This seminar considers race from a transnational perspective, with a focus on the Americas. We examine broader historical developments, including the emergence of global empire and colonialism, that gave rise both to concepts of race, racial difference, and hierarchy and to concepts of nation and nationality. As slavery, labor migrations, and the establishment of settler colonies brought peoples from different regions of the world together, racial difference justified unequal exceptions to otherwise equal rights of national citizens. This semester we will explore, in particular, how disease – both its medical and social understanding – shaped racial ideas and affected racialized groups.
b) consider historical concepts of race, ethnicity, and nationality as they relate to the United States,the Americas, and the world;
c) consider other dynamics of social difference including region, religion, class, gender, and sexualorientation as they relate to race;
d) explore the relationship between social conceptions/understanding of race, biology, anddisease;
e) learn to consider critically the course subjects and themes and communicate them effectivelythrough writing, oral presentation, and in other media.
Answer preview
Like most immigrants coming into the United States, Indian immigrants also faced racial discrimination stemming from racially motivated and disease inclined ideals. Generally, whites believed that immigrants were disease-ridden, and as such, would transfer these diseases if they were not correctly checked upon entry into the United States (Vivek, 2013). In line with such an assumption, the United States government set up immigrant processing stations, where Bengali peddlers and other immigrants would have to undergo a rigorous medical examination. Those who passed these evaluations got into the country while the rest got detained. According to Vivek (2013), Indian immigrants had to undergo a profoundly dehumanizing medical
