In spring 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments from President Donald Trump regarding his pursuit to end birthright citizenship. On the surface this decision, if passed, raises questions about the future of American citizenship, including how citizenship will be legally defined and whose citizenship will be revoked. But we also must consider how this pursuit connects to other federal initiatives and the country’s long history of anti-Black racism.
The Border Patrol may be coming to a city near you. ICE is ravaging through our streets. Children are being taken from their parents, and parents are being taken from their families, all in the name of cleaning our country of rapists, criminals and drug-dealing immigrants.
Javian Baker
Yet we have learned that some 170 American citizens have been detained, detainees have been sent to countries that are not their place of origin, and there is no proof that many of these people are rapists, thieves or drug dealers. The connection between immigration enforcement and birthright citizenship cannot be assessed without understanding Black Americans’ struggle for citizenship.
The question of birthright citizenship has a lengthy history in Black America. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent were only three-fifths of a person in the Dred Scott decision, America not only decided they had no rights to citizenship, but they “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
The question of birthright citizenship is fundamentally about who has access to public resources, protection under the law and representation in the courts. The ruling in Dred Scott limited the rights of the nation to its white citizens and protected the material property of enslavers.
During the Reconstruction period, there were numerous examples of white Americans explicitly and implicitly arguing for a white nation. The underlying reason for these practices was to limit the formerly enslaved’s ability to gain an equal footing in society and to exclude them from the body politic. Since chattel enslavement, economic rights have been closely tied to civil and human rights.
“The Civil Rights Movement is better understood as a struggle for the redistribution of public goods.”
We are, unfortunately, mistaken when we reduce the Civil Rights Movement to the Voting Rights Act and desegregation of the early 1960s. In fact, the Civil Rights Movement is better understood as a struggle for the redistribution of public goods. Desegregation was a plea to expand public goods only reserved for white citizens, and voting rights were an act to ensure Black Americans had a voice in deciding who was elected and who had access to public resources.
Almost 60 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. brought to the nation’s attention three evils we have yet to rectify: racism, materialism and militarism. King’s focus on these three evils was a moral issue, a matter of right and wrong and, more importantly, the significance of the dignity and worth of all human beings.
King’s emphasis on these three sins can help us better grasp the issue around birthright citizenship, the goal of immigration enforcement and the exclusivity of the body politic to white citizens and the well-to-do. Issues raised about citizenship justify the exclusion of nonwhite people from the body politic and public resources.
Maintaining a system of suppression and marginalization was necessary to retain the wealth accumulated through enslavement. There were more than 4 million enslaved Africans by 1860, valued at around $2.7 billion, which accounted for 60% of the nation’s wealth. The use of free labor in agriculture, carpentry, textiles, machinery, banking and the stock market built and sustained the nation.
“The question of birthright citizenship is used as a ploy … to secure the material interests of the wealthy.”
The reduction of people of African descent was not only a practice of anti-Black racism, it also justified the material well-being of those benefiting from enslavement. And the same is true today. The question of birthright citizenship is used as a ploy against anyone deemed an illegal immigrant to secure the material interests of the wealthy. The heirs of the $124 trillion Great Wealth transfer are not only inheriting the wealth of their families but also the government subsidies that accompany wealth.
King also was poignant on militarism, which is another tool for the wealthy. From 2020 to 2024, $2.4 trillion dollars of the Pentagon’s funding was granted to wealthy firms, which is more than half the Department of Defense’s total budget. The money was acquired through taxpayer money, but the Defense Department is seldom criticized as a major recipient of government subsidies. Criticism for receiving government funding is usually reserved for scapegoating the Black working class.
Many of the federal initiatives are expenditures for the wealthy. Under the guise of saving the nation money, cuts to SNAP, Medicare and the Department of Education will actually be redistributed to the wealthy through government subsidies like tax cuts.
The upcoming Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship is another tactic of the wealthy that could potentially leave the status of birthright citizenship of all nonwhites in jeopardy. The nation must be reminded that King’s moral vision excluded no one, particularly the moral responsibility we all must have for the dignity and worth of all creation.
Javian Baker is a scholar, writer and advocate for marginalized communities and children. He is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Children’s Development Institute. He writes on African American religion, politics and culture and holds a master’s degree from Vanderbilt University and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University.