A "segregated" Asia?: Race, the Bandung conference and pan-Asianist fears in American thought and policy, 1954-1955

Diplomatic History

Volumn 29, Issue 5, 2005, Pages 841-868

  Jones, Matthew ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 28144449959     PISSN: 01452096     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.2005.00520.x     Document Type: Review

References (155)

1. Amy Jacques Garvey, "Awakened Asia," Negro World, 19 March 1927.
2. Reprinted in Voices of a Black Nation: Political Journalism in the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Theodore G. Vincent (San Francisco, 1973), 295-96.
3. See Marc Gallicchio, The African American Encounter witb Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000), 210.
4. The work of Christopher Thorne is essential here; see Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War against Japan, 1941-1945 (London, 1978), 5-12, 175, 291, 359, 539.
5. See also John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York, 1986).
6. Quoted in Christopher Thorne, The Issue of War: States, Societies and the Far Eastern Conflict of 1941-1945 (London, 1985), 178.
7. The points about Japanese propaganda and the Black Muslims are made in Dower, War without Mercy, 174-75;
8. for Japanese interwar invasion fantasies see Gallicchio, African American Encounter, 58.
9. Harold R. Isaacs, "Race and Color in World Affairs," Foreign Affairs 47 (January 1969): 235-50.
10. This is an article which is also included in the collection, George W. Shepherd, ed., Racial Influences on American Foreign Policy (New York, 1970).
11. See Mary L. Dudziak, "Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative," Stanford Law Review 41 (November 1988): 61-120;
12. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights (London, 2001);
13. Azza Salama Layton, International Politics and Civil Rights Policies in the United States, 1941-1960 (Cambridge, MA, 2000);
14. Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996);
15. Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca, NY, 1997);
16. Gerald Horne, Black and Red. W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1943-1963 (Albany, NY, 1986);
17. Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (London, 2001);
18. Brenda Gayle Plummer, ed., Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003);
19. and, most recently, the pertinent and persuasive observations in Justin Hart, "Making Democracy Safe for the World: Race, Propaganda, and the Transformation of U.S. Foreign Policy during World War Two," Pacific Historical Review 73 (February 2004): 49-84.
20. Throughout this article, words denoting categories such as "white," and "Asian" are generally used without quotation marks for ease of style, but this should not be taken as unawareness about the sharply contested nature of such terms, or the "racial certainties" they tend to imply; in this I find sympathy with the approach of Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998), ix.
21. Matthew Connelly, "Taking off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North-South Conflict during the Algerian War for Independence," American Historical Review 105 (June 2000): 739-69.
22. See also Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York, 2002).
23. Connelly, "Taking off the Cold War Lens," 752-53. Dulles was certainly "color conscious" insofar as he identified himself as part of white, "Anglo-Saxon" civilization. In 1939, he wrote of the possibility of developing an "organic relationship" between the "democratic and Anglo-Saxon peoples" as a solution to the problems of peace and world order, while five years later noted his pessimism about the outcome of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference "largely because the different Russian philosophy makes it extremely difficult to produce anything which Anglo-Saxons would regard as fundamentally sound and inspiring."
24. See Dulles to Curtis, 11 January 1939, f.23-4, MSS Curtis 13, and Dulles to Curtis, 19 September 1944, f.36, MSS Curtis 31, Lionel Curtis Papers, Western Manuscripts Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford. I am indebted to Inderjeet Parmar for drawing my attention to the existence of this correspondence.
25. See Dulles statement to Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Formosa Treaty, 24 January 1955, Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Historical Series), vol. VII, 84th Cong., 1st sess., 1955 (Washington, DC, 1978), 113.
26. See Churchill minute for Strang, M.120/53, 1 May 1953, Swinton to Churchill, No. 21/53, 18 May 1953, PREM 11/518, U.K. National Archives (UKNA), Kew, London; the prime minister was not impressed: "I fear I can not agree. Pray discuss this with me"; Churchill note, 28 May 1953, PREM 11/518, UKNA. During the same period, Chester Bowles, the U.S. ambassador to India, was also noting how the word "Asiatic" was now "taken as a kind of insult" in the region;
27. see Chester Bowles, Ambassador Reports (London, 1954), 97.
28. Harold R. Isaacs, Scratcbes on Our Minds: American Views of China and India (New York, 1980; originally published 1958), 54-55.
29. Ibid., 58.
30. On the mixing of the imagery of the "yellow" and "red" perils in the language of the Eisenhower administration see Gordon Chang, Friends and Enemies. The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (Stanford, CA, 1990), 170-74.
31. Bruce Cumings has also highlighted the racial imagery employed by Americans during the Korean War; see, for example, The Origins of the Korean War, Volume II. The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947-1950 (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 694-96.
32. See, for example, the essays in David Ryan and Victor Pungong, eds., The United States and Decolonization: Power and Freedom (London, 2000).
33. NSC 48/5, "U.S. Objectives, Policies and Courses of Action in Asia," 17 May 1951, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1951 (Washington, DC, 1977), Pt. 1, 6:44.
34. See, for example, Philip Mason, Patterns of Dominance (London, 1971), 33-38;
35. Hugh Tinker, Race, Conflict and the International Order. From Empire to United Nations (London, 1977), 17-22.
36. Nehru statement, 25 June 1953, Ravinder Kumar and H. Y. Sharada Prasad, eds., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2d series, Vol. 22 (New Delhi, 1998), 82.
37. Eleanor Roosevelt, India and the Awakening East (London, 1954), 91.
38. See, for example, Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 118-19;
39. also Frenise A. Logan, "Racism and U.S.-Indian Relations, 1947-1953: Views in the Indian Press," Pacific Historical Review 54 (February 1985): 71-79.
40. See Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (Berkeley, CA, 2003), 27-28.
41. Study prepared by the OCB, "Reported Decline in U.S. Prestige Abroad," 23 September 1953, in FRUS, 1952-54 (Washington, DC, 1983), Pt. 1, 1:1466-47, 1489-90, 1531.
42. This was also, Bowles believed, the reason why most Indians looked "with strong sympathy toward other Asian people including the Chinese" and "admit to [a] certain twisted, secret, pleasurable reaction when they hear that their fellow Asians, the Chinese, are successfully holding off the Americans in Korea." See Bowles to Dulles, 20 March 1953, folder 243, box 94, Chester Bowles Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
43. Diary entry for 8 February 1955, C. L. Sulzberger, The Last of the Giants (New York, 1970), 132. U.S. officials were also aware that the Soviet Union, due to its supposed part-Asian "racial" characteristics, possessed clear advantages in appealing to a non-European audience; in 1955, the CIA's assistant director of national estimates can be found arguing that "Westerners have too often acted in a tactless and overbearing manner. They don't forget the Kipling concept of 'lesser breeds.' The Communists are very astute in their approach. They have created the impression that they do not look upon these people as 'backward' or 'underdeveloped,' phrases we have too often used. The struggle between the Soviets and U.S. and Western Europe, together with the racial and geographic background of the Soviets, have made it possible for the Soviets to get themselves accepted as non-Europeans, as fellow Asians." See "Reasons for the Impact of the Soviet Orbit's Military, Economic and Cultural Drive in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia," Sherman Kent memorandum for Allen Dulles, 29 November 1955, folder 9, box 100, Allen Dulles Papers, Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.
44. Klein, Cold War Orientalism, 37-49. Note also Andrew Rotter's view that "white American policyrnakers... saw Indians and other dark-skinned people as racial Others, in fundamental ways different from and inferior to whites. Because racial differences were felt so deeply by whites, race thinking conditioned foreign policy decisions. American policymakers after 1947 seldom said they were making policy for racial reasons. It would not have been fashionable to do so.... And yet, there is indirect but compelling evidence that American officials were thinking in racial terms when they made policy toward Latin America, Asia and Africa";
45. see Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947-1964 (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 154.
46. American reactions to the Bandung Conference have also been traced by Cary Fraser. This article differs in the important links it draws with other contemporary developments, including the formation of SEATO, the conclusions it reaches regarding Bandung's significance for pan-Asianism, and the array of perspectives and sources it employs; see Cary Fraser, "An American Dilemma: Race and Realpolitik in the American Response to the Bandung Conference, 1955," in Plummer, Window on Freedom, 115-40.
47. Ambassador in Thailand (Stanton) to Department of State, 18 February 1953, FRUS, 1952-54 (Washington, DC, 1984), pt. 1, 12:274.
48. Memorandum by the Far East Regional Planning Adviser to the Assistant Secretary for the Far East, 21 January 1953, ibid., 260-62.
49. See Acheson to Truman, 30 July 1952, ibid., 160;
50. memorandum of conversation between Acheson, Casey, and Spender, 11 November 1952, ibid., 238;
51. Bedell Smith to Wilson, 21 August 1953, ibid., 335.
52. A similar point is also made in Henry W Brands, Jr., "From ANZUS to SEATO: United States Strategic Policy towards Australia and New Zealand, 1952-1954," International History Review 9 (May 1987): 2611-63.
53. During the discussions over the formation of ANZUS in early 1951, John Foster Dulles, then acting as a consultant to the State Department, had hoped to provide for Philippine inclusion, so that the alliance did not appear as a "closed club for Anglo-Saxons"; see W. David McIntyre, Background to the ANZUS Pact: Policy-Making, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1945-55 (London, 1995), 334.
54. Asian participation might also counter the charge that the United States shared the common Western colonial practice of assigning races to martial or nonmartial categories, assuming that, as Kiernan put it, "Generally speaking, the lighter the skin, the sharper the sword." See Victor Gordon Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind. European Attitudes towards the Outside World in the Imperial Age (London, 1969), 315.
55. Memorandum of conversation by the director of the Office of British Commonwealth and North European Affairs, 16 April 1954, FRUS, 1952-54, pt. 1, 12:427.
56. Memorandum of discussion, 7 May 1954, ibid., 457 n9.
57. See "Secretary's Briefing for Members of Congress," 5 May 1954, Subject series, box 9, John Foster Dulles Papers, Dwight David Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas (DDEL).
58. Memorandum of conversation by the officer in charge of Thai and Malayan Affairs, 27 May 1954, ibid., 519, and see 520 n2; memorandum of conversation between Romulo and Murphy held 3 June 1954, 091 Indo-China, Chairman's File, box 10, RG 218, U.S. National Archives (USNA), College Park, Maryland.
59. Memorandum of discussion at 195th meeting of the NSC, 6 May 1954, FRUS, 1952-54, Pt. 1, 12:55.
60. See, for example, record of discussion between Dulles and Eden, 13 April 1954, ZP3/2G, FO 371/125123, UKNA;
61. also see Rotter, Comrades at Odds, 219, which highlights the gendered attributes of effeminate weakness assigned to Indian males in popular American stereotyping of the period.
62. See conversation between Knowland and Salisbury, 30 September 1953, FE/ 53/90, FO 800/784, UKNA.
63. See Roger Dingman, "John Foster Dulles and the Creation of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization in 1954," International History Review 11 (August 1989): 460.
64. Foreign Office to Washington (Eden to Makins), No. 1696, 19 April 1954, FE/54/21, FO 800/785, UKNA.
65. Geneva Conference (U.K. delegation) to Foreign Office (from Eden), No. 86, 1 May 1954, PREM 11/649, UKNA.
66. New York Times, 25 April 1954.
67. Memorandum of conversation, 26 July 1954, FRUS, 1952-54, Pt-1, 12:675.
68. See Anita Inder Singh, The Limits of British Influence: South Asia and the Anglo-American Relationship, 1947-56 (London, 1993), 178;
69. Evelyn Colbert, Southeast Asia in International Politics, 1941-1956 (Ithaca, NY, 1977), 296.
70. See U.K. High Commissioner, Delhi, to CRO, No. 220, 26 February 1955, D1071/132, FO 371/116921, UKNA.
71. See Chester Bowles, "A Fresh Look at Free Asia," Foreign Affairs 33 (October 1954): 54-55, 58.
72. See Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Volume Two, 1947-1956 (London, 1979), 180.
73. Colbert, Southeast Asia, 312.
74. Quoted in Gopal, Nehru, 227.
75. Minutes of Nehru-Mao conversation, 23 October 1954, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2d series, Vol. 26, eds. Ravinder Kumar and H. Y. Sharada Prasad (New Delhi, 2000), 34.
76. See Russell H. Fifield, The Diplomacy of Southeast Asia: 1945-1958 (Hamden, CT, 1968), 112-14.
77. New York Times, 2 January 1955. A few months earlier, Bowles had warned that U.S. policies in the region might lead the Colombo powers "to associate with Red China in the kind of 'Asia-for-the-Asians' coexistence advocated by Chou";
78. see Bowles, "A Fresh Look at Free Asia," 66.
79. The comment was from John E. Peurifoy; see entry for 21 February 1955, Sulzberger, Last of the Giants, 134.
80. Dulles-Robertson telephone conversation, 31 December 1954, Telephone Calls series, box 3, Dulles Papers, DDEL.
81. Entry for 30 December 1954, T. B. Miller, ed., Australian Foreign Minister: The Diaries of R. G. Casey, 1951-60 (London, 1972), 197. The permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, noted of such trends: "The world may be in danger of moving into 'Alice through the Looking Glass'... the march of events is causing many of the oldest, the most civilised and the wisest nations to abandon elements of their sovereignty and to move towards greater international co-operation. It would be an anomaly if, at the same time, exaggerated nationalism took hold of the less developed territories.... The reductio ad absurdum would be no sovereignty and no nationalism for the old, cultivated and civilised states; complete sovereignty and exaggerated nationalism for the barbarians"; Kirkpatrick minute, 24 November 1954, D1632/5, FO 371/111922, UKNA.
82. "SEATO Parley Facing Afro-Asian Challenge," New York Times, 20 February 1955.
83. Allen Dulles comments to NSC meeting of 5 August 1954, FRUS, 1952-54 (Washington, DC, 1985), Pt. 1, 14:518.
84. Draft policy statement prepared in the Department of State, 8 April 1955, FRUS, 1955-57 (Washington, DC, 1986), 2:460.
85. "Asia: Can the West Hold Back the Tide?" Nezzweek, 17 January 1955, pp. 15-16. As one scholar of the subject reminds us: "Like Orientalism, yellow peril discourse was hegemonic but not all-powerful, breaking down or changing when confronted with Asian resistance. The fear, whether real or imagined, arose from the fact of the rise of nonwhite peoples and their defiance of white supremacy. And while serving to contain the Other, the idea of the yellow peril also helped to define the white identity, within both a nationalist and an internationalist frame."
86. See Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams. Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle, 1994), 134-38.
87. See Richard Wright, The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference (London, 1956), 74-76.
88. See "Our Foreign Policies in Asia," Dulles speech before the Foreign Policy Association, 16 February 1955, "SEATO Meeting, Bangkok, February-March 1955" folder, Selected Correspondence series, box 98, John Foster Dulles Papers, Seeley Mudd Library. Bangkok would be important, Dulles believed, to show the "partnership of Asian and non-Asian nations, based on principles and on the common human interests of peoples, not such factors as race or color";
89. Robert Bowie, "Outline of Secretary's February 16th Speech," 9 February 1955, "SEATO Meeting, Bangkok, February-March 1955" folder, Selected Correspondence series, box 98, John Foster Dulles Papers, Seeley Mudd Library.
90. Memorandum of conversation, 7 January 1955, Secretary's memoranda of conversations, January-February 1955, Lot 64D199, box 3, RG 59, USNA. This full account of the meeting can be usefully compared to the expurgated version offered in FRUS, 1955-57 (Washington, DC, 1990), 21.
91. See also Fraser, "An American Dilemma," 120-211, though overlooked here are the important connections and comparisons in the area of race that the administration drew between the SEATO council meeting and Bandung.
92. Minutes of State-JCS meeting, 14 January 1955, Lot 61D417, box 51, RG 59, USNA.
93. Memorandum for the OCB by Elmer B. Staats (executive officer, OCB), and attached Terms of Reference for Working Group on Proposed Afro-Asian Conference, 11 January 1955, OCB 092-3 (January 1954-April 1955), White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central File series, box 85, DDEL.
94. Memoranda by Horace S. Craig for Staats, 21 January and 4 February 1955, OCB 092.3 (January 1954-April 1955), White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central File series, box 85, DDEL.
95. See minutes of a meeting, 18 January 1955, FRUS, 1955-57, 21:11-16.
96. See memorandum from the Acting Chair of the Reports Operations Staff to Dulles, 8 February 1955, ibid., 30.
97. Memorandum for the record by William Lacy, 9 February 1955, 670-901/ 2-955, Central Decimal File (CDF), box 2668, RG 59, USNA.
98. Memorandum for the record by Douglas MacArthur II, 10 February 1955, FRUS, 1955-57, 21:32. Romulo had told Chester Bowles, in one notable piece of hyperbole, that one of his main aims at the conference would be to "prevent the nurturing of a racial alliance which could develop into an enormity that would convulse the earth";
99. see Chester Bowles, The New Dimensions of Peace (New York, 1955), 195.
100. Telegram from Dulles to the Department of State, 26 February 1955, FRUS, 1955-57, 21:62. Dulles later maintained in his inimitable self-satisfied style that with Bandung set for "making a great pronouncement, probably in terms of anti-colonialism, Asia for the Asians, and so forth," he thought he would "take the wind out of their sails" and instead of "seeming to be afraid of that conference, or assuming that there was a conflict between their legitimate aims and ours, we should take the position that we were the pioneers in this field [through SEATO], and we hoped that they would be able to follow along";
101. see Dulles statement to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 8 March 1955, Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, vol. VII, 394.
102. See New York Times, 23 April 1955, and memorandum by Richard H. Sanger on "Talk by Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Democrat, of New York," 5 May 1955, 670-901/5-555, CDF, box 2670, RG 59, USNA.
103. See memorandum from Henry S. Villard to Staats, "Status Report on Asian-African Conference," 28 March 1955, OCB 092.3 (January 1954-April 1955), White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central File series, box 85, DDEL.
104. The fullest version of this conversation can be gleaned from amalgamating the published extract in FRUS, 1955-57, 21:77, and the original, partially declassified document, memorandum of a telephone call between Dulles and Wisner, 1 April 1955, Telephone Calls series, box 3, Dulles Papers, DDEL.
105. For good background on this whole affair, see Fraser, "An American Dilemma," 123-24. Though it is not possible to find direct evidence of CIA involvement, the Chinese Nationalist intelligence organization also made a dramatic attempt to kill Zhou Erdai during this period, when on 11 April 1955 its agents in Hong Kong managed to sabotage the Jakarta-bound Air India passenger airliner, the Kashmir Princess, which had been chartered by the PRC to take a Chinese delegation to the conference. The Chinese Communist authorities appear to have had some advance indication that such an attempt might be made, and Zhou made alternative arrangements to travel to Indonesia via Rangoon, but eleven Chinese journalists on board were killed when the Kashmir Princess was brought down in the sea by an onboard explosive device, and Beijing quickly leveled recriminations against the Nationalists and their American allies. The principal suspect behind the sabotage is known to have fled Hong Kong for Taiwan in May 1955 on an aircraft owned by the CIA-front company, Civil Air Transport.
106. This murky episode is explored in Steve Tsang, "Target Zhou Enlai: The 'Kashmir Princess' Incident of 1955," China Quarterly 139 (September 1994): 766-82.
107. Memorandum of conversation between Dulles and Sir Roger Makins, 7 April 1955, FRUS, 1955-57, 21:80-81.
108. Memorandum of conversation between Dulles and Dr. Charles Malik, 9 April 1955, ibid., 83.
109. The refusal of the Indian government to sign the Japanese Peace Treaty had led Dulles to complain to the Indian ambassador in Washington in October 1951 that India was falling in with the Chinese cry of "Asia for the Asians" and was hostile to American influence in the region; see Gopal, Nebru, 138.
110. In a past echo of these fears, Bruce Barton, a publisher and friend of Dulles, had written to the latter in 1944 to express the view "that the white man is on his way out of the Orient; that never for any great length of time in the future can a few white men entrench themselves in the seaports and exercise domination over a billion and a half black and brown men whom they have taught to read and manufacture and shoot... insofar as our boys are dying in the Orient to reestablish the Dutch and British and French, I believe the sacrifice is in vain. If the Japs do not drive the white man out, the Chinese and Indians will." Dulles concurred with the greater part of Barton's opinions; see Barton to Dulles, 19 May 1944, and Dulles to Barton, 8 June 1944, "Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 1944" folder, Correspondence series, box 24, John Foster Dulles Papers, Seeley Mudd Library.
111. In contrast to the musings of the secretary of state, the State Department's Office of Intelligence tended to discount the idea that the Chinese Communists would use Bandung to push the line of "Asia for the Asians"; see "The Chinese Communist Position at the Afro-Asian Conference," Intelligence Report No. 6797, 20 January 1955, OCB 092.3 (9) (January 1954-April 1955), WHO, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central File series, box 85, DDEL.
112. On the importance of European influences in fostering notions of pan-Asian solidarity, see, for example, K. M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance (London, 1953), 492-94.
113. See Stephen N. Hay, Asian Ideas of East and West. Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China and India (Cambridge, MA 1970), 291-95.
114. Quoted in Neville Maxwell, India's China War (London, 1970), 87.
115. Note, for example, Nehru's very guarded remarks about Asian unity and the impact of Bandung just after the conference, in Tibor Mende, Conversations with Mr. Nehru (London, 1956), 61-64.
116. For the importance of the contrasting revolutionary experiences of Nehru and Zhou in dispelling lasting notions of Asian unity, see Ronald C. Keith, The Diplomacy of Zhou Enlai (London, 1989), 119.
117. New York Times Magazine, 11 November 1951;
118. see also Sarvepalli Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawabarlal Nehru, 2d series, vol. 15, pt. 2 (New Delhi, 1993), 567.
119. See Michael Brecher, India and World Politics. Krishna Menon's New of the World (London, 1968), 55.
120. See Tinker, Race, Conflict and the International Order, 103.
121. Wright, Color Curtain, 150.
122. Ibid., 153.
123. See Oscar Morland to Harold Macmillan, D2231/319, 4 May 1955, PREM 11/ 881, UKNA.
124. See Tinker, Race, Conflict and the International Order, 103-4.
125. New York Times Magazine, 5 June 1955.
126. Minutes of a Cabinet Meeting, 29 April 1955, FRUS, 1955-57, 21:91-92.
127. Memorandum from Roy P. McNair to Horace S. Craig (Special Projects Staff), 13 May 1955, OCB 092.3 (2) (April-November 1955), White House Office, NSC Staff, OCB Central File series, box 86, DDEL.
128. See Congressional Record, vol. 101, pt. 1 (Washington, DC, 1955), 26 January 1955, 795;
129. Charles V. Hamilton, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma (New York, 1991), 238-40;
130. Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (New York, 1971), 102-5. According to Powell's later account, while senior State Department officials tried to dissuade him from going, private encouragement came from Director of the Foreign Operations Administration Harold E. Stassen and head of USIA Theodore C. Streibert. The efforts to persuade Powell not to go are mentioned in Department of State telegram to Jakarta, No. 1455, 28 March 1955, CREST (CIA Records Search Tool), USNA. The secretary of state and the head of the CIA's Directorate of Plans both agreed that "it was bad that Powell was going"; see memorandum of a telephone call between Dulles and Wisner, 1 April 1955, Telephone Calls series, box 3, Dulles Papers, DDEL.
131. Congressional Record, vol. 101, Pt. 3 (Washington, DC, 1955), 31 March 1955, 4145-47.
132. See Adam by Adam, 103-4, 110-11.
133. See Hamilton, Powell, 242-43.
134. "Washington Wire," New Republic, 2 May 1955.
135. Comments from U.S. News and World Report press conference, cited in Congressional Record, vol. 101, Pt. 4 (Washington, DC, 1955), 26 April 1955, 5122.
136. As massive resistance in the South to the Brown ruling began to gather pace, George Kerman, for one, and somewhat surprisingly given some of his other pronouncements, was expressing his belief that the evidence of racial prejudice still on such open display in the United States could only hurt American prestige abroad: "We must impress our people with the fact that the bulk of the world is colored differently from ourselves. We can't pretend to be a model with valid standards if we insist upon conceptions of races and white superiority." Sulzberger, Last of the Giants, entry for 1 August 1956, 313.
137. Quoted in Borstelmann, Cold War and Color Line, 97.
138. Home, Black and Red, 287.
139. See "Message to the Grass Roots," delivered 10 November 1963, in Malcolm X Speaks. Selected Speecbes and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York, 1965), 5-6.
140. See also ibid., 216, where a "final showdown" between East and West is predicted in ways reminiscent of the race war thinking of the 1920s.
141. See, for example, Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination (Boulder, CO, 1996), 74-76;
142. Gallicchio, African American Encounter, 5-8, 14-15. As Dower puts it, "The vision of the menace from the East was always more racial than national. It derived not from concern with any one country or people in particular, but from a vague and ominous sense of the vast, faceless, nameless yellow horde: the rising tide, indeed, of color";
143. Dower, War witbout Mercy, 156.
144. See Gallicchio, African American Encounter, 36-38. Between the 1920s and the Second World War, Jacobson has noted, the "natural" racial divisions of the world became grouped into far broader categories than previously was common in American discussions of the subject the Johnson Act of 1924, for instance, marking the "beginning of the ascent of monolithic whiteness") to the extent that they came to "overwhelm the national consciousness";
145. see Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 92-93.
146. See Walter White, A Rising Wind (New York, 11945), 154-55.
147. White also quoted liberally from Buck's American Unity and Asia (New York, 1942), which highlighted the impact of Japanese propaganda, and the essential truth of the message it contained about racial prejudice. On Pearl Buck's 1925 thoughts about the chances of a race war, see Gallicchio, African American Encounter, 41-42.
148. Paul H. Douglas, "The Good and the Bad in Us," Foreign Affair 33 (July 1955): 544.
149. See Thomas J. Schoenbaum, Waging Peace and Wan Dean Rusk in the Truman, Kennedy and Johnson Years (New York, 1988), 454.
150. McNamara memo for Johnson, 3 November 1965, FRUS, 1964-68 (Washington, DC, 1996), 3:514.
151. See also, and compare, Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds, 222-23.
152. See Richard M. Nixon, "Asia after Viet Nam," Foreign Affairs 46 (October 1967): 122. It might also be noted that Nixon dismissed SEATO as an "anachronistic relic";
153. ibid., 116.
154. See Bowles, Ambassador Reports, 229.
155. See Armstrong to Bowles, 22 July 1954, Chester Bowles folder, Correspondence series, box 11, Hamilton Fish Armstrong Papers, Seeley Mudd Library.