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My take on the international reaction to the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri, is at Foreign Affairs this morning. Here's a snippet:
As the turmoil in Ferguson, Missouri,
unfolds, questions about the United States’ commitment to human rights
are once more headlining news coverage around the world. The
uncomfortable international spotlight on such domestic problems should
not be surprising. American racial inequality regularly dominated
foreign news coverage during the 1950s and 1960s. U.S. policymakers were
eventually forced to respond, in part to protect America’s image
abroad. As it reflects on how to handle the protests in Ferguson, the
Obama administration would do well to consider the fact that, in
previous decades, federal intervention was eventually needed to protect
both civil rights and U.S. foreign relations.
In the body of the essay, I compare Ferguson with the civil rights crisis in Birmingham, Alabama in May 1963, which also featured brutal police suppression of civil rights demonstrators. Resolution of the Birmingham crisis led to a desegregation plan on the local level, as well as, ultimately, a shift in civil rights politics that led ultimately led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But the Little Rock crisis in 1957-58 may be a better comparison, depending on whether there is follow-through. As I explain here, federal government involvement in Little Rock was more effecting at protecting the nation's image than in meaningfully desegregating schools. I conclude this way:
Then, as now, protecting rights serves U.S.
international relations. Whether it also leads to real justice in
Ferguson, however, depends on a sustained effort once the foreign press
has gone home.