Coda: The Black Face of US Imperialism

Abstract

In the period in which this book has been written, US Imperialism has become staggeringly aggressive, and it seems impossible to end this book without some remarks about the disturbing ways blackness and the history of African American political disenfranchisement are still invoked with respect to America’s foreign ambitions. While its geographical target is now primarily western rather than eastern Asia (although we should not forget North Korea’s position in the “Axis of Evil”), one feature of US racial geometries has remained intact, if it has not actually intensified: blackness as the face of US foreign policy. If William Perry kicked off US empire-building with the blackface show his crew used to “entertain” the Japanese dignitaries he forced into opening their country, its racial associations are still such that blackness is called upon as a kind of disguise, a cover for the ritual humiliation, exploitation, and violation of those outside its borders. The Bush Administration has officially represented its War on Terror through two black Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice,¹ with the effect that black people have been shifted from actors on the stages of the US global imaginary to powerful agents of its theatres of war. Rice and Powell have been used by the Bush Administration (or have made themselves instruments of it) as symbols of American Progress that outwardly proclaim the triumph of racial equality but mask the snarl of racial violence underneath.