Paine and Race: Ideologies of Racial Liberalism and Settler Colonialism in the Founding of the United States

abstract: Thomas Paine has long been heralded as a voice of universal egalitarianism. That representation proceeds from wishful misattributions of antislavery writings and concerted misreadings of the existing archive that continue to this day. Building on insights from critical race theory, Black Marxism, settler colonial theory, and Indigenous studies, this article reveals a consistent pattern of white supremacy in Paine’s published writings. It argues that the emerging Republic defined itself as foundationally white against Black and Indigenous others, and that Thomas Paine was instrumental in this process. The article begins by delineating the systematic scholarly misrepresentation of Paine on the subject of race. It then provides a brief overview of his career in a transatlantic eighteenth-century frame, and proceeds to a radically new reading of Common Sense . It culminates with a reinterpretation of the racial ideology of Paine’s archive. A coda considers the significance of this argument in the current conjuncture.