The Classic American Contradiction: America’s Hypocrisy with Freedom and Minorities during World War II
Freedom in principle differs vastly from freedom in reality. Fundamentally, World War II not only reshaped Americans’ understanding of the internal boundaries of freedom, but also brought the contradiction between the principle of equal freedom and actual status of minorities to the forefront of national life. On one hand, a definition of American society in which all Americans enjoyed equally the benefits of freedom had been pioneered in the 1930s by leftists and liberals associated with the Popular Front. On the other hand, however, American life remained characterized by a system of inequality, disenfranchisement, and rigidly segmented labor and military sectors. Overall, while the U.S government intentionally used the mass media to promote a pluralist narrative of Americanism that emphasized freedom and equality, black exclusion in the political and social spheres of domestic life coupled with Japanese internment exposed the gap between this pluralist ideology and the actual status of minorities.
The United States’ federal government perpetuated a pluralist narrative that emphasized both toleration of racial minorities and dedication to the Four Freedoms. On January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed Congress, delivering the historic “Four Freedoms” speech. At a time when Western Europe lay under Nazi domination, Roosevelt presented a vision in which the American ideals of individual liberties were extended throughout the world:
“We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world. The second is the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world.”
In this sense, Roosevelt’s rhetoric promoted the narrative that pluralism was the only source of harmony in a diverse society. He further maintained that the rationale for the war was therefore to protect freedom so that it could extend internationally. In fact, this speech so inspired illustrator Norman Rockwell that Rockwell created a series of paintings on the “Four Freedoms” theme. In the series, he translated “abstract concepts of freedom into four scenes of everyday American life.” These images were publicly circulated when The Saturday Evening Post, one of the nation’s most popular magazines, commissioned and reproduced the paintings. The paintings served as the centerpiece of a massive U.S. war bond drive and were put into service to help explain the war’s aims. Therefore, Roosevelt’s rhetoric painted such a vivid image in the minds of Americans, cementing the principle of equality. This rhetoric was furthered in wartime posters. One such poster, “United We Win,” depicted a black American and a white American working together on fixing military equipment. This kind of mass-media — typically in the form of posters, pamphlets, and films — attempted to depict African American liberty that in reality was not present. This rhetoric was further perpetuated through “otherizing” the enemy. The U.S government made it abundantly clear that racism was the enemy’s philosophy — and thus attempted to emphasize that Americanism rested on the toleration of diversity and equality for all. Thus, government and private agencies eagerly promoted equality as the definition of Americanism and a counterpoint to Nazism in order to promote war mobilization. A case in point was OWI pamphlets. The OWI — an organization designated to oversee and approve posters — typically described prejudice as a “foreign import rather than a homegrown product” and declared racist bigots “more dangerous than spies” because they were “fighting for the enemy.” Roosevelt went so far as to say that the American mind and heart was and never will be “a matter of race” and that Americans must participate in the war in the name of freedom. Thus, through Roosevelt’s speeches, Rockwell’s far-reaching paintings, and OWI pamphlets, the United States effectively rhetorized racial equality and freedom in principle.
However, racial intolerance hardly disappeared from domestic life, revealing a gap between this pluralist ideology and the actual status of minorities. Racial barriers remained deeply entrenched in nearly all aspects of American life. In the political sphere, voting restrictions stripped black Americans from exercising their freedoms. For instance, a black community member in Black Mountain, NC, was told that “if he registered, he would lose his job and would have to leave the town.” Consequently, no black people voted in the community. This racial discrimination thus explicitly brought up the contradiction between Roosevelt’s rhetoric and the actual status of minorities: while Roosevelt claimed that Americanism lay on the freedom of “expression” and freedom from “from fear,” blacks were in reality explicitly denied political expression through mechanisms intended to instill a sense of fear. And by no means were these restrictions confined to the political sphere. In the military sphere, African Americans “worked as cooks and stewards” and were “forbidden from enlisting in the air force or marine corps.” As Henry Stimson, secretary of war, reported, “The Negro soldier [was] sepreated from the white solider as completely as possible.” This exemplifies that the government perpetuated a false narrative of pluralism.
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ngUxaZDENqeayygfy_bu9FCkIV1yaKIp829bziunNWM/edit
