Cold War diplomacy promoted Black culture abroad while segregation persisted at home

Evidence

Penny Von Eschen writes that between the 1950s and the 1970s the U.S. State Department sent African American jazz musicians abroad to “win the hearts and minds” of the Third World and to counter the country’s racist image with a depiction of the United States as a color-blind democracy. Like many attempts to re-create one’s self-image, this diplomatic effort was built on a deep contradiction: while African American culture was being promoted abroad, at home racial segregation and inequality persisted. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 1248

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the book’s central parallel: the US promoting a color-blind democratic self-image abroad (jazz diplomacy) mirrors later promoting a tolerant multicultural self-image (Muslim inclusion) while domestic discrimination continues. — connects to: Postwar Paris offered black Americans freedom and respect absent at home — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 548
• ADDENDUM: The contradiction of exporting a tolerant self-image while domestic racism persists is the exact template the book will apply to post-9/11 Muslim representation — a strong frame for the whole argument.