Race and U.S. Foreign Policy (Virtual Session)

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

How can we best understand the relationship between race and U.S. foreign policy? Racism featured prominently in early U.S. foreign policy practices like Native American dispossession and the trade in African slaves, despite its apparent ideological inconsistency with longstanding liberal values like national self-determination and rule with consent of the governed. Questions regarding the lingering manifestations and legacies of that long history are receiving overdue attention amid a resurgence of interest in racial politics among scholars of international relations. The four papers on this panel examine important questions related to how and why race has shaped the practice and study of U.S. foreign policy, focusing on the sterilization of racism from U.S. foreign-policy rhetoric, the racial origins of anti-imperialism, the preservation of racism in the U.S.-led liberal international order, and the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Sub Unit

• Division 20: Foreign Policy

Individual Presentations

• Whitewashing American Exceptionalism - Richard W. Maass, Old Dominion University

• Half Free and Half Dependent: Race and U.S. Empire - Desh Girod, Georgetown University

• The Racial Equality Clause and League Covenant: An APD Perspective on Race in IR - Stephen Pampinella, SUNY New Paltz; Tobias Lemke, University of Delaware

• Have You Heard about CERD? Including & Excluding Race in Human Rights Law - Audrey Lynn Comstock, Arizona State University

Chair

• Debra Thompson McGill University

Discussant

• Zoltan I. Buzas University of Notre Dame