Well, I just wrapped up the reading for Voting Rights and Representation, and I have a bit fewer comments about Smith.
First of all, I found that he spent far too much time saying what his focus was or would be and none at all actually justifying it. The only justification for the relevance of citizenship laws in explaining why ascriptive ideals also apply is that citizenship was denied to various parts of the population (nonwhites, nonmales, nonhetersoexuals, in Smith’s words) for 2/3 of the US’s history. He then uses this to launch into a discussion on myths and ideologies that actually form America’s ideologies and myths, and what motivates them.
Besides the fact I just stated, Smith doesn’t cover anything justifying his theories until page 30!
Now, onto textual notes I’ve made (I’m not including all of them, since it was so long compared to previous readings I’ve posted on)
On page 11, Smith writes “US citizens, and people who embrace membership in other political communities, can and should see their citizenships as forms of participation in enormously important collective historical enterprises that in fact do transcend their individual lives in time and space.”
I just wanted to start off with this quote, with which I wholeheartedly agree.
Page 13, the beginning of chapter 1: the term naturalization is interesting. For me and my parents, who are naturalized citizens after the amnesty of 1986, we always thought that they were “naturalized” because, whereas I was a citizen by birth, they were naturalized. It never had anything to do with allegiance being a question of natural law but of political fact. This explanation would still have fit in the time of kings and despots that Smith refers to, so I’m not sure if I accept the premise of the historical explanation of the term naturalization.
Page 15 discusses the requirement that Presidents of the United States be born in the United States. First of all, I will state that I think that rule should be repealed, but I feel that I have a very different from that Smith would have. I feel that the provision has outlived its time. It was necessary in the first 50 years of the republic. Why? Look at the passage it’s contained in: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the Untied States at the Time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” Why these requirements? Some would say that it’s to make sure that America doesn’t get a monarchy! Look what happened to Britain. King George is of German origin (as is President Bush, I believe, ironically enough). George I didn’t even speak English, and George III was his grandson. They were still royalty in Germany as well, and the stupidity of this struck British Americans, who when they drafted a Constitution, insured that the son of the President wouldn’t become the President, and that even in the case he did, there were certain restrictions: He could not be less than 35 years old, he could not be born in another country. Now, Smith attributes this to a form of selecting a people based on nonliberal ideology, but I think it’s just decided out of pragmatism. The one argument Smith still has though is that the historical example could be rooted in ascriptive notions of what British identity is (objecting to a German King), but I don’t think this is accurate since the colonists would have been just as upset if the King were ethically British. Lastly, the argument that the provision remains today doesn’t hold water, since that can be chalked up to a combination of inertia, and ignorance of the history. (”Never ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity,” or that’s how I think the quote goes).
Page 35: The first useful point I think Smith makes from an academic point of view (I like the quote from page 11 more for my agreeance with the philosophy of citizenship that it espouses): Citizenship laws are the result of political and ideological compromise and therefore don’t reflect a pure ideology. Therefore, they have to be pulled apart into their constituent ideologies in order to be analyzed. Given the focus of Smith’s work, it’s clear that he will be focusing less on the liberal influence.
Page 39: “But often the most wrenching clashes have turned on ascriptive ideologies and institutions as when…. and when black nationalists today oppose integration.” How is that turning on ascriptive ideologies, or are they only ascriptive when they support White Protestants? Moreover, the phrase “turn on” is ambiguous, as it could mean oppose or it could mean hinge on, two meanings diametrically opposed.
Speaking of the term ascriptive, I don’t understand it. Why on Earth is that the word we’re using? I’m not even sure what it means.
Lastly, the idea of looking at myths is interesting, and I think the best way to determine myth is to look at what schoolchildren are taught. Under this notion, there is quite a bit of racism in our myths insofar as Paul Revere’s plagiarized engraving of the Boston Massacre depicts Crispus Attucks as a white man, and up until the 1950s when children in the South were taught that racism is encouraged by the Bible. Finally, even today, the notion that this is a “Christian country” pervades in schools (public and private) in an inexcusable manner.
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