ABSTRACT
As the previous chapter suggested, nation building is not without its difficulties, uncertainties, and disruptions. In order to understand how the race-based society worked, one must examine the narrative (i.e., the verbal and nonverbal stories, anecdotes, special words, signals and ideas) that supported it. The race-based society was embedded in a discourse of racial superiority and inferiority. The legitimacy of a race-based society required a careful framing and reframing of issues and events. What citizens heard, believed and regarded as a reliable and authoritative source was essential to the maintenance of the society. The narrative had to permeate the language and biases of the meaning of words. As Werner Sollors's Neither Black nor White Yet Both showed, the effort to document the inferiority of blacks was a recurrent theme in American literature. 1 Throughout the development of America, a metanarrative supported its racial policies. A metanarrative is so overwhelming that it blocks out competing mininarratives. In other words, it is an authoritative explanation of why a society is and why it must remain so. It conveys a vision. As such, it is an explanation of the nation state's core values along with explicit citizen political obligations. While regime-supporting narratives are essential, they do not have to be inclusive. Indeed, a regime's explanation of itself can endorse values and norms that exclude some of its citizens (e.g., making being native-born a citizen requirement for high political office). According to linguistic analyst Norman Fairclough, power acts in discourse and behind discourse. It seeks to control and constrain the “contributions of nonpowerful participants.” 2 In other words, it is difficult, if not impossible, to block a power-driven and power-infused public discourse.
