As they struggled to make sense of the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, observers embraced two strands of history to help contextualize them: the deep and enduring history of racism in the United States and the alarming parallels to the rise of Nazism in Germany. But to understand white supremacy among the pro-Trump mob, we need to look at America’s historical connections to global anti-Black racism…
While offering technical assistance, the Peace Corps also became an avenue for this racialized civilizing mission. More than 240,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps, the majority of whom have been young and White. American gifts of laptops, Monsanto seeds or English classes to African nations presume that Africans aspire to be like Americans. This “white gaze of development,” Liberian political economist Robtel Neajai Pailey argues, has perpetuated the notion that non-White people cannot measure up to the living standards of White people.
