Race, Ethnicity, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective

342 Pages·2012·5.17 MB·English

by  Philip Muehlenbeck

Race,
Ethnicity,
and the
Cold War

R ace,
E thnicity,
and th e
Cold War
A G L O B A L P E R S P E C T I V E
E D I T E D BY
Philip E. Muehlenbeck
Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville
© 2012 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2012
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on
LC control number 2011034147
LC classification number D842.R28 2012
Dewey class number 305.8009'45—dc23
ISBN 978-0-8265-1843-9 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1844-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1845-3 (e-book)
Contents
Preface
Vil
Introduction: The Borders of Race and Nation
IX
Nico Slate
Port I.
Race and the International System
1 Token Diplomacy: The United States, Race, and the Cold War 3
Michael L. Krenn
2 A Wind of Change? White Redoubt and the
Postcolonial Moment in South Africa, 1960-1963 33
Ryan M. Irwin
Part II.
Race, Ethnicity, and Decolonization
3 Race, Labor, and Security in the Panama Canal Zone:
The 1946 Greaves Rape Case, Local 713, and the Isthmian
Cold War Crackdown 63
Michael Donoghue
4 Race, Identity, and Diplomacy in the Papua
Decolonization Struggle, 1949-1962 91
David Webster
5 “For a Better Guinea”:
Winning Hearts and Minds in Portuguese Guinea 118
Luis Nuno Rodrigues
V
vi I Race, Ethnicity, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective
Part III.
Race and the Interplay of
Domestic and International Politics
6 Testing the Limits of Soviet Internationalism:
African Students in the Soviet Union 145
Maxim Matusevich
7 Crimes against Humanity in the Congo: Nazi Legacies
and the German Cold War in Africa 166
Katrina M. Hagen
8 Race and the Cuban Revolution: The Impact of
Cubas Intervention in Angola 200
Henley Adams
Part IV.
Ethnicity and the Interplay of Domestic
and International Politics
9 Ethnic Nationalism in the Cold War Context:
The Cyprus Issue in the Greek and Greek American
Public Debate, 1954-1989 229
Zinovia Lialiouti and Philip E. Muehlenbeck
10 God Bless Reagan and God Help Canada:
The Polish Canadian Action Group and Solidarnosc
in Toronto 260
Eric L. Payseur
11 Ethnic Nationalism and the Collapse of Soviet Communism 283
Mark R. Beissinger
Contributors 303
Index 307
PREFACE
In the past decade scholarship examining the ways in which race and
ethnicity influenced US foreign policy during the Cold War has flour­
ished to the point of establishing its own subgenre.1 Yet what is striking is
the dearth of scholarship in the English language that focuses on the ways
in which race and ethnicity influenced the domestic and foreign policies
of states other than the United States during this time period. This volume
is an initial step toward rectifying this problem. It attempts to show that
race and racism were not the original sin of the United States, but rather
had an impact on the Cold War policies of countries all over the world.
The introduction and first two chapters of this book attempt to provide
some context for the study of race, ethnicity, and the Cold War by providing a
brief overview of the ways in which these variables affected US foreign policy
and how the decolonization of Asia and Africa changed the international dis­
course on race and influenced the global Cold War. The second section uses
case studies across time and geography to demonstrate the impact that race
and ethnicity had on decolonization. The third and fourth sections examine
how the variables of race and ethnicity interconnected the Cold War domestic
and foreign policies of numerous states across the globe.
This volume is not comprehensive, of course, nor could such a collection of
essays ever hope to be so. Unfortunately, several important topics—such as how
diplomats from India and Communist China used their darker skin and colonial
past in an attempt to gain Third World allies in the developing world or how the
“White Australia Policy” (which restricted nonwhite immigration to Australia)
affected that country’s relations with its Asian neighbors—go unexamined here.
However, by broadening the study of race, ethnicity, and the Cold War away from
America s shores and toward the rest of the world, this volume—with its multi­
disciplinary approach and emphasis on multiarchival and multinational research
(primary source research for this project being conducted in thirteen different
countries)—aspires to serve as inspiration for further research on how race and
ethnicity affected the Cold War policies of states other than the United States.
v¡¡¡ I Race, Ethnicity, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective
I would like to thank the following individuals for offering peer review
comments on one or more chapters of this volume: Jan Asmussen, Tim Bor-
stelmann, Daniel Byrne, Michael Conniff, Darren Dochuk, Cary Fraser, Julie
Gilmour, Piero Gleijeses, Will Gray, Julie Hesler, Anna Jaroszynska, Michael
Krenn, David Lewis-Coleman, Argyris Mamarelis, Dominique Marshall,
Filipe de Menses, Jim Meriwether, James E. Miller, Eric Morgan, Lise Namikas,
Meredith Roman, Tim Scarnecchia, Tom Schwartz, Nico Slate, Kirk Tyvela,
and the anonymous readers for Vanderbilt University Press.
I would also like to extend a special thanks to Ismail Ginwala, Elizabeth
Kostendt, and Katherine Meier-Davis, students at George Washington Univer­
sity who assisted me in editing these chapters with an eye toward comprehen­
sion by an advanced undergraduate student. Finally, Eli Bortz, my acquisitions
editor at Vanderbilt University Press, was an integral part of this project from
conception to completion. This volume is a much better final product because
of his involvement.
Note
1. Influential works on how race and ethnicity influenced US foreign policy during
the Cold War include: Carol Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations
and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003); Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and
the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2003); Alexander DeConde, Ethnicity, Race, and
American Foreign Policy (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992); Mary
Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); James Meriwether, Proudly We
Can Be Africans (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Brenda
Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), and as editor, Window
on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against
Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2001).
INTRODUCTION
The Borders of Race and Nation
Nico Slate
In January 1947, seven months before becoming prime minister of indepen­
dent India, Jawaharlal Nehru sent a secret note to the first Indian ambassa­
dors to the United States and China. “In the U.S.A. there is the Negro problem,”
he wrote. “Our sympathies are entirely with the Negroes.” Nehru explained,
however, that representatives of India should “avoid any public expression of
opinion which might prove embarrassing or distasteful to the Government
or people of the country where they serve.” In particular, Nehru stressed that
India “must be friendly” with both the United States and the Soviet Union
without alienating either superpower.1 Maintaining “sympathies” for African
Americans while remaining on good terms with the American government
would prove challenging for Nehru—complicating his efforts to remain non-
aligned in the Cold War. His note highlights the many dilemmas that faced
anticolonial freedom fighters as they became the leaders of postcolonial nation­
states in the midst of an increasingly polarized world. The Cold War height­
ened the difficulty of reconciling the demands of international diplomacy with
older commitments to a transnational politics of racial emancipation.
Nehru s challenge is but one of many routes by which race and ethnicity
entered into Cold War dynamics. Conversely, the Cold War itself influenced the
social, cultural, and political meanings of race and ethnicity throughout much
of the world. Reading this volume demonstrates the diversity of the reciprocal
linkages between race, ethnicity, and the Cold War. Building on conceptions
of the Cold War that go well beyond US-Soviet relations, this volume offers
insight into a range of distinct but often intersecting transnational histories.2
Much of the historical literature on race, ethnicity, and the Cold War
IX
x I Race> Ethnicity, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective
focuses on the American dimensions of what this volume makes clear was a
global story. Scholars of American foreign relations and of transnational Afri­
can American history have offered two distinct but not contradictory narra­
tives linking the Cold War and the struggle for racial justice in the United
States. Some scholars have argued that the Cold War provided a useful context
in which civil rights activists could pressure American politicians to combat
American racism. During the Second World War, advocates of “double vic­
tory” had aimed to link victory at home against racism with victory abroad
against fascism. One facet of the double victory campaign involved publiciz­
ing the opposition to American racism that had developed in regions vital to
the war effort, such as China and India. The racial status quo, advocates of
double victory warned, risked giving credence to the Japanese claim to defend
the nonwhite world. The argument that American racism damaged Ameri­
can foreign relations became even more compelling as decolonization acceler­
ated and as the Soviet Union positioned itself as a bulwark for those oppressed
by imperialism and white supremacy worldwide. Segregation, lynching, and
other brutal facets of American racism offered a propaganda windfall for
the Soviets. At stake, advocates of racial justice warned, was the support of
the recently decolonized countries of Asia and Africa. American politicians
became increasingly concerned about the link between racism and anti-
Americanism, especially at times of crisis, such as the violence that accompa­
nied the attempted integration of the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas,
in 1957. To the degree that such concerns motivated American politicians to
act, it has been argued, the Cold War contributed to the achievements of the
American civil rights movement.3
The impact of the Cold War on the struggle for racial justice was, however,
far from uniformly positive. While the foreign policy implications of Ameri­
can racism troubled some American politicians and provided opportunities
for advocates of racial equality, anti-Communist hysteria hampered many
civil rights organizations. Prominent left-leaning African Americans, such
as W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, found themselves harassed at home
and denied the right to travel abroad. As left-leaning advocates and organiza­
tions were marginalized, the national offices of mainstream civil rights orga­
nizations such as the NAACP hewed ever closer to the political center. Once
vibrant coalitions between civil rights and labor activists weakened as unions
came under attack and themselves purged more militant members.4
Like the domestic consequences of the Cold War for the civil rights
movement, the impact of the Cold War on the significance of race in
American foreign relations was decidedly mixed. While American presidents
and diplomats strove to woo newly" emerging Asian and African nations,
American policy toward the global South remained infused with racial bias