ABSTRACT
There is no more central institution to democracy than that of citizenship. A government of the people, by the people, for the people is meaningless without this mechanism that empowers and enables human beings to assume the charge, responsibility, and right to rule themselves as a community. Without citizens, there is no democracy. But just as democracy has been the accomplishment of social and political movements, citizenship has also been redefined by some of these same movements. In fact, many of the sociopolitical movements that through their struggles brought about greater democracy in American society were social movements that sought redefinitions of American citizenship. American citizenship has evolved by having been made more inclusive and more expansive. In other words, citizenship has been made to apply to and subsume members of the community who were up to that point not recognized as civic partners and equals. Or, citizenship has been transformed, making it more expansive, and thus more inclusive and welcoming to persons who were not members of the civic community but participated, or could participate, in the national project in some fashion. In short, just as American democracy has a history, American citizenship also has a history. At times their histories have run parallel, but at other times they have been at odds. It is known, for instance, that while American democracy was born proclaiming the equality of all human beings, its citizenship was inaugurated with the exclusion not only of African slaves and women, but also of white males who owned no property. American citizenship, which was supposed to ensure the integrity of American democracy, has been racialized and sexualized since its inception, thus contradicting the fundamental tenant of American democracy that all human beings are born equal. This racialization and sexualization became so entrenched in American democratic thought and practice that it was only until the first half of the twentieth century that American citizenship began to be commensurate with the universal, liberal, and civic ideals proclaimed in the American Constitution and its amendments. In many ways one can even say that American democracy has been realized through the acquisition of citizenship by groups, peoples, races, and ethnicities that had previously been seen as both not worthy and not capable of participating in the self-legislation of the American body politic. American democracy has been the result of the struggles for citizenship by purported unworthy or problematic selves and subjects.
