Rhetoric Commons^™

Ethiopia Is Now: J. A. Rogers And The Rhetoric Of Black Anticolonialism During The Great Depression, Aric Putnam

Strategic Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 inspired grass roots political activism in black America. To understand how this foreign policy issue became such a pressing domestic concern for black Americans, this essay analyzes an influential interpretation of the crisis, a pamphlet by J. A. Rogers entitled The Real Facts About Ethiopia. I argue that Rogers's text critiques the nature of race under colonialism by illustrating how state boundaries and racial categories are coordinate, strategic operations of colonial power. Second, I demonstrate how the text contrasts this parochial racial context with an alternative framework in which identity can be performed, …