A Brief History of Discriminative Politics
Gender and race discrimination have been categorized as social justice issues and have brought up lots of controversy during the centuries in any societies. Their discriminatory role hasn't been limited there, both have been playing an important role in the world of politics, especially in foreign policy. Political discrimination always has been a concern in the United States. From the beginning, the country has been governed by white males, which has been always an “Achilles' heel”1 in America’s foreign policy toward other countries, however, many of those countries never been innocent in this matter.
McEnaney describes, in her essay “Gender Analysis and Foreign Policy,” the value of studying genders analysis in politics and the effect of gender-based perspective, especially, on the foreign policy of the United States. On the other hand, Krenn’s argument over racism doesn't seem too far from his colleague. In his article, “The Adoptable Power of Racism,” he is trying to see the effect of the other socially unaccepted behavior, racism, on the foreign policy.
Land of freedom, as usually American refer to the country, has been built based on liberty, equality, and freedom, but at the end seems the land doesn’t provide much equality especially when comes to politics. Laura McEnaney and Michael L. Krenn argue the historical effect of gender and race in politics, through their articles, although they both never go to the deep side of the issue. McEnaney’s focus mostly has adverted to the cold war, “gendered actors”2 and the “masculine values”3 that “have shaped diplomacy”4 between the United States and Russia during the cold war. She describes that “gender analysis can affect the study of American foreign policy,”5 then she uses a couple of examples that none of them exactly shows the effect of gender analysis or sexuality on the foreign diplomacy of the United States. McEnaney does a great job to open the case, she promises that studying gender analysis in American foreign policy will be “an attempt to see things differently,”6 but, unfortunately, she remains behind the wall of ignorance herself. She doesn't get involve with the fact of female discrimination, sexism, or any gender issues in the United States politics, instead she hides herself behind the opinion of many other historians, or political scientists like George Kennan and Frank Costigliola, which makes it hard to understand her own opinion in the matter of gender and foreign relations in the United States: “Frank Costigliola found that George Kennan’s writing was rife with gendered metaphor ……”7. Suddenly the author loses the main topic
that she was supposed to discuss with readers, instead the article turns to describe plenty opinions that do not provide much-related information to the audience. Although the title makes it clear that reader must not expect many opinions from the writer, but McEnaney, by listing numbers of historians and political scientists and referring to them in every single paragraph, turns the article to an endless labyrinth with numerous doors that doesn't lead to a happy ending. McEnaney also fails to talk about the use of gender discrimination in other countries as an excuse for the United States to blame the entire domestic diplomacy of that country, or sending the American troops under excuse of democracy and human rights, and cannot be difficult to see the irony, because this has become the regular diplomacy for any country in the world to use the other countries domestic issues as an excuse to take advantage of the people who do not seek anything rather than equality. In contrast, her colleague, Krenn makes a good case of racism in American politics, especially in the effect of domestic racism in the United States from the perspective of other countries. He describes clearly how American foreign policy fails when politicians have to participate in the “resolution for international racial equality”8, which brought up by Japan over the discussion to end World War I. Krenn blames President Woodrow Wilson of losing a great opportunity to “gain the respect and possibly friendship of a growing power in the Far East”9. Another interpretation of Krenn’s words can lead the reader to believe that if President Wilson could be more responsible and less ignorant, that would change the history of the World War II. Krenn’s blame toward the American foreign policy continues by the fact that “racism turned back,”10 to the face of the “leader of the free world”11 by the soviet use of injustice racial profiling in the United States as a propaganda tool to win the cold war battle. He also moves forward and shows how “the desegregation of central high school in Little Rock in 1957”12, affects the picture of equality, justice, and democracy of the United States in the entire world.
In 1865, America faces with the presence of African-Americans in the scene of its politics; this was only one year before Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as the first woman, ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. Since then, none-white male politicians, and female politicians have played an important role in the stage of politics in the country, but this doesn’t deny the fact that the masculinity, racial ignorance attitude of the American politics sometimes led to use women, or minorities as a tool, for example using them as a way to get more vote and defeat the opposition party. The American discriminative perspective has been moved from the lack of political opportunities for female and minorities to defining the other religions or ethnicities incapable of taking control of their own land. During the last sixty years American foreign policy became famous of supporting apartheid, and racial genocide, but the country doesn’t hesitate to use the human rights as an excuse to occupy another land when it has benefits for the United States.
Footnotes
1. Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Volume II: Since 1914 (Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010), 19.
2. Ibid., 14.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 15.
8. Ibid., 19.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
Bibliography
Eagleton Institute of Politics. “Firsts for Women in U.S. Politics." Center for American Women
and Politics. Accessed September 24, 2014.
http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/resources/Firsts.php.
Krenn, Michael L. “The Adaptable Power of Racism." In Major Problems in
American Foreign Relations Volume II: Since 1914, edited by Thomas G. Paterson and
Dennis Merrill, 17-20. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010.
McEnaney, Laura. “Gender Analysis and Foreign Relations.” In Major Problems in
American Foreign Relations Volume II: Since 1914, edited by Thomas G. Paterson and
Dennis Merrill, 14-17. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010.
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