TY - JOUR
T1 - Making democracy safe for the world
T2 - Race, propaganda, and the transformation of U.S. foreign policy during World War II
AU - Hart, Justin
PY - 2004/2
Y1 - 2004/2
N2 - Recent literature has argued that, beginning in the late 1940s, the increasing ideological competition between the Soviet Union and the United States-or, more broadly, between communism and capitalism-transformed America's record of racial discrimination and violence into an international issue with consequences for U.S. foreign policy. This article challenges that historiography by raising questions about both the timing and the cause of the increasing importance of civil rights to the U.S. foreign policy process. It focuses roughly equally upon the damage that discrimination against Latinos in the Southwest did to the Good Neighbor Policy and the difficulties of the World War II propaganda organization, the Office of War Information, in portraying Amcerica's racial practices to the world. To account for these examples requires us to recognize the World War II years-not the Cold War-as the decisive turning point when the history of domestic race relations could no longer be sanguinely ignored by U.S. policymakers.
AB - Recent literature has argued that, beginning in the late 1940s, the increasing ideological competition between the Soviet Union and the United States-or, more broadly, between communism and capitalism-transformed America's record of racial discrimination and violence into an international issue with consequences for U.S. foreign policy. This article challenges that historiography by raising questions about both the timing and the cause of the increasing importance of civil rights to the U.S. foreign policy process. It focuses roughly equally upon the damage that discrimination against Latinos in the Southwest did to the Good Neighbor Policy and the difficulties of the World War II propaganda organization, the Office of War Information, in portraying Amcerica's racial practices to the world. To account for these examples requires us to recognize the World War II years-not the Cold War-as the decisive turning point when the history of domestic race relations could no longer be sanguinely ignored by U.S. policymakers.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=1842429793&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1525/phr.2004.73.1.49
DO - 10.1525/phr.2004.73.1.49
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:1842429793
SN - 0030-8684
VL - 73
SP - 49
EP - 84
JO - Pacific Historical Review
JF - Pacific Historical Review
IS - 1
ER -