Decolonizing the AHR

Extract

Long after the actual transfer of power from colonial masters to liberated peoples, the sovereign nations that emerged from imperialism’s grasp struggled to shake off empire’s hold on the national imagination, not to mention postcolonial social and class structure. Indeed, with political sovereignty, the process of decolonization had only just begun. Similarly, fifty years—yes, a half-century!—after the initial victories of the civil rights revolution in the United States, parts of the country have only now contemplated tearing down monuments to white supremacy and started to acknowledge and apologize for the history of racial terror that shaped and scarred many—probably most—American communities. This comes at a time when the current president of the United States persists in recycling some of the most shopworn tropes from the nation’s long history of racism and xenophobia, all while loudly (and unconvincingly) claiming, “I am not a racist.” Many historians find ourselves wondering if the culture at large has listened to a word we have been saying for at least a generation of scholarship.