Robert Vitalis: White World Order, Black Power Politics
Robert Vitalis (2015), White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations
Robert Vitalis's new book White World Order, Black Power Politics is worth the read and - I would say - for anyone not comfortably familiar with the past two centuries of US history, even worth multiple reads. It is a thoughtful and rich account of 20th century American International Relations' history that profoundly challenges our mainstream understanding of the discipline's origins in power and anarchy. Instead, Vitalis convincingly describes the first decades of International Relations as rooted in domestic and international race relations. Ideas, intellectuals, and institutions that constituted (and still constitute) the discipline can be understood to be shaped by and respond to strategies developed to preserve and extend white supremacy. The "international" in IR originally corresponds to race or color lines as a response to the question of how to efficiently manage inferior subjects (both at home and in the territories abroad) that increasingly sought liberation.
Vitalis puts forward two main claims. First, he shows that the discipline of IR in the US is founded on the imperial enterprise in the late 19th century that assumed a natural racial hierarchy. The development of important IR institutions, such as APSA and the Journal of Race Development (later Foreign Affairs) illustrate this foundation. What is important - and (collectively as well as individually) surprising - about this well-supported claim, is that this origin of racism and imperialism remains largely ignored among scholars of international relations to this day. Second, Vitalis claims that we - as a community of scholars and practitioners - cannot understand the history of our own discipline without understanding the 20th century freedom movements that stand at the core of its intellectual and institutional development. His book focuses on recovering the ideas of the "Howard school of international relations theory," - a heterogeneous group of African American thinkers affiliated with Howard University, whose work on white world supremacy from the standpoint of its victims has not only been suppressed but also forgotten by the dominant account of IR history.
White World Order, Black Power Politics introduces several ideas that deserve further discussion.
First, Vitalis puts forward the idea of "race development" as an instrument to promote peace and stability. Drawing from important "Howard'ian" thinkers such as Bunche, Locke and DuBois, he argues that fear of so called "race war" based on the notion of insurmountable differences (in different shapes and forms over the decades) enabled the imperialists and white supremacists to perpetuate their own hegemonic standing. Over time, terms such as "superiority and inferiority" have been replaced (and maybe obscured?) with "difference," the word "race" is now hidden in plain sight in discussions about "civilization" and "political and economic development." Reading about this in Vitalis's book is not surprising. Implicitly, we know about the hegemony of American or "Western" ideas and its underlying racial politics. What is surprising, however, is - at least my own realization - the lack of this awareness in even obvious fields of study such as International Aid and Development or Human Rights Politics. If the ideas and readings are out there, why do we not use them?
This brings me to a second interesting point in Vitalis's book: the role of ideas and institutions in the history of IR. He provides an explicit discussion of institutions in chapters 1 and 4 demonstrating the power these institutions - as well as individuals attached to them - exercise in terms of agenda setting and access. Chapter 2 focuses on the role of ideas in shaping the path of race development. What I think is missing from this account is a deeper exploration of the relationship between institutions, ideas, intellectuals and, most important, power. For example, the description of "race development" in chapter 2 as well as the excellent account of Du Bois' and Boas critique on the natural hierarchy of races is interesting but - in my opinion - would benefit from a stronger focus on, what I could call, "idea lineage." How did white supremacy make use of institutions and ideas (or vice versa) to ensure its continuing dominance? This question of the relationship of ideas, institutions, and power would also be interesting to explore further the heterogeneous strands of though within the Howard school (chapter 5).
Third, one of the most insightful ideas Vitalis introduces in his book is that history looks different if you look at it through the rear-view mirror. From the perspective of a post-WWII world, the origins and developments of IR are seemingly the consequences of an anarchically structured world order. Stories of domination and dependence - even though obviously present in the struggle for decolonization and liberation - are suspiciously absent from scholarship in the 1950s and 1960s even though questions of imperialism (tied to war of race as already discussed above) were considered fundamental problems of IR prior to the second world war. Today, even though - as Vitali successfully illustrates - deep-seated fear of potential race wars are still driving the tight grip of white supremacy, the story of the origins of International Relations had changed from one of race relations to one of an anarchic self-help system, in which the exercise of power is a law-like necessity. This development went parallel to the systematic and successful exclusion of African American thinkers, with the Howard school at the center, from most institutions of IR at the discipline.
Last, I want to point toward the timeliness (or maybe timeless-ness) of Vitalis's contribution. The "so what"-question seems easily answered but should most definitely be further discussed. To illustrate this point, I would like to end with a small quiz. "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be - will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved." (p. 62) Who said it? Tom Buchanan or Donald Trump?
Robert Vitalis's new book White World Order, Black Power Politics is worth the read and - I would say - for anyone not comfortably familiar with the past two centuries of US history, even worth multiple reads. It is a thoughtful and rich account of 20th century American International Relations' history that profoundly challenges our mainstream understanding of the discipline's origins in power and anarchy. Instead, Vitalis convincingly describes the first decades of International Relations as rooted in domestic and international race relations. Ideas, intellectuals, and institutions that constituted (and still constitute) the discipline can be understood to be shaped by and respond to strategies developed to preserve and extend white supremacy. The "international" in IR originally corresponds to race or color lines as a response to the question of how to efficiently manage inferior subjects (both at home and in the territories abroad) that increasingly sought liberation.
Vitalis puts forward two main claims. First, he shows that the discipline of IR in the US is founded on the imperial enterprise in the late 19th century that assumed a natural racial hierarchy. The development of important IR institutions, such as APSA and the Journal of Race Development (later Foreign Affairs) illustrate this foundation. What is important - and (collectively as well as individually) surprising - about this well-supported claim, is that this origin of racism and imperialism remains largely ignored among scholars of international relations to this day. Second, Vitalis claims that we - as a community of scholars and practitioners - cannot understand the history of our own discipline without understanding the 20th century freedom movements that stand at the core of its intellectual and institutional development. His book focuses on recovering the ideas of the "Howard school of international relations theory," - a heterogeneous group of African American thinkers affiliated with Howard University, whose work on white world supremacy from the standpoint of its victims has not only been suppressed but also forgotten by the dominant account of IR history.
White World Order, Black Power Politics introduces several ideas that deserve further discussion.
First, Vitalis puts forward the idea of "race development" as an instrument to promote peace and stability. Drawing from important "Howard'ian" thinkers such as Bunche, Locke and DuBois, he argues that fear of so called "race war" based on the notion of insurmountable differences (in different shapes and forms over the decades) enabled the imperialists and white supremacists to perpetuate their own hegemonic standing. Over time, terms such as "superiority and inferiority" have been replaced (and maybe obscured?) with "difference," the word "race" is now hidden in plain sight in discussions about "civilization" and "political and economic development." Reading about this in Vitalis's book is not surprising. Implicitly, we know about the hegemony of American or "Western" ideas and its underlying racial politics. What is surprising, however, is - at least my own realization - the lack of this awareness in even obvious fields of study such as International Aid and Development or Human Rights Politics. If the ideas and readings are out there, why do we not use them?
This brings me to a second interesting point in Vitalis's book: the role of ideas and institutions in the history of IR. He provides an explicit discussion of institutions in chapters 1 and 4 demonstrating the power these institutions - as well as individuals attached to them - exercise in terms of agenda setting and access. Chapter 2 focuses on the role of ideas in shaping the path of race development. What I think is missing from this account is a deeper exploration of the relationship between institutions, ideas, intellectuals and, most important, power. For example, the description of "race development" in chapter 2 as well as the excellent account of Du Bois' and Boas critique on the natural hierarchy of races is interesting but - in my opinion - would benefit from a stronger focus on, what I could call, "idea lineage." How did white supremacy make use of institutions and ideas (or vice versa) to ensure its continuing dominance? This question of the relationship of ideas, institutions, and power would also be interesting to explore further the heterogeneous strands of though within the Howard school (chapter 5).
Third, one of the most insightful ideas Vitalis introduces in his book is that history looks different if you look at it through the rear-view mirror. From the perspective of a post-WWII world, the origins and developments of IR are seemingly the consequences of an anarchically structured world order. Stories of domination and dependence - even though obviously present in the struggle for decolonization and liberation - are suspiciously absent from scholarship in the 1950s and 1960s even though questions of imperialism (tied to war of race as already discussed above) were considered fundamental problems of IR prior to the second world war. Today, even though - as Vitali successfully illustrates - deep-seated fear of potential race wars are still driving the tight grip of white supremacy, the story of the origins of International Relations had changed from one of race relations to one of an anarchic self-help system, in which the exercise of power is a law-like necessity. This development went parallel to the systematic and successful exclusion of African American thinkers, with the Howard school at the center, from most institutions of IR at the discipline.
Last, I want to point toward the timeliness (or maybe timeless-ness) of Vitalis's contribution. The "so what"-question seems easily answered but should most definitely be further discussed. To illustrate this point, I would like to end with a small quiz. "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be - will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved." (p. 62) Who said it? Tom Buchanan or Donald Trump?
posted by Unknown at 4:38 PM
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If anyone is interested, "No Freedom Without Peace: Race and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom 1915-1975" by Joyce Blackwell (originally written as a dissertation by Joyce Blackwell-Johnson)discusses this important group of activists' work around race and issues of colonialism/ imperialism in and around the time under investigation by Vitalis. Check it out!
Also, Morganthau on colonialism:
"The supposed moral obligation for the industrialized, rich nations to raise the standard of living of the nonindustrialized, poor nations throughout the world is grounded in the causal relationship which is presumed to exist between the policies and the high standard of living of the former and the low standard of living of the latter. However, the assumption of a simple causal relationship of this kind is a myth. The colonists, imperialists, and capitalists perform here the function of the devil to whom the evils of underdevelopment can be traced. In truth, these evils have multiple causes, of which colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism are, at best, only one."
Politics Among Nations (brief sixth edition revised by Kenneth W. Thompson), 108.
Though, to his credit, Morganthau did protest the war in Vietnam. Perhaps he, like Du Bois, underwent a kind of intellectual growth as his career progressed.
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