Merze Tate at Oxford 1935
Hazel Singer writes:
Hello friends,
Happy Spring! A new blog post is up, check out
Please share with friends. Comments are always welcome.
Warmly,
-Hazel
Thursday, March 30, 2017
A book was published in 2015 called White World Order, Black World Power by Robert Vitalis. Professor
Vitalis accidentally happened upon some information that ultimately
caused him to write this book (find a review of this book in the London
Review of Books here and one in Black Perspectives in AAIHS here). The names W.E.B. duBois, Alain Locke, Ralph Bunche, Rayford Logan, and (to a much lesser extent) Merze Tate
are known as giants in academia and were the foundation for what
Vitalis calls the Howard School (as in a particular school of thought
and
philosophy). What had been lost to history was the extraordinary role
these thinkers/scholars played in the formation of the field of
International Relations and therefore the foundation of US foreign
policy. While they were brushed aside as the field developed, their
research, interests, and publications in race relations and "race
development" were a challenge to their white contemporaries.
The issues of segregation, racial equality, colonialism, imperialism, paternalism, isolationism, "social and cultural Darwinism", and international racial parity all played a role in both domestic and international policy. These academics and thinkers forced their white counterparts (not necessarily successfully) to consider where they stood on various combinations of the above "isms" and Vitalis demonstrates how the white academics and thinkers moved from and through various positions as they were forced to acknowledge (some of) the ideas of the black thinkers. What is very clear is the racist underpinnings of US foreign policy and how this grew out of the history of slavery, colonialism, and the mercantilism of resource development.
Comment by email:
Hello Bill, Thanks, as usual, for being thoughtful and sharing the blog post. Warmly, -Hazel [Hazel Singer]
The issues of segregation, racial equality, colonialism, imperialism, paternalism, isolationism, "social and cultural Darwinism", and international racial parity all played a role in both domestic and international policy. These academics and thinkers forced their white counterparts (not necessarily successfully) to consider where they stood on various combinations of the above "isms" and Vitalis demonstrates how the white academics and thinkers moved from and through various positions as they were forced to acknowledge (some of) the ideas of the black thinkers. What is very clear is the racist underpinnings of US foreign policy and how this grew out of the history of slavery, colonialism, and the mercantilism of resource development.
Comment by email:
Hello Bill, Thanks, as usual, for being thoughtful and sharing the blog post. Warmly, -Hazel [Hazel Singer]
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