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10 Finding Constitutional Redemption through Hamilton
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Published:October 2020
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Abstract
This chapter explores how an ambiguity about the race of its characters runs through Lin Manuel Miranda's Hamilton: An American Musical. Hamilton's audience sees that people of color play the revolutionaries, and the same audience knows that those same historical figures were white. One way to think about these two facts is to understand Hamilton as casting people of color in white roles. Another way to think about Hamilton's diverse cast is to understand the musical as presenting an alternate reality in which Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and their associates were people of color. Commentators differ about whether people of color identifying with the Founders is positive or negative. Rather than understanding the story of America as a story of progress, decline, futility, or stasis, Jack Balkin argues in his book Constitutional Redemption that America ought to be understood through the lens of redemption, as “a story about the eventual fulfillment of promises made long ago” — specifically, the promises of liberty and equality made in the Declaration of Independence, repeated in the Gettysburg Address, and imperfectly implemented in the Constitution and its amendments.
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