Review: Miscellaneous: The Cold War and the Color Line
| Published date | 01 March 2003 |
| Date | 01 March 2003 |
| Author | Toby Zanin |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200305800127 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
Reviews
Media
Definitions
of
Cold
War
Reality
could
have
been
written with
the
post-cold
war
generation
in
mind.
This
collection
of
15
articles
by
Soderlund,
often
with co-authors,
examines
media
treatment
of
the
cold war
in
the
Caribbean
Basin
(Central
America
and
the Caribbean).
The
cases
range
from
the
1953
crisis
in
British
Guiana
to
events
in
Haiti
in
1993.
As
media reports
focus
on
leaders,
we
again meet
Cheddi
Jagan,
Carlos
Castillo
Armas,
Juan
Bosch,
and Maurice
Bishop;
of
course, Fidel
Castro
has
a
prominent
role.
The
studies
themselves follow
a
standard methodology,
facilitating
comparisons.
Ten
cases
feature
press
reports.
All
of
them
include
the
New
York
Times
and
at
least
one
other
paper,
usually
the
Toronto
Globe
andMail.
Four
articles
treat
TV
news.
In
all
instances,
methods
for
selecting
cases
and
analyzing
the
content
of
the
media
reports
are
set
out
clearly
and
thoroughly.
What
Soderlund
found
may
surprise
some
readers,
because,
overall,
the
media
acted
fairly
responsibly.
Leaders
and
movements identified
as
cen-
trist
fared
well.
The
left
naturally
took
its
knocks,
but
so
did
the right.
This
was
not
knee-jerk,
McCarthyite
anti-communism,
but
serious
journalism.
After reading
the
book,
I
found
myself
wondering
about
studies
of
how
today's
media
treat,
say,
the
war
on
terrorism.
And what
would
happen
if
we
looked
at
the
American
cable
networks
and
the
more
ide-
ologically
comunitted
papers
as
well
as
the
mainstream
media?
Perhaps
our
new
PhD
student
will follow
Soderlund's
lead
and
tell
us.
David Close/Memorial
University
THE
COLD
WAR
AND
THE
COLOR
LINE
Race
Relations in
the
Global
Arena
Thomas
Borstelmann
Cambridge
MA:
Harvard
University
Press,
2002,
xv,
36
9pp,
us$35.00,
ISBN
0-674-00597-x
One
of
the
few
positive,
if
unexpected,
consequences
to
emerge
from
the
Allied
victory
over
fascism
was
the
light
it
cast
on
the
discrepancy
between
the
high-gloss
of
presidential
rhetoric
(notably
Franklin
Delano
Roosevelt's
Four
Freedoms)
and
the
more
mundane
but
still
malignant
racist practices
which
defined the
American polity.
In
the
emerging
ideologically
polarized
cold war
milieu,
civil
rights
advo-
cates
and
their supporters
argued
that
America,
as
the
globe's
pre-emi-
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Wuiter
2002-2003
235
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