Reimagined Communities

In Chapters 5 and 6 of “The Cold War and the Color Line”, Borstelmann explains the ambiguous and long struggle of the civil rights in America, particularly rights of African American. What I thought the author did a particularly good job of, was to give an overview of the contemporary American history including several major players/factors; the cold war protagonists, American government, civil rights movements’ leaders, civil and other wars, internationally. In this sense, I think Borstelmann and McAlister share a writing style which is very similar in some regards; emphasis of details, arguments and thesis justified through the sum of all factors not only through the description of one single phenomenon.
I found the overview of local politics between 1960s and 90s well explained. However, I found the similarities between African American liberation movements and communism, seeing as separate but allied enemies in the eyes of Lyndon Johnson, an interesting phenomenon to analyze. I think that Johnson’s “military nationalism”(p.209) did not attempted to use Martin Luther King’s historical momentum to reinforce his government power. By this I mean, that the government relied on the fact that communism was already in the 60s enrooted as a strong psychological fear in the minds of Americans. Appealing to Communism was appealing to fear, consequently, proclaiming Dr. King as an allied of communism meant to create a fear and antagonism among white Americans towards Dr. King.
Generally, throughout the chapters that explain the dynamics of the 30 years of political change in America, I found the triangle between the US government, the civil rights and domestic issues movements and international conflicts overseas full of fluctuating dynamics which exact patters could not be defined. By this I mean that while we saw a similarity in the US government approach to racial struggle domestically and abroad during Nixon, Kissinger’s administration, we saw that Johnson, on the other hand had strong foreign policy involvements (Vietnam, Rhodesia) seemed a major cover for not taking adequate care of domestic racial issues. Carter on the other hand, seemed to be the first more progressive President to be against segregation.
Despite the fact the racial predicament kept solving itself in something I would call “two steps forward, one step back” in a never ending, personal interests intertwined battle with the governing administration, the racial issues have come a long way forward.
As the Epilogue explains it, the end of the Cold War was a major factor which impacted the civil rights movement for this one finally became an important and acknowledged issue not related anymore to Communism.
While the author put across that the end of the Cold War meant the emerging of the US as strongest multiracial power in the world, I wonder if rather than the ability to solve the racial hierarchy there was more of a psychological element within the nation that now no matter how racially segregated or not, the US was now the strongest country in the World. Could it be that the psychological effect of being in some sense the strongest nation made the sub-national struggles fade out? Certainly what the text suggests is that the cause of all things can only be a sum of all factors not a single black or white one.

In his discussion of the Kennedy administration and the racial tensions both at home and abroad that accompanied JFK’s presidency, Borstelmann does a great job of highlighting the sticky situations in which the president found himself and with which he had to contend. But was Kennedy really as ambivalent about race relations at home and abroad as the author makes him out to be? On the one hand, JFK’s need to appease both sides of the segregationist debate at home virtually forced a policy of inaction, telling both sides to employ restraint while silently encouraging white dominance in the south. Also, his appointment of George Ball as Undersecretary of State in 1961 did nothing to advance his image as a progressive, northern Democrat. On the other hand, Kennedy appeared to cater on several occasions to Africa’s heads of state, he appointed antiracist Dean Rusk as Secretary of State, and he established the Peace Corps. These are just a few examples from each side of the coin, but Borstelmann uses them and others very effectively to paint us a picture of Kennedy’s dualistic attitude toward race relations in the 1960s.
Regardless of whether we champion JFK as the “first American president who was not a racist”, as did the anti-segregationist James Meredith, or as a racially ambivalent president, it is still necessary question the motives behind Kennedy’s more progressive actions. For example, was the establishment of the Peace Corps a genuine initiative intended to reach out to the racially oppressed people of the Third World? Or was it merely a shallow strategic move to counter Communist professionals (doctors, journalists, etc.) working abroad? While the Peace Corps in and of itself appears to be an entirely philanthropic enterprise, the intentions behind its creation could very well have been politically motivated. There are several examples such as this in the text, and each one provokes the reader to reassess Kennedy’s seeming benevolence in the context of the Cold War.
Borstelmann illustrates very clearly the racial tightrope on which John Kennedy was perched during his years in office. As a narrowly-elected president, he had major political and social gaps to bridge from the beginning, which is not a position that generally fosters progressive change. The Kennedy administration’s ultimate balancing act would be between defeating the Soviet bloc and reshaping international race relations – two goals that Borstelmann shows us were deeply intertwined. In fact, the author even refers to JFK’s ‘cold war against racial inequality’. The ‘two Souths’ (America and Africa) were to be the arenas in which the global community would judge the United States’ racial policies, but segregation in the American south and, to a lesser extent, apartheid in South Africa would prove to be tricky situations to resolve. At home, white southerners like Senator Strom Thurman cleverly tried to equate racial equality with support for communism. Abroad, condemnation of racist European policies often countered US national interests. Furthermore, America’s outward message of racial equality drastically conflicted with domestic policies that perpetuated the Jim Crow south, and such hypocrisy reflected very badly on both the Kennedy administration and the American people. Although John F. Kennedy’s presidential administration of the 1960s was a turning point in many ways for American race relations both at home and abroad, there persisted during that time a variety of global and domestic hindrances to a progressive American perspective on race.