Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
wired.com
wired.com
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everyone of us needs to be vigilant about this type of racism. One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese.
One way I solve this is by introducing an independent observer/participant when situations like this emerge. This is costly but it has really worked to not only address this problem but also created an amazing diversity in my teams because it takes care of some of the implicit bias we all have to some degree.
I know plenty of tech companies that make sure female applicants get interviewed by at least one female engineer during the hiring process. They have a good faith belief this reduces discrimination rather than increasing it.
Of course, it could stray into discriminatory territory if you're doing something dumb - like sending all minority applicants to a hardass interviewer who rejects everyone; or giving certain employees a burdensome number of interviews on the basis of their race, at the cost of their other duties. But you should already be on top of issues like that anyway.
Maybe it's not bad; but it's sexist. Just as it would be racist if the criteria was making sure one of the interviewers was of specific race or nationality.
A common way to define racism is: negative prejudice + power
(The same can be done for sexism, though obviously on different characteristics)
From that point of view, making sure that a marginalized candidate is also interviewed by at least one member of the same marginalized community, if possible, is neither racist nor sexist.
(Because you're not negatively discriminating, and in fact to define the rule you don't even need to single out which marginalized community they are part of)
Most normal Americans, if asked to rank the statements "Black people are disgusting pigs", and "White people are disgusting pigs", would rank them as equally racist, regardless of whether white or black people have "power" in America.
It's not uncommon for words to have a technical meaning and a colloquial one. I don't see HN getting upset that "theory" is used differently by those awful academics compared to the common man.
"We must never substitute a doctrine of Black supremacy for white supremacy"
That's fair, but we're talking about ensuring that the interview process is not discriminatory. I.e. having some extra safeguards for marginalized people (safeguards which are not needed for those in power), a special process that you could maybe define akin to "positive discrimination" vs negative discrimination...
And MLK was totally in favour of that:
"society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro."
This is an idiotic way to define racism that makes it completely subjective to give the wielding accuser of racism to be highly discriminatory while claiming not to be bad.
And some would argue that there are fairly objective ways to define "power"
Personally I'm on the fence about these definitions but it annoys me to see people dismiss them as "idiotic" without engaging with the level of serious thought that has been put into them by sincere people.
Disagree once you've spent a day or two surveying the subject. Or even an hour or two.
> And some would argue that there are fairly objective ways to define "power"
Funny how elusive these “objective ways” are when it comes to actually defining them.
Even if there were an objective way to define that power, it still doesn’t change how dumb and divisive the whole approach is of making asymmetric the criteria for being “racist”. It has enabled blatantly bigoted behavior by tons of people against downtrodden “majorities” and has done more to divide society than the segregation in the 60s.
> it's widespread in academia.
This is very damming to sociology and to associate it with “academia” is a disservice to people who practice the objective discovery of science.
Usually once I join the one other woman leaves and the cycle repeats.
Yes, we have done this in the past with minorities...
Maybe a more generous interpretation is that people are flawed, and they're making an effort as imperfect as it is. I I feel the alternative is a catch-22, and everybody be damned regardless of the motive, effort, our outcome - nothing will be good enough.
“Yeah we know Pat’s a racist a-hole, but we fixed it by just not letting Pat interview people he’s racist against. It’s an elegant solution.”
I happen to be Greek and have worked with 2 Turkish colleagues without any issues. On top of that, during my many travels across Europe, Turks (along with other Balkan nationalities) are by far the most welcoming people I meet once they learn that I come from Greece and I befriended a few of them.
Do you have any different experiences to share?
Edit: corrected cypress misspelling. Thanks repliers!
If that's your criteria, who can interview Germans without bias?
Though, yes, all the food is Greek and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Just because your experience was fairly positive, that does not negate the general trend of such occurrences in hiring decisions among such pairs ( Greek-Turk, Indian-Pakistani, Japanese-Korean, Japanese-Chinese, Russian-Polish, Serb-Bosniak, Serb-Croat French-Algerian and countless other pairs in the Middle East & other parts of the world )
Theres surely some information that can be gleaned from anecdotes & oral histories. But we need data & objective studies to back them up if we are to make any progress on these issues.
if you do the exhaustive listing probably no one can interview/manage anyone.
and this is before taking into account more finer grained ethnic/religious/cultural/social clashing differences.
a) since such a cumbersome effort to weed out highly
probable biases, that go unnoticed or unchecked, would
likely be too prohibitively expensive for employers to
undertake and hence any such lofty expectations should be
done away with or
b) are you denying the possibility that such biases can
exist in huge numbers in hiring & career growth decisions?
But the latter surely is wrong. It's just that no one wants to be the first to open that can of worms. Thats all.
When I interviewed last time; the only company i did not make through phone screen was by a Japanese interviewer. I gave a three viable solutions to an easy question. Had no idea why I failed but probably because of racism
In addition, you would have to ask extremely invasive questions of everyone. So is your proposal that you require that your company ask for the detailed ethnicity of everyone? What happens when people refuse, do you just not allow them to interview or manage?
What about people who were born in the US, do you assume that if they are of Japanese descent they can't interview someone of Chinese descent?
I was happy to move to the US in part because I was pretty tired if my home country.
As a practical matter within US companies it's not feasible to assign team members based on avoiding those potential conflicts. Nor can we afford to hire independent observers. I can't imagine trying to justify that additional headcount request to Finance and HR, they would laugh me out of the room! Instead employees are expected to act professionally regardless of their personal feelings and if they can't do so then manage them out.
The biases don't even have to involve people to throw off the results. They could be against the usage of a particular API, for example, which I find insane, but I've seen it happen.
Furthermore, I live in the Balkans area (Croatia) and it so happens that companies from this area do employ people of varied ethnicity, and those do work on the same teams.
You'd think that a nation as varied as the US would know that.
What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.
Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States, but attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.
It seems absurd to declare a-priori that “no Indian shall be the unsupervised leader of a Pakistani (nor vice-versa) because that’s a conflict of interest”.
> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side.
What is the strawman?
“Conflict of interest” is when someone has a clearly defined interest, usually in something of value, that opposes the interests of someone they have a duty towards.
In ethnic prejudice, there’s no clearly defined interest.
I know this sounds pedantic. But when a conflict of interest arises, the next questions are “when did it begin?”, “when will it end?”, “how big was it?”, and “can we mitigate it somehow?”
You can’t do any of those things with ethnic bias.
Ethnic bias is bad, but it’s not a conflict of interests.
> Ethnic bias is bad, but it’s not a conflict of interests.
Okay, so - for sure, if you're from an opposite "frictioned background" and you can interview someone neutrally, you should be able to.
But if you have an ethnic prejudice, you literally have an interest against the person you are interviewing.
> But when a conflict of interest arises, the next questions are “when did it begin?”, “when will it end?”, “how big was it?”, and “can we mitigate it somehow?”
(one example) > when did it begin?
hundreds of years ago
> when will it end?
not soon
> how big was it?
the US literally fought an entire war over it
> can we mitigate it somehow
Yes, by having a variety of people from different backgrounds interview the candidate.
That wasn't that hard, was it?
The original comment by throwaway_dcnt -- "Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese." -- doesn't make any qualifications. I read it the same way that icelancer seems to: they make the determination themselves, assuming it's going to be a problem without actually establishing that it will be. If that is the case, that is literally racism.
For example, employees are required to declare a conflict of interest. Declaring ethnic bias is a firable offense.
Imagine a mostly white business in rural Georgia where all the employees have declares they have racial bias against Black people.
As a result, they avoid hiring Black people because they don’t trust they can fairly evaluate their skills.
Realistically if you applied normal conflict of interest rules, it would be very hard to make a company more diverse.
It would because it did and it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Steelworkers_v._Weber
Not just for this issue. If everyone hires friends and family, people from the hometown, place of worship, etc you run into other conflicts of interest. It’s always good to have disinterested parties involved in the hiring process.
Make a policy with respect to nepotism and discrimination, include a representative from other organizational groups in the interview process and be attentive to following policy.
You also have to be aware of culture issues and manage them without being a jerk. If you hire managers with background/experience whose norms are not inline with your culture you need to manage that. A McKinsey alum, a former outsourcing manager, and a web agency manager are going to have different positive and negative biases.
Often having darker skin, Black Americans are even prone to more discrimination domestically. Any editorial that doesn't recognize that fact as a truth has no legs to stand on in my opinion. The fact that people still hang on to caste ideology in any way, and treat it as a continuing reality should disqualify them from any role concerning equal opportunity. "Gradual change and understanding" is not a reasonable discussion in America, or we're all coddling the same violent and hateful past that America was born from.
I write this as someone who has lots of Pakistani and Indian friends, and has regularly struggled to get them to understand how different each of the dynamics are on this matter, but zero tolerance is essential to get people to understand that the issue is more serious and damaging than they could ever know.
Nigerian immigrants outperform most domestic US groups. So clearly "skin color" isn't the main factor (if at all).
Would your retort be "but Jamaicans who've won multiple gold medals in sprinting are wealthier than most Americans?"
People who smoke are more likely to get lung cancer.
Would your retort be "13 year olds who smoke have less incidents of lung cancer than the non-smoking population?"
If you subsample enough, you'll find outliers. That doesn't invalidate general trends/statistics.
E.g. age is important for lung cancer as well as smoking. Only when controlling for age do you get correct estimate about the danger of smoking.
What other variables does "Nigerian immigrants" introduce besides skin color and culture? The latter is eliminated by most US sociologists that keep screaming "it's not about culture!" so only race remains...
When you say "outperform most domestic US groups", are you normalising for the same skillset and education levels?
Perhaps a source to accompany your statement will help shed some light.
- Wealth upon entry (If all Nigerian immigrants come from millionaire families, then it doesn't matter if they're underpaid; they'll be far wealthier than most Americans)
- Location (If all Nigerian immigrants live in New York City, then the effect size of being underpaid can be masked by the higher income (and cost of living) in New York City)
- Profession/Job Title (if all Nigerian immigrants are neurosurgeons, then it doesn't matter if they're underpaid; they'll be way above average income)
- Age (if all Nigerian immigrants are older, then they'll have had more time to generate skills/wealth, which could mask the effect of being underpaid)
- Health (if all Nigerian immigrants are healthy, then the effect of being underpaid could be masked by the fact that many Americans are less productive due to health issues)
There are obviously more confounders, but doing an analysis using these would be a good place to start to actually answer the question.
I read it as the types of hardships and barriers that, say, a US descendant of slaves faces can be very different from a Nigerian immigrant, and that's one problem with lumping everyone with the same skin color together as "Black" when calculating diversity metrics.
I don't understand how this is still such a difficult concept for people.
This is very true. Most of the time when people think they're talking about race, they're actually talking about culture, which happens to be a much trickier concept. The Nigeria example, for instance, is an inconvenient truth that doesn't mesh well with the dominant race-essentialist narrative right now, so it typically gets ignored or outright dismissed.
Fifa has often rules for this, where it avoid drawing to teams to play together when they are in constant/active conflict.
So, if there are some national tempers flaring, or a war somewhere, it is a better idea to have some boundaries.
Why we hope most people are good natured, we don't live in a perfect world, and it would be insane, or completely naive to believe that 'biases' do not exist.
The other side of it is 'ethnic nepotism', where people hire and favor people from their own countries, creating this pools of mono-ethnic teams in a company which statistically are not probable. This is actually a very common sight in Tech companies and we all know it.
And, as a half-Croat, needed. The ethnic tensions between former Yugoslavian countries have never been resolved, and many emigrants took the unresolved issues with them. The youngest generation is one thing, they grew up without having to live through all that bullshit, but a lot of people 35 and older have lost relatives and friends in one of the wars.
FFS Bosnia is at the moment creeping into the breakout of yet another conflict.
Until relatively recently, the United States has always had a very strong strictly enforced caste system, even written into law, still the case in some Southern states. Some people were even allowed to buy and sell other types of people! As we can see some people are still allowed to kill certain types of other people with no consequences.
I disagree. The phrasing you used implied that you believed the United States did not already have a caste system and that foreigners were bringing it to the US. This is factually incorrect since the US always had a very strict caste system pretty much from the inception of the nation only repealed recently, and even then still functionally present.
Not sure what you want done there? Aren't you implying that the US is a caste-free system with the there?
Not going to touch the moral implications here, but _is_ that actually illegal discrimination? Is there any benefit for interviewing a particular candidate than an employee would miss out on? Again, not picking a side here; just curious.
Do you believe that's just the way "they" are? Is that the way you are?
Remind me never to apply for a job at your company. JFC.
In this case, though, the biases are so apparent that these employees can't be expected to interact with other potential employees. If an employee's behavior is so abhorrent you have to work around them, they should be replaced.
Another way to think of it - I'm sure the company has language in it's employee handbook around non-discrimination. These employees are overtly violating this language. By letting them stay on and accommodating their behavior, a clear message is sent that they're not serious about non-discrimination.
By the way I'm a person of Indian ancestry born and raised in the U.S. According to my grandparents, we're of lower caste as well. But no one has ever asked me what my caste is simply based on my last name. I'm not denying that casteism isn't a problem within the Indian diaspora. But it is entirely different societal problem within the United States compared to racism. In India , it might be similar to racism. But not the same in the U.S.
Let me put it this way - a person who hates all minorities or specific ethnic groups, isn't going to care what caste you belong into. He's going to hate you and the higher caste Indian person equally.
It's a bad argument.
Lots of people do do this. Aren't you aware of skin creams to whiten the skin, hair straightening products, eye lid surgeries, etc. The list goes on and on.
> then millions would be doing it and we wouldn't have all these problems
But those alone aren't enough. You need massive amounts of plastic surgery.
Financial cost is one but also the cost to one's identity.
But more importantly, millions of people wouldn't just throw away their identity. For this same reason, telling someone they can just change their last name is makes no sense.
> Race is immutable in most parts of the world.
Identity is just as immutable. You can tell someone to change their last name but that is about as effective as wearing different clothes. You cannot change a person's upbringing, how they were socialized, their memories, how they view the world. All of that is more or less set in stone from childhood.
You're better off getting plastic surgery. At least that will be effective.
Also passable isn't a think most people do these days. At least not since the 1960s where racial barriers were much higher. These days people of mixed heritage will most likely identify with the minority side of their heritage. (For many reasons).
As a Brazilian friend of mine once told me - Racial classification and categorization in the United States is just weird.
What exactly is the difference between the old concept of “passing” and the new concept of “identifying as white” other than nomenclature?
An excellent book on this subject.
What do you do with Bangladeshis. :D
These things are real, and discrimination based on them can be concealed and is often as the very fascinating article says, invisible to outsiders. I'm with you on the way to address this is by bringing more attention to it than with other commenters who suggest that it's actually racist or discriminatory to acknowledge and address this. It's hard to refute the line of the other commenters cuz on the face of it it is racist and discriminatory to provide affordances for these types of issues because you're assuming someone faces them based on their background. But let's remember something important which is that the words racist and discriminatory in their essence are actually neutral... they simply mean discernment based on something, in one case race.
That can be used negatively but it can also be used to try to write the wrongs that were done by the inverse of that. So sometimes to address a specific wrong you have to deal with the same parameters as created the wrong but invert the effect. Otherwise you're basically giving all the power for the use of racial and discriminatory actions to the side that wants to use them for bad. You have to be able to use them for good too but obviously you need to be careful in how you go about this but I don't think that less attention on this issue is the solution, so I like to jump behind the point that this person is making because it seems like a very brave point that they're making but it sounds like a good idea to me.
I mean I have no idea how these observers would work in practice but maybe one way to do this is to sort of have like a pre hiring congress where all parties meet and have a chance to discuss their background and any bias and how they feel about people from another place. But saying it, I don't think that would really work so easily, tho it might. Every group of people is unique to some extent...I think it's a very tricky thing to do... But closing one's eyes and not talking about is probably not the way to get progress on this.
edit: actually I realized I'm not sure what you're saying..also I'm not sure I understand how you see what I describe as illegal, if you care to share more about how you feel about that, that might be cool :) :p xxx ;p
I think you might be mistaken with this, even lower class people from these nationalities (the least educated ones) have no problem working with each other. Especially untrue for those with higher education (high school and above).
Great - as a British person, this gets me out of conducting interviews entirely!
I'm Serb, I've hired and worked with Croatians. I've had colleagues who were Lebanese and worked along side Israelis. I've had a Palestinian coworker report to a Jewish manager. I have seen an adjacent team's Japanese manager rely on their Chinese report as their right hand.
Maybe it's because I live and work in Canada where there is absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of garbage thinking.
You’ll be quite disappointed if you read about your new country’s history. Even the recent one (the last residential school where natives children were forced to attend and where children unmarked graves were found was closed in … 1998). Or about the province that tried to gain independence twice. Or what happened to the Metis people or the French speakers to the east..
Or just what happens when the dogma of multiculturalism takes over [0].
[0] https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/01/15/as-ndp-leader-j...
This caused a lot of anxiety in me and it still does. I suppressed the anxiety through abject narcism.
Once I was able to leave school and eventually move away I was assumed to be of the same class as my other white peers. Privileged, university educated etc. There was constant paranoia of being asked about my background and having to see the look on peoples faces when they asked where I got my degree from.
Again, I mostly floated through life benefitting from the implicit bias of my peers and others. Luckily I was smart and gravitated to tech at a very young age.
To this day I'm still wracked with anxiety at the possibility of discussing my financial situation, upbringing, or education.
Seeing this described as a denial of basic human rights in the article shocked me. I had never even thought about the anxiety objectively, until recently.
How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments)
Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments)
How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept 2020 (47 comments)
Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments)
Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 comments)
California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - July 2020 (56 comments)
California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments)
In a set up where there is such low/non-existent value going around and nothing much to show for, I'd expect toxic politics for every little thing.
There are quite a few places like this in this industry, and it can be very hard to achieve anything of value both personally and professionally at such places. And its all about identity politics, and cartel behaviour at the end.
I work for Cisco. Best place to work for, best salary in the market, the smartest people I've ever come across. Best work life balance.
I'm not Indian though, so maybe I'm not aware of all the details.
Cast based discrimination exist in India, but in my experience the issue is overblown in the knowledge industry.
A thing to keep in mind is that the Tech industry is very large. Even within organizations culture can be really different; cue Amazon engineers sharing horror stories while others paint it as the best place they’ve ever worked at.
I never saw this negative behavior out in our day to day, so it surprised me. This might be how the discrimination happens.
It’s also why I’ve had to cut off contact with most if not all of my family who are of Indian origin. They play strange political games that I have no interest in participating. At the end of the day humans are tribal and it is this aspect which makes me hate a lot of people.
Let me hazard a guess: You're "not lower-caste" (and that's how you can then dismiss your own assertion).
I am not denying the discrimination in the industry. It is the magnitude that I have my doubts on.
Caste issues are much more complex in my view. Feel free to disagree.
Imagine having two friends, one dirt poor and another fairly rich (but comes from a lower caste). Both appears in an entrance exams for the engineering degree. The poor score 99% but fails to make it but the rich dude who score 70% makes it to the college. He gets caste reservation.
One may say that reservation is is off topic but is it really? It is a lifelong reminder of who you are, to both the friends.
The poor friend who somehow makes it to the Silicon Valley, is often reminded of his caste privileges.
The rich lower caste friend, gets discriminated for his caste and economic privileges that others find undeserving.
There was a reddit thread that went super viral right after the SuperBowl (with zero data) about "demographics of people in the tv ads vs US demographics", and everyone was obsessing over how black people were vastly overrepresented versus their demographics... and STILL white people were also over-represented.
Don't kid yourself that just because you hear (or even experience) anecdotes of people belonging to the dominant group being "discriminated" against that it's the norm.
Simple - go try applying for jobs with a white-sounding versus a black-sounding name and see what happens.
And btw, this is literally what CRT is, and actual experts and academics have shown over and over and over again that the political systems are tilted against the non-dominant groups, even with the boogeyman of affirmative action.
Is there a way to tell an Indian's caste? I'm guessing it's impolite to ask.
You have a choice: you can assume you're correct that this is "overblown" and do nothing, or you can recognize that it clearly does happen (even if it really is rare) and make sure you're actively watching for it and reporting it when you see it.
It usually doesnt extend beyond that, since HR will be all over it. Often they will even go out of their way not to hire Indians as their directs, so as to deny any discrimination based hiring. But its rampant.
I even asked a senior manager if I needed to be Indian to excel at the company. He said the very fact I asked that question is a problem, whether or not it is true.
His answer could mean two things, and which one it is depends more on his race than yours.
;)
It's effectively a French guy hiring another french guy or a German guy stacking their team with other Germans. It's a bit more complicated than that because if you look at things like power distance index (PDI), India measures way higher in the chart than any western country (i.e., culturally Indians are more accepting of hierarchy than their western counterparts, so an Indian subordinate is more deferential to their boss than an American one for example)
It is like saying "an asian hiring another asian" while completely ignoring any sub-groups. "White men" are more diverse than you think and have only in modern times put things like hibernophobia behind us.
These are hard questions and the nuance is not obvious to everyone. For example some people think my group (Arabs) all share common culture even though this is not true.
I think to be able to genuinely change things, we have to be careful about calling other racist. I will be the first to admit I am an ignorant. I think we're all ignorant about something.
While this may be factually correct, that’s not exactly what racism here refers to, and to dismiss it as such is ignoring legitimate concerns.
Yea, there might be diversity among white men. However. White Men weren’t enslaved in large numbers. White men weren’t excluded by redlining. American society did not systematically deny the same opportunities to white men that it denied to other races and genders.
So when talking about racism, it’s not really helpful to point out that by definition not all white men are the same.
https://www.tiktok.com/@tizzyent/video/6881703506558848262?l...
The first few seconds of the linked video cover this. I encourage you to watch it.
Effectively, there is not a strong equivalence between the categorization of white vs. black in terms of origin. Whites typically weren't forced to move to North America and have their home cultures stripped from them through generations of slavery. This is why you find things like German Heritage celebrations or St. Patrick's Day, etc. You don't see Yoruba Heritage celebrations, etc. Further, the definition of "white" has grown over time to incorporate Irish, Italian, Slavic, etc. African heritage has persisted as a secondary class of citizens or worse in US history.
That is what is meant by stripped heritage. It really isn't schizophrenic. A white person could use the census and other tools to trace their roots successfully, further. A black person can and often does hit a dead end much quicker. We all come from somewhere -- knowing one's history can be helpful medically and for personal worldview.
Should a person be solely where their ancestors originated? I don't think so. But it does matter, in the same way the OP article on caste matters, in hundreds to thousands of small interactions over the course of every day life. I highly recommend Dr. Painter's The History of White People. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_White_People
As someone who is a first generation immigrant to the new world who went back to the old country I disagree with the idea that whites in the new world have specific regional/cultural European roots. They are far detached and most of the examples you mention are merely imitations or money grab celebrations. With genetic testing it is possible to locate where they originate from approximately, same with African originators, but I really don't see how this origin point means anything after hundreds of years across the Atlantic. A white American calling themselves 1/8 irish, 3/8 italian, and 4/8 french, is as ridiculous in my mind as an African American calling themselves 1/8 kenyan, 3/8 angolan, and 4/8 congolese. I agree with you that the African Americans are treated as lesser in the American society, but in many ways they have way more in common with the average white American then they do with the very diverse and foreign "black cultures". And likewise for the white Americans with the diverse and foreign "white cultures". My point is that if you believe in the existence of one, then the existence of the other comes as well, alternatively we could do away with the separation between black and white in America altogether and consider the people there to just be Americans, as people who left the old world for opportunity in the new world, which imo is where American society is trending towards overall (But will still take a long time and a lot of effort to achieve).
There was also a son of a bitch who was an aggressive baptist. He though I was a baptist because I had dated a baptist once, and knew some of the lingo. I really liked him until I saw him treat a Chinese person like crap for no reason. He treated anyone who wasn't a Christian like garbage.v
Just because people are from the same part of India doesn't mean they have the same caste.
being from the same part of India does not mean they will be of the same caste.
I'm a non-dalit Indian working in silicon valley. I know that caste based discrimination is still prevalent in India and not surprised that it continues in here in silicon valley as well amongst Indian community but I'm surprised to read this part in the article. I have never heard of someone doing a scan for sacred thread. Also, it's worth noting that most non-dalit people also do not wear this sacred thread so whoever is doing this scan isn't familiar with India or probably this part is made up in the article.
That said, I know that it's much harder for a dalit person to progress in India as the society still tries to pull them behind. Indian govt has reservations in colleges and jobs for dalit community, which I believe has helped the community a lot in last 50 years or so, helping many to bring their families out of poverty. But, still there's a long way to go. Also, a long way to go for non-dalit community to abolish this discrimination.
My heart goes with our dalit brothers & sisters and glad to hear that their issues are being discussed in silicon valley as well now.
Unsuprising that the Western press and academia has the nuance of a brick, perhaps because their own history is so grotesquely checkered.
I wouldn't trust Sai Deepak with anything, he's a nut job who for some reason sounds eloquent to the upper class Hindus.
This is true for any demagogues btw. It’s why Jordan Peterson appeals so much to upper class White Americans.
> Deepak mentions that 15% of those classified as SC/STs also wear the sacred thread
My point is that this is incorrect.
edit: asking this question to clarify since the other reply(ies) take this as a given.
This is incorrect. I can vouch this is a relatively common practice in Maharashtra.
There will always be an element of the intangible in any effort by the Western mind to understand India. The experience is one of irreducible complexity, the subject receding from attempts to form a mental framework that permits nuanced understanding.
This documentary is 50 years old. Nothing has changed.
Caste and class divisions run very deep in South Asian culture. I’m disappointed that even in tech where workers are generally highly educated this is something that continues to exist (please: I’m not talking about the necessity of a college education to be a good engineer, that’s another conversation. I’m pointing out that most tech jobs require a college education, in many cases Grad School education).
So much of it has to be taken with a boatload of salt. Since it is politically incorrect to challenge the established views, one simply has to rely on ones own observation. Especially if they are missing the woods for the trees on these debates.
It is very much in line with the western debates on race inequality, feminism or gender pronouns. Those claiming to fight these inequalities, intentionally or unintentionally create more fissures and distrust.
And unlike the western world where there has been a systemic slavery or persecution of indigenous population, in India there are literally thousands of castes and not always a clear idea of hierarchy. The hierarchy was mostly an academic theory built on flimsy propaganda.
Also the very same people who see privilege among sections of the Hindus are completely blind to the privilege of Christians or Muslims, considering that large parts of India have been under Islamic and Christian colonisation for several centuries. And Hindus have faced the same kind of violence from these two groups as much of the rest of the world.
In a way caste might have been the social glue that allowed the indigenous people to put up a fight and maintain their Hindu identity.
There is a strong correlation between caste and economic mobility & urbanisation. The ones who preserve their caste the most are ones who can gain some privileges in the form of vote banks, social security or class benefits, this easily excludes 90% of the urban educated masses.
In a country of 1.4 billion, sure there are large swathes of population still behest with the caste problem, but also in a country where 1/3 of the people are malnourished and have stunted growth, caste is hardly the biggest problem and might actually be a evolved social survival mechanism.
Their life is certainly far better than the muslims in Pakistan, so much so that many parts of Pakistan are revolting and claiming to want to reunite with India.
Whatever your claims of muslim persecution is mostly manufactured. In may ways the more radical elements are testing the limits of the patience of the citizens. I wish India would follow the west and start De-Arabising the muslim population, after all each community has their unique dress and culture.
I am a big admirer of Ali Anwar, founder of Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz. The hindu-muslim binary of the Indian poltics is the biggest issue lower caste muslims are facing today. Every issue is about Hindu and Muslim or Upper and Lower caste Hindus but None talks about the plight of the Dalit and Pasmanda lower caste Muslims.
I know I will get downvoted by upper caste ashrafs and sayeed muslims but this it the trusth. Cast matters, even if you are a muslim in India.
Lower caste pasmanda Muslims are not even allowed to bury their dead bodies with those of upper caste pure blood Muslims, who claim to be descendants of the prophet Mohammed.
Ali Anwar despite being a Muslim was in the JD(U)-BJP alliance in Bihar. BJP is a Hindu-nationalist party that also bought some progressive changes in the Muslim community. I don't like BJP but sometimes even the devil does the right thing, banning triple-talaq was one of such positive things done to uplift oppressed Muslim women.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/06/india-hate-cr...
“ In December, Uttar Pradesh police arbitrarily arrested 10 Muslim men under a law introduced by the Uttar Pradesh Government that targets consensual interfaith marriages, and allegedly tortured them. The legislation, which has been termed the “love jihad” law by right-wing nationalists and leading politicians, had not been approved by the Indian Parliament or the state legislature.”
“ The government accused members of the Muslim Tablighi Jamaat minority of spreading COVID-19, and as a result, health care facilities denied access to Muslims. Instances of hospitals refusing Muslim pregnant women and cancer patients surfaced in April 2020. In the months following the nationwide lockdown of March, social media and WhatsApp groups were flooded with calls for social and economic boycotts of Muslims, alongside fake news stories and other misinformation.”
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/sou...
And more. But why multiply examples?
Many countries in "liberal" Europe have banned the hijab.
Amnesty is not a reliable source of anything.
When India bans namaz on the streets and hijab which I think it should, perhaps you can come back and make these complaints.
Islamists fear of BJP & Hindus might very well be true, since they are incapable of feeling guilt having killed or ethnically cleansed millions of Hindus from their homeland in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Kashmir, at least fear will keep them in check.
The only ones who hate BJP are also the Ashraf ones, who are worried about loosing their privileges.
BJP is literally diametrically opposed to Muslims. There may be a lot of shit Mullahs, but at least some care.
btw in my experience internet dating & marriage sites have done more to break cast barriers in india than any social or affirmative action movement. I do think that it would take another generation for serious damage to happen to the caste system because towns & villages are still very much ingrained in this shit.
I was thinking the problem is limited to India and will not get carried over to US or tech industry in India.
Was not expecting to see caste system in US too and was doubting if it was real. I had heard one story where adults in US were introducing themselves with caste. This story talks about even the kids are introducing with their caste. What are we teaching kids?
Every Indian should read this. It doesn't matter if you discriminate or not, the person suffering is not dealing with just you but lots of people. Even if a small percentage discriminate that is bad enough for that person to feel vulnerable for long time.
Counter-point: many cases of sexual harassment seem to occur over a long time, where the problematic behavior is known or suspected widely -- it's just that nothing is done.
Consider: I don't care for celebrities or Hollywood, I'm not American, but I knew Weinstein for being a pig long before he got cancelled, mostly through offhand jokes from comedians. I didn't really know how big of a deal in his business he was, I just knew that everyone seemed to know that he was a pig. So when he finally got cancelled, what surprised me is that I sort of thought that he already had been.
I've known of few instance of much less prominent harassment (sexual or otherwise for that matter) at the periphery of my social circle, and it was a similar phenomenon. I believe there is a type of people that does that kind of things (narcissists), the problem I suspect is that they tend to also be good at manipulating people so that they can keep doing damage for a long time.
I didn't hear of it either until I noticed large groups of Indian-origin devs and managers (mostly at older companies such as IBM, Oracle, etc), and somehow only the 'upper caste' folks would get promoted and be invited to happy hours and such. How much that can be attributed to inter-personal relationships and professional competence as opposed to outright discrimination, one will never know but a pattern does emerge. It's never in your face discrimination, just subtle favoritism towards one's group.
Mind you, this happens with people from the same Indian state as well. They'll often speak in their regional language during meetings even though not everyone speaks that language, which simply goes on to alienate that team member. (This has happened to friends of mine at T-Mobile and Intel)
"marriage sites have done more to break cast barriers in india"
Not sure if I agree with you there. It has brought to light just how prevalent that kind of thinking is. It's a common trope on Indian matrimonial websites how users have a list of requirements (Looking for fair skinned, Hindu upper caste, etc). Maybe that has helped break cast barriers by bringing it to light, I don't know, but it was really surprising when I came upon it for the first time.
I do not recall ever seeing casteism at workplace. So reading these reports have been surprising to me, since these are not subtle, but rampant. I can only attribute it to my privilege driven echo chamber. Or the fact that I never worked in US. (only briefly in India).
What I read in media disgusts me. I am very motivated to make sure nothing like this happens in my zone of control / influence, at work.
I know casteism is deeply rooted in Indian society. I do not relate with it. Many folks I know, don’t either. On optimistic side, I hope that means with newer generations, casteism will dilute and wither away.
My parents changed my, and their names, and surname to Slavic sounding for reasons you can understand. Out of many, lower risk of being drafted (being non-white, and living in far-east increases likelihood of draft 10x,) ease of getting into a good school, or university for me, and simply lower chances of getting into random troubles with officials.
At the same time, knowing this, I am as much as discomforted by practice of meritless "diversity hire" just for the sake of putting people of colour to pass the diversity checkbox.
Pretending to play a role of "smart south Asian" while yes-manning, and knowing you being a decoration is as bad as discrimination, if not worse.
Sometimes, it could be an advantage, but using it that way just feels wrong given I know what it's like to lose out on things due to my sex/sexuality/disability. Why would I ever want anyone to lose to me because they're male/straight/not-disabled?
I do wonder if I'm hampering myself, because those aspects of myself have presented some difficulties, but who's to say a straight white man didn't have difficulties of a similar level that were ignored because they didn't tick the diversity box? (Good luck to impoverished straight white men or straight white men who are autistic or have mental health problems).
And I don't know about your experience, but mine is that a lot of the diversity checkbox people are in this for their personal brand/career and they're just as slimy and backstabby as any white men have ever been. At least the straight white dudes just call me a bitch to my face. I can respect that.
perhaps it would be best if everyone walked a mile in shoes not their own.
perspective is everything.
Outrage, I would say.
The parents feel like their child has been taken over by some weird agenda to make such a big deal out of normal stuff!
This scene from an Indian movie I saw recently made me realize that the caste system is not just prevalent and absurd but also has a very complicated hierarchy built into it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4N98tQsp64 (<2 min, with subtitles)
I'm sorry but this makes no sense to me whatsoever. Reservations in India follow a formal documented process and do not apply to private enterprises. Changing one's surname will make zero difference.
I am also familiar with many upper-caste people who have changed their surname to something generic (like Kumar) to avoid revealing their caste. This doesn’t just apply to job seeking in private enterprises. They do this to avoid any kind of attention drawn to their surname, and hence caste. This attention can then play out differently in different scenarios.
Is just the first step. Bribing the right authorities is next.
> Otherwise millions of people would be turning into lower castes
How do you know they aren't already?
Surname change was to avoid revealing caste. No appropriation of "lower caste" to get favorable quota.
I have no evidentiary way to conclude if change ended up helping me or not. I just never had to face caste based discrimination.
I shared the experience, so folks on this forums come out knowing more than what is typically seen in media.
No rhetoric. There is no denying, that problem is real.
The problem of people from dominant castes facing discrimination on the basis of their surnames is wholly imaginary.
I wondered about that right away - is any of this just sour grapes from lower caste folks taking it out on higher caste folks now that they're in an environment where the playing field is suddenly level?
<preachy> The challenge is to transition into equal rights mode, rather tribal one. Sooner the better. </preachy>
In tech these days there's enough racial groups that you are as likely (or more, in my experience) to end up with blatantly racist behavior from minority groups who either only hire their own or explicitly do not hire specific minorities they dislike.
I remember working at a bank where the portfolio trading team was all racial group X, algo team racial group Y, and OMS racial group Z.. because the managers were...
The white guys were like the generic neutral glue that could sometimes be hired into the X/Y/Z group teams.
My previous fund I recall a friend telling me he started looking for a new job as soon as our new boss started as he was grilling him in their native language trying to figure out which specific racial/caste/regional sub-group he was from..
This fits with a saying I've seen thrown around about our modern times, which is basically that "Class is the only remaining non-taboo bias in American polite society".
Living in a very blue city in a very blue state surrounded by highly educated, "social justice warrior" types .. you'd be surprised how quickly the same people who have every type of window decal/bumper sticker/flag, march in every sort of rally you can imagine, and earnestly support every anti-racism/DEI initiative under the sun.. are willing to "punch down" class-wise, as long as the lower class people are white.
But the more I got to know Indians who were more privileged than I have been, the pattern started to clearly emerge. I distinctly remember thinking - "people who are better educated than I am tend to be richer or from an upper caste background, usually both".
I try to not let it get to me - I'm in a more "esoteric" position as I'm neither one of the privileged castes nor the downtrodden. My last name is still a dead giveaway to people who know. And I wonder how many opportunities I've missed because I've never been part of these subgroups (any subgroups really). I'm lucky enough that I have friends and a partner who recognise their historical privilege very well.
It's why diversity is important. I love working with my Dutch, Indian, German, Turkish, Chinese, American, Brazilian etc... colleagues. When I'm in a diverse group, those feelings tend to fade away - because I know there isn't a large group that I might need to be closely aligned with.
Of course, living in another country (not USA), the higher up I look at management, the less diversity I see. Same problem in a different form, I suppose. :)
All of the above is just an individual experience. But data seems to confirm it.
Can you share this data. I am curious.
I'll edit this with more links later, it's 3am in my TZ atm.
I have just begun to notice, but I have no idea about the identity politics. I recall in college that some of my friends from India would fawn over certain last names, and I felt it was something to do with the caste system, but I had concluded that the people I was around in universities and in the workforce were mostly from a level of privilege that it wouldn't be possible to learn more. I always found Indian nationalism to be strange, where so many people would interject that everything is perfect. Makes it easier for me to avoid my own US nationalism, because it must be just as comical to others.
In this article it mentions Dalit. How many people from that group would be in Silicon Valley, is it impossible to know since it is insensitive to ask and disastrous for them if people did know?
Seems like there is a potential for solidarity amongst more vocal groups pushing for representation.
Less that 10%
Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments)
^ Seems like there is a potential for solidarity amongst more vocal groups pushing for representation.
Good luck, but I don't believe that's happening anytime soon considering that SV is upper-caste dominated also no politician really gives a damn unless your group has the population significant enough to win the elections.
Also, do you know prop-16 was rejected by Cali, the most progressive state in the US. see https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/prop-16-failed-in-californ...
India is like 3 different countries when sliced by caste. The highest castes are about as privileged as the typical Chinese. The middle are at sub saharan Africa levels. The bottom 25% constitute probably the most deprived population in the world. Better off than the Rohingyas but not by too much.
"Jay Bhim" is a great movie based on a real incident. Bhim refers to the social reformer profiled in the article Bhimrao Ambedkar.
Not true, at all. It depends on your state of birth and the caste. A Dalit from a poor state like Bihar is underprivileged than a Dalit of Kerala or Tamil Nadu.
Is it not racist?
As my comments go against the Hindu exceptionalism narrative, he is trying to discredit my comments in whichever way possible.
The perpetrators in real life were Christians but portrayed as Hindus.
The Hindu villagers who in real life helped the victim seek justice are portrayed as casteists who hinder justice.
A lot of literature, news articles and movies are made to exacerbate the problem and create problems where none exist.
Thanks to social media, this deliberate twisting of facts has come to light, but much of these stories manufactured by the evangelical groups as equally ridiculous as with Christian persecution or Caste atrocities.
1) https://scroll.in/article/876000/is-the-caste-system-deep-ro...
2) https://www.jstor.org/stable/44144111
3) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-11229170
4) https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/dalit-catholics-continu...
The leadership of Churches in India remains in the hands of upper-caste Christians, and they are as bad as their Hindu counterparts.
Can you really tell if someone is from India and not from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh? Because I can't and I am from India.
These things are rarely as simple as looking at someone visually from afar or in a lineup and making a complete decision.
So, you can confidently tell a Bengali Indian from a Bangladeshi? Or a Madhesi from a Bihari? An Indian Gurkha from a Nepali?
I respectfully call BS.
the ambiguity is practically nonexistent in the US so the circumstance wouldn't come up
I acknowledged that
You’re not going to get more than that
(unless I’m wrong about how represented those other groups are, that could be an insightful conversation I’m willing to have)
But when I read stuff that is so clearly nonsensical, I start questioning what embellishment factor I should I account for.
> Questions about a person’s last name or home village can be seen as invasive attempts to identify caste. A pat on the shoulder might be a friendly greeting—or a search for a sacred thread that some dominant-caste Hindu men wear beneath their shirts.
There is simply no way to figure out someone's caste by their home village. The overwhelming majority of Hindu men from dominant castes do not wear a sacred thread. If someone believes that a pat on the shoulder might be checking for a caste marker, it's very likely that they'll be seeing caste discrimination where none exists.
Most Indian villages will have multiple jatis (sub-caste groups) and it’s perfectly normal for endogamy to be so complete that people’s families speak exactly the same language and the genetic distance between them is on the order of that between Swedes and Sicilians. Indian genetics is fascinating.
Stop pretending like you don't know what I'm talking about. You're either lying to yourself or being ignorant. I'm sure many things in the article are embellished, but stop reducing other people's experiences.
A village is next to useless in terms of identifying one's caste.
> I've seen it happen to my dad all the time when we're in another city or country.
How? There are more than six million villages in India. Do these people maintain a distributed database of some sort?
> I'm sure many things in the article are embellished
How much of it is embellishment is exactly what I'm wondering.
> but stop reducing other people's experiences.
Maybe come up with a convincing argument rather than ask people to take your word for it.
I guess that I should explicitly add that I am not from India. Cross-cultural communications can be a bit difficult at times and I'd rather not make blunders like that.
> Do you feel threatened when a coworker asks about where you are from? It's something I do ask from time to time (not during interviews obviously, but during lunch for example) out of pure curiosity. Should I stop?
I think its a fair question. Its not as much about where a person is from but "what caste they belong to" type of stuff that might be offensive.
Speaking as a Muslim, the way the Indian society perceives us, we are the lowest of the lowest castes.
Muslims themselves perceive our layer as fairly flat. This is mostly because most muslims themselves have been caste refugees to a new religion(Islam) in the past. And for the better wouldn't want to go back to that history.
1 ) https://theprint.in/opinion/indias-muslim-community-under-a-...
2) https://www.opindia.com/2020/10/muslim-social-hierarchy-cast...
3) https://theprint.in/opinion/pasmanda-muslims-missing-from-po...
4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lENVbLrJOQw
5) https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/we-need-a-caste-censu...
6) https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/dilip-kumar-the-gardene...
7) https://thewire.in/caste/lower-caste-muslims-in-up-forge-new...
Emancipation of the Dalit Muslims hasn't yet occurred, Hindu-Muslim binary contributes to this oppression of Pasmanda and Dalit/ lower caste Muslims.
The oppressor can never understand the pain of the oppressed. How many lower caste Muslims ruled India? Why 90% of the Muslims politicians are upper caste ashrafs/syeeds? Ashraf hegemony must end.
Dad started with manual labor work, and things like cutting wood in forests when he started. Retired as a taxi driver.
Not seen any caste system in muslims, let alone discrimination of any kind. Looks like desparate attempt from Hindus to drag muslims into this just to be able to say 'Its not just us'.
Just read the oppression Indian lower caste untouchable Muslims face in India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasmanda_Muslim_Mahaz
Upper caste dominant ashraf/sayeed Muslims in India have tried to label the people of the Mahaz as "un-Islamic heretics", which is a form of propaganda against them. Same is the case in Pakistan.
We all are Muslims and we don't have castes. Unless it's about an upper-caste Muslim woman marrying a lower caste untouchable muslim.
But invisible cultural barriers exist when it comes to language even though caste barriers have gone away.
Although it's not always that straightfoward. In Gujarat, Muslims used to be able to "cancel" caste pollution - that is, if you touched a Dalit and then touched a Muslim you wouldn't have to purify yourself.
So no, Muslim/Islam religion hasn’t escaped caste trap in India. There are upper caste, lower caste etc. For instance, leather/tanning work is typically done by lower caste Muslims compared to say a merchant.
Let me further drive home my point. “Lingayat” is a religion created explicitly to be outside of caste system. To an extent they consider themselves to be of a different religion from Hinduism. Though superficially you can’t tell the difference because culturally they are very similar to Hinduism. But after a few centuries, Lingayats now have their own caste hierarchy. Almost parallel to Hindu caste system.
https://karepass.cgg.gov.in/CasteReport.do?actionParameter=C...
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/matrimonial-ad-s...
California withdrew it's Cisco case but you wont' see any coverage of that here.
https://thewire.in/caste/california-drops-caste-discriminati...
I am from India and have been in the US for more than a decade.
I come from a low caste. The only folks who have asked about my caste and asked if I am from a higher caste are white Americans due to my vegetarianism (voluntary for ethical reasons).
> Do you feel threatened when a coworker asks about where you are from?
No, not at all.
But I did get upset when my PhD advisor (a white American) wanted to know if I was from the priestly class.
There is definitely casteism in India, but I have not seen it in Silicon Valley.
Casteism is there in India and is unfortunately widespread but steadily disappearing. India's PM and President are from lower castes but you won't see coverage of that in Western news.
Because other Indians will identify your caste based on your last name, food habits, dialect, your family business (etc). They don't need to ask you.
False. This is a broad generalization. Some large states in India use paternal names as last names.
Severe defensiveness. Not trying to undermine testimony, but life is a spectrum. On the spectrum of all testimonies, there is without a doubt corroborating testimonies that are the result of trauma.
I’ll give an example. I’m an alcoholic. There are times my shame is so great that even in random stores where I go to buy some beer, I can feel eyes on me as if the whole world knows I’m an alcoholic. It’s an intense feeling of guilt and shame. Other examples of this are imposter syndrome arising from being doubted. If you ever been doubted in any meaningful way, you can palpably feel the doubt on your skin in new situations - all from past trauma. But in reality, no one may be doubting you in these new situations.
I would not be surprised if a majority of them were based in India, or based in the US but working for an Indian company (similar to Chinese companies in Italy, who set up factories with exclusively Chinese workers to make leather purses that can be stamped with "Made in Italy").
> they assume my caste based on how I look
I'm curious in this comment, are you dressing up a certain way that is typical of brahmin, or are there some other characteristics that makes you look brahmin?
These patterns are often used by people as a shorthand for categorizing another's relative caste and often as the basis for discrimination.
At a very broad generalization, upper caste individuals tend to skew more toward more west asian, and less regional/indigenous phenotypes.
The trait most strongly associated with higher caste is fairer complexion, which is the basis of great deal of South Asian discrimination, and has ancient roots reaching back millennia, though it was reinforced by colonial powers. There are many exceptions to this though, and a lot of stories about people being misidentified as one caste it the other on the basis of complexion.
People pay close attention to this because phenotypes are a type of currency, especially in matters related to marriage and community identification, and also power relationships.
He wants a cultural genocide, not a biological one.
If every Ukrainian tomorrow declared themselves Russian, Putin would be ecstatic. Compare a Dalit declaring himself Brahmin.
One man's crisis is another opportunity. I wonder how hard it is to enter the Ukraine now and then cross to Europe with no papers as a 'refugee, formerly expat-student.'
They want to go back to India, not go stay in another European country. What do you think they are going to do when they arrive in another EU country? They can't stay there as refugee since they have Indian passport and India isn't fighting some war. Also being refugee is no fun either. I can't believe some people feel like there is some fun to walk over to a country without any resource and legal means and stay there as a refugee.
Even if what you are saying is true, what do you expect is the solution? Keep them all in Ukraine and let them die in some war which they have nothing to do with.
Arm them and bus them to the frontlines, pour encourager les autres?
Some brahmins have lighter skin and brown eyes compared to average Indian who has brown/dark brown skin and black eyes. So some brahmins think they are different(better) to other Indians and prefer to marry amongst their own kind.
I don't think you should stop asking people where they are from. But perhaps don't interrogate them (we get enough of that at airports), implying that they're obstructing their true origin from you. Also, tone matters, whether you like it or not. Saying "where are you from" can sound genuinely curious, but it can easily sound disgusted and derogatory.
On any implied caste system, I can speak for the London tech startup world in which I've worked for several years. I've probably had dozens of (South) Asian colleagues and have never noticed the slightest hint of intra-Asian racism or classism.
As far as I understand it from Americans I know, quite a few people in the US have a fascination with where their, and others', ancestors came from, so it could be a fairly innocuous question. Pretty much any American I know would happily rattle off an answer of 'oh, I'm half Irish, a quarter French, and a quarter Spanish' or something similar.
Here in the UK, even though we're also a nation of immigrants and invaders throughout history, there is much more of an attitude of 'people whose ancestors have always been here' ('British') versus 'immigrants' ('not really British') - even if the 'immigrants' are from families who have also been here for generations.
So yeah. Generally 'but where are you really from?' means something a little like 'I don't believe that you're one of us people who have always been here'. Whether that's malicious or just naive depends on the person, but I can imagine it gets pretty tiring.
(I'm the son of a Chinese immigrant, but due to my other parent being Scottish I pass for white and thus I've never actually been asked the question!)
I'll ask "Where are you from?" as a way to understand someone's heritage only if it's obvious, from accent or other markers, that they are literally from another country.
I like learning more about people and the world so I like to ask people about where they’re from. The immigrants I’ve spoken to are proud of their heritage and don’t take offense. I have noticed though that their descendants can take offense, perhaps because they take it as implying they’re somehow inauthentic. All that’s required is a little delicacy. Instead of asking “where are you really from” instead ask something like “it sounds like your family has a really interesting story, would you like to tell me about it?”
Based on the fact that you took some (minor) offense to the followup questions, I'm assuming you're middle-class or higher?
I've spent a decent chunk of my adult life living in working class, high-immigrant areas (Noble Park and Sunshine, to any other Melbournians - both actually really nice places).
What struck me as interesting is that in these environments, probing about one's ethnicity is nothing more than smalltalk. Everybody has one; they're curious about yours and will ask directly.
In more upper-middle-class environments, though, it can be really taken the other way as ethnicity is something semi-taboo that needs to be treated far more carefully.
Possibly I was offending some folks in Australia.. in 2022, as a white man without Mediterranean roots, I'd probably not say your username out loud in either country :)
If you'd like, I'd be more than happy to print you off a W-word pass. :P
Working class racism certainly exists and can be very nasty, but it's not endemic and casual in the way it can be among the middle classes.
One possible explanation is that the working classes know they're at the bottom of the heap, while the middle classes are much more finely tuned to differentiation markers of all kinds.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/07/white-...
I never ask, as I don't want to offend, however I am often quite curious. Not because I doubt anyone's claim to being British - most British Indians are likely more British than I am. Usually, I just want to talk about food, ask if you've been to India, hear your life experiences, reminisce about when I visited India, etc.
One of my favourite work relationships was with an older Indian man who, when he found out I was vegetarian and liked Indian food, he would bring me food his wife had made and give me recipes to cook myself. Sadly he died of Covid, but I still cook the recipes he gave me often - albeit with less ghee.
I feel like it's a little sad that racists have made it hard to talk about any issue touching on ethnicity without worrying that one may be coming from a place of hatred or aggression. My girlfriend is a Filipina so I can pick up the accent, and when I was making small talk with someone I asked if they were from the Philippines. They said yes, but instantly clammed up and didn't really talk to me for the rest of the interaction. But hey, I'm autistic so maybe I'm misunderstanding what I did wrong.
The majority of the time it isn't asked from a place of genuine curiosity but as a way of boxing you in and "other"ing you. I shouldn't need to justify my existence to you just because my skin color stands out.
Also restricting your exploration to just food topics doesn't make you curious or cultured. There's more to experiencing a culture than looking up a recipe online, going to an "authentic" restaurant or going backpacking while surrounded by expats of a similar cultural background as you.
Ultimately I'm not a zoo animal for you to poke or probe at. I'm a complicated individual with my own personal story just like you are & I deserve the same respect I give you.
How would you feel if I just met you and started interrogating you on whether you are an Angle, Saxon or a Jute?
Now how would you feel if every single non-white person you met asked you this dozens of times over the span of a decade?
Obviously I can't know what it's like to be asked this kind of thing constantly for years, but I can say that travelling in non-white countries as a white person, you do get asked that kind of stuff a lot (or people touch my hair, beard, talk about how tall I am etc.). Or stuff about Scotland or the royal family. I've never minded, but perhaps after years it would get annoying.
I don't think any one would be threatened by asking where they are from, even in India unless you grew up around in the same state or region, location is not a nuance (in the caste sense) you would be able to easily get. For example some one from the south, won't know anything about punjabi castes or where they hail from, even one state over it is hard to know they would usually speak a different language after all.
A foreigner asking is generally not considered threatening, they however might be worried you would say something to another indian colleague without understanding the implication and that can be difficult for them.
---
Most of the article is certainly true, it is important to note that all groups discriminate not just ones on top, disproportionately high representation of forward communities among the Indian diaspora makes it seem it similar to black racism here it is more complex than that [1]
There many groups collectively known as dalits, form one end of the spectrum, other castes form the middle, and forward/dominating castes a the end, every group discriminates against everyone else, and there are sub groups within groups. family, lineage, language, color, religion[2], region and dozen other factors to break into further sub groups.
It shouldn't be that surprising, India as country has as much or more diversity and double the population of Europe. You find similar discrimination of Europeans too, by country (Poland,Serbia etc), region of a country, language (Catalans), groups (gypsies) race/skin, religion (even with Christianity: Catholic, orthodox, Protestants etc ) and so on and on.
--
[1] This happens because these groups have access to more funding/ education, relatives already living give a boost and so on
[2] Caste is not limited to Hindus, there are plenty of communities where you will find mix of Hindus and Christians, or Muslims , depending who is dominant the others would be discriminated
As such I don't really feel particularly threatened by being asked where I'm from. I do have a bias towards groups with more diverse teams (ie not just Indians) but that's more about enjoying the cultural exchange that comes with that instead of the homogeneity and conflict that can come from staying within one's own cultural influence.
If anything I've seen much more nepotism than casteism.
This is true with European names too (masson, taylor, carpenter, miller ....), and has the exact same origin.
However, today due to the politicization first by the colonialists and the church, and now mostly by a leftist-church nexus it has become politically incorrect if it feels like they have an agenda behind it.
Strangely at least among the current generation, I have experienced probing questions about my diet as well as probing hands (pretending to be a friendly shove or pat) not from Hindus but from Christians.
In my understanding it is a way for them to ensure that I am not an "evil Brahmin" and can be trusted enough to part take in what every gossip they have and an assumption I would have to submissively accept their "righteousness".
Nonsense.
> and their caste is also obvious from their last name
What exactly do you suggest be done about this?
It is a well known fact that the primary form of caste discrimination occurs against lower castes by upper castes. Your attempts at subterfuge are futile.
Of all the things you found out of line is my comment calling out one of these lies.
If you are engaging in good faith, you would be replying to any of the several lies being trotted out in this thread, such as "caste system was created by British and Indian Christians via colonialism" instead of expressing hostility to somebody who is countering the lies - by trying to make some irrelevant meta point to distract from the core issue.
Going back to the original comment- I was making it clear that nobody needs to pat someone on the back to figure out if they are brahmins - you can tell from the last names.
I dont really know the castes of my friends except Brahmins, because they keep informing me.
1. Tamil brahmins - any domestic post on Facebook has a reference to the "TamBram" community.
2. My manager informed me once that the reason he was light skinned while south Indian was because his ancestors were north Indian brahmins who moved to the south to work as priests. I never asked him about his skin color. He brought it up himself.
3. One of my peers - a maharashtrian brahmin explained to me how his particular brahmin subcaste was even superior to other brahmins because of some XYZ reason. I didn't know he was a Brahmin before this.
There are several more instances. Of course, there must be brahmins amongst my friends where I don't know about their caste. But the only friends who have brought up their caste voluntarily were brahmins.
Yes, this is called selection bias. In what context did your friends talk about their caste?
I'm still not sure what you suggest about people's last names. This is not unique, it's also true for the last names of all sorts of people who have faced discrimination or discriminated against others - "white" people can be eg. Jewish, Irish, Italian, Anglo, German etc and there are names common to each of those groups.
Asking people to change their names is quite a heavy lift and impractical - I know some parts of India have historically made it easy for people to drop their last names and move to a system similar to Iceland where each generation uses the their parents' names as their last name.
And I have not asked anyone to change their name. All I did was refute the fake allegation against the Indian Christians patting the back of brahmins to figure out their caste. For anyone coming from India this is a hilariously absurd lie.
If you are offend by them carrying their tradition or culture that they have inherited for 100s of generation.
How would you then think of Indians named John or Mohamed? You know that, these political religions spread almost exclusively through violence and colonisation.
India is a strange country where it is ok to engage in hate against indigenous people/culture, yet political incorrect to even speak of the violent history of Christianity or Islam.
You are perhaps engaging in the same kind of hate the Nazis spread of the jews.
This is again pseudo history peddled by the RSS. Another instance of Hindu exceptionalism. This is completely counter to actual history and is a lie propagated by the Indian right wing. You should talk to an actual historian instead of relying on WhatsApp forwards by RSS.
> You are perhaps engaging in the same kind of hate the Nazis spread of the jews.
Re: Godwin's law.
India is a diverse country with many subcultures, each with their own unique traditions dating back many thousands of years.
Why should everyone loose their unique identity?
Why should people not be proud of their identity or uniqueness?
A lot of privileges that the "Brahmins" have can be mostly attributed to the fact that they were not competing with the colonial interests like business and were used as native informants and peons & clerks.
This gave them a head start compared to the rest of the population who were reduced to penury and in many case ended up as substitutes for black slavery in the form of bonded labourers.
So in using the caste card people are covering up the devastating effects of colonisation.
The privileges held by the colonising classes and collaborators, esp. Christians as they gobbled up enormous amounts of state resources, temple lands in the form colonial grants and 99 year lease to the church. Yet it is politically incorrect to point out these privileges.
For this reason, my state got rid of surnames ~50 years ago. It sure is inconvenient in some places: I have to explain that I don't have a last name and that they're calling me by my father's first name. But given the pros, I don't know why the other states haven't followed suit
- Have found regional identities to be stronger than others. Some regional identities based on languages and ability to form together as a group are much stronger than others (Punjabis, Gujaratis and last decade or 2, Telugu people)
- Some communities in India like business communities of Jains and Marwaris are quite closed like Jewish folks in some instances. They do not allow other folks inside their sanctum
- Fights are mostly a symptom of other issues - limited resources, significant population and a lot of it are kept alive by the democratic nature of the country where politicians exploit the divisions
- Affirmative action has made it much easier for people for downtrodden communities (SC, ST) to get Govt jobs, promotions etc. However a lot of these benefits are only accruing to second and third generation of privileged people from their caste and festers resentment in middle class whether urban or otherwise including myself who is classified as OBC (Other backward classes) which is one of the most illogical way of grouping people as any. A lot of OBCs have a lot of land and wield a lot of power
I just want to say that the issue is very complicated and also has a lot of colonial influence still hanging around it to this day. Having said that, things are so much better than what they were 3-4 decades ago based upon my conversation with family elders.
PS. - Anecdata. I was rejected by many SC/ST i.e. women from backward castes in arranged marriage website because they did not want to lose the "privilege" affirmative action will bring to their children. Ultimately I had to find someone from my own caste. My attempt to be open minded and different fell flat on its face.
In some cases the village might indicate one's caste. In most cases, it does not.
If two Indians are from the same region, they know the demographic of that region pretty well.
So, that might be revelatory. But this is only true for some regions in India where villages are segregated.
Most villages in India are not segregated, i.e. Brahmins, upper-caste (they call themselves that), general castes, Dalits live together. But the neighborhoods are often segregated. But they do go to the same schools.
But as you are not an Indian, whether the one being asked is a Brahmin or a Dalit, will not tell you his village name- simply because you will not know it.
And in megacities, people from every caste are there.
As someone from outside India, you can safely ask where someone is from. They will probably tell you- "Mumbai" or "a small village near Delhi". No risk there.
Never ever ask people their caste.
https://www.learnreligions.com/reincarnation-in-buddhism-449...
Buddhism has a similar concept, named and understood differently.
There are plenty of folk superstitions in both Hinduism and Buddhism, so it's not impossible that some folks may have believed what you wrote above at some point. But the actual agreed-upon views are pretty clear.
Not sure that applies to any religious text ever. Regardless, it is clearly not clear, since people are misinterpreting it.
Read Manu Smriti, Yajnabalka Smriti, or Parashara Smriti.
You can find them online.
In Bhagavad Gita, there are no verses that directly say bad things about so-called lower castes, but liberation is offered to people "even if" the seeker is a woman, a son of a prostitute, or a "dog-eating lower caste".
The Hindu scriptures themselves are casteist and sexist.
Western media is extremely India phobic and Hindu phobic.
The caste system, as per scriptures, is just a categorization of work that people do. Every one is prescribed their duties and jobs as per caste. However, there are innumerable instances in the scriptures when people have taken up jobs of other castes, as per situation demands.
The discrimination of people based on castes, is an invention of society and its degradation.
However, I often find that an ingrained sense of "my religion is holier than thou" leads to a subtle thread of anti-Hindu outputs.
Some publications are blatant. Some are not.
This is blatantly false. Can you cite me some?
Even the Lord Rama killed Shambuka because he wanted to learn the Vedas as a Sudra.
Another incident I don't remember from the Mahabharata where one person was keen for reaching brahminic status. And that was denied. And was said as an example.
> there are innumerable instances in the scriptures when people have taken up jobs of other castes, as per situation demands.
Cite me two or three.
And please don't say Parshuram being a warrior or Viswamitra being a sage. Both were upper caste Brahmin or Kshatriya.
All religions are bad. Degree varies.
(To top it all, apparently there's even a tradition which says the wise Shambuka ultimately managed to perfect his dharma by means of Rama's intervention, whilst the Brahmins who had requested that very intervention are criticized. Thus adding all sorts of nuances to the story that can hardly be described as "casteist".)
Dalits are even outside of these four varnas.
But when people leave a religion, they're not just leaving what the religion is on paper, because that's not what anyone engages with. They're leaving how the religion operates in practice, and that includes how people practice that religion day to day.
I have read many verses from Manu Smriti, Parashara Smriti, and Yajnabalka Smriti.
They are ripe with casteism.
In Vedas, too, it is mentioned that Sudras are created from the feet of Purusha, and Brahmins from the head.
And also, Mahabharata mentions that brahmins can't face capital punishment. The most that can be done is banishing them.
Indian scriptures are deeply casteist and sexist, too.
Hinduism itself should be blamed for casteism.
Even Buddha fought against casteism.
That is the varna system. There is no caste system in Vedas or in Hinduism.
The same verse from Purusha Suktam also appears in Zoroastrian Avesta Yasna and the Pahlavi Denkard.
‘Caste’ comes from ‘Casta’, a Portuguese word.
Now…what does it mean by allocating different parts of the body to different categories of people?
‘Purusha’ is the cosmic man. Before the gods were created, there was Purusha. The gods themselves came from the sacrifice of Purusha. The immortality of gods was granted to them because they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the mortals/humanity. So every time they perished, they were resurrected.
The concept of yagna in Hinduism symbolises the sacrifice of the gods. Vedas say that our lives too are a sacrifice. We live and we die. We merge with a universal consciousness. When we are no different from this universal consciousness, we are resurrected too. That is the principle of reincarnation. In sacrifice, we will find our resurrection.
The sacrifice of a god and the resurrection of said god is a recurring theme in many faiths and religions.
The Purusha Suktam is a poem about sacrifice of The Cosmic Man. He has a thousand heads and a thousand limbs. And how his sacrifice comes down as the five elementals of fire, air, earth, water and space. From these, all of creation is born..as earth and skies, planets and stars, forests, oceans, land forms. This disembodied Cosmic Man enters as sunshine and rain. Plants, mammals, birds and insects are created. And then so is man..sun becomes the soul and moon becomes the mind. Seven sheaths of gross matter is formed as the physical bodies..from his body, the four varnas are created so man can create division of labour. Nowhere is caste mentioned. Nor do the Vedas ask people to discriminate against each other.
A Brahmin lives on charity and studies Vedic knowledge for teaching and for the world benefit. A Kshatriya takes that knowledge and implements it as a ruler. A Vaishya takes care of the material needs that fuels the system. The Shudra works and creates what society needs.
The varna system reflects the four purusharthas: dharma, artha, kama, moksha. The Brahmin has to uphold Dharma(divine law). The Kshatriya has to deliver artha(material goals) according to Dharma. Vaishya and Shudra are motivated by artha and kama(material goals and desires). Moksha is for anyone who seeks it..and hence for everyone.
Brahmin lives on charity but is bound by religious rules and regulations. Kshatriya has power, but also has duty. Should be ready to fight and die to protect his people. Vaishya is free to accumulate wealth but also has responsibility to fund the entire society. Shudra only needs to work to take care of his desires, has to bear burden of labour and owes nothing to anyone. This system worked as there were many small manageable kingdoms and there was conformity. Conformity means less conflict. There was mobility between small kingdoms that if one was allergic to the homogeneity, there was another place to belong to..until the Muslim invaders came first abs then British raj came and got rid of the kingdoms.
Now Brahmins had to work and Kings were useless. Merchants were burdened to pay dictators and invaders and colonial masters. Resources were diminished and there was no more fair redistribution of available resources. It was a survival game now. The solid foundation and implicit safety net was gone. Every one of the varnas has one benefit and one handicap. So each one depended on the other three and peaceful balance was easier to maintain.
It’s like a game of Jenga. Take away one piece and everything comes crumbling down. Invasions and colonialism keep pulling pieces all the time but the system was self healing. Until it wasn’t.
You are mistaken. There is no caste in Hinduism. Purusha suktam is about the sacrifice of The Cosmic Man. It appears in the Rig Veda and also in other religions of that time. Hinduism is the only surviving polytheistic religion. It draws ire because of it’s very existence. It’s a threat abs irritant to the monotheistic faiths because of its foundational difference of opinion wrt individual soul, consciousness and it’s place in the universe.
Monotheism cannot erase Hinduism although there has been efforts to tarnish its core. Yes..Purusha Suktam is part of Hindu scriptures. Varna is mentioned. Caste isn’t. Social edits to a religious text is someone else’s responsibility. That is collateral damage due to civilizational pressures.
Hinduism is not for everyone. And that’s ok. There are many religions in the world. And different faiths. As well as atheism and agnosticism and ignosticism. But I don’t think a casual assassination of the Hindu faith that is followed by approximately one billion people is warranted or should be condoned due to incomplete religious literacy.
Most Indians who claim racism here in US usually come from upper/mid caste and lived decent lives in India and have seen their families and neighbors treat lower caste people like dirt.
Not just caste but discrimination based on the state-of-origin/language are often committed by identifying your group based on your last name.
There are often groups in offices from some states that will ensure that folks that are not from their states don't succeed and are coerced into resigning.
Folks from relatively developed states in India don't want to admit students from underdeveloped or poor states, which breeds another form of caste-language-based discrimination in India.
Does caste-based discrimination exist? Yes, it does. But it depends on where you live. In rural India, it is more prevalent than in California.
Is the Indian government doing anything about this menace? Yes, India has a positive discrimination system for these oppressed castes in all government universities and all governmental jobs. Today 65-75% of all seats in top Indian universities are for oppressed, underprivileged, and poor people.
Is it better than now compared to when we got independence? Yes, but many want their kids not to marry into other castes, mainly lower caste.
Also, this is the reason students in their board exams (+2 / Twelfth-grade
tests) were forbidden from writing their last name in the answer sheets.
Teachers in India openly discriminated against students from other
castes/jatis/varnas by giving them lower marks.
https://theprint.in/india/governance/57-of-indias-teaching-f...
How can a school teacher ask kids about religion and caste? How does this not contribute to discrimination based on <religion, caste.. >?
The telling part is the kids assuming the most important part of their background is religion, region, and caste.
The Indian Ministry of the Exterior has his work up for free [1], but I’d suggest the printed US edition of Annihilation of Caste with Arundhati Roy‘s introductory essay.
I know its something that exists though, its mind boggling that people still adhere to it. Hopefully it goes away though.
Here is an interesting interview type video on it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BSN-3nmMyM
[2] https://theprint.in/opinion/indias-muslim-community-under-a-...
It is one thing to say that "X is not technically a part of our religion" or "I have never witnessed X" and another other to dismiss it as a phenomenon entirely.
I grew up Mormon. Many, perhaps most active Mormons will spin controversial Mormon history and teachings in the best possible light, and downplay toxic cultural practices as being not that common, or not really part of the church (even when they were widespread).
It's funny, there was even a sort of saying on my mission, "Would you go to a Chevy dealer to ask about a Ford car? No, you'd go to a Ford dealer!" to try and explain why you should trust LDS missionaries. But of course, that saying doesn't really make any sense -- the real authority you should trust would obviously be a reputable third party, not someone with incentives going either way.
It takes time for any historical pattern to be reversed. Centuries, maybe even millennia. Even among people who actively reject the caste system it won’t be so easy for it to go away. Maybe technology can help.
Hiding is not the answer. By hiding, people signal that there is something to hide. I would even say that hiding makes it worse. It tells everyone that there is something to hide even the people uninterested in the situation. But when viewed objectively we can all see that there is nothing to hide. That it's just a bad idea that persists.
How do you fix it? I suspect that by uniting and fighting against the very idea that it's a valid system is the way to fix it. In time, the whole system would eventually collapse. Bad ideas can disappear over time but people have to fight to make them go away. Specially the oppressed set. You don't fight the idea that it's an unfair system. You fight the idea that it should even exist. I know. It's easier said than done. But by fighting the very idea of its existence. It will eventually make the whole idea go away.
The best example, I can think of, that is winning against a bad idea is the use of Queer in the LGBTQ community. 20 yrs ago "queer" was a horrible thing to say to an individual. The community has fought hard to change the word's meaning and now it has become a word that people like to hear. A word of pride. The whole idea has been turned on its head. Sure there are still people that use it as an insult but it's going away. 20 years from now it will just be a bad memory. Queer is and will be a point of pride. It was a genius idea in its simplicity and its effectiveness.
Well…not exactly. There's plenty of situations where being of a certain caste, whether it's high or low, can confer you no benefit and sometimes even a disadvantage. So besides the general thing of people generally trying to move away from discrimination, it's not necessarily a thing everyone wants to perpetuate.
Caste is like religion if you are brainwashed when you are kid, its almost impossible to let go even if you change countries. Hopefully the kids of these immigrants who grow up in the host country will not have the same hatred.
As non-Indians, it seems we exist outside the system, which could be ambiguously interpreted to either have no connotation at all, or to exist at the bottom of the social strata. [1]
Anecdotally, the kind of treatment you'll get in practice depends a lot more on your race and national origin. [2]
1: https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/3898/what-caste... 2: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/let-s-talk-about-r...
However, the key point of difference is that it was more deeply ingrained in Indian society and was made into a rather rigid hereditary system. While in other places the child of a shoe cleaner might end up marrying a trader or might end up working as a trader himself, doing so would have faced more resistance from society in India. This can still occasionally be seen in villages and sometimes even towns and cities, where individuals from different castes want to get married but are murdered instead, either by the community or even their own families.
This effectively forced those in 'lower' jobs like cleaning drains into that position for generations, inflicting a lot more unjust suffering upon them.
There were a couple Russians and Chinese in the group who seemed also permanently stuck at the bottom.
For the most part, if you wanted to move up, you left this group and moved into some other group in the company. I just left the company entirely.
Do people really use this acronym? Lol that's just unfortunate
An analogy might be black Brits getting discriminated by Jim Crow laws in the old American South. That was simple racism based on skin color and it didn't matter if you were American or not.
comon this is a bit over the top. Is this for real??
edit: I guess this is as good as it gets https://ambedkarinternationalcenter.org/join-the-mission/aic...
Sounds like he went from the bottom 1% to the top 1%. That's impressive.
Any Indian that comes to mind, and you could bet that he/she is from an upper caste. It is hidden only because it is sort of accepted, and thats not a good thing.
Caste is a very complex topic that spans back thousands of years — including the exploitation of the Manusmriti [1] by British colonists to wield their own power while colonizing South Asia — and is really not at all comparable to, say, being an “ethnic” white person like an Italian in early 20th century America (half-Irish here myself).
It has been a part of Indian society for a very long time, going back millennia, but it was codified in its modern form by the British. For instance:
"Nicholas Dirks has argued that Indian caste as we know it today is a modern phenomenon as caste was fundamentally transformed by British colonial rule. According to Dirks, before colonial rule caste affiliation was quite loose and fluid, but colonial rule enforced caste affiliation rigorously, and constructed a much more strict hierarchy than existed previously, with some castes being criminalized and others being given preferential treatment." [1]
Preferential treatment in this case means educational opportunity, administrative jobs, etc - essentially avenues of upward socio-economic mobility. Since then, it has almost become ingrained in Indian culture. So much so, that people think that one caste is "better" than the other, marrying into another caste would bring disgrace to the family and community, and so forth.
Another factor to consider is affirmative action. There are few good public universities and jobs in India, and a certain percentage of them are reserved for groups who have been historically discriminated against. This kinda rubs upper-caste people the wrong way since some of them believe casteism no longer exists and that even if reservations are required, they should be based on the socio-economic status as opposed to one's caste.
Overall, as you can tell by now, it's a pretty tense matter. Things are improving but by no means is it a non-thing.
My question is why would you be asked or, if asked, tell your caste?
The most roundabout way to determine one's caste that I have come across is inviting someone to swim. Brahmins, the upper-caste Hindus, traditionally wear a thread[1] which is on display when you swim. The ones who don't wear a thread are assumed to be non-Brahmin.
Anyway, once the caste is known subtle discrimination may follow (depending on the people of course).
As for the thread, I expect that you could buy one on ebay ;)
Brown skin + studied in a top government college. backward caste. got in via reservation
Fair skin + College(non-goverment quota) - probably from upper caste
All these can be known from an interview by looking at the person and resume.
To me this is one of those things people really care about when they're involved and slightly better off - so someone in the upper-middle class, someone from a good school, etc - but the majority of people don't really care. The only people who care about what school they went to or what class they identify as are those slightly above average without other notable accomplishments yet. Professors at Harvard care less about their school prestige than the fresh undergrad entering the job market. So, to take this as an example, I'd assume the only people who care about the Indian caste system are young, in a caste slightly above average whatever that means, and yet to really progress in their career to have more notable accomplishments to base their identities around.
The article is more Paranoia than Fact in today's context.
What may have been true is earlier generations has largely disappeared in Urban areas and in particular; in the IT industry. Everybody just wants a good paying job and a decent life, nobody bothers much about Caste.
I see people directly referring to a candidate who didn’t do well in an interview “must have gotten admission to IIT/NIT via reservation” (reservation is something of American affirmative action; but I’m not really sure). Passing remarks behind the back of other colleagues. And then saying things like, apparently being generous, “wow, doesn’t seem like you’re from that community!” (implying as if that community is inherently weak and dumb and the individual is an exception).
My name is as caste neutral as it gets. They still somehow figure it out - thousands of miles from my native place.
When you tell them you never used reservation even though you were eligible - you become kinda of like them, a little. But the moment you say you didn’t use it because you didn’t need it and you wanted to leave the college seat for someone more needy and that you support reservation system - you’re thrown back away from being somewhat like them.
Yes, the them and us are clear distinctions here.
It comes in many shapes and forms. Landlords asking “we’d prefer vegetarians” that’s asking “we’re Brahmins and prefer Brahmin or upper caste tenants”. My friend just lied as he really liked a flat overlooking a lake and trees next to the balcony in a quiet area, he said “well, even though I’m a Brahmin I eat meat once in a while” (he wasn’t a Brahmin) and the landlord was soon saying, “of course, of course, food is a personal choice”. He left soon as the landlord politely but slyly kept trying to glean the confirmation out of his visitors including me, also tried setting him up with his niece assuming his caste.
This will end up being a poorly written extremely long essay if I keep giving examples.
It was very early in my pre teens that I was made aware of my caste and place in the social hierarchy. I was fully aware that I sit somewhere in the middle of the caste hierarchy and there are people above me and also below me.
The power imbalance is so staggering and oppression is so deep rooted in such pervasive manner that all things might get consumed by the simmering anger and hatred one day. People who have lived mostly in cities easily fail to see this. They brush it aside saying we have jobs, we are moving on, we are getting educated.
This is so ignorant and blinding that they not only miss that a far greater number that lives in villages and towns and smaller cities are unseen by them, they are not seeing what’s right in front of them in the same larger cities as well. And yes, a lot of them deliberately do not acknowledge such divides and inequalities - some with a desire to fit in, others with vested interests of historical social power.
PS. Also, it’s so so different from the western notion of racism. So different.
Wow, the article really called it when it comes to deflections like this.
We learned about it in middle school. Maybe that’s not common elsewhere in the US?
What, besides Bollywood, should a US (tech) company do? Remove the surname field on the internal company address book? Prevent Indian nationals hiring / interviewing /managing other Indian nationals?
I do ask seriously - my utterly uninformed instinct says that we are close to the equivalent of 1950s US - southern blacks left the USA to fight and came back with tales of drinking warm beer in British pubs and people being amazed by their accents not their skin colour. India is seeing a second generation leaving to work in global markets and there will be an effect.
So - how do we get on the right side of history?
I will preemptively apologize for my directness. Euphemisms dilute.
I have written about it in some capacity on HN before. [1] But, I'll give you the 1 pager:
1. There are Indians and then there are Indians. The average undergrad at a UC is one of highly privileged 1st gen immigrant or 2nd gen Indian-American, both of who have no clue what caste even is. It is like trying to solve malnutrition in India, by feeding burgers to your fellow FANG engineer. In my 27 years surrounded by Indians, I have never been asked my caste, nor have my upper-caste peers made questionable comments in confidence.
2. Caste issues persist among those who pursue the hardest paths to success (eg: L1 sweat shop route) in the US. However, over the years, I have seen it develop into a 'crabs in a bucket' style circular firing squad. The more they believe in the 'zero sum nature' of an engagement, the more willing people are to stifle someone from the outgroup in an effort to get ahead. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there.
3. In truly poor communities in non-urban India, caste is a reality of life. India is a shit-hole nation (as a famous man once said). Desperate times in shit-hole places nudge good people into vile behaviors. Even past the explicit discrimination, generational poverty is crippling. On the bright side, things are getting less worse as a fast pace. But, to paint any rosier picture about this would amount to lying.
4. Sloppy affirmative action breeds resentment. (America, take notes) It hurts me to say this, but the proof is in the pudding. At my moderately-prestigious-Indian-university, I saw liberal 'general'(upper-ish caste) students turn resentfully anti-affirmative-action as they saw the bar be dropped so lower every year, in the Indian zero-sum career market. People are not judged for their caste. They are judged because their caste reveals that they got an easier path within a narrow academic structure. (This ofc, ignores the crippling poverty and social barriers these people also have to overcome. But, sociology 101 is not in our gen-eds).
5. Caste is dead, long live caste - Caste is so 1990s. The entire societal hierarchy shifted under the feet of sub-par social commenters and they never even noticed. A decent portion of 2nd generation American-Indians don't fraternize with 1st generation Indians. IITians stick to IItians. Masters H1b-OPT candidates look down on those who came through the L1 consultancy sweat-shop grind. I could write an entire book on this. It is a brutally merit status system, where merit is defined within a narrow academic context. (Indians are not unique in this phenomenon. I frequently see this among urban american communities too. Sorting into groups based on internal perceptions of status happens whenever a community reaches size threshold. If anything, it is a rather familiar social stratification)
Shoe-horning the caste issue into hyper-polarized and shallow american power struggles is worsening the issue. India has been making rapid progress in terms of helping lower-caste communities. From representation in every local + national body to economic assistance to educational assistance to a harsh anti-discrimination law. In 70 years of independence, we have come a long way. The progress may be on a low base, but the delta is huge. UCs and California Liberals (with all connotations it carries) are wielding caste as a weapon for political means. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Let's take an example of an upper caste manager and a lower caste IC reporting to him. If the manager rates the IC poorly because of genuine performance reasons, the IC may still feel it is because of caste, instead of his poor performance
Let's take an example of a Lower caste manager and an upper caste IC reporting to him. If the IC disagrees with the manager about something, the manager again may think it is because of caste.
In this way it becomes hopeless.
In cities like Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai- the problem is non-existent.
The problem is much more rampant in Northern parts of India. This region is the American south without the good parts.
This region ranks the highest in the country for foeticide of girl children. Because the society is deeply patriarchal.
Honor killing, i.e. killing your own daughter or sibling for marrying outside caste is rampant.
This region also votes in high numbers for divisive-policy holders.
In other regions of India, the problem is much less visible.
In Bengal, where I come from, I have never seen casteism. Inter-caste marriage is rampant. Yes, castiest assholes exist everywhere. But many don't care- or care only when it comes to marriage.
I belong neither to a so-called "upper caste" nor I am a Dalit.
Caste-based discrimination is minimal in here.
Ambedkar is a venerable intellectual even if you completely disregard his caste identity and fights for Dalits. As a non-Dalit, I have deep respects for him- just as an intellectual, a nerd.
What did away with caste mostly is colonialism. Colonialism attacks your way of living, and casteism is an Indian way of living. The places where British rule was consolidated, you will see much less casteism in those places.
Casteism is not a new problem. Buddha faught against it two millenias ago.
Do NOT listen to Hindus who say that casteism has nothing to do with Hinduism. Hindu scriptures such as Manu Smriti, Parashara Smriti, Yajnabalka Smriti are ripe with casteism.
Even in the Mahabharata, it is said that capital punishment or holding is not apt for a Brahmin criminal. The most that can be done is banishing them.
In Magadha Empire of the Mauryas, Kautilya suggests death penalty for Dalits who go to bed with a Brahmin woman. The opposite carries little punishment.
And many foreigners are wondering whether asking about one's village is risky. I will say that it depends.
In colonial strongholds, the villages are less segregated. And history takes place.
Bengal was a stronghold of Buddhism during the Pala Empire. The staunch Brahmin Sen kingdom brought Brahmins from other Indian places and sent them to each village to "save" the masses.
So, in a Bengali village, there are Brahmins as well as other people.
And also local identity. Suppose, there is a village called "Mohanpur" or "Krishnagunj"- nobcaste identity here. But if there's a village called "Mahargaon", you know that it consists of Mahar sub-caste. That gives the identity away.
It is also not true as many claim that most Brahmins do not wear threads. Only modern-minded, reformist kind of people give up thread. I have at least three Brahmin friends who gave up the thread. One of them is a Communist. So you get the picture!
There is also a modern form of casteism due to the affirmative action policy.
An SC person, no matter how rich or privileged, gets lucrative benefits. That draws hatred towards them. For example, to get in a Chemistry major course of a very prestigious college, an Unreserved caste person needed 94 in chemistry. But an SC person needed only 59 (out of hundred). That college is very expensive though. Frustrated mediocres of Unreserved caste hate on the reserved people for this. (The very good ones get in despite the reservation).
In government employment or higher education, an SC person gets five fold advantage-
1. Age relaxation for five or more years. Say, 25 is the ceiling for others, but 30 for SC.
2. Cutoff marks in qualifying test is much lower.
3. Eligibility is marked off at 60% in college/HS for others, but 45% for SC.
4. Number of attempts is uncapped or much higher.
5. Even if you get through reservation, your reservation again applies when promotion is sought.
All this, no matter how rich you are.
This irks people. I had no such issues since I never suffered from reservation personally. But I know people who have. E.g.- a friend could not qualify for medical school despite getting 500+/720 in the entrance, but a much richer SC person got in a very good one at 400+/720. The former would need 650+/720 to get in the same school.
This fuels modern casteism that I see in Bengal.
I absolutely abhor the idea of caste. And just like the person in the article, I am no longer a Hindu. I despise all systems where you are marked off at your birth. Became an athiest at 16, and gave up Hinduism at 19.
Many households do not care about casteism now.
Many are hopeful, that with younger generations, casteism will automatically die out. But I am not so hopeful. I regularly meet young casteists.
You should know that the Hindu Nationalistic BJP/RSS cabal has been trying very hard to get Dalit votes by calling them Hindus and forming a pseudo-unity against Muslims.
Mass converting out of Hinduism to Christianity, Buddhism, and even Islam is common to irk the Brahmin overlords of society.
You should also know that casteism is common in SC people and OBC (Other Backward Classes- a government term to classify people who are higher than Dalits in Hindu hierarchy but "lower" than upper castes). They do not like people marrying outside of their caste.
You should also know that casteism is designed rather than natural.
And these people in the SV are lucky. Their counterparts in North Indian villages suffer a much worse fate.
I will monitor this thread, and ask me questions if you want.
But I believe that more communities will seek to be the "lower castes" because there will be benefits.
And, as more and more people will be in the SCs, the benefits will not mean anything anymore becasue everyone will get equal opportunities.
And I am not talking purely speculatively. There were mass movements of certain communities for them to be in the OBCs. They were Unreserved before. Like the Patels in Gujarata, and Jats in Haryana. So, people actually wanted to go from "General" to "Other Backwards Class" to get benefits in employment and higher ed.
Before state elections, incumbent governments promise to communities that they will be included in the OBCs if they win.
In this way, the benefits do get diluted. When a lot of people get same benefits, they are not much of benefits anymore.
This has happened with OBCs.
If the same happens with SCs, then that will be interesting to watch.
And Dalit is not merely caste anymore. It is also people's identity. I would think that many would be opposed to leaving it behind.
I think the people from upper castes other than Brahmins will be quite eager to call themselves Brahmin. Although, not more than few. The race will be towards the bottom.
The people who actually need the help will suffer.
Making one's cast included in OBC doesn't matter much.
Then Ramayana and Mahabharata aren't scriptures, too.
Smritis are definitely scripture.
And yes, there were dissenters.
And no, not of only some Hindus, the casteism was systematic.
I have reletives in a small town, and my uncle remembers that in every wedding receptions and funerals brahmins ate first and no one else was allowed to eat together with them.
Only after brahmins had finished, people from other castes could begin eating.
This is Bengal, and only 50 years ago and less.
Another thing is that casteism is _not_ limited to Hinduism in India. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Look at the matrimonial sections of Indian newspapers -- there are Christians who explicitly look for a Nadar (a caste from Tamil Nadu which has become prosperous in the past century), a Christian Saraswat Brahmin (a caste from Western India including Goa, where the Portuguese only allowed native Christians of Brahmin origin to be Roman Catholic priests).
Sikhs have castes mirroring Hindu castes, even though their religion is explicitly against the caste system.
Indian Muslims have a different caste system, with people claiming an Arab, Persian and Turkish ancestor (and sometimes people of high-caste Hindu origin), at the top, and people of Dalit origin at the bottom.
SCs have no ceiling of income to qualify for benefits.
I know about casteism in other religions. But the scale is nowhere near to that of Hinduism.
And yes, even for the OBCs, it is very badly implemented.
Only people on salary (government or private) face restriction since they can't fake income. I know plenty business owners and farmer who are well above the ceiling but continue to take benefits.
OBC benefits are not much anyway. Because there are too many people in that class.
I'm not Indian so can't speak to that experience but discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism. If you don't think MIT/Stanford grads in their mid 20s at Big Tech companies have more doors open to them you're crazy.
There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. Like all Africans are somehow viewed the same in many ways despite their being significant cultural, religious and language differences that go back centuries. The same is true in Asia (eg a lot of Chinese in Malaysia face significant discrimination such that they end up going to university overseas because they can't locally).
So a deeply ingrained caste system like India's I can totally believe doesn't magically disappear because those raised in that system now happen to live and work in the United States.
Is there? While my experience comes from living in a cosmopolitan border town, it is hard to imagine anyone seriously lumping Asians in with Africans, short of the outright rascists raging against "immigrants"
it's worth noting that those with more power have greater potential to cause damage with their haphazard lumping
Similarly in south India I wouldn't be surprised if a typical local think all North Indians are same butter chicken/paneer eating assholes.
Of course they have more doors open to them. They went to a good school and worked at a well known company.
--Someone who went to a good non-Stanford school and works for a well-known company
And this is coming from someone that went to a mid-sized state school.
Yes.
And yes it is ridiculous because the jobs don't require anything unique from Stanford from employees, and neither should it matter for potential members of the C-Suite or Board, or clients.
Maybe the goal is to increase the probability that an employee is smarter, harder working, more motivated, or just better connected. Perhaps it is true, perhaps it is not, but for whatever reason, people are willing to pay a premium.
But it has been happening for many decades or longer, so I assume there is some utility being gained that is worth it, even if it is just from nepotism.
This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false) and I’d question the intent of who taught you this - it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate.
Please prove it's false.
Myself, from a more privileged background, was not even aware of the issues “on the ground” until I saw and lived it for myself. It’s very easy to see where personal bias can cause one to overlook or fail to notice the experience of others.
Is your objection to privileged background failing to notice privilege, or objection to the notion of privilege itself?
This kind of language ("cult" and "indoctrinate") is a conversation-stopper and does nothing to help anyone. If it's so easy to prove the idea is false, could you do that instead of using baseless invectives?
Same can be said for current usage of "privilege" and "equity".
If all answers are supposedly proof of your claim, that's just another way to silence dissent by invalidating opposing claims and viewpoints.
Ironically, some of the responses saying it's true that privilege invisible to those who have it are demonstrating otherwise. For instance, this [1] response who wrote that they weren't aware of their privilege "until I saw and lived it for myself". If privilege were invisible to those that have it, they wouldn't have been able to see it.
Actually ask around, and the overwhelming majority of people are cognizant that coming from a stable family is a privilege relative to coming from a dysfunctional family. Or coming from a wealthy family is a privilege relative to coming from an impoverished one.
Is unique to the West? Do people in Asia distinguish one European from another? How about in Africa?
That said, I don't think the claim quite holds that westerners view all minorities as the same. East Asians, while maybe initially assumed to be Chinese or Japanese, have generally unique stereotypes in the US. I also recall a story reported in This American Life[1] that describes a black American woman in Paris, and how her treatment depends on whether she's seen as an African or an American. I think it's perhaps a bit more accurate to say that the broad appearance of a minority group invokes certain stereotypes, but these stereotypes will become more specific with more information about the individual. There's obviously a limit to this, since a Chinese person from Shanghai and a Chinese person from some small city in Henan is a distinction that probably won't mean much to most non-Chinese, but I think people would realize there _is_ a difference, just not know where that difference manifests itself, and obviously cannot change their mental models without that knowledge.
[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris/act-...
I think it's because the news and the politicians view them in categories of demographic, then report on that demographic. I've lived in the South and always think it's funny when people say they should "punish the South," by withholding funds for whatever reason, apparently not realizing the South has the largest Black population in the US by far. Of course if funds are ever withheld, that large black population would also be punished, because they are also southerners. This is pertinent because southerners and blacks are pretty large minority demographics in the US that politicians try to garner favor with.
Societies are complex. It seems like a lot of people want to blurt out the first simple answer that comes out of their noggin.
This is why remote work is so important, the politics of the office and "culture" is more about delivery with remote over internal politics. Remote work emphasizes the external view over the internal view which is always skewed in office environments. Remote work opens up a broader market of workers and can flow with life changes of employees easier like a move, families or travel.
We all do lots of remote already to everyone outside the office. Most communication is virtual now even within the same company, across offices in different areas and most importantly, to the customer of the product. The external view is most important, always. Remote can help automatically focus on external perception over internal perception. Remote work can minimize the weight of office politics and "culture".
Another legacy area we need to change is removing health insurance from the job. We don't get our home/auto/life insurance through work and it would be a pain if we did, imagine changing all that on jobs. Contracting or entrepreneurship helps to get your own benefits for healthcare and it is truly a better way. Health insurance removed from the job will help businesses compete with countries that do have public options or private markets not connected to the employer, allow workers more freedom to change jobs, allow people to start jobs easier and isn't constantly a hassle. Getting healthcare on your own or not requiring it to be business level is both pro-business and pro-worker. It also can fix pricing as the customer is now individuals/families not employers, all we need to do is group similar to Medicare groups. Right now grouping is based on the company and this puts sole/small/medium companies at a disadvantage in pricing.
There are obvious upsides of remote work, sure, but my hypothesis is that generalizations are going to be stickier.
I've always said, when you see some kind of "obvious" discrimination going on in an organization -- sex, age, race, caste, whatever -- I almost guarantee that's manifesting in some other ways as well.
By that logic, bigfoot, UFO's and the Loch Ness monster all exist.
Now, the resentments on this affirmative action (Ambedkar, who is highlighted in the passage, originally wrote that the AA will be for a period of 5 years, but has since been used as a vote bank tool) are plenty and some, IMV, are justified.
One is that the current and previous generations, have seen very limited caste discriminations. Sure, events happen in a country as big and varied as India, but generally, caste based discriminations have been subdued, and mostly pushed back to silent and invisible forms (social interactions, marriages, friendships, etc). The current and previous generation kids, have hardly seen any caste based discrimination due to various reasons. It also helps that a section of political leaders are from the backward and other castes.
What this brings about is the feeling of unfair punishment. A kid who is in high school now, who has friends from all walks of life, of many castes and religions (In my schooling, with high school ending in 2003, I never once bothered about caste and religion, as it was never a point of discussion) will write an exam for bagging a seat in a good college or university. Then he will discover, that the same friend who has been with him for all these years, has a similar lifestyle as him, goes everywhere he goes, does everything he does, is eligible for a seat with a lower cut-off score, buoyed by additional mandatory allotment of seats.
From the perspective of the kid, he works hard and sincerely, only to be snubbed because his forefathers have insulted some castes in their days.
What would you tell him?
Two, the benefits of AA have not percolated throughout the society. Those who have benefitted from the initial steps, have risen to wealth and power, and continue to get the benefits, while those who really need help, often do not get it.
Also, after 200 years of British occupation, India was left penniless. Couple that with decades of socialist policies, wealth generation was low and slow. This results in a huge section of population being poor. And this includes all castes and creeds.
I often see negative and insulting remarks on Brahmins (considered the "highest" caste), and often they are blamed for all evils of caste discrimination (whereas, discrimination has been in the society from all sections and even within castes). However, presently, a majority of brahmins are poor or middle class.
In this scenario, the only escape those who do not belong to the AA castes, is to move abroad in search of better opportunities.
All this caste based drama in SV and elsewhere is the result of that feeling of unfair punishment.
Romania has a considerable group of such people. The Gipsy (also know as Romani) are an Indian people that are thought to have been part of a caste and fled India hundreds of years ago. To this day they cant lift themselves up, and frankly the government of Romania is not doing much at all. To call it an injustice it would he an understatement.
Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma. Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani migration's early history are based on linguistic theory. There is also no known record of a migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.
Here’s an article from DDG search:
https://indiantribalheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/Lambanis...
There is a strong evidence that they might have been driven away by the Islamic invasions, because their timelines coincide.
I'm an upper caste indian and here's my experience looking for an apartment to rent in Chennai, India, in around the year 2000. I was repeatedly asked by potential-landlords if I was a brahmin (I'm not), and told they couldn't rent to me if I wasn't. It was my first trip to Chennai (I'm from the north), and I am pretty sure it's illegal to openly ask a potential tenant if they're a brahmin. But there was simply nothing I could do about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._R._Ambedkar
Jurist economist academic politician social reformer anthropologist writer
One of the nastier pieces of "information " about Ambedkar that an upper caste kid shared with me as a child was that Ambedkar was actually the bastard child of a Brahmin with a lower caste woman. This explains why he was so smart as all lower castes have very low IQ.
Sorry if it is an unsatisfying critique of America but its obvious. Go look at the wealth data, look who is thriving and has net worth or success in business.
Carry down that line of thought and you might fall into all sorts of nonsense. Note things like Pope Gregory (n?) saw a pair of slaves in a market in Rome in the n00s. These two were picked up from somewhere that would eventually become part of England/GB. He was told they were Angles. The story goes he quipped that they were "surely Angels" due to their physique and long blonde hair. Part of England is known as Anglia still and of course England itself is "Angleland".
It seems a bit odd that, that anecdote and play on words survives a good 1500 years during which time English has gone through three major stages (old/middle/modern). However you can easily posit from that story that Britons were also enslaved, if you very carefully define "Briton"!
Anyway, my point is that you can't really use terms like american slavery. History can't be stuffed into boxes like that with pejorative terms scattered like confetti.
The caste system being discussed here is nominally an indian sub continent thing and way older in origin than the slavery employed around C17th onwards with the horrendous triangle of trade.