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I appreciated the well-researched issue on "Communism in Britain and the British Empire" (S&S, Spring 1997). However, as I am sure our writers and readers know, more could be said about this important subject.
For example, as I was reading in your pages about the life of R. Palme Dutt, the prolific British Communist who was of Indian ancestry, it occurred to me that historians of the left need to engage more directly the insights provided by those who have pondered the construction of "whiteness." I am thinking of the work of, e.g., Noel Ignatiev, Alexander Saxton, David Roediger and Theodore Allen, to cite a few examples; unfortunately, these scholars deal overwhelmingly with the era preceding the 20th century.
Racism as we know...