An Identity of Passions

Abstract

In late 1984, at the peak of the repression of township revolt in South Africa, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and TransAfrica, the black lobby for Africa and the Caribbean, were arrested for demonstrating unlawfully before the South African Embassy. This highly publicized event sparked subsequently the formation of a multiracial antiapartheid front called the Free South Africa Movement, which, led by TransAfrica, mobilized national protests against apartheid and Washington's passive policy of constructive engagement with Pretoria. After a year of rallies and White House resistance that coincided with increased state terrorism in South Africa, Congress overrode a presidential veto and voted sanctions against the apartheid government.1 For the first time in U.S. history, African Americans had acted as a potent force in a critical foreign affairs dispute. The abundant antiapartheid actions of African Americans often appeared as novel interventions into world affairs. Awareness of the historic preoccupation of U.S. blacks with civil rights had produced popular perceptions of basic indifference among black Americans to foreign policy issues, even those relating to Africa, their ancestral homeland. In two new and notable books on blacks and world affairs, Race against Empire and Rising Wind, Penny Von Eschen and Brenda Gayle Plummer defy notions of black disinterest in the world overseas with proof of a rich strain of internationalist interests that dates back to the days of Depression diplomacy when isolationism dominated the nation's outlook.