Role of Race in American Foreign Policy - Essay Example

A nation's foreign policy is always integrated into its general public policy. It comprises the laws, rules, and programs that a nation uses or implements in order to regulate its relationship with other countries and the entire world. Just like a domestic public policy, foreign policy is generally the resulting inter-play of national interests with other nations, alongside other power-groups that make a countrys influence to be felt by the other nations that a country interacts with. Supposing a nation is a unified body, the internal and international policies would be effective and reconcilable even when interacting with other nations. Even though, each single nation must clearly and distinctively know its interests and power-groups on both domestic and global arena.

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Foreign policy for the United States was established on the pillars of the nations international interactions with other nations and for introducing the ultimate standards for the interaction with, for, and amongst individual citizens, organizations, as well as corporations. Unfortunately, racism might have influenced and hindered the good intentions and standards for the intended interactions on both local and international arena. Regardless of the nations foreign policy remaining firm to its core obligations, the influence of racism on its implementation still remains evident to date. For instance, citizens with the Middle East and African ancestry have been confronted with horrifying circumstances in the U.S. due to their originality, race or color. A number of studies on the relationship between Race and the American foreign policy provide evidence the racism across the U.S. has resulted into several losses of life to the innocent individuals of the minority groups. For example, the evident targeted shootings, killings, and burning of cities are some of the conspicuous effects or impacts of racism. These evident influences amongst other several effects of racism have made the implementation of foreign policy a great challenge, which is also fueled by the inherent hatred by some of the countries across the Asian and African continents towards the U.S. It is due to these scholarly researched or studied facts that this paper takes a deeper scrutiny at the roles that race and racism played and continue to play in the formulation and implementation of the United States Foreign Policy.

Drawing from the U.S.s Department of States, some of the nations central agenda on foreign policy are to establish a secure, sustainable, democratic, and flourishing world that will benefit the people of American, as well as the international communities. Some of the jurisdictional aims of the U.S. foreign policy include the export control; impose measures on the commercial interactions with other nations while safeguarding the U.S. businesses abroad; global commodity agreements; protection of the U.S. citizens both at home and abroad; and to foster the international education, especially for the U.S. citizens. Regardless of all these measures put in place to help in both domestic and international relations, racism has continuously thwarted the U.S. efforts towards strengthening their foreign policies.

The U.S. foreign policy is aimed at assisting the country to uphold a good rapport with other nations. Nonetheless, this has not been the case since racism has dominated the policies. Therefore, it is essential to point out that racism in the U.S. has had a great impact on the people living within the U.S., as well as those who directly or indirectly receive the U.S. support in the eradication of internal conflicts. The most impacted races by the influences of racism are the African-Americans along with Hispanics, who have lost lots of lives as a result of racial discriminations. It is for these reasons that it is essential to establish how race has influenced the implementation of the U.S. foreign policy since it unveils to many people the importance of eradicating racism, and adverse effects of treating individuals on the basis of their looks or ancestry.

Throughout the periods between 1890s and early 1900s, the American troops worked extremely hard against the Filipinos during the war of the Philippines. The influence of racial differences greatly influenced the U.S. involvement in the Filipino war. As time elapsed during the periods of early 1900s through 1930s, America occupied Haiti as a result of the racial attitudes coined to the American foreign policy, thereby leading to the mistreatment, imprisonment, brutality, terrorizing, and involuntary placement of the Haitians in the labor gangs. During this period, approximately 2,000 people within the Haitian workforce lost their lives by the end of 1919 as a result of separation and favoritism for the light-skinned Haitians over their light skinned counterparts by the U.S. forces.

Racism played a significant role in the general attitude of the U.S. towards Japan when it issued intimidating fears to the U.S. on the use of Sea/Ocean (in the Pacific) during the period between 1930s and 1940s. By the dawn of 1941 when the war ensued between the two nations, the Americans got the opportunity to utilize their racial stereotype towards the Japanese in dehumanizing their enemy. This is a stereotype that had been built over a long period of time, and it resulted into what philosopher John Dower termed as a merciless war within the Pacific. Similarly, back at home (in the U.S.), thousands of Americans with Japanese ancestry were collected and driven into the U.S. based imprisonment camps. Unsurprisingly enough, American racism persisted both domestically and overseas during the war with Japan. As such, racism persisted and even extended to the African-Americans alongside other minorities.

The association between racism and U.S. foreign policy continued to grow more complicated during the Cold war period, which was subsequent to the World War II. Race in the U.S. had become a multifaceted international liability. For instance, during the battle with the communists, the U.S. had a lot to do in the ideological fights against the underdeveloped worlds, including Africa, Asia, and the Latin America. This displayed the U.S. mistreatment of the African-Americans at home accompanied by discriminative view of other races abroad.

In some of the most recent literatures, the killings of the Blacks across the United States have been persistent. For instance, by March, 2014, the U.S. administrative police made up to more than 112 killings, which was estimated to be twice the number of killings made by the British police throughout the entire 20th century. These rampant killings have been proved to target the minorities, alongside the excessive and unwarranted conviction of the minorities for crime across the United States. For instance, by the end of the year2008, more than 58% of the aggregate number of prisoners within the U.S. were from the Hispanic and African-American ancestries, thereby indicating the prevalence of favoritism in the process of convictions, in which individuals from minority races end up behind the bars for the sake of their looks. As well, it has become noted that individuals with the looks of the Middle East origins are confronted with grave discriminations within the U.S. and are at the risk of being killed innocently simply due to their looks which have widely been perceived to be akin to that of terrorists. Therefore, such individuals may remain at top risk of being killed even if they cautiously adhere to the state laws. The brutalities, punishments, convictions, and favoritism in favor of the people of color within the U.S. have thereby left the minorities within the U.S. to live hating the people of American ancestry. These effects of racism have left a number of countries considering the U.S. people as hypocrites and as a people who lack respect for other races.

Former USF students Megahed Youssef and Mohamed Ahmed, were in 2008 arrested in South Carolina with explosive devices at Navy-base. Ahmed had posted a number of You Tube videos that explaining how to manufacture and use different explosive devices. Other videos expressed his great desire to commit martyrdom. Upon his interrogation, Ahmed pleaded his claim that the actions he was just about do take were in response to the U.S. foreign policy across the Middle East. At his trial, Ahmed pleaded guilty and is currently serving 15-years jail sentence for supporting terror activities. On the contrary, Megahed Youssef was acquitted of all the charges against him, seemingly because he was a white American.

Sam Osmakac a man from Pinellas Park, FL, was in January, 2012 arrested during a sting operation by the FBI, in which the officers claimed that he had attempted to purchase weapons of mass destructions and also attempted to attack a number of sites across the Tampa Bay and its environs. A local Muslim leader had tipped the FBI concerning Osmakacs views and actions of extremism. It was reported that Osmakac an Islamic immigrant from Kosovo, was never pleased with what he perceived as a wrong-doing to the Muslim community, a factor that was unclear but stemmed from the U.S. foreign policy. Thereafter, Osmakac was convicted by the court on terror charges.

From the above cases mentioned, the Islamic-Americans displayed their discontent by the American foreign policy towards the Middle East. These particular American citizens felt displaced and neglected by the U.S. foreign policy, making them to act ill of their country but in defense and reservation of their transnational religious identities.

On 27th, Nov., 2014, a CNN newspaper report revealed details about a fight in which two white-men were involved. The newspaper also talked about another incidence in which a white-man was involved in a fight with an African American. In the pictures displayed in the newspaper for the white mens judgement, people said that the judgement for the use of knife was right for the first picture. They proved that the white man with the knife was actually the one shown in the image. The second picture displayed a white man with knife while the black man was anonymous. However, people judged the black man and said that indeed he was the one with the knife and not his white counterpart. This was a clear evidence the black people in the U.S. confront too much discriminations regardless of their innocence. These people often suffer from the superior races, a factor that keeps on demoralizing them a lot. The newspaper concludes and recommends that the Americans contribute much to the issue of racism and it has come a time when they should never judge people on the basis of their color or looks but by their abilities and personalities.

Elsewhere, a NewsOne article, in 2012 revealed and summarized the patterns of murder cases that occurred in the U.S. during the 2012. The article revealed the cases of murder of up to 30 black people just in the first three months of that year. Analysis further unveiled that, out of the 30 murder cases of the blacks, 12 blacks who were murdered did not show any illegal behavior nor a single criminal background while another 8 murdered were as a result of emotional disturbance. Nonetheless, the killers claimed that the victims appeared suspicious, thereby leading to their killings.

DeConde, one of the senior U.S. diplomatic philosophers, provides and overview of a two-century survey on the impacts of ethnicity and interest groups on the U.S. foreign policies and their formulations. The general conclusion from this long term survey is that ethnic groups within the United States may have very limited influence over foreign policies towards particular nations, or regions. Even though, the effectiveness of these ethnic groups in...