Racism - A Short History - George M Fredrickson.pdf - WNLibrary

gime—the ban on intermarriage. Part of the explanation
for the delay can be found in the popular association of
“forced desegregation” with Communism during the heyday
of McCarthyism in the late ’40s and early ’50s. 54 But a
full answer would have to take into account some combination
of entrenched racist beliefs and the protection that the
federal system continued to provide for the deviation of the
southern states from the national norm of legal equality.
An important recent study has argued that the progress
of racial equality in the United States has been fostered
mainly by the external pressures generated by wars and
international rivalries. In times when national success or
survival seems to depend on inclusiveness and the affirmation
of egalitarian values, Philip A. Klinkner and Rogers
M. Smith argue in The Unsteady March, the extension of
rights to African Americans has been possible. When such
pressures have been absent, reversion to the seemingly normal
pattern of racial inequality has taken place. World War
II and the Cold War thus provided a window of opportunity
for blacks that is now closing. 55 There is much evidence to
support such a view of African American history. At best
progress has meant two steps forward and one step backward
from the time that the wake of the American Revolution
abolished slavery in the North but strengthened it
in the South. Significant progress has occurred, however:
legalized segregation is as dead today as racial slavery was
in 1865. An exclusive emphasis on reasons of state as the
motivation for egalitarian reform risks overlooking the
moral dimension—the extent to which racism conflicts
with other values that Americans are supposed to hold.
The national conscience is admittedly easier to arouse
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