The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena

• Publisher:   Harvard University Press
• Number Of Pages:   384
• Publication Date:   2001-01-10
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   067400597X
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780674005976

After World War II the United States faced two preeminent challenges: how to administer its responsibilities abroad as the world's strongest power, and how to manage the rising movement at home for racial justice and civil rights. The effort to contain the growing influence of the Soviet Union resulted in the Cold War, a conflict that emphasized the American commitment to freedom. The absence of that freedom for nonwhite American citizens confronted the nation's leaders with an embarrassing contradiction. Racial discrimination after 1945 was a foreign as well as a domestic problem. World War II opened the door to both the U.S. civil rights movement and the struggle of Asians and Africans abroad for independence from colonial rule. America's closest allies against the Soviet Union, however, were colonial powers whose interests had to be balanced against those of the emerging independent Third World in a multiracial, anticommunist alliance. At the same time, U.S. racial reform was essential to preserve the domestic consensus needed to sustain the Cold War struggle. The Cold War and the Color Line is the first comprehensive examination of how the Cold War intersected with the final destruction of global white supremacy. Thomas Borstelmann pays close attention to the two Souths--Southern Africa and the American South--as the primary sites of white authority's last stand. He reveals America's efforts to contain the racial polarization that threatened to unravel the anticommunist western alliance. In so doing, he recasts the history of American race relations in its true international context, one that is meaningful and relevant for our own era of globalization.

The Cold War and the Color Line is a must read for anyone who is interested in understanding democracy and the challenges of making it real. Another great read to accompany this is Eyes Off the Prize. Were high school students allowed to read this sort of text not only would they find history more interesting, but they'd likely become more engaged as citizens.

"The Cold War and the Color Line" by Thomas Borstlemann was a textbook in one of my stepson's history classes at Southeastern Louisiana University. He thought I might enjoy it and I did. The focus is on the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson during the U.S. civil rights era. Borstlemann describes how America's practice of racial segregation (and support of European colonial powers, and the segregationist regime in South Africa) hampered it in the minds of third world countries as these mostly non-white countries chose between capitalist and democratic systems and the Communist model. An interesting observation of Bortlesmann's is that the presidents that did the most in support of civil rights for racial minorities were those who grew up in the South--Truman (Missouri) desegregated the military; Johnson (Texas) got the Voting Rights Act passed, and both Carter (Georgia) and Clinton (Arkansas) took a strong interest in the rights of both African-Americans and blacks in Africa. On the other hand, the presidents raised outside the South (Eisenhower in Kansas, Kennedy in Massachusetts, Nixon in California, Reagan in Illinois and Bush in Connecticut) viewed racial equality as a secondary issue at best, or in some cases even worked to reverse past gains. As a "50-something", I lived through most of this era (albeit in central New York state, not the deep South), and found Borstlemann's work to be very illuminating. Since I've lived in the south (South Carolina, Virginia and Louisiana) for the last 30 years, I appreciated the book from the "new South" perspective as well. Highly recommended to students of history and race relations.

In The Cold War and the Color Line, Borstelmann evaluates how US domestic and international race relations shaped the Cold War and how the Cold war shaped the domestic and international race relations. From my studies, and I imagine the studies of the majority of average Americans, the civil rights movement, de-colonization, and the Cold War happened in individual vacuums - separate from each other, only linked by common abstract dates. Borstelmann shows these happenings are all highly connected - at times acting as catalysts for another. "There was no greater weakness for the United States in waging the Cold War than inequality and discrimination," Borstelmann asserts. The United States had to confront racial segregation and discrimination within its own borders as well as regimes around the world to develop a multiracial global coalition against Soviet Communism. The US had to inspire the newly de-colonized non-white nations to sway towards the "free world." But how was the US to inspire a world, the majority non-white when Jim Crow was still firmly implanted in American society? Borstelmann follows the developments of these issues through the Presidencies that were tempered by the Cold War. I found the book a pleasant surprise. The book went beyond what I expected - being the race situations during the Cold War. Borstelmann took his work beyond that to a living political environment - domestic and international as one - where de-colonization, the Cold war environment, and the Civil Rights movement were taken out of their individual vacuums and thrown into a perspective that understands the complexities of that no so long ago reality. I am positive that anyone interested in race relations will embrace this book. Also I believe for a complete perspective of the Cold War or for any interested in the momentous events that transpired in the 20th century, this well researched book will make an excellent read.

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