This course examines the relationship between the social construction of race and the production of social and economic inequality through the themes of land and labor. Beginning with pivotal historical events and their consequences that shaped land and labor in the United States' mainland and its empire and continuing to the struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, solidarity, and liberation experienced and enacted by Native American, African American, Asian American, and Latina/o/x/é Americans, we will seek to understand how old racial hierarchies manifest in current and structural issues in communal, national, and transnational politics and how these communities work to build a just and equitable society through anti-racist and anti-colonial practices and movements. Specifically, the course will cover settler-colonialism, chattel slavery, coerced labor, territorial and resource conflicts, labor recruitment, immigration, migration, globalization, U.S. transnational borders, and reparations. To better comprehend how systems of power and inequality controlling land and labor are constructed, reinforced, and challenged, we will root all analysis of race and racism in their intersection with class, gender, sexuality, religion, spirituality, national origin, immigration status, ability, tribal citizenship, sovereignty, language, and age within communities.
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