Race and the Cycles of Constitutional Time

Abstract

Guy Charles has pointed out to me that The Cycles of Constitutional Time ["Cycles"]' does not say a lot about race. Although statements about race, slavery, and Jim Crow appear at various points in the narrative, race is not an organizing theme of the book. And yet race - and the use of race as a political strategy - is behind many of my claims in Cycles. Charles's suggestion inspired me to write this Article, and to tell the story of the book by making race the organizing principle.

The Cycles of Constitutional Time argues that we can understand American constitutional development in terms of three kinds of cycles. The first is the rise and fall of regimes featuring dominant political parties. The second is a very long cycle of polarization and depolarization that stretches from the Civil War through the present.4 The third cycle is a series of episodes of constitutional rot and constitutional renewal.

Each of these cycles has deep connections to successive political struggles in the United States over race and racial equality. In each regime, the dominant electoral coalition is shaped by the politics of slavery (in the antebellum period) or race (after the Thirteenth Amendment). In several cases, the dominant coalition breaks down because of disputes about slavery or race. The cycle of polarization is highly correlated with attempts by politicians to make race, and more generally, identity, the central questions that divide the two major political parties. Finally, each period of constitutional rot in the country's history has been accompanied by deep polarization that is connected both to increasing income inequality and to party coalitions divided over issues of race.