Are Our Hands Clean? A Final Reflection

Our class has really made me step back and try to view the world objectively. When reading our primary and secondary texts, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed with the true history of racial oppression, mass racial violence, slavery, labor & labor power, capitalism, US Foreign policy, "whiteness" as a construct, disposability in regards to labor forces, labor units, gender politics, reproductive labor, biopolitics & biopower, invisibility, queering of male Asian American immigrants, "the stranger", rape, lynchings...I think the list could go on for quite a while. All of these concepts have made me realize that the society we live in is incredibly flawed because the country we live in has been constructed on an insecure foundation of racial injustice and incredible racial oppression. I have learned so much about these three central concepts of race, labor and migration through the proletarian voices and narratives that have emerged through the centuries of working class men and women, speaking to the world about their lives and their struggles to find their means of subsistence. I have come to realize that poverty is cyclical and how imperialism and capitalism divide the world.

I have enjoyed the analysis of race, labor and migration provided by many of our classmates and I really admire how many of you can eloquently express your feelings and thoughts in regards to this big picture. I definitely learn something new every class just by listening to many of you speak and I am very grateful that I got to spend this quarter with such knowledgeable and insightful people. To Christine, thank you like always, for providing us with the resources we need to understand how and and why America is the way it is. Of course I keep asking myself, if our hands are clean in regards to the events history has provided and our role in reading, conceptualizing and critically thinking about all of the elements that have influenced people of color and people of labor....I have yet to formulate an answer...but this class has indeed helped me step closer to an answer.