Cold War Racial Politics and Global Impression Management: North Carolina Economic Development as a Case Study

Abstract

The USA emerged from the Second World War as the dominant economic and political power in a world-system undergoing vast political and economic reorganization. US government efforts to expand the nation's role in international affairs paralleled Southern states' economic development attempts. This article employs the methodology of historical sociology and offers a new historical narrative on US segregation policy decisions relying on the example of North Carolina. Nearly 50 years ago, national and state leaders used impression management strategies to pursue a symbolic and pragmatic strategy to legitimate the US position in the world-system, and to boost North Carolina's economic development. This analysis of global impression management strategies used at the beginning of the era of US hegemony suggests a framework for understanding US efforts to maintain hegemony in the post-Cold War era, and to influence a 21st-century world order.