"Caste or Colony?: Indianizing Race in the United States," Modern Intellectual History 4 (2007): 275-301.

Summary
This article examines the two competing vision of “how blacks in the U.S. are understood to relate to Indians: one vision identifying race with case, the other identifying race with colony.” (275) Thinkers in both countries, Immerwahr argues, “have disagreed, sometimes passionately, over whether being black is like being colonized or like being untouchable.” (276) Moving beyond the black-Indian analogy (Gandhi-King), we see both moments of mutual inspiration and bitter contention. Immerwahr explores the long connection of India and the United States, from the missionary-abolitionists to Ambekdar to black Americans (Thurman, Rustin, etc.) visits to India and Gandhi, all of which occurred before King’s travels and adoption of non-violence. Throughout, there was a contentious ideological relationship with how each compared to the other. Even King, upon returning to the U.S. after his trip, adopted government-interventionist approach to ending discrimination that echoed Ambekdar’s view in the 1930s (a view he took from the United States, in particular the civil rights bills during the 1860s, and one that Gandhi opposed). In a circuitous way, King was adopting an American idea, via India. Moreover, King’s views represented race-caste approach (returning to the sociological perspective of the 1930s) that contrasted with the black internationalists’ race-colony argument, later adopted by the Black Power Movement. Ultimately, Immerwhar shows how the connections between Indian and the U.S. created two threads of comparison: race-caste/race-colony.