ABSTRACT
The importance of the color line is suggested by the fact that, for most of American history, whiteness has been more valuable than citizenship. Despite twentieth century civil rights reforms, the color line remains linked with significant inequities. The US government interned more than a hundred thousand Japanese Americans in concentration camps, most of whom were US citizens. Some of them reflect persisting discrimination, but others are the entrenched legacy of past discriminatory treatment. The original and primary pattern of America’s colonizing has been settler colonialism, which involves displacement of the indigenous population by outsiders. American colonizing that is of significant relevance to the color line has also taken other forms. American relations with other nations of the Americas that remained nominally independent of the US have approximated colonization. Millions of children and immigrants joined a society embodying a rigid color line, which before long seemed part of the natural order.
