Vitalis, Robert. "A Mongrel American Social Science". In White World Order, Black Power Politics: The birth of American international relations, by Robert Vitalis, 1-24. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2015.

Vitalis, Robert. "A Mongrel American Social Science". In White World Order, Black Power Politics: The birth of American international relations, by Robert Vitalis, 1-24. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2015.

• In the first decades of the 1900s, 'international relations' referred to the study of race relations, specifically focusing on how White nations could act to prevent the non-White peoples of the world from resisting or challenging White supremacist rule (1).
• This original meaning has not been maintained, with the field of IR radically changing to discuss the interactions between states, not races. The initial relationship is only remembered by African-American studies scholars who look at reactions to the Harlem Renaissance (1-2).
• IR scholars during the 1950s specifically rejected any connection with this earlier racist project, falsely claiming that IR had never supported or enabled imperialism. This claim was linked to the assertion that the US was not and had not been an imperialist power (7).
• Histories of IR scholarship from the 1950s and onward have sought to ignore or sideline the racist scholarship produced by many IR scholars. Scholars like Ralph Bunche purposefully ended publication of past racial science publications during the 1950s, and works on race relations by both White supremacists and Howard School academics were ignored and suppressed following WWII (13).
• Academia is extremely important in shaping public discourse about foreign relations and the opinions of key policymakers on international issues. The ideas of academics and their theories are thus important to state action (3-4).
• International Relations [IR] in the United States is taught as compromising two major rival theories -- realism and liberalism -- and then, also, constructivism. This theoretical basis, and the set corpus of texts, is relatively static and determined by what the lecturers themselves were taught (5-6).
• Contemporary IR courses stress the ancient and timeless roots of IR, often using the Melian dialogue of Thucydides to connect modern IR beliefs to Classical civilization (5, 19). The initial IR scholars of the 1920s specifically rejected any ancient roots to stress the novelty of their discipline (6). 
• The last phase of imperial expansion during the late 1800s coincided with the creation of modern departments of sociology, anthropology, and racial science at American universities. This led a group of American social scientists to found the field of 'international relations' in the 1890s to engineer a more stable system of White supremacy and reduce the threat of a race war (8).
• The Harlem Renaissance was the focus of many early international relations scholars in the 1910s and 1920s. The birth of the Black liberation and Black pride movement in Harlem during this period demonstrated to IR scholars the worst possible outcomes if White supremacy was not properly and actively maintained (9-10).
• The emancipatory focus of scholarship by Black academics like W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke led some IR scholars to conclude that Black education, especially higher education, posed an existential threat to White supremacy (10).
• The early figures in American IR were deeply racist and concerned with race relations and the maintenance of White supremacy. Essentially none challenged Jim Crow laws or colonial rule, and many actively advocated for White supremacy (10-11).
• Theodore Lothrop Stoddard, one of the early advocates of a realist foreign policy during the 1920s, also called for the creation of separate systems of representation for Blacks that would leave the US Congress as a White-only institution (10).
• The only significant IR scholar of the period to engage with Black scholars was Raymond Leslie Buell, who dedicated his scholarship during the 1930s to finding peaceful solutions to racial tensions that resulted from the 'natural' extension of White domination to new areas (11).
• The main scholarly group rejecting White supremacist notions of international politics and race relations were the Howard School, based at Howard University. They created theories to support the erosion of White supremacy, and worked alongside Black liberations in Africa and the Caribbean (12).
• The work of the Howard School academics is almost entirely ignored in historiographies of IR, which instead focus on the non-racialist work of White IR scholars in intellectual isolation from the scholarship of Black academics (12-13).
• The demand for Black Studies programs and departments at American universities in the 1960s arose from a desire by Black activists and academics to use the field as a platform to critique the racist theories and assumptions common in other academic fields (15).
• Black Studies, sometimes called Africana or Afro-American Studies, has successfully eked out a niche in academia. It tends to have limited staffing and funding, but exists in many prominent universities. Opportunities for advanced degrees in the field are, however, limited (15-16).  
• The biggest battle over Black Studies programs, both during the 1960s and currently, is the attempt by some faculties to combine American, Caribbean, and African issues. Courses continually slide back towards centering and focusing on the African-American experience and struggle separately from Black liberation elsewhere (16).