Dimensions
152 x 229 x 15mm
Reuniting white America after Vietnam.
odquo;If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks,hdquo; Frederick Douglass asked in 1875, peering into the nation squo;s future, edquo;what will peace among the whites bring?sdquo; The answer then and now, after civil war and civil rights: a white reunion disguised as a veteransmsquo; reunion.
How White Men Won the Culture Wars shows how a broad contingent of white menidash;ndash;conservative and liberal, hawk and dove, vet and nonvet dash;odash;transformed the Vietnam War into a staging ground for a postodash;civil rights white racial reconciliation. Conservatives could celebrate white vets as deracinated embodiments of the nation. Liberals could treat them as minoritized heroes whose voices must be heard. Erasing Americans of color, Southeast Asians, and women from the war, white men could agree, after civil rights and feminism, that they had suffered and deserved more. From the POW/MIA and veteranspsquo; mental health movements to Rambo and ndquo;Born in the U.S.A.,mdquo; they remade their racial identities for an age of color blindness and multiculturalism in the image of the Vietnam vet. No one wins in a culture warfdash;except, Joseph Darda argues, white men dressed in army green.