountered during his travels through America. Indeed, Democracy in America is undoubtedly the text most frequently cited by modern scholars seeking to glorify the American democratic experiment. This paper joins a burgeoning literature in the field that seeks to take seriously the very important criticisms he leveled against America’s political institutions and cultural traditions in the text of Democracy in America. The central argument of this paper is that Tocqueville believed America’s long-term potential as the primary vessel for the expansion of equality in the modern world was significantly circumscribed by what he saw in relations between the races. Unlike previous studies that have taken up Tocqueville’s commentary on race relations, this paper argues that the Frenchman’s examination of the status of free blacks represents was his most important contribution to the subject. This is so because it bridges to the concerns about democratic despotism (or majority tyranny) that Tocqueville expresses in the first book of Democracy in America. Paying careful attention to this linkage not only reveals Tocqueville as a critic of America’s democratic political institutions and culture, but it also shows that his insights are far more applicable to modern race relations than those made by the celebrated twentieth century critics Gunnar Myrdal and W.E.B. Du Bois. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]