Rioting ranked among the defining privileges of antebellum white citizenship

Evidence

Every institution in American life takes on a new hue when examined through a color-sensitive lens. So with the riot: in antebellum America a citizen (or potential citizen) was distinguished by three main privileges: he could sell himself piecemeal; he could vote; and he could riot. … If the Constitution did not formally guarantee to whites the right to engage in mob attacks on black people, that right was safeguarded in the Jacksonian age by the absence of anything like a modern state. The city relied on volunteers to defend public order. When the call came to “Assist the mayor!” citizens were expected to, and did, step forward to apprehend a lawbreaker or stifle disorder. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 472

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The redefinition of citizenship as ‘sell oneself, vote, riot’ — and the white monopoly over the third — is a compressed theoretical claim about what whiteness purchased.
• XREF: connects to: Free northern Blacks faced kidnapping into slavery despite legal prohibitions — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 499; Lynching’s function of stripping citizenship spanned land grabs and riots; Post-Reconstruction lynching reasserted naturalist racial violence against legalist racial order. — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 80 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Lynching’s function of stripping citizenship spanned land grabs and riots #expands (0.82)
• Post-Reconstruction lynching reasserted naturalist racial violence against legalist racial order. #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 80
• Retributive racial violence functioned to reassure whites of racial dominance #expands (0.72) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 633