Holding the line: Race, racism and American foreign policy, 1953--1961 (Africa)

This dissertation focuses on United States diplomacy toward Africa. It is an attempt to alter the analysis of American foreign policy by offering a holistic assessment of the impact of race on American diplomacy. The central argument of this dissertation is simple: to understand how the Eisenhower administration treated Blacks in Africa, one need understand how it treated Blacks in America. In other words, the African American community exists apart from "mainstream" America, much like a nation within a nation. Reduced to its basic terms, this dissertation offers an understanding of the administration's approach to Blacks by relying on certain theoretical approaches from the Critical Race Theory school of thought. The application of Critical Race Theory, along with an evaluation of archival material and secondary sources, will result in a clearer understanding of the role of race in American diplomacy.; It is unique as a diplomatic history for several reasons. First, this dissertation eschews the ethnicity paradigm of race in favor of structural analysis which: (1) treats race as a social construct rather than as a valid biological phenomenon; and (2) refuses to reduce racism to the intentional or willful acts of individuals. Second, the analysis contained herein relies heavily upon archival material, some of which had been classified prior to this research. Third, the discussion of this racialized diplomacy focuses on Black women as the group most vulnerable to the stress of racism. Accordingly, a gendered interrogation of U.S. foreign policy supplements the critical race analysis.