Hacker News Reader

Comment by cleandreams | Hacker News Reader

I had a student in my class who wrote about being from a "low caste" background. So when a friend hosted a woman from India on her podcast who said there was so caste discrimination in India I spoke up about this. The podcast guest said that the fact that anyone in the west mentioned caste discrimination, even within western tech companies, was an act of racism against Indian culture and reflected colonial judgements. My friend, who is very, very woke, agreed. I was so annoyed. Thank you for bringing this up. Such discrimination has no place!

View on HN

I would've been in the same camp of denying it and treating it as just a thing westerners exaggerate and to an extent that is the case. But at the same time caste discrimination is still very much a thing.

The way I've seen people in the west envision it is that everyone is keenly aware of their caste, where they are in society and what they're "allowed" to do. But it isn't that blatant to me, so I felt impressions of caste discrimination were overblown. I was raised to be caste-blind (literally wasn't taught the differences to be able to even subconsciously be biased) so I projected that upon everyone.

However as I've interacted with other Indians, I have noticed that our conversations tend to be very different. I don't really care about where they're from, barely care about their name beyond how to refer to them etc, mostly interested in what they do professionally and what they're interested in while their questions tend to focus on where I'm from and what my family history is.

My understanding is that my caste is fairly mundane so I haven't really noticed any discrimination towards myself, but I think I've atleast noticed that many people have a lot of interest in identifying the caste at least, which can obviously lead to discrimination pretty easily.

That's silly. Obviously all cultures have their own issues, and I'd say it's actually rather patronizing to pretend that non-Western cultures don't have their own dynamics of bias and discrimination.

Having said that, as a cultural Westerner, I'd be very loathe to speak much on the topic of the Indian caste system, as while it's clearly a real thing, and I believe those Indians in America who say it is, I'm certain I lack enough context and background to talk about it without it ending up being an exercise in projecting my own culture's dynamics onto theirs. It's the kind of conversation I think I probably need to do far more listening that talking in.

> > I had a student in my class who wrote about being from a "low caste" background.

> as a cultural Westerner, I'd be very loathe to speak much on the topic of the Indian caste system, as [...] I'm certain I lack enough context and background to talk about it without it ending up being an exercise in projecting my own culture's dynamics onto theirs. It's the kind of conversation I think I probably need to do far more listening that talking in.

Depending on the length and depth of that student's essay, the person you're responding to may have done enough listening to at least raise the topic and hear an honest opinion rather than being shut down as colonialist prejudist for merely asking the question

At least, that's how it's written. Maybe they said a lot more, it's not like I was there, but I'm just going by the version that we can read here

That person should be banned from ever invoking "intersectionality" again. They've failed one of its most basic tests.

ha this matches my observation

I think at this point we could just double down and say “I’m fighting colonialism, on the side of the colonizers”

Just throw the meme back, and still stamp out caste discrimination

“hey some cultural genocide is worth it” first, the reaction would be funny af, especially if all the “OBC’s” get the joke

To be woke is to be against colorblind treatment and to be for discrimination

Really? How so?

I think originally woke was shorthand for anti-racist (I don’t mind being corrected on this since I am not American). Unfortunately the term did not reach the UK in good enough time to be properly encoded in our Oxford English Dictionary and as a result the usage has gone rampant become diffuse! The meaning now seems to be converging on "I don’t agree with .".

Generally western laws would view caste-based discrimination as illegal and wrong. So, it would correct for an individual to express the same opinion in the West, even if that opinion disturbs the ideas and beliefs of a subset of the population attached to someone else’s culture.

You're right on target there. The term is basically meaningless now, after the reactionary right in the US started using "woke" as a scare word for "anything anyone vaguely liberal does that we can pretend is an extremist conspiracy", after attempts to use "cultural Marxism" fell flat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com