Singh’s Problematic History

By John Bain

I want to start by introducing myself a bit, since I joined the class
late and was not able to do so on the first day. I am studying
international affairs and history, and this class is the first english
course that I have taken in my four years at GW. The perspective from
which I have approached our readings so far has been that of a student
of international affairs and history, not english. Things such as
poems are almost like a foreign language to me. I see other people
decipher the meaning of poems with an impressive fluency that I do not
have. This is what has intimidated me about english courses for the
past four years. So when we began the course with Singh’s book I was
relieved, because we were starting with a style of writing I was
familiar with.

What I found when I dove into Singh’s book was that I agreed with much
of what he said in principle, but his narrative of imperialism was
particularly problematic for me. The problems started from the very
beginning with what seemed to be Singh’s assertion that Martin Luther
King’s decision to come out against the Vietnam War was radical. Singh
presents the reaction of the Johnson administration as somehow
evidence of King being persecuted by a “court of public opinion”. This
event is framed as King coming out against a “colonial war in Vietnam”
(a term that I find very flawed), making Johnson’s reaction equal to
that of a colonial government subjugating a collaborator who comes out
against a colonial policy.

My main issue is with this narrative of colonialism, which begins with
this example of King’s opposition to the war and continues throughout
the book. The decision by King to come out against the war in the
spring of 1967 was hardly radical. Opposition to the war had already
been growing as US casualties in Vietnam mounted and the war was
broadcast to American living rooms. It is hard to view Martin Luther
King’s decision to come out against the war in 1967 as radical when
you consider that by March of the following year Walter Cronkite had
come out against the war, Eugene McCarthy nearly won the New Hampshire
primary on an anti-war platform, and President Johnson chose not to
seek reelection as anti-war opposition within his own party made it
seem unlikely that he could make it through the primaries.

So King may have been one of the earlier public figures to come out
against the war, but his decision to do so was hardly radical.
Further, given the rising public opposition to the war, the reaction
of the Johnson administration can hardly be seen as evidence Singh's
narrative of American colonialism. Instead it should be seen as the
reaction of a desperate administration that was rapidly losing
support.

I am not trying to argue that the United States has no colonial
history, westward expansion and the occupation of the Philippines are
clear examples of such a history. The opening example used by Singh to
set his narrative of American colonialism is just one of many he uses
throughout the book. Some of his examples I find more credible than
others. The flaws with the opening King example, however, illustrate
what I see as a cherry picking of historical information throughout
the book that ultimately undermines, rather than supports, Singh's
narrative of American colonialism.