Analysis: The Colored People Are Still Waiting, Still Watchful
The topic "The Colored People Are Still Waiting, Still Watchful" addresses the complex dynamics of race, imperialism, and international relations during World War II, particularly from the perspective of the United States. Central to this discourse is the recognition of how America's historical racism and discriminatory policies towards Asian and African American populations complicate its global narrative of democracy and freedom. The speech by Pearl S. Buck highlights the significant disconnect between America's self-image and its actions in Asia, emphasizing that the United States must acknowledge its role and influence in the region beyond its Eurocentric focus.
Buck argues that the war with Japan should prompt a reevaluation of U.S. foreign policy, advocating for an inclusive approach that considers the interests and perspectives of Asian nations. She points out that Japan successfully exploits America's racist history in its propaganda efforts, which undermines U.S. credibility and support among potential allies in Asia. The call for an end to racist influences in domestic and foreign policy is framed as essential for establishing genuine international cooperation and fostering democratic growth worldwide. Ultimately, the phrase "the colored peoples are still waiting, still watchful" serves as a poignant reminder of the ongoing struggles for equality and recognition faced by people of color around the globe.
Analysis: The Colored People Are Still Waiting, Still Watchful
Date: February 10, 1942
Author: Pearl S. Buck
Genre: speech
Summary Overview
By February of 1942, the United States had been reluctantly pulled into the global turmoil of World War II as a direct result of the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. From the beginning, however, the United States fought a war both against Japan in the Pacific and against the German-Italian military juggernaut in North Africa and Europe, and American popular opinion tended to associate US aims with those of traditional European allies such as Great Britain and France.
American author and former Chinese resident Pearl S. Buck spoke out against that Eurocentric mindset in this 1942 speech. Buck argued for a more global US foreign policy that recognized the nation's deep interests in Asia. She also contended that the US history of racism against its own African American and Asian American residents complicated its message of democracy and freedom to people of color around the world.
Defining Moment
When Buck delivered her speech to an assembly of bookstore owners and other merchants in February of 1942, she was speaking to an American public fervently dedicated to a US victory over the Axis powers. Americans had come to see US intervention in the global conflict as central to protecting national security and to supporting the ideals of democracy and freedom worldwide. Yet the history of US interaction with Asia did not necessarily adhere to those ideals. The country had opened economic relations with the highly isolationist Japanese government in the 1850s through the threat of force. More than once, the United States had intervened in Chinese affairs to further its own economic interests. The Spanish-American War (1898–99) had provided an opportunity for US forces to claim the Philippines as a US holding. When Japanese forces began their own aggressive campaign against mainland Asian territory in the 1910s, however, the then isolationist-leaning United States had declined to step in to support national determination there.
The United States additionally had a history of racism and discrimination against ethnic minorities, Asians among them, within its own borders. Widespread racism against Asian immigrants, popularly believed to be culturally inferior and economically threatening to white Americans in the West, had led to the passage of restrictive immigration legislation and discriminatory foreign policies beginning in the late nineteenth century. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, barred practically all immigration from China and prevented immigrants from gaining naturalized citizenship. Under the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement negotiated between the United States and Japan in 1907 and 1908, the Japanese government agreed to limit emigration of unskilled Japanese laborers from Japan to the United States. These arrangements gave way to restrictive US immigration quotas in the 1920s, which kept Asian immigration at very low levels well into the 1960s.
Suspicions against Japanese immigrants and even native-born Japanese Americans were high, as many white Americans believed that those people felt greater loyalty to their Asian heritage than to the United States. Federal policy allowed for the investigation and detention of Japanese Americans, and not long after Buck delivered her speech, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the internment of 117,000 Japanese Americans living in the West. Although German and Italian immigrants also underwent some official discrimination, unquestionably it was Japanese Americans who received the harshest treatment. Racism against Japanese Americans spilled over to other Asian American ethnic groups, with Chinese Americans—a group tracing their heritage to one of the nation's wartime allies—sometimes feeling so persecuted that they wore buttons proclaiming, “I Am Chinese.” The relationship between the United States and Asian countries was, therefore, one tinged by racism and imperialism on one side and resentment on the other.
Author Biography
An American born in West Virginia, Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (1892–1973) was the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries who raised her in the Chinese village of Zhenjiang (Chinkiang), near Nanjing (Nanking), with brief stays in the bustling city of Shanghai. Growing up, the future author developed a deep affinity for Chinese culture. After attending college in the United States, she returned to China for several years, writing on Chinese society and penning novels that channeled Chinese life for a Western audience, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Good Earth (1932). This and other writings by Buck greatly shaped the US view of China and its people. Buck settled in the United States permanently in 1934.
Over the ensuing few decades, Buck was an outspoken supporter of civil rights for African Americans and women, adoption of mixed-race children, and other humanitarian causes. Her 1942 novel Dragon Seed addressed the brutal Japanese occupation of the Chinese region of Nanjing and was a popular source of information on the conflict for American audiences.
Document Analysis
Buck spoke at the American Booksellers Association gathering shortly after the publication of Dragon Seed, a novel that emphasized her authority as an expert on not only China but also the contemporary conflicts taking place in the region. As such, Buck notes that she had been asked to discuss China in her remarks but “found that China is no more to be talked about as a separate entity.… China has become a part of the world.” Her speech therefore requests that listeners and the broader American audience consider Asia as a region—and one in which the United States has lasting, important interests and interactions.
Buck claims that Asia, not Europe, is the key area of US influence abroad and deserves greater national attention. American fascination with Europe is “unreal and nostalgic,” she says, and US involvement in Europe has relatively little effect. Americans, Buck states, are unaware of their role in Asia, but their enemy Japan is not; Japan employs the US history of racism in propaganda intended to undermine regional support for the United States. Because this demonstrated history of white-on-Asian racism and violence is true, potential Asian allies view the United States and its key European allies warily. Allying exclusively with Great Britain without regard to Asian interests is therefore not conducive to intelligent, forward-thinking foreign policy, Buck asserts. Buck rightly predicts a world in which traditional European powers would lose their imperial colonies abroad. New, native governments in Asia and elsewhere present the best opportunities for emerging democracies, but also the greatest challenges in establishing productive intra- and interregional relations. Buck argues that the Japanese understanding of this situation and their willingness to use propaganda that causes a deep unease in the Asian audience present a significant foreign policy problem for the United States.
The solution that Buck proposes is an end to racist influence in both foreign and domestic policy. Creating an inclusive, internationalist foreign policy would allow the United States to truly support the growth of democracy abroad and prevent the rise of a strong influence from regional competitors such as Japan or the Soviet Union. This international leadership could serve US interests in all parts of the world where “the colored peoples are still waiting, still watchful,” a subtle linguistic nod to not only Asia but also Africa and Latin America, where other “colored” peoples formed a majority.
Glossary
coolie: an offensive slang term for an unskilled laborer, especially one from China or India
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Conn, Peter. Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography. New York: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.
Kang, Liao. Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Bridge across the Pacific. Westport: Greenwood, 1997. Print.
Leong, Karen J. The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism. Berkeley: U of California P, 2005. Print.
Weatherford, Doris. “Buck, Pearl Sydenstricker.” American Women during World War II: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2010. 64. Print.