79-172 Race, Caste, Class, and Difference in the United States and India
9 units, Carnegie Mellon University
This course compares the marginalization of Black Americans to the social exclusion of Indian Dalits throughout the duration of the twentieth century. The course explores the parallel experiences of racism and broader discrimination between these groups, centering on how race intersects with caste, capitalism, and class. The course compares the struggles of both Black Americans and lowcaste Indians against mass incarceration, police brutality, criminal and racial stereotypes, and their quest for civil rights. It contains multiple transnational elements, exploring the histories of the South Asian diaspora in the United States, comparing their analysis of the racism Black Americans experience, and evaluating how they connect their findings back to the marginalized experiences of lowcaste Indians in India. It is an imperative part of this course to look at race and caste globally, in an interdisciplinary manner and engaging with disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, and political science. The course will begin with an overview of the History of Racial Formation and White Supremacy and then shift to the 1890s with the Plessy v. Ferguson court case in 1896 which legalized the existence of a caste society through racial segregation. The final weeks of the course will analyze the development of criminal castes and mass incarceration in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the contemporary manifestations of racial caste in the United States as well as caste and gender discrimination in India.
Prerequisites: none listed
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