“It occurred to me that I really was in someone else’s country and yet, in some necessary way, I was outside of their country […] for the first time I was an alien, I was a sailor—landless and disconnected. And I was sorry that I had never felt this particular loneliness before that I had never felt myself so far outside of someone else’s dream” (Coates 124).

Ta-Nehisi Coates had an enlightening experience on a trip abroad to France, one that revealed a new perspective on race that contrasted with his experience as an African American man in the United States. Almost two centuries earlier, Alexis de Tocqueville left France to study the emerging democratic society in the United States, one that contrasted with the aristocratic societies established in Europe. Both Coates’s and Tocqueville’s journeys were temporary. But, in the context of contemporary immigration, their experiences are not the norm. What happens when the purpose of a person’s trip is to live the American Dream? How would Coates and Tocqueville think about a more permanent immigration experience? What insights do these authors offer to people who leave their home countries to live in a world not meant to be theirs? Do they offer insight into how we might think about the modern-day immigrant experience?

In Between the World and Me, Coates described his experience navigating a twenty-first century society shaped by the social construction of race and discussed how he used education as a powerful tool to combat fear and violence. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville analyzed the American democratic experiment from his perspective as a member of the nineteenth-century French elite, including the settlement of European immigrants, the equality of social conditions and the dangers of tyrannical leadership. Although writing from two centuries apart, both authors present valuable perspectives for us to understand American democracy in the context of immigration. In 2025, the construction of a binary between immigrants and citizens indicates the deterioration of American democracy, where only educated citizens can uphold democratic ideals.

Tocqueville scrutinized the American democratic experiment with the intensity of an educated French aristocrat. He evaluated the implications of democracy beyond a superficial understanding. Tocqueville wrote from a time when monarchies were waning and democracies were emerging, allowing him a unique position to analyze and compare both types of societies. He described the shift away from aristocratic societies as a “democratic revolution” left to its “primitive instincts,” indicating the inevitable development of democratic societies (Tocqueville 16). He also wrote, “[i]t is hardly the happy and the powerful who choose exile” rather those in “poverty, along with wretchedness” (40), explaining why people thought it necessary to leave an aristocratic society. Tocqueville’s observations would go on to remind generations of readers how this country was built.

Tocqueville recognized that the founding generation of Americans were immigrants. He described “[t]he immigrants settling in America at the start of the seventeenth century” (Tocqueville 23), and the “great equality [that] was widely spread among the immigrants who settled upon the shores of New England” (59). His language highlighted the Anglo-American colonists’ identity as immigrants and promoters of equality. Although immigration was seen differently in the mid-nineteenth century, were these not immigrants who traveled abroad in search of a better life? Today, we forget the origins of our country. We easily condemn people brave enough to travel outside of their native country looking for a better life. We fail to remember that the individuals we label as immigrants have the same aspirations as the founders of American democracy.

We can understand the modern hierarchy of American citizenship through Ta-Nehisi Coates’s observations on racial hierarchy. Throughout his life, Coates interrogated himself and the burden he felt from living in a black body. Why did his appearance, something he did not choose for himself, feel so heavy? Why did it create fear for his future and violence in his world? Who decided black was inferior to white? Had it always been this way? In his search for answers, Coates found that “[t]he belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society” was a relatively new idea created by people who “believe[d] that they are white” (Coates 7). In this way, Coates argued race was not a natural truth, but a construct designed by white people to distinguish themselves and secure a position of power over others.

Building on his argument of race as a social construct, Coates emphasized that its true purpose is to uphold systems of power. According to Coates, “the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white” (Coates 42). The belief of whiteness has always required control over others to maintain its meaning and privilege. Domination and exclusion are core beliefs that give society the ability to categorize people and create hierarchies. Following Coates’s self-interrogation, we must ask ourselves, will society continue to follow a hierarchical structure? Will we always live with gaps between worlds?

Tocqueville considered the social hierarchy shaped by a monarchy, where power rested with the crown and the aristocracy. Coates described a social hierarchy built on the construction of race, where black Americans are positioned as inferior to white Americans. In our contemporary society, yet another social hierarchy is being constructed by people in power. This 2025 social hierarchy is shaped by citizenship status: the immigrant/citizen binary has created social categories that, in Coates’ words, are a “world apart” (20).

How did we get to a place where we see “citizen” and “immigrant” at opposite ends of a binary? Why do we use “immigrant” as a label of exclusion, letting it alienate us to the extent that we feel alien to each other with an unreachable gap between worlds? Will we willingly let another social hierarchy deteriorate our democracy?

In his analysis of the American democratic experiment, Tocqueville described how the absence of a social hierarchy set the stage for an equality of social conditions among the Anglo-American colonists. He observed that in the nascent nation “the classes are muddled […] education is expanding and men’s intelligence tends towards equality; the condition of society is becoming democratic” (Tocqueville 18). The absence of class systems in early America allowed for all individuals to be born without predisposed titles. An ideal democratic society provided everyone with an equal opportunity to own property and access education. Realistically, as time went on, not every generation of Americans would enjoy the same economic or social egalitarianism. However, we must remember and strive to meet the underlying principle that every American should have equal opportunity, as it is fundamental to the character of American democracy.

Almost two centuries later, Coates argued that despite the absence of an aristocratic hierarchy, the social conditions of American democracy were in fact not equal. For Coates, “[t]o be educated in […] Baltimore mostly meant always packing an extra number 2 pencil and working quietly” and it seemed like “[t]he world had no time for the childhoods of black boys and girls” (Coates 25).  An unequal society starts from the way it educates its citizens. Although aristocracy as a formal system was gone, Coates’s experience with public education reveals the inequalities present in American society.

From Tocqueville to Coates, both authors believe an education is powerful. Tocqueville argued that educated citizens protect democracy from deteriorating into tyranny or falling to despotic leadership. Similarly, Coates used self-education to resist the limitations he faced due to the racial hierarchy of modern American society.

Although he wrote from a mid-nineteenth century aristocratic mindset, Tocqueville emphasized the value of education. According to Tocqueville, “[a] political, industrial, commercial, or even scientific and literary association equals an educated and powerful citizen who cannot be persuaded at will nor suppressed in some shadowy corner and who saves the liberties of all by defending its own rights against the demands of the government” (Tocqueville 811). While education naturally contributes to the development of intellect, Tocqueville extended its importance to a political context. He argued that educated citizens are essential for a stable democracy. Tocqueville observed that educated men created a government outside the once-typical hierarchical structure that was part of an aristocracy. More importantly, an educated citizen would be aware of the signs of a government shift away from democratic ideals. In Tocqueville’s view, democracy cannot survive without active and informed participation. Without educated citizens, complacency and ignorance allow for the possibility of deteriorating democratic ideals and the rise of unchecked powers.

While Tocqueville focused on education as a safeguard against tyranny, Coates demonstrated how self-education became a tool in a hierarchical society. He described the “singular gift of study, to question what I see, then to question what I see after that, because the questions matter as much, perhaps more than, the answers” (Coates 117). For Coates, self-study was not merely an academic hobby, it is a way to make sense of a society that has systemically excluded him. He did not feel that he lived with true independence, but his education was a necessary tool to understand how history shaped his reality and limited his freedom. In this way, Coates exhibits the ideal educated citizen Tocqueville wrote about; one who is critically engaged and has a civic conscience.

In today’s society where immigration-based hierarchies define who is considered a full citizen, we apply the insights offered by Tocqueville and Coates. Based on Tocqueville’s nineteenth century observations, we had the potential to continue striving for the ideal democratic society founded on equality of social conditions. Instead, as Coates illustrates, twenty-first century American society replicated hierarchical structures that have undermined the country’s democratic potential. We might not be able to pinpoint the exact moment where our democracy was put at risk or see the extent to which it will deteriorate, but we can use the texts of educated people. Tocqueville and Coates wrote from two completely different times and with distinct intentions, yet they both speak to how we can address American democracy in 2025: we can use education as a form of resistance and a tool to pursue democratic ideals. In rejecting the immigrant/citizen binary, we must remember that we are a country of immigrants. We were built by immigrants and continue to exist due to the labor and effort of all who strive for the American Dream.

Works Cited

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. 2015. One World, 2025.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Gerald E. Bevan, Penguin Books, 2003.