Reading response # 7 (from howard zinn's a people's history)

What’s on the Other Side of the Reputation...

A time of unreserved anger and passionate need of expression was amidst, and after the United States entered WWII with the pretense of defending thepeople discriminated against, and especially with the anti-communist craze of the time, Truman knew that there needed to be changes made at home. “The United States was out in the world now in a wayit had never been.” (Zinn, p. 449); Truman and his advisors, being aware of this, decided to make changes to Civil Rights laws against lynching, voting discrimination, and racial discrimination injobs... Now whether those were followed or not is another issue. Nonetheless, Truman’s Committee had an unequivocal motivation; yes, perhaps in existence was a “moral reason”, but more importantly (toTruman and his committee), was the “economic or international reason.” Truman’s Committee stated, “Those with competing philosophies have stressed—and are shamelessly distorting—our shortcomings... Theyhave tried to prove our democracy an empty fraud, and our nation a consistent oppressor of underprivileged people.”

Conscious that the US couldn’t afford a bad “record,” Truman issued an orderfor the segregated armed forces to “institute policies of racial equality ‘as rapidly as possible.’ It took over a decade to complete the desegregation in the military.” Zinn says that the Presidentcould have exterminated racial inequality and discrimination, but even with these new laws, he/they did not.
Unlike with the Espionage Act and the more recent Smith Act, enforcement was neverexercised. If there would have been proper enforcement, I’m sure issues of racial inequality wouldn’t be such an obtrusive problem ninety plus years after the amendment of equal rights took place. Thoughsegregation was and is a huge factor in racial inequality, it was not outlawed until 1954, almost ten years after Truman’s “reforms”. More than ten years after Brown vs Board of Education and almost...