Antiracism as Foreign Policy: Exporting Diversity as an American Value by Nola Haynes

Antiracism as Foreign Policy: Exporting Diversity as an American Value

By Nola Haynes

American foreign policy is predicated on securing and expanding U.S. interests. The goals of securing and expanding are projected through the value system codified in the National Security Act of 1947 (NSA). The grand vision of protecting American values, both domestic and abroad, underwrites foreign policy decision-making. Considering the NSA reflects American values and its commitment to democracy, in an updated NSA, there is an opportunity to explicitly value and protect diversity as it is one of the country’s strongest assets.

One suggestion is to apply the lens of diversity, equity, inclusiveness, and accessibility (DEIA) to the definition of American values. In this way, DEIA is more than a catchphrase for increasing diversity in workspaces and in higher education; it becomes part of U.S. national security ethos that is then baked into foreign policy decision-making. The 2017 and 2020 Trump administration travel bans illustrate how legal instruments such as the Immigration Nationality Act (INA) are vulnerable to the vagueness of determining what American values are and who gets to decide them.

The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 was amended to jettison the quota system established by the Immigration Act of 1924. Also known as the Johnson-Reed Act, this legislation went a step further than creating immigration quotas. It prevented people from all Asian countries and countries along the Western Hemisphere from entering the United States In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality Act altered the quota system, allowing non-citizen husbands of American citizens to enter (women were already exempt), and it lifted the prohibition against people from Asian countries. However, people from countries along the Western hemisphere, such as Latin America and African countries, were still excluded. The 1965 amendment added provisions that stated, “no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of his race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence.”

The 1965 act decreased the barrier to entry in some ways. It also challenged U.S. domestic and foreign policy propped up by Jim Crow-era laws. However, lurking inside the act was § 212 (f), a provision that relies on presidential powers, suspending entry to “aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants” as the president sees fit. In 2017, the Trump administration applied § 212 (f). Because the provision says, “the President must make a ‘finding’ that the entry of the noncitizen is detrimental to the interests of the United States,”¹ the administration used terrorism as the finding.

In post-9/11 America, the word “terrorism,” once invoked, triggers a response in the national memory. In 2017 the Trump administration enacted its first national security policy, the travel ban, via Executive Order 13769, banning people from mostly Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The ban was updated in 2020, which included banning people from mostly African countries.

It is the reality of using national security concerns, such as terrorism, that projects a foreign policy that is unwelcoming to Muslim religious groups, Middle Easterners, and Africans. As an aside, the travel bans argued by some national security legal scholars had the potential to erase strict scrutiny, a constitutional protection prohibiting discrimination. The travel bans also impacted translators working inside countries named in the travel ban. This was a real security consequence for foreign service officers and military personnel.

To illustrate how identity-bias factored into the travel bans, below is population data of countries listed on both 2017 and 2020 travel bans. This list shows how many people were impacted by the bans, in millions.

2017
Somalia: 15.9
Venezuela: 28.4
Iran: 17.5
Syrian Arab Republic: 17.5
Libya: 6.9
Sudan: 43.8
Yemen: 29.8

TOTAL: 159.8

2020
Ghana; 31.1
Kenya: 53.8
Kyrgyzstan: 6.5
Myanmar: 54.4
United Republic of Tanzania: 59.7
Eritrea: 3.5
Nigeria: 206.1

TOTAL: 415.1

2017 + 2020 = 574.9 million

So, how can we reimagine a foreign policy that includes antiracism as a guiding principle? Antiracism is a multi-modal concept that explains how racism is expressed systemically, buoyed by biased thinking, which is propped up by an ideology of supremacy. The travel bans illustrate how racial and ethnic racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia can be expressed systemically through foreign policy that invokes national security claims of protecting against terrorism.

One way to bake antiracism into foreign policy decisions is by updating the vision and philosophy of the National Security Act of 1947. This is not unheard of, considering many incoming administrations present a National Security Strategy plan that addresses updated threats. American political, social, and economic policy in 1947 was premised on a value system that excluded people of color and non-Protestant groups. These groups did not have full access to democracy, multiple groups were disenfranchised, and segregation was codified in the Constitution via Plessey v. Ferguson (1896). An updated NSA must include a vision of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access so that these values are not easily erased based on the whims and ideology of a given administration.

As seen with the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which was motivated by a philosophy of supremacy elevated to a national security threat because democracy was violently and publicly imperiled. Therefore, since domestic national security impacts the effectiveness and credibility of exporting democracy to the world, envisioning an anti-racist foreign policy starts with clarifying what American values are, what we hold sacred, and what we are willing to fight for. This kind of clarification will help create ethical and good-faith policy while setting an example for the global community, restoring trust in the United States as peace brokers, and repairing its. reputation as stewards of diversity.