A racist view of political legitimacy has persisted since America’s founding

Evidence

None of this was an innovation of the Trump era. Obama’s election reignited a centuries-old fight over democratic legitimacy—about who can claim the country as their own and who has the right to act as a citizen. Ever since our founding, an exclusive, hierarchical, and racist view of political legitimacy has been a persistent strain in our politics. Adherents of this view—who seek to narrow the scope of participation and wield power through minority rule—are the direct heirs to a tradition of American reactionary belief with its own peculiar history, not just in the ideological battles of the founding but in the institution that shaped and defined the early republic as much as any other. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 625

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the reframing claim (racial exclusivity is foundational, not a deviation) from any claim that Trump invented it.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core case study: this is the reframing thesis in its ‘continuity not deviation’ form, linking to the Wilentz letter dispute over whether slavery is foundational or peripheral. — connects to: Founding-era unity rhetoric was a conscious misrepresentation of American diversity — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 146