What important changes led to the post-WWII “culture of exclusion” in terms of race, class, and gender?
For long, the United States championed for civil rights, but during World War II, the fight against fascism highlighted contradictions between America’s ideals to democracy and equality and its treatment of racial minorities. In mobilizing for the potential entry of the US into World War II, a significant number of whites were recruited into industries in the spring of 1941, prompting threats of mass marching in Washing from the leaders of Black labor, unless blacks were accorded equally opportunities for the jobs. According the Library of Congress (068.00.00), the threats forced the hand of the president at the time, Franklin Roosevelt, who in an effort to avoid possible race riots and international embarrassment, issued an executive order banning any form of discrimination in the defense industries. It culminated to the establishment of the Committee of Fair Employment Practices, whose objective was to investigate any complaints of discrimination and take appropriate measures to redress to genuine grievances, but little was achieved to suppress the effects of the infamous Jim Crow’s Laws. The post-World War II US faced a different predicament filled with opportunities and challenges. The Library of Congress (068.00.00) posits that the American society became affluent following an unprecedented economic growth. The reality of economic prosperity combined with exposure to different conditions around the world saw societal members become wealthy and women activists emerge to champion for women inclusivity. However, the American Dream was not to be shared by all because the upward mobility was more pronounced among the whites, while African Americans and Hispano Americans were excluded despite the evident aggressiveness in their fight for freedom and civil rights espoused in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence in the post war era.
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The culture of exclusion in the US dates back to 1790s when the Naturalization Act of 1790, prohibiting any non-whites from acquiring the US citizenship, was passed by Congress, which gave way discriminatory practices well before World Wars. The negative implications of the 1790 Act were soon evident in the 1800s Yellow Peril, a racist-color metaphor that epitomized the xenophobic concept of colonialism that proclaimed people of East Asia to be a danger to the Western World. Such was the case when immigrant populations increased in the US prior to World Wars, culminating in the formation of groups such as anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese informed by perceptions of immigrants as an unwelcome economic competition and a threat to “racial purity” of the whites. The objective was to limit access of immigrants to equal legal and economic rights as the whites. The outcome was the Naturalization Act of 1870, which revised the 1790 Act under which only white immigrants could become US citizens, to extend the privilege to African-Americans. However, these acts designated Asians as aliens, barring them from public participation including voting, serving in juries, and testifying against whites. According to Yang (2004), the Yellow Peril as a form of xenophobia represented the whites’ fear of the colored people, and intended to instill their perceived superiority through discriminatory laws.
The culture of exclusion is captured by a number of media sources and outlets and historical documentations, where gender, race and class are used as paradigms for discrimination. The Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1870 in the US corroborate the argument by Melvin Oliver, the sociologist in the documentary The House We Live In that, “Race in itself means nothing … the markers of race, skin color, hair texture, … mean nothing unless they are given social meaning and unless there's public policy and private actions that act upon those kinds of characteristics” (1:00:51). Despite the argument that race as a social and a cultural construct is invisible to the eye and is not biologically real, it cannot discredit that fact that classification as Asian, Latino, or Black does not entitle one to the same privileges as whites in the society. The hierarchy of races has been predominant for a very long time.
Movement to the New Left is a classic example of the revolution against cultural exclusion that was instilled in the American and global societies in the wake of economic prosperities following the World War. In one of the commentaries to the new left, Glazer observed, “for the last few years, I have looked with growing skepticism the analyses and actions of the radical left in America”. Being known for their second thoughts, it would be easy weigh down the implications of such a statement. It is evident that Glazer perceived the radical left, who were the people who believed in something being fundamentally wrong and immedicable in the society, and could primarily be righted through mobilization of the disadvantaged to push for radical change. In hindsight, one can argue that Glazer did not foresee the New Left as a movement that would change the course of history, and the presence of a significant number of commentators who rushed to specious judgments of politics of the era, so the 1960s become a contested area as many failed to grasp what exactly took place.
Why was Cold War liberalism able to satisfy some demands for inclusion and not others?
Cold War was the most challenging issue the US and its allies had to deal with because it eroded optimism and confidence that had built following success over Germany and Japan in World War II. Cold War was a representation of a new international tension between the US and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies, spreading fears of Communist subversion and spawning many tensions between the two superpowers that gripped the US politics for over 20 years. This state of affairs led to Cold War Liberalism, which refers to activism post World War II by liberal politicians and leaders of labor unions in support of democracy and equality. The Library of Congress posits that Cold War liberalism was an outcome of the broad political consensus in relation to Cold War and anti-communism, which was shattered by the American military involvement in the Vietnam War because it signified a contrary belief to what was the main discourse at the time. The onset of Cold War brought to focus the US position in relation to segregation and inequality, which culminated in federal and judicial action as evidenced by the executive order by the then president, Harry Truman, to abolish any form of racial discrimination in the military. According to reports by the Library of Congress, the liberals won many court battles and eventually mobilized mass lobbying to push Congress to pass the civil rights legislation. These developments during Cold War liberalism saw America embark on a “Journey of Reconciliation”, but full benefits were not realized because Cold War liberalism faced strong opposition from conservatives, who fought vehemently to maintain the status quo.
The Cold War served to diminish the culture of exclusion following inclusive participation during World War II. According to McEuen (2016), the Second World War did not only transform the US for women, but also did give women the opportunity to change their nation. One can argue that the infamous “Women’s movements” were not borne directly from championing of women rights and equality, but rather as a consequence of need. As posited by the Library of Congress (068.00.00), the US adopted a non-discriminatory approach in the recruitment of people into the defense industries in preparation for eminent involvement in World War II. Besides racial minorities, other notable beneficiaries were women. McEuen (2016) posited that hundreds of thousands of women were recruited as volunteer and wage workers into different sectors including in positions where they were previously discriminated. While a significant number of women moved from their hometowns to take advantage of the opportunities developing from the war, many more remained at home, but their roles were not restricted to household chores; they participated in initiatives aimed at conserving resources, raising funds, building morale, filling jobs left by men recruited into military. It was an unmatched moment of women revolution and empowerment that set precedent for the “women’s movements”; a discourse that was ambiguous during Cold War liberalism.
The effects of Cold War on civil rights and vice versa have been documented, and there is a consensus among historians that Cold War was crucial in the bloom of civil rights movements in the US. Consequently, the US was under immense international pressure and criticism to stop the movements, which were an outcome of inequality and the widespread McCarthyism, where baseless accusations were brought against civil rights activists by conservatives who were bent on promoting communism propagated by the USSR. The political implications of Cold War on American politics were evidenced during the reigns of Richard Nixon, whose passion for foreign affairs at the expense of domestic affairs attracted despise and hate from the blacks who voted against Nixon’s rule. This gave birth to the “Southern Strategy”, which according to Branch (1999), refers to political attempts by the Republican Party to gain political mileage “by appealing to racism against the blacks harbored by many white southerners”.
While this was a crucial strategy for winning political support, it brought to the fore the power that the blacks wielded, and may have be a contributing factor to conservatives continued fight against Cold War liberalism, which can be argued to be an outcome of deeply entrenched fear of the blacks revolution. However, it worth noting that the stark difference between civil rights movements such as those epitomized in “movement to the new left”, is that while civil rights movements fought outrightly for equality in all spheres, black power was a political progeny, borne of the need to create regional political supremacy among the democrats and republicans in the US. Nevertheless, the outcome in the form of re-alignment of political parties by bringing the liberal and conservatives into their respective political parties instead of creating a third party, the labor party that would have added to the division.
In what ways did conservatism change from the 1950s to the 1980s?
The shift in conservatism over time can be based on Buckley (1999) observation that ideas rule the world and not intellectuality, and this is evident in the Southern Strategy, which was a battle of ideologies as each faction sought to outdo the other. The paradigm shift in conservatism is a contradicting one. Where conservative prevailed before, it is them who now face the wrath of liberals. According to Buckley (1999), conservatives operate as non-licensed non-conformists in a liberal world where freedom prevails over oppression, but the irony is that the liberals, in their oppression of conservatives, practice the very exclusion culture that saw the emergence of civil rights activism and movements demanding for equality.
Cold War liberalism is often looked at from the nationalistic perspective defined by the tense relationships between world superpowers and its allies, but the fact that its effects trickled and took root in the societal fabric cannot be ignored. Women movements can be argued to represent another paradigm of cold war because it changed the position of women in the society. The Library of Congress and McEuen (2016) posit that following involvement in war, individual and collective experiences did not allow women to step back into the shoes they wore before as they felt they could offer much more and contribute equally as men. However, the dreams were thwarted by the primary message that was both a promise and an order that women’s involvement would be needed “only for the duration of the war”, implying a simultaneous end in war and opportunities it created. Cold War liberalism was faced with an unsurmountable challenge in dominant gender roles intended to maintain social order amidst fast-paced changes in gender roles. “Race, class, sexuality, age, religion, education, and region of birth …combined to limit opportunities for some women while expanding them for others” (McEuen, 2016), and women who tried to challenge these norms faced harsh criticism from the conservatives.
Glazer (1998) in the book We Are All Multicultural Now posited that the society has undergone a paradigm shift; where initially it was engaged in assimilation, presented as the melting pot, the society is engaged in pursuance of multicultural. One can argue that this new discourse that seeks to deconstruct cultural exclusion is an outcome of efforts of several movements that occurred post World War II, which according to the Library of Congress, were informed by developments and experiences following the war. The involvement of hundreds of thousands of African-Americans including women as laborers in defense plants and actual war fields played a significant role because it empowered the minority groups in the society by enabling them to recognize that they can contribute equally to the American Dream. According to Glazer (1998), multiculturalism was an outcome of the failure to by the mainstream society to assimilate African-Americans; and the anger and frustration, coupled with knowledge of their capabilities following the war, gave black Americans the impetus to reject long standing traditions that discriminated them.
There were a number of shifts in discourses of conservatism from both sides of the divide following the long struggle against racial exclusion. One such shift was in the definition of race, where some factions tried to offer a more acceptable perception to racism by observing that race referred to classifications rather than social and political injustices. However, this did not prevent further developments in the movements, notably, the hostility in the civil rights movement when some actors abandoned the non-violence approach and became separatists. The new approach to struggle for racial inclusion had a strong foundation in the ideology of Malcom X, who advocated for self-defense in the face of attack. The radical shift in the approach was informed by the perceived ineffective of the initial non-violence strategies as the white conservatives demonstrated unwillingness to cease racial segregation and discrimination. These struggles culminated to the formation of the Black Panther Party, which brought to focus the threat of Black Power to whites’ dominance and supremacy, resulting to change in perception of social and labor movement from that of instruments for advocacy of equality to that of instruments for propagating the pathology of black people.
4. What enduring legacies emerged from conflicts in the 1970s concerning race, class, and gender?
The conflicts in relation to race class, and gender are founded on the supposed link to forms of governance such as capitalism. One can argue that the campaigns preceding the just concluded US presidential elections epitomized everyone’s concerns of the inextricable link between racism and capitalism following utterances by Donald Trump in reference to minority groups. Fear of a repeat of historical injustices were evident among significant population segment because such utterances brought sharp focus on the potential re-emergence of conservatives who for long have opposed the liberal discourse of the contemporary traditional and modern societies. In Boggs and Ofari (1970) book Racism and the Class Struggle , the relationship between discrimination according to race, class, and gender, and capitalism is established.
The conflicts of the 1970s led to legacies that prevail in the modern context in the form of corporations run through capitalism. The Cold War liberalism and other civil rights movements impacted immensely on the US corporations especially in relation to labor laws due to demands for equal treatment and benefits by the African-Americans. One can argue that the capitalistic approach adopted by corporations where millions of individuals make decisions that are not coordinated, was an outcome of the conflicts between factions such as liberals and conservatives. The labor laws implied that corporations were not spared from political mechanizations, and were trapped between the conflicting power models of capitalism and community development. Black people power was central to conflicts concerning race, gender, and class because it informed criticism of the failure of capitalistic corporations to address economic injustices among minority groups. For instance, attempts by business lobbyists to pray away the power of organized labor is evidence of conservatives’ attempts at maintaining the status quo where corporations dictate proceedings.
According to Ashbolt (2005), 1960s and 1970s represented an era of turbulence in the US politics defined by mass social protests and labor movements that are encapsulated in the New Left Movements . The radical politics of the era continue to confound many, especially their role in influencing corporate behavior in the US. Manheim (2011) posits that the Labor movements in the US reached its greatest market share of the American Workforce and its peak of influence during this era (p. 12). However, the influence of labor movements for an unexplained reason began to wane in the 1970s, prompting the movements more insightful leaders to look for organizing frameworks that could reverse the trend. Collaboration among members of the former political new left movements led to an approach termed by Manheim (2011) as “power structure analysis”, whose underlying principle was that “the way to force a change in the behavior of an opponent was to is to find ways to leverage against that opponent the interests of its own friends and allies, so that they become, in effect, the agents of the campaign” (p. 13). Whether this was the catalyst to the evident power shift, with corporations bent on suppressing the gains initially made by labor movements, or not, is arguable. Nevertheless, Manheim (2011) observes that Labor Unions soon embarked on experimenting the approach by carrying out a prototypical campaign against a clothing manufacturer, Farah Manufacturing, in what became termed as “corporate campaign” in the labor toolkit in 1972.
One can argue that the above developments represented the biggest defeat for organized labor because they shifted power to corporations and business lobbyists who wanted to pry away from organized labor. According to Ashbolt (2005), the developments gave strength to the neoliberal and neo-conservative agenda that was substantially dedicated towards burying the radical sixties. The era witnessed substantial attacks on the gains of several social movements including anti-war and civil rights movements, instigated by the growing political influence of corporations. Burris (2010) offers a different perspective to the growing influence of the US corporations during the era: “financial contributions to political parties and candidates are an important source of political influence in many societies” (p. 1). Given the wealth disparities in the US at the time, wealthy capitalists and giant corporations among other contributors, assumed dominance in financing political campaigns, allowing them to exercise disproportionate influence over politics and public policy. One argue that the waning power of social and labor movements, the efforts by Labor Union leaders to compromise, and the growing disproportionate influence of corporations were the main contributors to a power shift with corporation becoming dominant and influential. Ashbolt (2005) compares this approach to the “New Right Movement”, which was a revanchist approach in the 1970s sought to recover and reconstitute traditional structures of authority. Though it signaled the end to Cold War, it was accompanied by a new form of neo-liberalism that sought to bury the sixties and all history that epitomized the utopian dreams of a better and just society and related struggles.
References
Boggs, J., & Ofari, E. (1970). Racism and the class struggle: Further pages from a black worker's notebook.
Branch, T. (1999). Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–65 . New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 242.
Buckley, W. (November 1955). Our mission statement. National Review. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/223549/our-mission-statement-william-f-buckley-jr.
Glazer, N. (1998). We are all multiculturalists now . Harvard University Press.
Library of Congress (068.00.00). (n.d). The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom: World War II and Post War (1940–1949). Retrieved on 10 December 2016 from: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html..
McEuen, M. A. (2016). Women, Gender, and World War II. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History . Retrieved on 10 December 2016 from: http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-55.
Yang, T. (February 19, 2004). The malleable yet undying nature of the yellow Peril. Dartmouth College. Retrieved December 18, 2014. Retrieved on 10 December 2016 from: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~hist32/History/S22%20The%20Malleable%20Yet%20Undying%20Nature%20of%20the%20Yellow%20Peril.htm
