Dr. Pailey Challenges Negro Citizenship Clause - As House Debates Liberia’s 178-Year Citizenship Law (The Analyst-Liberia)→

MONROVIA – A 178-year-old constitutional clause restricting citizenship to persons of Negro descent has returned to center stage. Dr. Robtel Neajai Pailey, an LSE scholar, brought a decade of research on the clause to the House of Representatives Tuesday. Her comparative study covers Liberia and Sierra Leone, the only two African nations with such a provision. The central question she posed: is the clause racist, protectionist, neither, or both? The debate is not merely academic. It implicates land ownership, foreign investment, and Liberia’s democratic future. Pailey’s 250-plus interviews across four countries reveal that citizens fear non-black land acquisition above all else. Any reform that sidesteps that anxiety, she warned, is dead on arrival. THE ANALYST reports.