Vol. 11 No. 5 (May 2001) pp. 255-256.

RESPONSE BY THE AUTHOR, MARY L. DUDZIAK, TO JAMES FOSTER, REVIEW OF COLD WAR CIVIL RIGHTS: RACE AND THE IMAGE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY BY MARY L DUDZIAK.

REPLY BY THE REVIEWER, JAMES FOSTER.

RESPONSE BY MARY L. DUDZIAK:

I would like to thank James Foster for his thoughtful and careful review of my book, COLD WAR CIVIL RIGHTS (LPBR, Vol. 11 No. 5 (May 2000) pp. 230-233). Foster raises an important point in his last paragraph, and I wanted to comment just to clarify my own position. Foster suggests that "Myrdal argues and Dudziak presumes, America needs to live up to its own liberal democratic ideals. But, just how liberal democratic are American ideals?" He argues for a broader conception of the American political tradition, in keeping with Rogers Smith's argument that, as Foster puts it, "ascriptive, hierarchical themes in American political culture play at least as significant a role in our history as American egalitarianism." Although I didn't explicitly take up this point in Cold War Civil Rights, I think that Smith, and Foster, are right that along with abstract constitutional principles of racial justice, Americans held to a political tradition that fostered much injustice. Smith masterfully develops this argument in his award-winning book, CIVIC IDEALS (1997).

Applying these insights to the Cold war context, some foreign critics of American racism viewed the problem in Myrdalian terms, suggesting that the U. S. simply needed to live up to its foundational principles of liberty and equality. Others' views resonated with Smith's critique: American inequality was indicative of American values, and exposed a negative feature of the American system of government, its accommodation of racial inequality. In response, the State Department and the USIA were relentlessly Myrdalian, arguing that difficulties like Little Rock in 1957 and Birmingham in 1963 were simply growing pains as the U.S. gradually evolved to live up to its true principles.

Thanks to Professor Foster for raising this issue and for reminding us of Rogers Smiths' important argument.

REFERENCE:

Smith, Rogers M. 1997. CIVIC IDEALS: CONFLICTING VISIONS OF CITIZENSHIP IN U. S. HISTORY. New Haven: Yale University Press.

REPLY BY JAMES FOSTER:

I am pleased to learn that professor Dudziak shares the view that there are "multiple traditions in America," not all of them egalitarian. As our colleague Joel Grossman reminded me in an e-mail response to my review: "it reminded me of what I thought was the best comment on Myrdal's book-Charles Silberman's CRISIS IN BLACK AND WHITE (1964), in which he wrote, if I remember correctly:

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the real American dilemma was that there was no dilemma!"

REFERENCE:

Silberman, Charles E. 1964. CRISIS IN BLACK AND WHITE. New York: Random House.