Promotional Information

"Clarence Lusane offers a critique, not only of two individuals, but of a foreign policy that has further isolated the USA in a sharply polarizing world. Lusane contextualizes Powell and Rice as both part of a minority political tendency within Black America, as well as individuals the political Right utilizes in order to make more palatable its message of US global domination. Lusane's scholarship and passion make this a compelling book, and one which all students of US foreign policy and the politics of Black America should consider an invaluable text." -- Bill Fletcher, Jr., President, TransAfrica Forum, Visiting Professor, Brooklyn College/City University of New York "In a much-needed expose', Clarence Lusane documents the Bush administration's craven attempts to use the civil rights legacy to justify its war in Iraq, and the willful collaboration of Colin and Condi in that shameful equation. This thoroughly researched analysis of the twisted relationship between US racial politics and US foreign policy is a must-read for both academics and activists. Highly recommended!" -- Howard Winant, UC Santa Barbara, author of The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Color Is Hegemony? A Commonality of Circumstances: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Policy This Is Not Your Father's Republican Party: Powell, Rice, and the GOP Turkeys in the Straw: Race and Representation in the Era of George W. Bush What Color Is Hegemony? The U.S. New Security Paradigm The Clash: Iraq in the Crosshairs of Hegemony Counter-Hegemony in the Global South: Africa Challenges the Powell, Rice, Bush Doctrine Counter-Hegemony in the Global South: The Americans Say "No Pasaran" to the Bush Doctrine Washed Up: The Legacies of Powell and Rice (and Bush)

About the Author

CLARENCE LUSANE is Associate Professor at the School of International Service, American University, where he teaches courses in global race relations, anti-discrimination policy, and international drug politics. He is the author of six previous books, including Hitler's Black Victims (2002), Race in the Global Era (1997), and The Struggle for Equal Education (1992). He is a recipient of the prestigious British Council Atlantic Fellowship in Public Policy and a board member of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Reviews

The author establishes that race has played a preeminent role in the assumptions underlying American foreign policy decisions and that the war on terrorism is narrowly defined to exclude the terrorism of global human security that Darfur and other places manifest….Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students.
*Choice*

Lusane analyzes the impact of race on U.S. foreign policy by examining how former Secretary of State Colin Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have constructed current policy. He argues that African Americans have a long history of participating in U.S. foreign policy and that blacks serving in foreign-policy posts in previous administrations have embraced their racial identities and stressed racial equality in the world. This, he writes, was owing to the historical racism experienced by blacks in the United States. According to Lusane, Powell and Rice have not embraced their racial identities unless doing so has promised to advance the Bush administration's agenda; instead, both champion the idea of individualism. This break with tradition has upset many in the African American community….Recommended.
*Library Journal*

This work argues that the racial identity of Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, the first African Americans to be appointed to their positions, helped shape the presentation of the hegemonic foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration, but played very little role in the actual formation of that policy. Author Lusane suggests that they played a game of racial affinity that was used to justify a more dangerous foreign policy and to distract from their more substantive roles in policy formation. Along the way, he provides a history of African American attitudes towards foreign policy, examines the 2001 UN World Conference on Racism as a case study on the intersection of race and Bush foreign policy, and details the role of Powell and Rice in bringing us the Iraq War.
*Reference & Research Book News*

[R]eveals how many Blacks presumably feel, and it therefore it performs a public service.
*WAIS*