Abstract
Europeans learned from the freedom struggles waged by African Americans in the second half of the twentieth century in political as well as cultural ways. What they absorbed from their knowledge of African American insurgencies and their exposure to specific individuals, organizations, and movements was often indirect, filtered through discourses about politics and ethics, support for decolonization, and especially through local traditions of peace and antinuclear organizing. At the same time, Europeans expressed considerable ambivalence about race, especially in the context of increased immigration of people of color after World War II, and specifically about African Americans, often seen simultaneously as victims of oppression and as examples of a debased American popular culture. A combination of doubt and expectation attends the contours and limits of African American and European shared perspectives. Most discussions of these connections emphasize the therapeutic effects that freedom from racial constraints had on black Americans fortunate enough to cross the Atlantic and live life in countries where race was not all-consuming.
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Notes
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© 2011 Manning Marable and Elizabeth Kai Hinton
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Plummer, B.G. (2011). Peace Was the Glue. In: Marable, M., Hinton, E.K. (eds) The New Black History. The Critical Black Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230338043_7
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