Alexander Broughton
Week 5
Section A02

Vietnam and Civil Rights

In the From Saigon to Baghdad: The Vietnam Syndrome article, Andrew Priest mentioned that American exceptionalism contributed to the initiation of U.S. military involvement overseas.  To me, this shows how easily the American public can be manipulated into ignoring the real issues.  Their loss signified that America was not exceptional after all.  I personally believe that this loss opened the minds of American citizens into seeing, not only international issues, but also domestic issues such as racial inequality. After all, they would never be able to regain their image unless they supported racial equality and fixed the issues in American society. The loss of the Vietnam war was not actually a loss, it brought the Civil Rights Movement into the spotlight of the American people and encouraged change. It could be a coincidence that the Vietnam war and Civil Rights Movement coincided at the same time (November 1955 to April 1975 and 1954 to 1968, respectively), but I think the failure of Vietnam was the catalyst to fix the domestic issues former president Clinton wanted to take on. The fact that later presidents continued to initiate military action shows that U.S. never fully focused on domestic issues in their inglorious, and often futile, attempts at regaining their exceptional identity as a world superpower. Therefore, many of the same discriminatory attitudes still exist in our society, just hidden away from the spotlight. Today, I see this spotlight as the political stage in presidential campaigns, talk over affirmative action, and in South East Asian representation in the media. How can we open up the current issues over racial discrimination to the public if the U.S. constantly wants to continue its exceptionalist phase, ignoring domestic problems?