With a background in the highest-ranking caste, you would of course be the least able to notice those things.
The typical American response that I already see elsewhere in this thread is "lol this is like a white dude saying racism doesn't exist". This totally ignores the basic fact that it is not that easy to tell someone's caste, which makes it a totally different class of problem. It's kind of possible based on a combination of factors [3], but there are so many exceptions that basically unless you ask someone, you can never be sure. And therein lies the problem – the very existence of these sorts of conversations about "how you tell what caste X is?" is often the backbone of caste-based discrimination. I feel shitty even talking about how you'd tell someone's caste.
And ultimately, I think that's why these kinds of measures will backfire. You are going to have a lot more Indian-Americans being curious about what caste they are when the problem could have faded into the background, with existing anti-discrimination statutes being applied to cases like the ones cited in the article.
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[1] A typical subtle version is mentioning a person's caste in a conversation where's it's totally irrelevant; a US equivalent would be something like "Jim, the new software engineer started today. He's Latino."
[2] A reasonable question here would be: "What changed? Why would Indian immigrants not discriminate after they come to America?" My answer is best guess is most Indians who come to the US are already likely predisposed to liberal and educated to a fairly high level. Unlike the US (where even Civil War history is still a touchy subject), specific lessons about the history of caste discrimination, statutes against it, and attempts at reparations are baked into all levels of the Indian education curriculum. Along with that, exposure to the staggeringly high diversity of America tends to dull any remaining biases that might exist. Like everything, I am sure there are exceptions. And I'm guessing that they are certainly more likely in Councilwoman Sawant's age group (she's almost 50).
[3] There should be a Falsehoods American Media Perpetuates About Caste article. If I wrote it, the top two would be: a) It's always possible to tell a person's caste based on their last name, and b) It's always possible to tell a person's caste by whether or not they eat meat.
You should try that sometimes
> I am Indian-American (born into a brahmin family if that matters) and personally haven't noticed casteism, barring the occasional idiot in our communities.
Translation: I don't see a problem.
> Having said that, we (Indian-Americans) should be open to criticism and scrutiny.
Translation: even though I'm open to criticism, I don't see a problem.
> We are a very successful lot - arguably the richest immigrant group in America - surely we can be secure enough to confront some of these bad things. We need to stop being defensive and touchy about such charges.
Translation: blah, blah, blah . . . me, me, me. Nothing about the problem.
It's entirely fair to point out that different castes would see and experience casteism very differently...but sheesh, it's tiresome to see a bunch of (probably white) keyboard warriors show up and argue with in Indian American about what it's like to be Indian in America.
In any case, there are some deeply problematic aspects to Indian culture, including that of my own community, and criticism of them is warranted, no matter the demographics of the critic.
But they have shown an openness to learning. Instead of responding, like some commenters have, by getting mad at their potentially ignorant sentence, it’s a far better approach to, like some other commenters have, educate them about the fact that the very nature of privilege means that as part of the privileged class you get to live life being oblivious about the class distinctions.
That is indeed the privilege of the privileged. And the burden of the unprivileged is that they do not have the luxury to live their lives while being oblivious to their lack of privilege.
I'm a White person from Utah. Saying that I don't see Racism is missing the point. Of course I don't see Racism, it's well hidden from me as a part of my culture. And above and beyond that the Racism I do see is actually the hiding of clear discrimination such that it is invisible to me.
The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.
Unfortunately, criticism/scrutiny on the internet is not always nicely couched. So people will be direct like this commenter was.
Everyone is receiving racism but it's the truly privileged that can do so and claim they aren't guilty of it themselves.
Caste exists. It didn’t need to, but people invented it. Pretending it isn’t real and doesn’t affect people’s lives is not how to fix this.
You're not describing reality since there is no such thing as a "lower-caste person". Stop thinking, talking, and acting as if there is.
You can't legislate your way out of it, you just stop doing it, including the language.
Instead of a law to stop "lower" and "upper" caste from discriminating against each other (like that comment was saying), the entire concept of caste needs to be purged.
That won't happen if you continue to use those very terms and then say it's (describing) reality. The sooner people stop dealing with it, the sooner it stops being a (real) thing.
Like, who is “we”? In any situation where one group has structural advantages over another, there are going to be people who are very much not on board with merging the groups. If your plan to equalize everyone is just “pretend the groups don’t exist”, it will fail, because you’re simply ignoring a status quo that others are actively working to preserve.
So basically you had a group of invaders who came to India, proclaimed themselves both racially and morally superior, and enforced a rigid system of miscegeneation laws to prevent themselves from being diluted. Makes the wildest dreams of white supremacists tame in comparison.
Of course, none of that justifies the discrimination. I don't know how to fix it either, India tried but hasn't succeeded. B. R. Ambedkar, the author of India's Constitution came to the conclusion that Hinduism is unreformable and that former untouchables like himself should convert to Buddhism, but that hasn't happened on a large scale. Subhas Chandra Bose proposed to abolish the caste system through socialism and inter-caste marriages, but he was an authoritarian bordering on Fascist.
Your idea of abolishing the concept of caste system is noble, but it has been tried and failed in India. Just as you could say making people color-blind would solve racism (setting aside the problem of reparations for past injustice), but how do you make it happen? It's a social problem, and there are seldom simple solutions. Banning the language won't make it disappear, just as (effectively) banning the N-word hasn't made racism go away.
But there are, like, trillions of different genetic differences between all of us, and you could draw totally different lines around people and find a genetic basis if you really wanted. The genetic basis is used to justify the arbitrary groups; the groups are not an emergent phenomenon of the genetics.
But if you want to refer to things in a really widespread system by their name, then you show respect to the people practicing the system and may have more success in saying — keep believing what you are believing, but in this context you cannot enforce it. You may have an easier time getting it adopted then.
In the case of the caste system, my initial reaction was like the sibling comment but then I realized that I personally (and many Indians today) no longer believe it has anything to do with reality and is in fact just a self perpetuating mass delusion. So the question is, do we therefore have a right to gaslight and disrespect the beliefs of those who do believe it if they come to live in our country. My guess is yes.
Unfortunately, U.S. discrimination laws have a long history of replacing perceived, hard to demonstrate/prove discrimination with actual explicit discrimination in the other direction... so although you may be morally correct, you're likely to be legally incorrect.
so wheras in the North, you'd have Narayan Sharma's son being named Vishal Sharma, in Tamil Nadu Sriram Narayan's son would be Vishal Sriram.
So yes, the system does exist
Due Disclosure: South Indian, not a Brahmin, but I have many friends whose names follow this system.
Caste does not say your ancestors did that job, caste meant a person from a particular caste could only do that job and could not take up other jobs, people from other castes could not take their jobs and were disqualified because you were not born in a particular list of families. Some castes were prohibited from getting an education and were killed for this.
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/what-s-in-a-name-ofte...
If someone doesn't want to share their caste, that's very easy to do.
Hence... discrimination amongst indians is usually around where in india you're from, what language do you speak (tamil, hindi, marathi, etc.), what tier college you went to (IIT?), obviously gender, and other factors.
Comparing Caste to race is completely wrong and it's a red herring.
Having every indian fill out what caste they are on their job application doesn't solve the problem.
I think it’s a human trait in general. People often don’t handle when a piece of their culture is by and large rejected as backwards and wrong. Often a lot of doubling down happens and you end up with some really nasty fringe groups. Often people evolve and adapt and it’s a success story.
Same (I'm also indian but I'm vaishya). But I have a bunch of white dudes telling me that it happens all the time!
I've seen much more discrimination on other factors - mainly around what state you're from (since someone from chennai obviously has a completely different culture than someone from delhi)
In parts of the US, Catholics or Jews were not allowed to hold office well into the 1870s, so your example is not as hypothetical as you seem to think.
Before you accuse me of making up a contrived example, that was exactly why the New York Times downplayed the Holocaust during WWII despite by that time uncontrovertible evidence, because they did not want to be perceived as a Jewish news outlet engaging in special pleading:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-new-york-times-downplaye...
There is a nuance here. Sunni-shia is a sect rather than a religion.
There is a difference between:
1. A Muslim manager rejecting a Muslim candidate (without knowing or paying attention to their sect)
2. A Sunni manager rejecting Shia candidates while hiring Sunni candidates
1 is covered by current law while 2 is not (this is why Seattle passed this ban but for castes)
Your example won't apply here as the candidate won't be rejected due to being Muslim but rather being Sunni or Shia. If there were sects in play in the Judaism case, then that is an accurate parallel.
This is similar to caste discrimination that applies within religions (caste is complex as multiple religions have them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_among_South_Asian...).
This is out of topic: Also, shouldn't laws go beyond just discrimination? Shouldn't we legislate towards prevent violence given the past and present of Sunni-shia violence? Discrimination in jobs seem tame compared to outright violence.
However what I do mind is when this criticism is mixed with religion and culture bashing (in this case Hinduism) by ill-informed people who read hot takes on the news.
Case in hand, the Seattle ordinance. The councilwoman proposing the ordinance went to great lengths to assure people that it doesn’t target a single religion and yet here’s a BBC article[0] that manages to convey an extraordinary amount of misinformation in one line on the third paragraph. This is exactly what people were concerned about and exactly what is playing out.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64727735
Edit: Text from the article “ The caste system in India dates back over 3,000 years and divides Hindu society into rigid hierarchical groups.” There are many flaws with this statement but Hacker News is probably not the best place for history lessons.
Do you think a potential change would be to stop using that phrase?
That's the Indian equivalent of "I was born into a white family and I personally haven't noticed racism, barring the occasional idiot..."
I'm not saying discrimination doesn't happen. But from what I've seen, it's rarely about caste and usually about other factors (read my other comments in this thread for context)
/s
"Brahman, also spelled Brahmin, Sanskrit Brāhmaṇa (“Possessor of Brahma”), highest ranking of the four varnas, or social classes, in Hindu India. "
... did you think a quick google would confirm what you're saying? I'm confused.
What you're doing is kind of like a white American lecturing an Indian about how, in spite of what they may know already, racism in the US is overblown.
I never said nor implied discrimination doesn't happen. I'm saying it's far more complicated than just what caste you're in... and you're chasing the wrong thing if you just go after caste.
Him: "I am Indian-American (born into a brahmin family if that matters) and personally haven't noticed casteism"
You: "Same"
Sure sounds like you're heavily downplaying it to me.
2) It's not obvious what caste you're from. What is obvious is where in india you're from, what college you're from (indians care a TON about college rank), what cultural upbring you had. It's far more likely to get discriminated on that.
Again, you're taking your knowledge of American politics and applying that to India.
India has a far richer history (thousands of years vs. 250 years) and far more areas to discriminate over.
You are 1) completely clueless and 2) incredibly arrogant about issues you know nothing about. So yeah, not really interested in talking to you further.
I never said you were. I certainly wouldn't have imagined you were dalit with your attitude, but I wouldn't have put a bet on Brahmin either.
>It's not obvious what caste you're from. What is obvious is where in india you're from, what college you're from (indians care a TON about college rank),
I thought you were trying to emphasize just how NOT like the US Indian culture is? Going to Harvard is, y'know, kind of a big deal in the US too, even if the officer who just pulled you over can't tell at a glance.
>what cultural upbring you had. It's far more likely to get discriminated on that.
I mean, I'm no expert on India but I'd bet pretty good money that a lot of this parallels "acting white" in the US - which is often used as cover for the underlying prejudice.
And that fury you are exhibiting about "how I wouldn't know because I'm not one of them"... yeah, white Southern Americans have been like that to me too (I'm not American).
Prejudice and social hierarchy reinforcement is more of a human trait than a cultural one, and similar patterns are exhibited in different cultures.