Gary Gerstle The American Crucible

In Gary Gerstle’s historical monograph called American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century, he attempts to prove that the rooseveltian nation is a contradiction of civic and racial nations. A civic nation seeks to include anyone who shares the same value to the “promise of economic opportunity and political freedom to all citizens, irrespective of their racial, religious, or cultural background” (7). While civic nationalism seeks to include, racial nationalism seeks to exclude those who are not “held together by common blood and skin color and inherited fitness for self-government” (4). The nation of Theodore Roosevelt, rooseveltian, believes in “political and social equality for all irrespective of race, ethnicity, or nationality