There is a healthy amount of irony to be appreciated when considering the application of antiracism in U.S. foreign policy. For all its achievements, the United States is a country wracked with racial tension, profiting from racist policies that exploit people and resources to the benefit of its own profit and power. That being said, the United States, with its increasingly diverse population and the pervasiveness of racist policies with racist outcomes, provides an excellent case study for envisioning an anti-racist policy overhaul.

Imagining anti-racist U.S. foreign policy in action starts with acknowledging the effects of systemic racism and white supremacy on policymaking and finding ways to prevent it from persisting. It also requires reconstructing national security in a way that truly encompasses all Americans. This requires dismantling an understanding of the American identity as white by default in order to rebuild it in the image of the myriad racial and ethnic identities that make up its population—and to ensure that foreign policy decisions to protect national security include protecting the diversity of the U.S. population. Antiracism also entails a foreign policy that treats racism and white supremacy as a vulnerability that can be exploited abroad and integrates antiracism into all national security structures.

Centering antiracism as a core principle of U.S. foreign policy would mean leaders, both in government and civil society, acknowledging both systemic racism and white supremacy as structural drivers of decision-making and policy outcomes. Recognizing the impacts of these policies alone, however, is not enough. An anti-racist foreign policy shifts the focus away from an idealized, white image of the United States, to a more realistic representation of the population, both in the interests it represents and the people making decisions.

Read the full op-ed in New America