Synopses & Reviews
Japans lightning march across Asia during World War II was swift and brutal. Nation after nation fell to Japanese soldiers. How were the Japanese able to justify their occupation of so many Asian nations? And how did they find supporters in countries they subdued and exploited?
Race War! delves into submerged and forgotten history to reveal how European racism and colonialism were deftly exploited by the Japanese to create allies among formerly colonized people of color. Through interviews and original archival research on five continents, Gerald Horne shows how race played a key—and hitherto ignored—;role in each phase of the war.
During the conflict, the Japanese turned white racism on its head portraying the war as a defense against white domination in the Pacific. We learn about the reverse racial hierarchy practiced by the Japanese internment camps, in which whites were placed at the bottom of the totem pole, under the supervision of Chinese, Korean, and Indian guards—an embarrassing example of racial payback that was downplayed by the defeated Japanese and the humiliated Europeans and Euro-Americans.
Focusing on the microcosmic example of Hong Kong but ranging from colonial India to New Zealand and the shores of the U.S., Gerald Horne radically retells the story of the war. From racist U.S. propaganda to Black Nationalist open support of Imperial Japan, information about the effect of race on U.S. and British policy is revealed for the first time. This revisionist account of the war draws connections between General Tojo, Malaysian freedom fighters, and Elijah Muhammed of the Nation of Islam and shows how white racism encouraged and enabled Japanese imperialism. In sum, Horne demonstrates that the retreat of white supremacy was not only driven by the impact of the Cold War and the energized militancy of Africans and African-Americans but by the impact of the Pacific War as well, as a chastened U.S. and U.K. moved vigorously after this conflict to remove the conditions that made Japan's success possible.
Review
“Frost has provided a coherent examination of the role of American women during the poor people's movement of the 1960s...there are many different things for scholars to admire about this book.”
-American Historical Review,
Review
“:Frost has created a usable past capable of enriching our understanding of the difficulties of democracy and the tough realities of American politics.”
-Peace and Change,
Review
“A thoughtful, illuminating, and compelling study. Frost has mined original sources, including a range of oral history interviews. . . . A vitally important book for scholars and students of the '60s, of community organizing, and of the politics of urban America since World War Two. . . . easily the best feminist treatment of SDS to appear in over twenty years. The appearance of works such as this marks the coming of age of a new generation of scholars who treat the 1960s in genuinely historical terms. Frost performs the considerable feat of treating this still-controversial period both critically and appreciatively.”
-Felicia Kornbluh,Duke University
Review
"Frost has created a usable past capable of enriching our understanding of the difficulties of democracy and the tough realities of American politics." - PeaceandChange
Review
“Frost contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the era and pushes past stereotypes of the sixties.”
-Journal of Social History,
Review
“The finest study to date on the ill-fated Economic research and Action Project. . . . An outstanding work.”
-Choice,
Review
“This fabulous study shows where global history can go. It adventurously moves to practically every continent, producing especially sharp insights into world views of race in the U.S. Horne arrestingly shows how Anglo-U.S.racism enabled Japan to pursue empire while claiming a place as the champion of struggles against white supremacy.”
-David Roediger,University of Illinois, author of Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past
Review
“Through multi-archival research that spans five continents, Gerald Horne demonstrates how and why the Pacific War should be understood as a Race War, not as an exculpation of Japan's Pan Asianism, but because of the poisonous triumph of the 'color line.' Horne powerfully argues that we should not forget that white supremacy retains salience in spite of, or because of, the Anglo-American victory in the Pacific War half a century ago.”
-Yukiko Koshiro,Colgate University
Review
“Gerald Horne is one of the most gifted and insightful historians on racial matters of his generation. In Race War! Horne presents a provocative yet convincing argument that unearths the racial dimensions of U.S. policies pursued in the Far East during the Second World War. Horne's thesis provides a strikingly new and powerful interpretation of the international politics of race in the twentieth century.”
-Manning Marable,Center for Contemporary Black History, Columbia University
Review
“An expansive and unflinching survey of race and empire, Race War! shows the complexities of white supremacy and resistances to it.”
-Gary Y. Okihiro,Columbia University and author of Common Ground: Reimagining American History
Review
“Besides writing an important history, Horne adds to our understanding of the evolution of white supremacy.”
-Political Affairs,
Synopsis
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2002
Community organizing became an integral part of the activist repertoire of the New Left in the 1960s. Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that came to be seen as synonymous with the white New Left, began community organizing in 1963, hoping to build an interracial movement of the poor through which to demand social and political change. SDS sought nothing less than to abolish poverty and extend democratic participation in America.
Over the next five years, organizers established a strong presence in numerous low-income, racially diverse urban neighborhoods in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, and Boston, as well as other cities. Rejecting the strategies of the old left and labor movement and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, activists sought to combine a number of single issues into a broader, more powerful coalition. Organizers never limited themselves to today's simple dichotomies of race vs. class or of identity politics vs. economic inequality. They actively synthesized emerging identity politics with class and coalition politics and with a drive for a more participatory welfare state, treating these diverse political approaches as inextricably intertwined. While common wisdom holds that the New Left rejected all state involvement as cooptative at best, Jennifer Frost traces the ways in which New Left and community activists did in fact put forward a prescriptive, even visionary, alternative to the welfare state.
After Students for a Democratic Society and its community organizing unit, the Economic Research and Action Project, disbanded, New Left and community participants went on to apply their strategies and goals to the welfare rights, womens liberation, and the antiwar movements. In her study of activism before the age of identity politics, Frost has given us the first full-fledged history of what was arguably the most innovative community organizing campaign in post-war American history.
Synopsis
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2002
Community organizing became an integral part of the activist repertoire of the New Left in the 1960s. Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that came to be seen as synonymous with the white New Left, began community organizing in 1963, hoping to build an interracial movement of the poor through which to demand social and political change. SDS sought nothing less than to abolish poverty and extend democratic participation in America.
Over the next five years, organizers established a strong presence in numerous low-income, racially diverse urban neighborhoods in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, and Boston, as well as other cities. Rejecting the strategies of the old left and labor movement and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, activists sought to combine a number of single issues into a broader, more powerful coalition. Organizers never limited themselves to today's simple dichotomies of race vs. class or of identity politics vs. economic inequality. They actively synthesized emerging identity politics with class and coalition politics and with a drive for a more participatory welfare state, treating these diverse political approaches as inextricably intertwined. While common wisdom holds that the New Left rejected all state involvement as cooptative at best, Jennifer Frost traces the ways in which New Left and community activists did in fact put forward a prescriptive, even visionary, alternative to the welfare state.
After Students for a Democratic Society and its community organizing unit, the Economic Research and Action Project, disbanded, New Left and community participants went on to apply their strategies and goals to the welfare rights, women's liberation, and the antiwar movements. In her study of activism before the age of identity politics, Frost has given us the first full-fledged history of what was arguably the most innovative community organizing campaign in post-war American history.
About the Author
Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston. His books include Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois and Race War!: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (both available from NYU Press).