foreignpolicy--2020-07-03--Why Is Mainstream International Relations Blind to Racism?

Beginning with its creation as an academic discipline , mainstream IR has not been entirely honest about its ideological or geographic origins .
It has largely erased non-Western history and thought from its canon and has failed to address the central role of colonialism and decolonization in creating the contemporary international order .
Foreign Policy asked nine leading thinkers in the field how IR has fallen short and how the research , teaching , and practice of it must change .
Forget Westphalia .
The Modern State Was Born From Colonialism .
By Gurminder K. Bhambra , a professor of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of International Relations at the University of Sussex .
She is the author of Rethinking Modernity : Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination and Connected Sociologies .
Matters of race are usually addressed as domestic issues—that is , as questions of identity or in terms of stratification ( the differential distribution of rewards and resources within a country ) .
While both of these categories of analysis are of fundamental importance , they often neglect the international processes through which race and racial differences have also been produced .
Contemporary politics is generally viewed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which is widely , but erroneously , understood to have its origins in the system of sovereign states that came into being in Europe in 1648 .
The history of the modern state system , as it is often taught , focuses on the impact of the American and French Revolutions in the late 18th century .
However , this is precisely the period of colonial expansion and settlement that saw some European states consolidate their domination over other parts of the world and over their populations , who came to be represented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is rarely described or theorized as a constitutive aspect of the so-called modern state—which , then , is imperial as much as national .
The racialized hierarchies of empire defined the broader polity beyond the nation-state and , after decolonization , have continued to construct inequalities of citizenship within states that have only recently become national .
Britain , for example , did not distinguish among the members of its imperial polity when legislating for citizenship in 1948 , with common citizenship available for those in the U.K. and in its colonies .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ narrowed along racial lines .
In light of the subsequent so-called hostile environment policies , those who had moved legitimately to the U.K. from the nonwhite Commonwealth were required to demonstrate their entitlement to citizenship and , if they could not , were in many cases deported in what has come to be known as the Windrush scandal .
Race isn ’ t a factor that enters so-called nation-states from the outside .
Rather , they are racialized from the very moment of their emergence as imperial polities and continue to reproduce racialized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practitioners of international relations must take seriously the colonial histories that were constitutive of the formation of modern states .
A failure to do so not only is an intellectual error but also has profound consequences for the nature and possibilities of politics—including the politics of race—in the present .
Africa Isn ’ t Rising .
It Has Always Been at the Center of Global Politics .
By Yolande Bouka , an assistant professor in the political studies department at Queen ’ s University in Kingston , Ontario .
If the field of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the history of racialized international political analysis and practices , it must first come to terms with the erasure of the roles non-Western political actors and societies have played in shaping global affairs .
In the case of Africa , challenging that erasure also means questioning the recent “ Africa rising ” narrative , which seems to imply that Africa was , until very recently , at the margins of the global economy and politics .
From Mansa Musa ’ s role in Cairo ’ s decade-long economic crisis in the 14th @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Atakpame , in what is present-day Togo—in which the Ashanti Empire suffered a devasting defeat against the Dahomey Kingdom and the Oyo Empire , leading to shifts in Ashanti foreign policy—it is clear that many pre-colonial African polities ’ activities had important international implications .
IR must come to terms with the erasure of the roles non-Western political actors and societies have played in shaping global affairs .
Similarly , centuries of economic and diplomatic exchanges between China and various African polities before colonialism , and Africa ’ s role during both world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long-standing and well-documented relevance in world affairs .
Challenging racist analyses in the discipline also means being more curious about African actors ’ agency at various levels of analysis .
State-centric approaches tend to focus on state capacities and failures and ordinary Africans merely as bodies to be acted on and moved like pawns on a global chessboard , which obscures how their strategies , engagement , and resistance shape flows of power in the international system .
Today , any discussion about the so-called “ new scramble for Africa ” —in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Russia compete for market share , resources , and influence on the continent—divorced from a proper examination of local , national , and regional interests , power dynamics , norms , and practices will yield poor academic and foreign-policy analysis .
To properly understand the central role Africa has played and will continue to play in future debates about international relations and in world affairs , the field needs to remedy the African archive ’ s erasure and get comfortable looking race in the face .
Liberalism Didn ’ t Create @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Activism of the Oppressed .
By Randolph B. Persaud , an associate professor of international relations at American University .
The last weekend of June closed off with some history-making events in three different institutions .
In academia , Woodrow Wilson ’ s name was removed from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University .
In government , the Mississippi Legislature voted to remove the battle flag of the Confederacy from their own state flag .
And in entertainment , a concerted effort got going to remove the name and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the airport in Orange County , California .
These developments reveal a great deal about the domestic social order in the United States , and world order , more broadly .
They also have resonances for IR theory , if indeed IR theorists were more attuned to the multitude of exceptions that accompanied foundational liberalism .
The core elements of what I shall call Euroliberalism include but are not limited to the right to life , liberty , and property ; equality before the law regardless of any attribute or marker of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In The Great Delusion , John Mearsheimer fleshes out the varieties of liberalism relevant to IR theory—as well as the catalogue of exceptions , many of them based on racism and civilizational bias .
Historically marginalized peoples are the ones who have pushed the international system to adopt whatever level of democratic governance exists .
Notwithstanding the brilliant disquisitions of European philosophers and pronouncements of presidents and prime ministers , democratic governance from India to South Africa to the American South has emerged principally through the activism and agency of subaltern populations—those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerful class or group , especially colonial subjects , and those victimized by anti-Black racism and other forms of discrimination .
The killing of George Floyd and the movement for change that it has sparked mark a historical moment in democratizing democracy .
Police forces—a key institution in liberal democracies—are now being pushed to reform , to abandon the racial animus that has been central to their practices through much of American history .
The movement against police racism and police brutality has already been globalized , and now social forces dedicated to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cultural content of citizenship .
And thus , from Germany and France to Indonesia and Brazil , the marginalized are joining with progressive social forces in redefining what civic responsibility and popular agency look like in the making of democratic society .
I contend that the global subalterns and historically marginalized peoples are the ones who have pushed the international system to adopt whatever level of democratic governance exists .
Numerous wars of liberation and anti-colonial/anti-racist struggles produced political independence and national sovereignty—the key foundations on which democracies are built .
The subalterns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global liberalism by transforming the idea of freedom for some into the practice of freedom for all .
IR Should Abandon the Notion of Aid , and Address Racism and Reparations By Olivia U. Rutazibwa , a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth and a fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study .
She is a co-editor , with Robbie Shilliam , of The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics .
When I decided to study international relations 20 years ago , I was not interested in which among realism or liberalism—or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constructivism—was the proper theoretical approach .
Instead , I came to study IR because , as a second-generation Rwandan born and raised in Belgium , I could not wrap my head around what happened in 1994 .
Then a teenager , looking at the existential distress of my family members—rather than at my schoolbooks—I understood that something apocalyptic was unfolding in Rwanda .
The United Nations , meanwhile , was retreating from the country , after 10 Belgian U.N. blue helmet paratroopers had been murdered on the eve of the genocide against the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ apart from the death of the Belgian troops , the events were recounted vaguely like any other seemingly ethnic conflict in Africa—with Belgium ’ s and other Western involvement underplayed or erased .
Many Belgians are still unaware of Belgium ’ s colonial ties to both Rwanda and Burundi , nor are they clear , if at all conscious , about who killed whom .
My interest in IR came from the fact that I could not make sense of the fact that the U.N.—which , according to my IR textbooks , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the cradle of human rights—left a million people to die in 1994 .
I therefore set out to study what is known as “ ethical foreign policy ” : international ( i.e.
, Western-led ) actors showing up for the other peoples of the world with the well-being of the supposedly receiving others proclaimed as the driving force behind their presence .
Building on mainstream IR , usually dead silent about racism and colonization , at the time , I viewed more involvement ( financial , political , and technical ) as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is no historical evidence that Western presence has ever enhanced the well-being of the previously colonized world .
It took me a solid decade—and exposure to post- and decolonial approaches—to change my doctoral research question from : “ When do Western actors not show up ?
” to “ Should they be there in the first place ?
” Ever since I discovered—through the works of colleagues like Errol Henderson , Meera Sabaratnam , Siba Grovogui , and Robbie Shilliam—that one can include analyses of race , racism , colonialism , and paternalism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ present-day North-South relations , I have come to the conclusion that we should get rid of the notion of aid and the related discipline of international development , which , like IR , is built on a profound whitewashing of history and the erasure of the contributions of previously colonized people to wealth and advancements in the West .
Indeed , the entire notion of aid is obscene—and racist .
International relations that do not reproduce the logic of colonialism must instead engage with ideas of repair , dignity , and even retreat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the field of IR means viewing it not merely as an issue of stereotypes or cultural insensitivities , but as a colonial technology of life and premature death built on ideologies of whiteness and white supremacy .
It is also not just about adding a bit of racism and colonialism and stirring .
It means fundamentally rethinking the purpose of the discipline : Do we make it a science of the status quo or a science of the possibility of life—starting with Black lives ?
Earlier this week , on June 30 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the very first time in history his regret for the countless brutal acts committed during the colonial era in the Belgian Congo—60 years after formal independence .
IR scholars who place race , racism , and colonialism at the center of their analysis know that it is about more than acknowledging the past .
The scholarly imperative is to study and question the current international system built on racial capitalism , and to imagine alternatives .
At best , Belgium ’ s belated gesture is the start of a conversation about repair and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ IR , as it exists today , has not been able to ignite .
The Field of International Relations Wasn ’ t Born Where You Think It Was By Vineet Thakur , a lecturer at Leiden University and the current Smuts visiting fellow at Cambridge University , is a co-author of South Africa , Race and the Making of International Relations .
The established story runs that the IR discipline is a child of World War I .
In a world weary of destruction , so the familiar founding myth goes , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to mitigate the problem of war .
Only a dispassionate , reasoned , and objective study could lead to new pathways out of it—leading to the founding of a department at Aberystwyth University in Wales and an institute of international relations on the sidelines of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference .
This story is only half-true , however .
There is another war that was equally important to the founding of IR : the South African War , also known as the Boer War , of 1899-1902 .
The Union of South Africa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four warring proto-states and the constituents of the British Empire in 1910 , became the model for how the institution of war could be tamed .
The men , the method , and the money involved in this mythmaking , as Peter Vale and I argue in a recent book , are crucial precursors to understanding the individuals , ideas , and the institutions involved in the founding of IR as an academic discipline .
The Round Table , perhaps the singularly most important network responsible for the creation of several early chairs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ IR field , drew almost entirely on the work of its core members in South Africa .
The Round Table , perhaps the singularly most important network responsible for the creation of several early chairs , institutes , and journals in the IR field , drew almost entirely on the early work of its core members in South Africa , then known as “ Milner ’ s Kindergarten , ” named after the British colonial administrator who was high commissioner of South Africa during and after the war .
They money for IR @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first institute , London ’ s Chatham House , and one of its first journals , the Round Table , came from the South African mining magnate Abe Bailey , a key ally of the imperialist politician Cecil John Rhodes .
The Round Table ’ s racial ideas , developed first in South Africa , later served as templates for the interwar ideas of the British Commonwealth and the so-called World State .
Indeed , the life and work of Chatham House ’ s founder Lionel Curtis is the thread that links the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of South Africa to the British Commonwealth to the idea of a world government .
This alternative origins story raises two crucial issues in thinking about race and the making of IR—as an academic discipline and as a field of practice .
First , to analyze racial constructions of the world , scholars ’ archival gaze must expand beyond the United States and Britain .
Important as it is to understand race and its role in the making of IR from the American or British perspectives , studying only these contexts excludes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Second , race almost always operates in conjunction with other categories—such as caste , class , civilization , and , in today ’ s context , the racialized Muslim .
The challenge for IR is to find a new language that is not confined to just one master concept or one corner of the world .
By Duncan Bell , a professor of political thought and international relations at the University of Cambridge .
The global Black Lives Matter protests have amplified interest in the role played by ideologies of race in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the discipline of international relations .
IR was born in the age of empire , and for the first few decades of its history it was explicitly occupied with questions of colonial administration and the justification of racial supremacy .
Social scientists furnished legitimacy for a world structured by imperial exploitation and pernicious racial hierarchies .
Race was often viewed as the basic unit of politics—more fundamental than state , society , nation , or individual .
The “ religion of whiteness , ” as the civil rights activist and scholar W.E.B .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( though not unchallenged ) across the Euro-American world .
As Robbie Shilliam of Johns Hopkins University argued recently in Foreign Policy , it was manifested in the “ color line , ” that Du Bois saw as an organizing principle of international politics .
Yet many IR scholars today , Shilliam observes correctly , “ have carefully avoided reflecting on the role race plays in our field.
” In a forthcoming book , Dreamworlds of Race , I scrutinize a white supremacist version of “ racial utopianism ” that was popular at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the “ Anglo-Saxons ” ( or “ English-speaking peoples ” ) , if unified politically , could bring peace and justice to the earth .
Many eminent individuals proselytized the idea , including Andrew Carnegie , who ended up creating the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace , and the arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes .
Though the most extravagant versions of Anglo-utopianism were exhausted by the mid-20th century , the idea that the “ English-speaking peoples ” are destined to play a leading role in shaping world politics has proved remarkably durable .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the so-called Anglosphere and in projects for reorienting Britain ’ s post-Brexit foreign policy .
The intertwined histories of race and empire haunt the present .
Yet the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrates the productive power of collective action and the possibilities for rethinking history in the service of a more equitable future .
If mainstream IR is to play a part in this vital endeavor it needs to address questions of imperial and racial domination , past and present , far more seriously than it has done in recent years .
Eurocentrism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Racism By Karen Smith , a lecturer in international relations at Leiden University and an honorary research associate at the University of Cape Town , is the co-editor , with Arlene Tickner , of International Relations From the Global South : Worlds of Difference .
In the same way that international relations has neglected race , the discipline has been both ignorant and dismissive of alternative ways of thinking about the world that do not , according to a Eurocentric understanding of history , originate from the West .
Ideas from outside the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ field of IR and lacking in value because of their geographic origin , because they are not couched in the theoretical language regarded as legitimate by the gatekeepers of IR or do not appear in forms—such as recognized academic journal articles or books—that are considered to be appropriate sources for the study of IR .
In addition , scholars from beyond the West have , in a way that reflects the global economy , been relegated to the role of providers of raw material—in the form of empirical evidence—while the transformation of these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of knowledge has been regarded as the prerogative of the West .
For example , Western scholars often assess African states according to criteria developed by European theories of statehood and rely on local scholars to provide the relevant data , instead of considering alternative African understandings of the state .
As a consequence , the majority of what students read about in IR continues to be written by a minority of the world ’ s people .
The presumption that all worthwhile ideas originated in the West is not only exclusionary but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bilgin and Siba Grovogui have argued—and should be acknowledged as constituting a form of intellectual racism .
The exclusion of scholars and ideas from outside Europe and North America has resulted in a field that does not provide those who study it—and often go on to practice it as , for example , diplomats and politicians—with the necessary diversity of perspectives to fully grasp the dynamics of the contemporary global system .
Perhaps most significantly , it has constrained the discipline ’ s ability to imagine a different world .
By Toni Haastrup @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the University of Stirling and the co-author , with Jamie J. Hagen , of “ Global Racial Hierarchies and the Limits of Localization via National Action Plans ” in the book New Directions in Women , Peace and Security .
Across the world , countries are adopting new foreign-policy practices to redress inequalities within the global system .
One of these is Sweden ’ s feminist foreign policy .
Established in 2014 , this approach to foreign policy was led by former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström , and it draws attention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gender and the absence of women in the field of international relations , including foreign-policy practice .
Feminist foreign policy has now gone beyond Sweden , to include countries like Canada and , recently , Mexico .
While these moves toward a foreign-policy approach informed by feminism is important , they can reinforce enduring blind spots within the field and practice of international relations by ignoring race .
Feminist foreign policy often allows wealthy countries to focus attention on the plight of women in countries with developing economies .
Wealthier countries , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being better placed to respond to the challenges around gender discrimination .
The dominant brand of feminist foreign policy fails to consider seriously the racialized legacies of colonialism that lead to the conditions of gender discrimination in developing economies .
The assumptions encoded in the relationship between developed and developing economies are thus racialized .
A country with a feminist foreign policy often invokes its own experiences as good practice elsewhere .
Yet gender discrimination is universal , and often members of minority groups within the developed economies are significantly disadvantaged by endemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emphasizing gender-based discrimination “ elsewhere ” as the core inequality , this dominant brand of feminist foreign policy fails to consider seriously the racialized legacies of colonialism that lead to the conditions of gender discrimination in developing economies .
For feminist foreign policy to provide a transformative alternative to the current practice of foreign policy , an explicit consideration of race is necessary .
Race in IR is not new , so why treat it as irrelevant in the quest for more egalitarian and just societies ?
A movement of transnational feminists provides @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through how to challenge the structural violence—the harms caused by social structures to disadvantaged peoples—that upholds the dominant practices of international relations .
In accounting for structural violence , and thus acknowledging how an explicit consideration of race impacts foreign policy , the Feminist Foreign Policy Project—a group of activists , academics , and practitioners—has called on wealthier countries to halt the arms race ; reconsider military interventions in developing economies ; reverse the trend of increased militarism via increased military spending ; and rethink the championing of economic policies that invariably increase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues that originate in wealthier countries is a transformative plan that could begin to tackle the inequalities within international relations .
A different way of doing foreign policy that is people-led rather than state-led and emphasizes solidarity over interest is the only means toward justice for all .
The West ’ s Triumph Led to Racial Catastrophe .
Its Decline Could Lead to Racial Justice .
By Seifudein Adem , a professor of global studies at Doshisha University .
According to the late political scientist Ali Mazrui , the first phase of global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americas and the trans-Atlantic slave trade .
This was the era of the West ’ s ascendance .
The second phase was the period of colonialism and imperialism , through which the world has recently passed .
This was the era of the West ’ s triumph .
Both these phases resulted in racial catastrophes .
At a deeper level , what the world is witnessing today could be the third phase of cultural encounters .
The pretention of Western culture to universal validity is being challenged from the angles of cultural relativism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the West was not valid in another ) ; historical relativism ( what was valid in the West at the beginning of the 20th century was not valid in the West at the beginning of the 21st ) ; and empirical relativism ( the West often failed to live up to its own standards , and occasionally those standards were better met by other societies ) .
Indeed , the rejection of the process that makes all of us look similar ( homogenization ) while making one of us the boss ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This is the era of the West on the defensive .
For many around the world , the moral disease of racism needs to be confronted as vehemently as the physical disease now sweeping around the globe .
In recent months , COVID-19 emerged and spread globally .
In response to the coronavirus pandemic , there have been noticeable lapses of standards in many Western societies , while those standards were better met by several non-Western societies .
The world has also witnessed , more recently , the global spread of protests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ African American man cruelly killed by police in the United States .
Many of those who protested in different countries might not have known all that much about the specific issues and may not have even spoken English .
But that so many knew about the incident at all and felt strongly about it to come out to protest is itself something .
The COVID-19 pandemic and the global protests against police brutality demonstrate that , first , the challenges to humanity transcend the territoriality of the state and the parochialism of race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if rudimentary , convergence of political sensibilities may be emerging at the grassroots level .
For many around the world , the moral disease of racism needs to be confronted as vehemently as the physical disease now sweeping around the globe .
These shared sensibilities could , in the long run , become a catalyst for something bigger : the creation of a truly global village that is based not on cultural hierarchy but on what Mazrui called cultural ecumenicalism—a combination of a global pool of achievements with local pools of distinctive innovation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

Gurminder K. Bhambra, Yolande Bouka, Randolph B. Persaud, Olivia U. Rutazibwa, Vineet Thakur, Duncan Bell, Karen Smith, Toni Haastrup and Seifudein Adem

Worldwide protests against police racism and brutality and the toppling of statues commemorating white supremacists have led to a public reckoning in the United States and many other countries—forcing citizens and governments to confront the historical legacy of systemic racism and the enduring inequalities it has created. A similar reckoning is long overdue within the academic discipline of international relations (IR).
Worldwide protests against police racism and brutality and the toppling of statues commemorating white supremacists have led to a public reckoning in the United States and many other countries—forcing citizens and governments to confront the historical legacy of systemic racism and the enduring inequalities it has created. A similar reckoning is long overdue within the academic discipline of international relations (IR).
Beginning with its creation as an academic discipline, mainstream IR has not been entirely honest about its ideological or geographic origins. It has largely erased non-Western history and thought from its canon and has failed to address the central role of colonialism and decolonization in creating the contemporary international order.
Foreign Policy asked nine leading thinkers in the field how IR has fallen short and how the research, teaching, and practice of it must change.
Forget Westphalia. The Modern State Was Born From Colonialism.
By Gurminder K. Bhambra, a professor of postcolonial and decolonial studies in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination and Connected Sociologies.
Matters of race are usually addressed as domestic issues—that is, as questions of identity or in terms of stratification (the differential distribution of rewards and resources within a country). While both of these categories of analysis are of fundamental importance, they often neglect the international processes through which race and racial differences have also been produced.
Contemporary politics is generally viewed through the lens of the nation-state, which is widely, but erroneously, understood to have its origins in the system of sovereign states that came into being in Europe in 1648. The history of the modern state system, as it is often taught, focuses on the impact of the American and French Revolutions in the late 18th century. However, this is precisely the period of colonial expansion and settlement that saw some European states consolidate their domination over other parts of the world and over their populations, who came to be represented in racialized terms.
This external domination is rarely described or theorized as a constitutive aspect of the so-called modern state—which, then, is imperial as much as national. The racialized hierarchies of empire defined the broader polity beyond the nation-state and, after decolonization, have continued to construct inequalities of citizenship within states that have only recently become national.
Britain, for example, did not distinguish among the members of its imperial polity when legislating for citizenship in 1948, with common citizenship available for those in the U.K. and in its colonies. As empire receded, entitlement to citizenship narrowed along racial lines. In light of the subsequent so-called hostile environment policies, those who had moved legitimately to the U.K. from the nonwhite Commonwealth were required to demonstrate their entitlement to citizenship and, if they could not, were in many cases deported in what has come to be known as the Windrush scandal.
Race isn’t a factor that enters so-called nation-states from the outside. Rather, they are racialized from the very moment of their emergence as imperial polities and continue to reproduce racialized hierarchies to this day. Scholars and practitioners of international relations must take seriously the colonial histories that were constitutive of the formation of modern states. A failure to do so not only is an intellectual error but also has profound consequences for the nature and possibilities of politics—including the politics of race—in the present.
Africa Isn’t Rising. It Has Always Been at the Center of Global Politics.
By Yolande Bouka, an assistant professor in the political studies department at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
If the field of international relations is truly committed to wrestling with the history of racialized international political analysis and practices, it must first come to terms with the erasure of the roles non-Western political actors and societies have played in shaping global affairs. In the case of Africa, challenging that erasure also means questioning the recent “Africa rising” narrative, which seems to imply that Africa was, until very recently, at the margins of the global economy and politics.
From Mansa Musa’s role in Cairo’s decade-long economic crisis in the 14th century to a key 1764 battle near Atakpame, in what is present-day Togo—in which the Ashanti Empire suffered a devasting defeat against the Dahomey Kingdom and the Oyo Empire, leading to shifts in Ashanti foreign policy—it is clear that many pre-colonial African polities’ activities had important international implications.
IR must come to terms with the erasure of the roles non-Western political actors and societies have played in shaping global affairs.
Similarly, centuries of economic and diplomatic exchanges between China and various African polities before colonialism, and Africa’s role during both world wars, demonstrate the continent’s long-standing and well-documented relevance in world affairs.
Challenging racist analyses in the discipline also means being more curious about African actors’ agency at various levels of analysis. State-centric approaches tend to focus on state capacities and failures and ordinary Africans merely as bodies to be acted on and moved like pawns on a global chessboard, which obscures how their strategies, engagement, and resistance shape flows of power in the international system.
Today, any discussion about the so-called “new scramble for Africa”—in which countries like the United States, China, and Russia compete for market share, resources, and influence on the continent—divorced from a proper examination of local, national, and regional interests, power dynamics, norms, and practices will yield poor academic and foreign-policy analysis.
To properly understand the central role Africa has played and will continue to play in future debates about international relations and in world affairs, the field needs to remedy the African archive’s erasure and get comfortable looking race in the face.
Liberalism Didn’t Create Modern Democracy. It Emerged From the Activism of the Oppressed.
By Randolph B. Persaud, an associate professor of international relations at American University.
The last weekend of June closed off with some history-making events in three different institutions. In academia, Woodrow Wilson’s name was removed from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. In government, the Mississippi Legislature voted to remove the battle flag of the Confederacy from their own state flag. And in entertainment, a concerted effort got going to remove the name and likeness of the famed actor John Wayne from the airport in Orange County, California. These developments reveal a great deal about the domestic social order in the United States, and world order, more broadly. They also have resonances for IR theory, if indeed IR theorists were more attuned to the multitude of exceptions that accompanied foundational liberalism.
The core elements of what I shall call Euroliberalism include but are not limited to the right to life, liberty, and property; equality before the law regardless of any attribute or marker of identity; and toleration based on reason. In The Great Delusion, John Mearsheimer fleshes out the varieties of liberalism relevant to IR theory—as well as the catalogue of exceptions, many of them based on racism and civilizational bias.
Historically marginalized peoples are the ones who have pushed the international system to adopt whatever level of democratic governance exists.
Notwithstanding the brilliant disquisitions of European philosophers and pronouncements of presidents and prime ministers, democratic governance from India to South Africa to the American South has emerged principally through the activism and agency of subaltern populations—those subjected to the hegemony of a more powerful class or group, especially colonial subjects, and those victimized by anti-Black racism and other forms of discrimination.
The killing of George Floyd and the movement for change that it has sparked mark a historical moment in democratizing democracy. Police forces—a key institution in liberal democracies—are now being pushed to reform, to abandon the racial animus that has been central to their practices through much of American history. The movement against police racism and police brutality has already been globalized, and now social forces dedicated to democratizing democracy are rewriting the political and cultural content of citizenship. And thus, from Germany and France to Indonesia and Brazil, the marginalized are joining with progressive social forces in redefining what civic responsibility and popular agency look like in the making of democratic society.
I contend that the global subalterns and historically marginalized peoples are the ones who have pushed the international system to adopt whatever level of democratic governance exists. Numerous wars of liberation and anti-colonial/anti-racist struggles produced political independence and national sovereignty—the key foundations on which democracies are built. The subalterns have had to rectify the contradictions of global liberalism by transforming the idea of freedom for some into the practice of freedom for all.
IR Should Abandon the Notion of Aid, and Address Racism and Reparations
By Olivia U. Rutazibwa, a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth and a fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. She is a co-editor, with Robbie Shilliam, of The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics.
When I decided to study international relations 20 years ago, I was not interested in which among realism or liberalism—or the new kid on the block, constructivism—was the proper theoretical approach.
Instead, I came to study IR because, as a second-generation Rwandan born and raised in Belgium, I could not wrap my head around what happened in 1994. Then a teenager, looking at the existential distress of my family members—rather than at my schoolbooks—I understood that something apocalyptic was unfolding in Rwanda. The United Nations, meanwhile, was retreating from the country, after 10 Belgian U.N. blue helmet paratroopers had been murdered on the eve of the genocide against the Tutsi.
In the Belgian media, apart from the death of the Belgian troops, the events were recounted vaguely like any other seemingly ethnic conflict in Africa—with Belgium’s and other Western involvement underplayed or erased. Many Belgians are still unaware of Belgium’s colonial ties to both Rwanda and Burundi, nor are they clear, if at all conscious, about who killed whom.
My interest in IR came from the fact that I could not make sense of the fact that the U.N.—which, according to my IR textbooks, was a Western-led beacon of hope and salvation and the cradle of human rights—left a million people to die in 1994.
I therefore set out to study what is known as “ethical foreign policy”: international (i.e., Western-led) actors showing up for the other peoples of the world with the well-being of the supposedly receiving others proclaimed as the driving force behind their presence. Building on mainstream IR, usually dead silent about racism and colonization, at the time, I viewed more involvement (financial, political, and technical) as an ethical given.
Yet, there is no historical evidence that Western presence has ever enhanced the well-being of the previously colonized world. It took me a solid decade—and exposure to post- and decolonial approaches—to change my doctoral research question from: “When do Western actors not show up?” to “Should they be there in the first place?”
Ever since I discovered—through the works of colleagues like Errol Henderson, Meera Sabaratnam, Siba Grovogui, and Robbie Shilliam—that one can include analyses of race, racism, colonialism, and paternalism in the study of the international and present-day North-South relations, I have come to the conclusion that we should get rid of the notion of aid and the related discipline of international development, which, like IR, is built on a profound whitewashing of history and the erasure of the contributions of previously colonized people to wealth and advancements in the West. Indeed, the entire notion of aid is obscene—and racist. International relations that do not reproduce the logic of colonialism must instead engage with ideas of repair, dignity, and even retreat.
Taking the problem of racism seriously in the field of IR means viewing it not merely as an issue of stereotypes or cultural insensitivities, but as a colonial technology of life and premature death built on ideologies of whiteness and white supremacy. It is also not just about adding a bit of racism and colonialism and stirring. It means fundamentally rethinking the purpose of the discipline: Do we make it a science of the status quo or a science of the possibility of life—starting with Black lives?
Earlier this week, on June 30, the king of Belgium expressed for the very first time in history his regret for the countless brutal acts committed during the colonial era in the Belgian Congo—60 years after formal independence.
IR scholars who place race, racism, and colonialism at the center of their analysis know that it is about more than acknowledging the past. The scholarly imperative is to study and question the current international system built on racial capitalism, and to imagine alternatives. At best, Belgium’s belated gesture is the start of a conversation about repair and reparations, not aid—a conversation that mainstream IR, as it exists today, has not been able to ignite.
The Field of International Relations Wasn’t Born Where You Think It Was
By Vineet Thakur, a lecturer at Leiden University and the current Smuts visiting fellow at Cambridge University, is a co-author of South Africa, Race and the Making of International Relations.
The established story runs that the IR discipline is a child of World War I. In a world weary of destruction, so the familiar founding myth goes, a new and supposedly scientific discipline was needed to mitigate the problem of war. Only a dispassionate, reasoned, and objective study could lead to new pathways out of it—leading to the founding of a department at Aberystwyth University in Wales and an institute of international relations on the sidelines of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. This story is only half-true, however.
There is another war that was equally important to the founding of IR: the South African War, also known as the Boer War, of 1899-1902. The Union of South Africa, a racist state forged out of four warring proto-states and the constituents of the British Empire in 1910, became the model for how the institution of war could be tamed.
The men, the method, and the money involved in this mythmaking, as Peter Vale and I argue in a recent book, are crucial precursors to understanding the individuals, ideas, and the institutions involved in the founding of IR as an academic discipline.
The Round Table, perhaps the singularly most important network responsible for the creation of several early chairs, institutes, and journals in the IR field, drew almost entirely on the work of its core members in South Africa.
The Round Table, perhaps the singularly most important network responsible for the creation of several early chairs, institutes, and journals in the IR field, drew almost entirely on the early work of its core members in South Africa, then known as “Milner’s Kindergarten,” named after the British colonial administrator who was high commissioner of South Africa during and after the war.
They money for IR’s early initiatives, including its first institute, London’s Chatham House, and one of its first journals, the Round Table, came from the South African mining magnate Abe Bailey, a key ally of the imperialist politician Cecil John Rhodes. The Round Table’s racial ideas, developed first in South Africa, later served as templates for the interwar ideas of the British Commonwealth and the so-called World State. Indeed, the life and work of Chatham House’s founder Lionel Curtis is the thread that links the gold mines of Johannesburg to the Union of South Africa to the British Commonwealth to the idea of a world government.
This alternative origins story raises two crucial issues in thinking about race and the making of IR—as an academic discipline and as a field of practice. First, to analyze racial constructions of the world, scholars’ archival gaze must expand beyond the United States and Britain. Important as it is to understand race and its role in the making of IR from the American or British perspectives, studying only these contexts excludes the people of the rest of the world. Second, race almost always operates in conjunction with other categories—such as caste, class, civilization, and, in today’s context, the racialized Muslim.
The challenge for IR is to find a new language that is not confined to just one master concept or one corner of the world.
Race and Empire Still Haunt IR
By Duncan Bell, a professor of political thought and international relations at the University of Cambridge.
The global Black Lives Matter protests have amplified interest in the role played by ideologies of race in both the dynamics of world politics and the discipline of international relations.
IR was born in the age of empire, and for the first few decades of its history it was explicitly occupied with questions of colonial administration and the justification of racial supremacy. Social scientists furnished legitimacy for a world structured by imperial exploitation and pernicious racial hierarchies. Race was often viewed as the basic unit of politics—more fundamental than state, society, nation, or individual.
The “religion of whiteness,” as the civil rights activist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois termed it, was common (though not unchallenged) across the Euro-American world. As Robbie Shilliam of Johns Hopkins University argued recently in Foreign Policy, it was manifested in the “color line,” that Du Bois saw as an organizing principle of international politics. Yet many IR scholars today, Shilliam observes correctly, “have carefully avoided reflecting on the role race plays in our field.”
In a forthcoming book, Dreamworlds of Race, I scrutinize a white supremacist version of “racial utopianism” that was popular at the dawn of the 20th century—the fantasy that the “Anglo-Saxons” (or “English-speaking peoples”), if unified politically, could bring peace and justice to the earth. Many eminent individuals proselytized the idea, including Andrew Carnegie, who ended up creating the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes.
Though the most extravagant versions of Anglo-utopianism were exhausted by the mid-20th century, the idea that the “English-speaking peoples” are destined to play a leading role in shaping world politics has proved remarkably durable. It has resurfaced in assorted conservative visions of the so-called Anglosphere and in projects for reorienting Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy.
The intertwined histories of race and empire haunt the present. Yet the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrates the productive power of collective action and the possibilities for rethinking history in the service of a more equitable future. If mainstream IR is to play a part in this vital endeavor it needs to address questions of imperial and racial domination, past and present, far more seriously than it has done in recent years.
Eurocentrism in IR Is a Form of Intellectual Racism
By Karen Smith, a lecturer in international relations at Leiden University and an honorary research associate at the University of Cape Town, is the co-editor, with Arlene Tickner, of International Relations From the Global South: Worlds of Difference.
In the same way that international relations has neglected race, the discipline has been both ignorant and dismissive of alternative ways of thinking about the world that do not, according to a Eurocentric understanding of history, originate from the West.
Ideas from outside the West have been deemed inferior in the field of IR and lacking in value because of their geographic origin, because they are not couched in the theoretical language regarded as legitimate by the gatekeepers of IR or do not appear in forms—such as recognized academic journal articles or books—that are considered to be appropriate sources for the study of IR.
In addition, scholars from beyond the West have, in a way that reflects the global economy, been relegated to the role of providers of raw material—in the form of empirical evidence—while the transformation of these facts into more advanced, abstract forms of knowledge has been regarded as the prerogative of the West. For example, Western scholars often assess African states according to criteria developed by European theories of statehood and rely on local scholars to provide the relevant data, instead of considering alternative African understandings of the state.
As a consequence, the majority of what students read about in IR continues to be written by a minority of the world’s people. The presumption that all worthwhile ideas originated in the West is not only exclusionary but false, as scholars such as Pinar Bilgin and Siba Grovogui have argued—and should be acknowledged as constituting a form of intellectual racism.
The exclusion of scholars and ideas from outside Europe and North America has resulted in a field that does not provide those who study it—and often go on to practice it as, for example, diplomats and politicians—with the necessary diversity of perspectives to fully grasp the dynamics of the contemporary global system. Perhaps most significantly, it has constrained the discipline’s ability to imagine a different world.
Feminist Foreign Policy Cannot Ignore Race
By Toni Haastrup, a senior lecturer in international politics at the University of Stirling and the co-author, with Jamie J. Hagen, of “Global Racial Hierarchies and the Limits of Localization via National Action Plans” in the book New Directions in Women, Peace and Security.
Across the world, countries are adopting new foreign-policy practices to redress inequalities within the global system. One of these is Sweden’s feminist foreign policy. Established in 2014, this approach to foreign policy was led by former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, and it draws attention to the implications of discrimination based on gender and the absence of women in the field of international relations, including foreign-policy practice.
Feminist foreign policy has now gone beyond Sweden, to include countries like Canada and, recently, Mexico.
While these moves toward a foreign-policy approach informed by feminism is important, they can reinforce enduring blind spots within the field and practice of international relations by ignoring race. Feminist foreign policy often allows wealthy countries to focus attention on the plight of women in countries with developing economies. Wealthier countries, or developed economies, then position themselves as being better placed to respond to the challenges around gender discrimination.
The dominant brand of feminist foreign policy fails to consider seriously the racialized legacies of colonialism that lead to the conditions of gender discrimination in developing economies.
The assumptions encoded in the relationship between developed and developing economies are thus racialized. A country with a feminist foreign policy often invokes its own experiences as good practice elsewhere. Yet gender discrimination is universal, and often members of minority groups within the developed economies are significantly disadvantaged by endemic racism and xenophobia. Further, in emphasizing gender-based discrimination “elsewhere” as the core inequality, this dominant brand of feminist foreign policy fails to consider seriously the racialized legacies of colonialism that lead to the conditions of gender discrimination in developing economies.
For feminist foreign policy to provide a transformative alternative to the current practice of foreign policy, an explicit consideration of race is necessary. Race in IR is not new, so why treat it as irrelevant in the quest for more egalitarian and just societies? A movement of transnational feminists provides a way forward for reflection and thinking through how to challenge the structural violence—the harms caused by social structures to disadvantaged peoples—that upholds the dominant practices of international relations.
In accounting for structural violence, and thus acknowledging how an explicit consideration of race impacts foreign policy, the Feminist Foreign Policy Project—a group of activists, academics, and practitioners—has called on wealthier countries to halt the arms race; reconsider military interventions in developing economies; reverse the trend of increased militarism via increased military spending; and rethink the championing of economic policies that invariably increase inequalities. Paying attention to these systemic issues that originate in wealthier countries is a transformative plan that could begin to tackle the inequalities within international relations.
A different way of doing foreign policy that is people-led rather than state-led and emphasizes solidarity over interest is the only means toward justice for all.
The West’s Triumph Led to Racial Catastrophe. Its Decline Could Lead to Racial Justice.
By Seifudein Adem, a professor of global studies at Doshisha University.
According to the late political scientist Ali Mazrui, the first phase of global cultural encounters led to genocide in the Americas and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This was the era of the West’s ascendance. The second phase was the period of colonialism and imperialism, through which the world has recently passed. This was the era of the West’s triumph. Both these phases resulted in racial catastrophes.
At a deeper level, what the world is witnessing today could be the third phase of cultural encounters. The pretention of Western culture to universal validity is being challenged from the angles of cultural relativism (what is valid in one society in the West was not valid in another); historical relativism (what was valid in the West at the beginning of the 20th century was not valid in the West at the beginning of the 21st); and empirical relativism (the West often failed to live up to its own standards, and occasionally those standards were better met by other societies).
Indeed, the rejection of the process that makes all of us look similar (homogenization) while making one of us the boss (hegemonization) seems to be well underway. This is the era of the West on the defensive.
For many around the world, the moral disease of racism needs to be confronted as vehemently as the physical disease now sweeping around the globe.
In recent months, COVID-19 emerged and spread globally. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, there have been noticeable lapses of standards in many Western societies, while those standards were better met by several non-Western societies. The world has also witnessed, more recently, the global spread of protests demanding justice for George Floyd, an African American man cruelly killed by police in the United States. Many of those who protested in different countries might not have known all that much about the specific issues and may not have even spoken English. But that so many knew about the incident at all and felt strongly about it to come out to protest is itself something.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the global protests against police brutality demonstrate that, first, the challenges to humanity transcend the territoriality of the state and the parochialism of race and, second, a transnational, if rudimentary, convergence of political sensibilities may be emerging at the grassroots level. For many around the world, the moral disease of racism needs to be confronted as vehemently as the physical disease now sweeping around the globe.
These shared sensibilities could, in the long run, become a catalyst for something bigger: the creation of a truly global village that is based not on cultural hierarchy but on what Mazrui called cultural ecumenicalism—a combination of a global pool of achievements with local pools of distinctive innovation and tradition. We should hope so.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-03--How America’s Founding Fathers Missed a Chance to Abolish Slavery

And yet when the war was done , Lafayette expressed disillusionment with the patriarch of liberty , who politely rebuffed or ignored the Frenchman ’ s repeated pleas to free America ’ s slaves—some of whom had fought valiantly as soldiers in the assault at Yorktown .
“ I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America , if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery , ” Lafayette later said , according to historian Henry Wiencek ’ s 2003 book An Imperfect God : George Washington , His Slaves , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentiments came to be used as a rallying cry by abolitionists before the Civil War .
Lafayette was only one of many legendary figures associated with America ’ s founding 244 years ago this Saturday , July 4 , who died dismayed over its inherent contradictions over race , which only grew more intractable with time .
And as Americans celebrate another Independence Day , the sense of disillusionment has not disappeared , either .
No doubt , a great deal has changed for the better since the Civil War , including the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the constitutional and legislative establishment of equal rights for all Americans .
But , somehow , too little has changed in terms of the racial divide that—in a way that is all too apparent after the killing of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement—the founders and their successors not only failed to heal but often to address at all .
Only in recent years have scholars begun to acknowledge the extent to which the true abolitionist movement in America began in the very earliest years of the republic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Founding Fathers as Benjamin Franklin , Alexander Hamilton , and John Jay .
It did not have to be this way .
As some historians now argue , America ’ s racial divisions might have been addressed much sooner .
“ I think there are two great tragedies that come out of the Revolutionary War , ” said the Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian Joseph Ellis , who is working on a new book about the subject .
“ One is removal of the Indians and the other is slavery .
I think the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a Greek tragedy—in other words , I don ’ t think it could have happened any other way .
The demography was such that it was fated .
But I think slavery was a Shakespearian tragedy .
That is , it could have gone the other way .
The first anti-slavery movement in the entire Western world happens here in the United States , right at the end of the Revolutionary War.
” Only in recent years have scholars begun to acknowledge the extent to which the true abolitionist movement in America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up to the Civil War , under such famed figures as William Lloyd Garrison , but in the very earliest years of the republic , at the hands of such anti-slavery Founding Fathers as Benjamin Franklin , Alexander Hamilton , and John Jay .
It was shortly before the Revolution that the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was formed , with Franklin later elected its president .
The New-York Manumission Society was created in 1785 by Jay , and joined by Hamilton , to promote the gradual abolition of slavery .
Franklin , who was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the other founders as a font of wisdom and advice , actually made the abolition of slavery the last crusade of his life .
Though as a young man Franklin had owned slaves himself and published advertisements for slave sales in his newspaper , the Pennsylvania Gazette , toward the end of his life he became a passionate activist for emancipation .
Franklin ’ s last public act before his death in 1790 was to send to the first Congress of the United States a petition asking it to “ devise means for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the American People ” and “ promote mercy and justice toward this distressed Race.
” Even in Virginia , gradual emancipation plans were discussed , and both Washington and Thomas Jefferson thought—perhaps wishfully—that slavery would die a natural death before long .
Their default position was to leave the issue to the coming generations ; they were too busy creating a new nation out of unwieldy former colonies .
But Washington , prodded by comrades he admired like Lafayette and Lt. Col. John Laurens—an idealistic South Carolinian who pushed hard for emancipation before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Revolutionary War—remained deeply anguished over the issue , some historians say .
Ultimately , he became the only founder to free all his slaves in his will ( though he left it to his wife , Martha Custis Washington , to execute his plans , which she delayed ) .
“ If you look at Washington ’ s will , he ’ s not conflicted over the place of African Americans at all , ” Wiencek said in an interview .
“ From one end of his papers to the other , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found none , unlike Jefferson , who ’ s explicit on his belief in the inferiority of Black people .
In his will , Washington authored a bill of rights for Black people and said they should be taught to read and write .
They were Americans , with the right to live here , to be educated , and to work productively as free people.
” Washington ’ s devoted comrade-in-arms , Lafayette , like many early abolitionists including Franklin , also rejected all notions of Black inferiority .
In a 1786 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ In the cause of my black brethren , I feel myself warmly interested and most decidedly side against the white part of mankind.
” “ In his will , Washington authored a bill of rights for Black people and said they should be taught to read and write .
They were Americans , with the right to live here , to be educated , and to work productively as free people.
” “ That moment at the founding was really a horrible missed opportunity , ” said another historian , Sharon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Investing in Life : Insurance in Antebellum America .
“ Many of these slave owners weren ’ t wedded to slavery in a real hard way .
It wasn ’ t empty talk .
They really did see it as going against what they were preaching as a new nation.
” Indeed , in the early years of the republic , slavery looked destined for extinction not only because it was antithetical to the founding principles of the nation , but also because it wasn ’ t working economically .
Before the invention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the 18th century , when many Virginia plantations like Jefferson ’ s and James Madison ’ s were mainly growing tobacco and only beginning to shift to wheat , they were actually losing money on slavery .
“ Tobacco was destroying the soil .
At the time , Virginia would have been better off without slavery , ” Ellis said .
“ Washington had over 300 slaves but only a third of them worked .
The rest were too old .
… Jefferson , Madison , and [ James ] Monroe all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The right way to go was to end slavery economically , as well as for justice ’ s sake.
” Ellis suggests that Washington—who set so many critical precedents that shaped the character of the new nation , for example , forestalling a rebellion among his soldiers against civilian control near the end of the Revolutionary War and then leaving power after two terms—might have made a difference on the race issue had he lived longer and expressed his real views more forthrightly .
( He died suddenly of a throat infection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
Washington “ could have changed history ” by turning his home state of Virginia into a “ beachhead ” for abolition , Ellis argues .
“ There was a chance that could have happened .
If Washington had decided , ‘ Let ’ s go to the capital ; this is a testament I want to make about the country ’ s future.
’ Instead of delivering a Farewell Address about foreign policy , which is what he did , make it about slavery ; that would have made a huge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was far more preoccupied with keeping his new nation out of entanglements with France and England and tamping down the emerging factionalism between Jefferson and Hamilton over the powers of the federal government .
So he and the other founders took the less onerous path of sweeping the slavery issue under the rug , believing that time was on their side .
“ My feeling is that Washington believes slavery would come to an end when the international slave trade ended in 1808 , which is what the U.S. Constitution called for , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States stabilized as a new nation , slavery did not quietly wither and die off ; on the contrary , it became more profitable and widespread , and the Southern slave states became more recalcitrant about abolishing it .
And some of the founders , including Jefferson , later came to realize that all they had really done was lay the groundwork for the Civil War .
In the early 19th century , as the fervor over the Revolution ’ s ideals and moral qualms over slavery faded , the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Southerners used to refer to slavery ) also began to make sense economically with the shift among Southern plantations from tobacco to cotton , which was much easier to cultivate , and the widespread use of the cotton gin .
Because the machine could separate out seed from cotton on its own—a slow , painstaking job formerly done by slaves—Eli Whitney ’ s invention meant the more pickers of cotton bolls ( that is , slaves ) one owned , the more profit one made .
“ Washington thought the window for emancipation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life , but it was really closing , ” Ellis said .
“ They [ the founders ] didn ’ t foresee the cotton gin and the rise of the cotton kingdom .
The first census made clear that the slave population was doubling every 20 to 25 years.
” Jefferson , who spent his life trying to get out of debt and in the end freed only a few of his slaves , became a key figure in preserving slavery , as he and other Southern planters came to view slaves as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time through birth rates .
“ By then , the ownership of Black people was so profitable , the institution was getting harder and harder to dislodge , especially after Jefferson allowed it in the [ newly purchased ] Louisiana territory , ” Wiencek said .
“ Jefferson was one of the first to realize you could use enslaved people as collateral ; he took out a $ 2,000 slave-equity loan in Amsterdam .
When this notion spread throughout the South , it was really game over for abolition.
” Edward Baptist of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , notes that by the 1830s , slave assets were being bundled and securitized by banks for big profits , not unlike mortgages were in the financial crisis of the mid-2000s .
“ It ’ s not just the productive labor but also the reproductive labor of enslaved people that is extracted and exported around , ” he said in an interview .
Jefferson , the third president , was followed by two successive slave-owning Virginian presidents—his acolytes James Madison and James Monroe , who ensured the perpetuation of slavery into the early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ The Virginia dynasty set things in the wrong direction , ” said Ellis , referring to the fact that four out of the first five U.S. presidents were Virginians .
“ If Virginia had gone the other way , I think the whole arc of history would have also gone the other way.
” And so , in one of the consummate ironies of American history , it was Jefferson—the author of the Declaration of Independence who wrote that “ all men are created equal ” —who proved central to institutionalizing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life .
Though as a young man , Jefferson , too , had gingerly advocated freeing the slaves , as time passed , his statements on the topic became more contradictory and deceptive , and he gradually hardened toward emancipation .
Indeed , perhaps no founder embodies the grotesque ambiguity of America ’ s original sin more than Jefferson , who called slavery a “ hideous evil ” but , by the time he reached middle age , had turned Monticello into a slave factory to pay down his debts—and until he died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that defined his entire life .
Jefferson—who was one of the youngest of the Founding Fathers in 1776—was also one of the few to live long enough to realize how costly his avoidance of the issue would become .
A few years before he died , Jefferson appeared to understand that the Civil War was inevitable , warning in a famous letter that he heard the toll of “ the [ death ] knell of the union ” after the Missouri Compromise of 1820 , when the Southern slave states insisted on maintaining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states by demanding that Missouri be admitted to the union as a slave state to counter the admittance of free Maine .
The Missouri Compromise meant an irreconcilable stalemate—to be resolved only by war .
Equally alarmed by the Missouri decision was Jefferson ’ s devoted friend and fellow Founding Father John Adams—who famously died on the same day as Jefferson , July 4 , 1826 , 50 years to the day after independence .
Though Adams , a Northerner who owned no slaves , opposed slavery his whole life , he had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Monticello ” too much on the issue .
Preserving the union was paramount in Adams ’ s mind , especially in face of foreign threats to its unity .
But in one of his last letters to Jefferson , Adams spoke at last of being “ terrified ” about “ the black cloud ” of slavery that has been “ hanging over [ this country ] for half a century.
” ( Jefferson did not respond . )
Following the Missouri Compromise , Adams also knew it was time to speak out publicly—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John Quincy Adams , to take a stand on the issue .
“ I shudder when I think of the calamities which slavery is likely to produce in this country , ” the second president wrote in a letter to John Quincy ’ s wife , Louisa Catherine Adams , in 1820 .
“ If the gangrene is not stopped I can see nothing but insurrections of the blacks against the whites and massacres by the whites in their turn of the blacks .
… ” John Quincy Adams , the sixth president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prominent abolitionists in the country .
But it was much too late to stop the Civil War—and all that followed .
In a letter to Lafayette , Washington told his French friend that he was moved by “ the benevolence of your heart .
… Would to God a like Spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country , but I despair of seeing it—some petitions were presented to the Assembly , at its last Session , for the abolition of slavery , but they could scarcely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and his example lived on .
Frederick Douglass later paid homage to the Frenchman at his grave in Paris and savaged the “ shameless hypocrisy ” of the founders in an 1852 speech : “ What , to the American slave , is your 4th of July ?
I answer : a day that reveals to him , more than all other days in the year , the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim .
To him , your celebration is a sham ; your boasted liberty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ greatness , swelling vanity.
” It was poetic justice , perhaps , that the recent protests after the killing of George Floyd converged on Lafayette Square , the park across from the White House that is named for the French abolitionist hero of the revolution , without acknowledging his importance in the cause the protesters were fighting for .
But like Adams , Jefferson , and other founders , Washington was far more concerned about the stability of the new republic .
“ He and the other founders knew that republics always died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They fell apart .
They feared the fate of the republic was still at risk , until it was solidified.
” As Jefferson put it in his warning letter about the Missouri decision , “ We have the wolf by the ear , and we can neither hold him , nor safely let him go .
Justice is in one scale , and self-preservation in the other.
” William Darity , a Duke University economist and scholar who is one of the nation ’ s leading authorities on the economic impact of slavery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for African Americans , believes that there were “ a number of roads when the wrong path was taken ” going back to the beginning of the republic .
At the same time , he said in an interview , it ’ s nearly impossible to imagine that all 13 colonies would have joined in the revolution had slavery been made an issue .
“ The most resistant would have been South Carolina , ” said Darity , who recently co-wrote the book From Here to Equality : Reparations for Black Americans in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Baptist agrees that states in the Deep South like South Carolina and Georgia were quite dug in , even if some in Virginia were wavering on the issue .
“ I would point out that the most pro-slavery elements in the Constitutional Convention and in the ratification process frequently got what they wanted , ” Baptist said .
“ The South Carolinians came to Philadelphia determined to get lots of things , including the fugitive slave clause , in the Constitution , and they did.
” Another reason for the temporizing of Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ populations in these states were terrified of African American uprisings if the slaves were freed too quickly .
By the end of the 18th century , 40 percent of the population of Virginia was Black ; in South Carolina , the figure was closer to 60 percent .
To many white Southerners , emancipation meant insurrection .
For the Northern states , the issue was much easier and more straightforward .
Vermont was the first state to legally end slavery , Ellis points out , but at the time , there were only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were all free already .
Fears of what would happen to enfranchised Blacks in the South were always a common thread underlying the debate over emancipation .
And those issues were never resolved : Even Abraham Lincoln , the Great Emancipator , thought that a peaceful and stable biracial society was impossible .
The historical evidence shows that Lincoln believed for most of his life that removing Black people from the country and colonizing them elsewhere was the only real solution , and he even proposed this to a stunned delegation of free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( They declined , noting that they themselves had been Americans for generations . )
After the Civil War , white fears of Black insurrection again grew virulent , setting the stage for the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow—and the racial divisions that would ultimately culminate in the civil rights movement of the 1960s , as well as the debates that still rage today .
“ Most of the monuments to the Confederacy in the Southern states were built in the late 19th and early 20th century , ” Ellis said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ period in U.S. history ; once Blacks were free , they were seen as more dangerous , and whites felt they had to terrorize them.
” And so passed another century , along with constitutional amendments and new laws that appeared to heal everything but the racism that was there from the beginning .
And so the issue rages on .

There was no greater devotee to the American cause of independence than the Marquis de Lafayette. The young and idealistic French aristocrat endured the terrible winter at Valley Forge and fought bravely in critical battles in the Revolutionary War—playing a decisive role in George Washington’s victory at Yorktown. He revered the man he called his “beloved, matchless Washington” as a surrogate father. Gen. Washington was just as enamored of the Frenchman who helped him win the war: If you visit the first president’s estate at Mount Vernon today, you will see, displayed prominently in the front parlor, the rusted key to the Bastille in Paris that Lafayette sent Washington during the French Revolution, describing it in a letter as a tribute from a “missionary of liberty to its patriarch.”
There was no greater devotee to the American cause of independence than the Marquis de Lafayette. The young and idealistic French aristocrat endured the terrible winter at Valley Forge and fought bravely in critical battles in the Revolutionary War—playing a decisive role in George Washington’s victory at Yorktown. He revered the man he called his “beloved, matchless Washington” as a surrogate father. Gen. Washington was just as enamored of the Frenchman who helped him win the war: If you visit the first president’s estate at Mount Vernon today, you will see, displayed prominently in the front parlor, the rusted key to the Bastille in Paris that Lafayette sent Washington during the French Revolution, describing it in a letter as a tribute from a “missionary of liberty to its patriarch.”
And yet when the war was done, Lafayette expressed disillusionment with the patriarch of liberty, who politely rebuffed or ignored the Frenchman’s repeated pleas to free America’s slaves—some of whom had fought valiantly as soldiers in the assault at Yorktown. “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery,” Lafayette later said, according to historian Henry Wiencek’s 2003 book An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. His sentiments came to be used as a rallying cry by abolitionists before the Civil War.
Lafayette was only one of many legendary figures associated with America’s founding 244 years ago this Saturday, July 4, who died dismayed over its inherent contradictions over race, which only grew more intractable with time. And as Americans celebrate another Independence Day, the sense of disillusionment has not disappeared, either. No doubt, a great deal has changed for the better since the Civil War, including the abolishment of slavery 155 years ago and the constitutional and legislative establishment of equal rights for all Americans. But, somehow, too little has changed in terms of the racial divide that—in a way that is all too apparent after the killing of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement—the founders and their successors not only failed to heal but often to address at all.
Only in recent years have scholars begun to acknowledge the extent to which the true abolitionist movement in America began in the very earliest years of the republic, at the hands of such anti-slavery Founding Fathers as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.
It did not have to be this way. As some historians now argue, America’s racial divisions might have been addressed much sooner. “I think there are two great tragedies that come out of the Revolutionary War,” said the Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian Joseph Ellis, who is working on a new book about the subject. “One is removal of the Indians and the other is slavery. I think the removal of Native Americans from their lands was a Greek tragedy—in other words, I don’t think it could have happened any other way. The demography was such that it was fated. But I think slavery was a Shakespearian tragedy. That is, it could have gone the other way. The first anti-slavery movement in the entire Western world happens here in the United States, right at the end of the Revolutionary War.”
Only in recent years have scholars begun to acknowledge the extent to which the true abolitionist movement in America began not in the mid-19th century leading up to the Civil War, under such famed figures as William Lloyd Garrison, but in the very earliest years of the republic, at the hands of such anti-slavery Founding Fathers as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. It was shortly before the Revolution that the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was formed, with Franklin later elected its president. The New-York Manumission Society was created in 1785 by Jay, and joined by Hamilton, to promote the gradual abolition of slavery. Franklin, who was a sage, grandfatherly figure revered by the other founders as a font of wisdom and advice, actually made the abolition of slavery the last crusade of his life. Though as a young man Franklin had owned slaves himself and published advertisements for slave sales in his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, toward the end of his life he became a passionate activist for emancipation. Franklin’s last public act before his death in 1790 was to send to the first Congress of the United States a petition asking it to “devise means for removing the Inconsistency from the Character of the American People” and “promote mercy and justice toward this distressed Race.”
From left: An abolitionist pamphlet published in Boston in 1762. The cover of a 1797 letter to George Washington on his continuing to enslave people from Edward Rushton, a British abolitionist. The title page of a pamphlet from former U.S. President James Madison proposing the gradual abolition of slavery without endangering the economic and social stability of the South.
Even in Virginia, gradual emancipation plans were discussed, and both Washington and Thomas Jefferson thought—perhaps wishfully—that slavery would die a natural death before long. Their default position was to leave the issue to the coming generations; they were too busy creating a new nation out of unwieldy former colonies. But Washington, prodded by comrades he admired like Lafayette and Lt. Col. John Laurens—an idealistic South Carolinian who pushed hard for emancipation before being killed near the end of the Revolutionary War—remained deeply anguished over the issue, some historians say. Ultimately, he became the only founder to free all his slaves in his will (though he left it to his wife, Martha Custis Washington, to execute his plans, which she delayed).
“If you look at Washington’s will, he’s not conflicted over the place of African Americans at all,” Wiencek said in an interview. “From one end of his papers to the other, I looked for some sense of racism and found none, unlike Jefferson, who’s explicit on his belief in the inferiority of Black people. In his will, Washington authored a bill of rights for Black people and said they should be taught to read and write. They were Americans, with the right to live here, to be educated, and to work productively as free people.” Washington’s devoted comrade-in-arms, Lafayette, like many early abolitionists including Franklin, also rejected all notions of Black inferiority. In a 1786 letter to John Adams, Lafayette wrote: “In the cause of my black brethren, I feel myself warmly interested and most decidedly side against the white part of mankind.”
“In his will, Washington authored a bill of rights for Black people and said they should be taught to read and write. They were Americans, with the right to live here, to be educated, and to work productively as free people.”
“That moment at the founding was really a horrible missed opportunity,” said another historian, Sharon Murphy of Providence College, author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America. “Many of these slave owners weren’t wedded to slavery in a real hard way. It wasn’t empty talk. They really did see it as going against what they were preaching as a new nation.”
Indeed, in the early years of the republic, slavery looked destined for extinction not only because it was antithetical to the founding principles of the nation, but also because it wasn’t working economically. Before the invention of the cotton gin at the end of the 18th century, when many Virginia plantations like Jefferson’s and James Madison’s were mainly growing tobacco and only beginning to shift to wheat, they were actually losing money on slavery. “Tobacco was destroying the soil. At the time, Virginia would have been better off without slavery,” Ellis said. “Washington had over 300 slaves but only a third of them worked. The rest were too old. … Jefferson, Madison, and [James] Monroe all ended up bankrupt because of this problem. The right way to go was to end slavery economically, as well as for justice’s sake.”
Ellis suggests that Washington—who set so many critical precedents that shaped the character of the new nation, for example, forestalling a rebellion among his soldiers against civilian control near the end of the Revolutionary War and then leaving power after two terms—might have made a difference on the race issue had he lived longer and expressed his real views more forthrightly. (He died suddenly of a throat infection in 1799 at the age of 67.) Washington “could have changed history” by turning his home state of Virginia into a “beachhead” for abolition, Ellis argues. “There was a chance that could have happened. If Washington had decided, ‘Let’s go to the capital; this is a testament I want to make about the country’s future.’ Instead of delivering a Farewell Address about foreign policy, which is what he did, make it about slavery; that would have made a huge difference.”
But Washington at the time was far more preoccupied with keeping his new nation out of entanglements with France and England and tamping down the emerging factionalism between Jefferson and Hamilton over the powers of the federal government. So he and the other founders took the less onerous path of sweeping the slavery issue under the rug, believing that time was on their side. “My feeling is that Washington believes slavery would come to an end when the international slave trade ended in 1808, which is what the U.S. Constitution called for,” Wiencek said.
Yet even as the United States stabilized as a new nation, slavery did not quietly wither and die off; on the contrary, it became more profitable and widespread, and the Southern slave states became more recalcitrant about abolishing it. And some of the founders, including Jefferson, later came to realize that all they had really done was lay the groundwork for the Civil War.
A family of enslaved people picks cotton in the fields near Savannah, Georgia, circa 1860.
In the early 19th century, as the fervor over the Revolution’s ideals and moral qualms over slavery faded, the “peculiar institution” (the euphemism some Southerners used to refer to slavery) also began to make sense economically with the shift among Southern plantations from tobacco to cotton, which was much easier to cultivate, and the widespread use of the cotton gin. Because the machine could separate out seed from cotton on its own—a slow, painstaking job formerly done by slaves—Eli Whitney’s invention meant the more pickers of cotton bolls (that is, slaves) one owned, the more profit one made. “Washington thought the window for emancipation was opening toward the end of his life, but it was really closing,” Ellis said. “They [the founders] didn’t foresee the cotton gin and the rise of the cotton kingdom. The first census made clear that the slave population was doubling every 20 to 25 years.”
Jefferson, who spent his life trying to get out of debt and in the end freed only a few of his slaves, became a key figure in preserving slavery, as he and other Southern planters came to view slaves as valuable capital assets that would multiply over time through birth rates. “By then, the ownership of Black people was so profitable, the institution was getting harder and harder to dislodge, especially after Jefferson allowed it in the [newly purchased] Louisiana territory,” Wiencek said. “Jefferson was one of the first to realize you could use enslaved people as collateral; he took out a $2,000 slave-equity loan in Amsterdam. When this notion spread throughout the South, it was really game over for abolition.” Edward Baptist of Cornell University, another historian of slavery, notes that by the 1830s, slave assets were being bundled and securitized by banks for big profits, not unlike mortgages were in the financial crisis of the mid-2000s. “It’s not just the productive labor but also the reproductive labor of enslaved people that is extracted and exported around,” he said in an interview.
Jefferson, the third president, was followed by two successive slave-owning Virginian presidents—his acolytes James Madison and James Monroe, who ensured the perpetuation of slavery into the early 19th century and the Civil War period. “The Virginia dynasty set things in the wrong direction,” said Ellis, referring to the fact that four out of the first five U.S. presidents were Virginians. “If Virginia had gone the other way, I think the whole arc of history would have also gone the other way.”
And so, in one of the consummate ironies of American history, it was Jefferson—the author of the Declaration of Independence who wrote that “all men are created equal”—who proved central to institutionalizing the racial inequality that still pervades American life. Though as a young man, Jefferson, too, had gingerly advocated freeing the slaves, as time passed, his statements on the topic became more contradictory and deceptive, and he gradually hardened toward emancipation. Indeed, perhaps no founder embodies the grotesque ambiguity of America’s original sin more than Jefferson, who called slavery a “hideous evil” but, by the time he reached middle age, had turned Monticello into a slave factory to pay down his debts—and until he died, he never truly acknowledged the hypocrisy that defined his entire life.
A map shows the status of slavery in the United States in 1821. Published in 1920, it shows Free States, states undergoing gradual abolition, free states via the Ordinance of 1787, free states via the Missouri Compromise, and slave-holding states.
Jefferson—who was one of the youngest of the Founding Fathers in 1776—was also one of the few to live long enough to realize how costly his avoidance of the issue would become. A few years before he died, Jefferson appeared to understand that the Civil War was inevitable, warning in a famous letter that he heard the toll of “the [death] knell of the union” after the Missouri Compromise of 1820, when the Southern slave states insisted on maintaining an equal balance of slave and free states by demanding that Missouri be admitted to the union as a slave state to counter the admittance of free Maine. The Missouri Compromise meant an irreconcilable stalemate—to be resolved only by war.
Equally alarmed by the Missouri decision was Jefferson’s devoted friend and fellow Founding Father John Adams—who famously died on the same day as Jefferson, July 4, 1826, 50 years to the day after independence. Though Adams, a Northerner who owned no slaves, opposed slavery his whole life, he had genteelly avoided pressing the “sage of Monticello” too much on the issue. Preserving the union was paramount in Adams’s mind, especially in face of foreign threats to its unity. But in one of his last letters to Jefferson, Adams spoke at last of being “terrified” about “the black cloud” of slavery that has been “hanging over [this country] for half a century.” (Jefferson did not respond.)
Following the Missouri Compromise, Adams also knew it was time to speak out publicly—and he prodded his equivocating son, soon-to-be-president John Quincy Adams, to take a stand on the issue. “I shudder when I think of the calamities which slavery is likely to produce in this country,” the second president wrote in a letter to John Quincy’s wife, Louisa Catherine Adams, in 1820. “If the gangrene is not stopped I can see nothing but insurrections of the blacks against the whites and massacres by the whites in their turn of the blacks. … ”
John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, later became one of the most prominent abolitionists in the country. But it was much too late to stop the Civil War—and all that followed.
The Union commander's notice of the Emancipation Proclamation to the citizens of Winchester, Virginia, on Jan. 5, 1863.
Could slavery have been abolished earlier, the Civil War avoided, and Black Americans afforded more of an opportunity to enjoy equal rights much sooner, as George Washington himself apparently once wanted? It may be “wishful thinking,” as Providence College’s Murphy puts it, to suggest that history could have played out much differently. “The problem is that Washington is more of an outlier,” Murphy said. “More people then were like Jefferson.” Washington himself understood this fact, which was one reason, Ellis added, that the first president “thought you couldn’t raise the issue frontally” and why he evaded Lafayette’s plans for emancipation and building communities of freed slaves.
In a letter to Lafayette, Washington told his French friend that he was moved by “the benevolence of your heart. … Would to God a like Spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country, but I despair of seeing it—some petitions were presented to the Assembly, at its last Session, for the abolition of slavery, but they could scarcely obtain a reading.”
Lafayette remained unassuaged, and his example lived on. Frederick Douglass later paid homage to the Frenchman at his grave in Paris and savaged the “shameless hypocrisy” of the founders in an 1852 speech: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity.” It was poetic justice, perhaps, that the recent protests after the killing of George Floyd converged on Lafayette Square, the park across from the White House that is named for the French abolitionist hero of the revolution, without acknowledging his importance in the cause the protesters were fighting for.
But like Adams, Jefferson, and other founders, Washington was far more concerned about the stability of the new republic. “He and the other founders knew that republics always died young,” Ellis said. “They fell apart. They feared the fate of the republic was still at risk, until it was solidified.” As Jefferson put it in his warning letter about the Missouri decision, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
William Darity, a Duke University economist and scholar who is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the economic impact of slavery and the continuing problem of income inequality for African Americans, believes that there were “a number of roads when the wrong path was taken” going back to the beginning of the republic. At the same time, he said in an interview, it’s nearly impossible to imagine that all 13 colonies would have joined in the revolution had slavery been made an issue. “The most resistant would have been South Carolina,” said Darity, who recently co-wrote the book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.
Cornell’s Baptist agrees that states in the Deep South like South Carolina and Georgia were quite dug in, even if some in Virginia were wavering on the issue. “I would point out that the most pro-slavery elements in the Constitutional Convention and in the ratification process frequently got what they wanted,” Baptist said. “The South Carolinians came to Philadelphia determined to get lots of things, including the fugitive slave clause, in the Constitution, and they did.”
The 1774 seal used by early abolitionist societies in England and the United States.
Civil Rights activists carrying “I Am a Man” placards are blocked by National Guardsmen during a protest in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.
Another reason for the temporizing of Washington and other founders was that the white populations in these states were terrified of African American uprisings if the slaves were freed too quickly. By the end of the 18th century, 40 percent of the population of Virginia was Black; in South Carolina, the figure was closer to 60 percent. To many white Southerners, emancipation meant insurrection. For the Northern states, the issue was much easier and more straightforward. Vermont was the first state to legally end slavery, Ellis points out, but at the time, there were only three Black people living there and they were all free already.
Fears of what would happen to enfranchised Blacks in the South were always a common thread underlying the debate over emancipation. And those issues were never resolved: Even Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, thought that a peaceful and stable biracial society was impossible. The historical evidence shows that Lincoln believed for most of his life that removing Black people from the country and colonizing them elsewhere was the only real solution, and he even proposed this to a stunned delegation of free African American representatives in August 1862. (They declined, noting that they themselves had been Americans for generations.) After the Civil War, white fears of Black insurrection again grew virulent, setting the stage for the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow—and the racial divisions that would ultimately culminate in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as well as the debates that still rage today.
“Most of the monuments to the Confederacy in the Southern states were built in the late 19th and early 20th century,” Ellis said. “That was actually the most racist period in U.S. history; once Blacks were free, they were seen as more dangerous, and whites felt they had to terrorize them.”
And so passed another century, along with constitutional amendments and new laws that appeared to heal everything but the racism that was there from the beginning. And so the issue rages on.