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A Certain Blindness

Trygve Throntveit

in Power without Victory: Woodrow Wilson and the American Internationalist Experiment

This chapter examines Woodrow Wilson's reputation as a racist, imperialist, and hypocrite. Multiple critics conclude that Wilson's brand of American liberalism was fundamentally rooted in racist ... More

This chapter examines Woodrow Wilson's reputation as a racist, imperialist, and hypocrite. Multiple critics conclude that Wilson's brand of American liberalism was fundamentally rooted in racist thought and essentially dependent on the imperialistic subordination of peoples whose societies and cultures diverged most widely from his own. Even scholars who credit Wilson's rhetoric with sparking the anticolonial nationalist movement, or his League of Nations with enabling its development, emphasize the irony of a racist helping unleash such forces. Wilson's prejudice does indeed explain several of his administration's policies and their tragic consequences: the frustration of blacks treated as second-class citizens by their government employers; the psychic and physical trauma of those victimized by a lynching epidemic Wilson was reprehensibly slow to condemn; and the death and destruction visited upon Caribbean and Central American peoples by soldiers he deployed in their lands. These actions and consequences also explain his reputation as a hypocrite.Less

Introduction

in Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain

This chapter investigates various themes that lay behind the port riots. These are the broader economic and social context of the riots, contested understandings of national identity and ... More

This chapter investigates various themes that lay behind the port riots. These are the broader economic and social context of the riots, contested understandings of national identity and ‘Britishness’, the vagaries of life in Britain's seaports, theories of crowd behaviour, and an evaluation of the effects of racist thought within sections of British society. General demonstrations of post-war resentment across many sections of British society were in the large seaports specifically focused on job and housing shortages. The cultural dimension of shared identities and common experiences among black people in the ‘black Atlantic’ world contributed to the debate on identity and the inter-connectedness of colonial and metropolitan experience. The riots in 1919 erupted in poverty-stricken port communities and were frequently presented by poorly unionised workers. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in the book is given.Less