The same goes for race outside of Anglo-American culture. I'm (half-)Asian and think the whole debate is stupid. I don't fit into your racial categories, my skin color is in-between what you seem to think is the "right" color and the "wrong" color, the rest of the physical features you use to tell race apart have just as little variation as between "white" ethnic groups, and everybody interbred anyway.

Interestingly I had the same experience going on a vacation to the Balkans. To an outsider, Croat/Serb/Bosnian are all basically the same - your languages are mutually intelligible, your food is all tasty meat cuts and flatbread, you look more or less the same. But apparently within this region, this is a life-or-death distinction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...

It matters at companies with high levels of south asian representation, for example Apple, Cisco, Google, etc. When people complain of caste discrimination they aren't talking about it coming from white folks like you.

As someone also not from South Asia, I share your perspective. But the problem being solved is not discrimination of Indians by white people. The problem being solved is discrimination of Indians amongst themselves using caste. Your perspective (and mine) are irrelevant.

I believe you and everyone else here saying that they don't/can't discriminate based on caste, but the fact is that due to how social structures are set up it is very likely that close to 100% of Indians you have ever interacted with at your work are, in fact, from a higher caste. There is still a lot of bias especially concerning upward mobility, and so these are still pressing issues to address.

Whoa, a white person that doesn’t see caste? Well knock me down with a feather!

I’m not sure that this is as insightful of a post as you envisioned.

It is not bullshit, the discrimination came from other Indian manager who has higher caste than Dalits.

https://www.bloomberg.com/letters/2021-03-18/caste-based-dis...

> If someone unfamiliar with your culture cannot see distinctions between castes - maybe its all bullshit?

It may be.

But there are enough examples in history to understand that this may not be a trivial matter, either. Could you tell if someone is Jewish or not? Could you tell utus and tutsis apart?

Your experience is yours, I'm not arguing that.

But I've worked with ~100 Indian co-workers and several were very vocal about their caste because they were from the "higher" caste; well-educated, children of politicians and scientists and vegetarian.

That's not a particularly interesting perspective or at least, not one you should assume hasn't occurred to people affected or not affected by this issue.

> if you think caste matters

I think it matters if it's causing discrimination at my workplace.