1/I recently read "American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century", by Gary Gerstle. https://www.amazon.com/American-Crucible-Nation-Twentieth-Century/dp/0691173273 … Here is my review, in tweet-thread form.
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11/But it was too late. The black-white integration was too slow. It was still only minor by the time WW2 ended. A couple of years later, the entire military was desegregated. But by then, Gerstle says, it was too late. The chance was lost.
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12/Gerstle obviously thinks, though he does not explicitly say, that Teddy Roosevelt's plan to forge a truly American race might have worked, if America had fully integrated the military during WW2. I am skeptical of this idea, but it's really interesting.
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13/More broadly, Gerstle's book shows that Americans have always used a mix of civic nationalism and racial nationalism to define their national identity, and that neither of these traditions has ever been able to vanquish the other.
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14/The big question, going forward, is: Will America continue to define American-ness partly in racial terms? And if so, who will be included, and who, if anyone, will be excluded? This is an incredibly crucial question for our nation, but no one knows the answer. (end)
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