Full Essay
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Designing the Dream State examines how tyrants consolidate power using colonialism to create empires by extracting natural resources, human capital, and destabilizing communities for profit. The U.S. used the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 to codify into law the exploitation of educated South Asian populations using the “American Dream” as a marketing ploy to continue to capitalize on their labor. Importing South Asian labor served dual purposes for the empire, reducing labor costs, while cementing the Black communities as the permanent underclass in the U.S. by design.

Corporate Governance

British oppression in India started with the commercial pursuits and arrival of the British East India Company 1608. This corporation – formed by the Queen – began to directly govern parts of India by 1757. A massive uprising in 1857 rested control from the corporation to the British government who ruled for nearly another century. In the wake of their departure in 1947, they left a landbase divided into two separate countries–India and Pakistan–including the region that later became Bangladesh.

 Among the countless atrocities, the literacy rate in India was 12 percent in 1947 and local economies were in shambles after being bled dry by the British. Resources and humans fueled the British cause in World War II—both as soldiers and the victims of famine, materials and labor was rerouted to the war effort. The Bengal famine (1943) alone resulted in the deaths of some three million people due to malnutrition or disease.

The People

Prior to 1965 immigration from South Asia to the U.S. was severely restricted. The 1965 Act allowed the United States to implement an immigration policy that specifically selected South Asians with a background in science or engineering who were qualified to get their Master's or PhD degrees—selling it to the colonies as an entrance into the American Middle Class. This phenomenon was referred to as the “brain drain,” wherein the Imperial Center imports the human intellectual capital developed by a former colonial nation. In an attempt to regain their footing, the newly independent state (India) greatly invested in science, engineering, and medical education. Determined to capitalize on this “value”, just like any other resources that are mined by colonialism/imperialism, the US devised a scheme to extract this perceived wealth. They also hoped to get the upper hand against the Soviets during the Cold War by aligning South Asia with its policies. After just gaining independence from hundreds years of colonialism, the U.S. swooped in and took the cream from an already over-exploited nation.

Launching the Marketing Scheme

“The American Dream” was effectively an ad campaign that reinforced the new American brand, selling a story of prosperity a stark contrast to the vast destruction caused by colonialism. Immigrants dreamt of upward mobility, the nuclear family, patriarchal gender roles, rugged individualism, open roads and suburban life.  

The popular term “model minority” was coined in this period—the inevitable result of this policy that allowed the South Asian community to be neatly inserted into the upper middle class, drunk on the dreams of Capitalism. Presidents Nixon and Reagan and an army of loyalist foot soldiers like Dinesh D’Souza and Nimarata “Nikki” Haley weaponized this myth to divide and conquer, echoing techniques employed by the British—using shame and class status as weapons.

America: 1965

With the Civil Rights movement in full swing, massive marches in Selma led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Watts uprisings, and protests around the Vietnam War, civil unrest was exploding in the U.S. in 1965. Images of the assassination of Malcom X were widely published alongside the first televised footage of war fueling an atmosphere of outrage directed at the U.S. government. The space race continued this trajectory in the form of a Cold War with the Soviet Union and associated propaganda to encourage patriotism. 

Perhaps not coincidentally, the ‘65 Immigration act was signed the same year the Jim Crow system ended. Who would choose to leave their homeland only to be ruled under the thumb of Jim Crow? New South Asian immigrant communities became a key feature of the blueprint of empire building going forward.

In the mid-1970s, the first wave of newly naturalized citizens began sponsoring immediate relatives from abroad. Immigration quotas expanded again in the 1980’s diversifying the U.S. empire’s labor pool. Domestic South Asian-American communities grew beyond the upper middle class into the middle class and increasingly the working class.

Colonialism is a one-way road.

As the South Asian-American population grew to meet changing labor needs domestically, the H1-B visa program sanctioned additional South Asians as long-term “guest workers” starting in 1990. Meanwhile, South Asian’s obsession with America’s supposed riches morphed into religious devotion. As some South Asian-American individuals “Americanized” they also sought to maintain a connection with their homeland, while an increasingly neo-liberal India sought to maintain and utilize this connection. 

The Hindu Nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its counterpart in the diaspora, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), pushed the Hindu right-wing even farther in a reactionary direction. Both groups have undeniable links to Nazism. Affluent members of the community—especially those in the U.K. and the U.S.—proved integral to the funding of the right-wing movement in Indian politics.

Works in this show seek to deconstruct these imperial, post-1965 South Asian-American experiences. The pieces examine the haze of memory as captured through, among other things, the recording of visits to points of sacral import (a.k.a tourist spots), the banality of marketing, and objects associated with the commodification of culture.  

The “price of the ticket” of entrance into this dream state requires one to know their place and to be satisfied with their pre-designated role.

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This plaque, created during the year long residency at the University of Hartford, revises the University’s newly crafted Land Acknowledgment statement, making the connections between the University, the military–industrial complex and Harry Jack Gray (ex-CEO of Raytheon), for whom the center of campus is named after.