Civic Engagement in the Community

Historical Context

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that more than any other country in the world, the United States of America had effectively applied “principles of civic association” to address societal issues. Tocqueville asserted that the new and growing democratic order was transforming the civic culture of U.S. society. He viewed democracy as the great equalizer that rests on freedom and equality to address individual and community concerns. At the time of his visit (1831–1832), Tocqueville was interested in gaining a better understanding of how U.S. political life operated. He focused on the various forms of civic association and how the new political order was shaping a civil society. Recent interpretations of Tocqueville's original text note that he viewed a civil society as a circle of private enterprise and civic matters controlled by codes of civility. These deeper understandings of democracy and liberty that account for civic associations and public action fail to fully explain how communities came together to develop a robust democratic society.

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam writes that Tocqueville believed that through civic association, people working together publicly and privately for mutual goals reduce the potential for selfish endeavors and contribute to the development of a vibrant civil society. Putnam notes that since the publication of Democracy in America, the United States has played a role in systematic studies of the connections between democracy and civil society. The paradox of this reality is that although the people who lived in the rapidly expanding United States were culturally and racially diverse, the nation's leaders acted to restrict and control diversity. The Naturalization Act of 1790 extended citizenship to immigrants, but restricted the privilege to persons who were White males. American Indians were removed to special territories. Mexicans and Mexican Americans, whose lands were conquered and confiscated, were politically and economically marginalized. Following the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans [Page 386]were restricted and isolated by “Jim Crow” laws in the South and de facto segregation and discrimination across the country. Chinese Americans were denied citizenship and the right to vote, first in California and then everywhere else in the United States with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which made the Chinese “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” This act effectively prohibited most Chinese from immigrating to the United States for many years. Further, landholding restrictions were imposed on Japanese immigrants. By 1924, the Asian Exclusion Act outlawed all but a few Asian immigrants from taking up permanent residence in the United States. The Exclusion Act remained in effect until 1965.

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