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Comment by puranjay | Hacker News Reader

If you don't know your caste, you're most likely upper caste.

In America there is no system in place today that forces people to remain separate or keeps one CLASS subservient to another.

If you were born the son of a street sweeper, but excelled, you would be fully accepted by your peers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

Not so in India. The Caste system freezes everyone in place for their life time.

For someone to move from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_caste to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_caste is denied.

http://chng.it/kJphRWWBRr

There is a similar system in the US, based on skin color. The article's title references the book How To Be An Antiracist. It's very much on people's minds today, and the article was written to see what lessons the US can learn from the situation in India (including Indians in the US, where caste-ism remains a problem).

https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525...

>There is a similar system in the US, based on skin color.

Is there? It is very easy to find instances of poor black kids that are now multi-millionaires due to sports. Lebron James, for example, grew up without a father figure and in a poor household. He is now a billionaire.

India's constitution was written by Ambedkar. Kocheril Raman Narayanan was president of Independent india; elected within 50 years of its independence. I think US is independent way longer than 50 years.

So because a few black people make money off of sports we don't have a racially biased system?

There are also rich "low caste" people in India - it doesn't mean there isn't caste discrimination.

is the change legally prevented? I have confusion on what constitutes movement as well.

I hope you mean this with some irony. The current prime minister of India, who is a self made in every way possible is not upper caste and the President is a Dalit. They both belong to the ruling Hindu right BJP.

The opposition, Congress, which is secular left, has been dominated by Brahmins including the Gandhi family. For all the anti Brahmin nonsense spewed by the Congress, they could have remedied it by the Gandhi's stepping aside instead of ruling India for 40 year out of its 70 directly and another 10 by proxy in the 2000. Ironically even the politburo of Indian communist parties are dominated by Brahmins.

Just step aside!

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