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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2/The book is a decent overview of race relations and conceptions of nationhood and national belonging in America. The people who most need to read this book are people from Canada, UK, Australia, etc. It will help you understand how America is different from your own countries.
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3/Substantively, much of the book is a quick-gloss of stuff Americans learned - or should have learned - in high school. There are two big exceptions: 1) the story of Teddy Roosevelt's nationalism, and 2) the story of military unit integration during WW2.
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4/Teddy Roosevelt gets the most coverage, and is obviously the focus of the author's scholarship. A fascinating man, both brilliant and crazy, full of contradictions and inconsistencies. His importance seems underrated in most popular accounts of American history.
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5/Teddy Roosevelt had the idea of forging a new American race, which he thought would be a superior race. It would include white people of all types (including Jews), as well as Native Americans. But not black people.
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6/T.R. didn't believe in gradual "melting pot" assimilation - he believed that war would be the force that would unify the new American race in the fire of battle. He assembled the Rough Riders as a test of this idea.
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7/In the middle of battle in Cuba, the Rough Riders found themselves mixed with a black unit. T.R., happy for the help, started writing nice things about black people. But a couple of years later he was back to excluding them from his would-be master race.
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8/Gerstle sees this incident as a metaphor, presaging the real crucial moment when America actually implemented T.R.'s idea: WW2. Gerstle sees WW2 as the moment when the modern American white race was forged - through battle, just as T.R. wanted.
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Replying to @Noahpinion
Sounds fascinating, will take a look. May I ask, have you read Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson? Just completed, a novel about race and the South, our book club choice but we're all whit(ish) brits so I'm interested in hearing informed US opinion.
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