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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

Just because people from outside the caste system cannot spot it, and it is much jarder to spot than say discrmination against people of color or women, doesn't mean caste based discrimination isn't every single bit as racist as all other forms of racism.

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It is form of discrimination. But it’s not racism.

Just like sexism is not racism.

Race is an ambiguous delineation of a tribe someone might belong to.

Sex, age, etc are more defined delineations.

Who is to say the 1.3B population of Indians does not have multiple races? They might all be the same tribe in the eyes of a person with ancestors from Europe, born and raised in the US. But for someone in India, they very well could view the other 1.29B Indians as being in tribes as different as “white” and “black” tribes in the US.

Note that racism is not skin color-ism, since a very light skinned descendent of a darker skinner person is also, commonly, referred to as being “black”, especially if they have obvious physical traits that display they have “black” ancestors.

Race in the US (and other parts of the developed world) is about the socioeconomic tribe that the one belongs to, or that one’s network (including ancestors) belong to. That seems very similar to castes in India.

Race in the US is not a “socioeconomic tribe”. You said it yourself, it’s based on physical features. That’s not what a caste is.

Indian populations also have similar differences in physical traits that they use to discriminate, but they also correlate with socioeconomic status. Including lighter and darker skin.

I guess that depends on your definition of racism. Can people from the UK be racist to the Polish? If yes, fine. But technically it’s different from racism and more nationally based bigotry.

The was a race in Europe that faut a genocidal war against East Europeans, based on perceived race.

Playing semantics during discussions on discrmination always has some undertones of trying to justify said discrimination, because of course it is something different...

Semantics may not be the most helpful during a discussion of this but neither is application of modes/solutions learnt from other forms of bigotry. The best way to kill the caste system is to forget about it which is in the process of happening. It’s not further entrenching yourself in that identity that may be necessary in more superficial forms of bigotry.

Does your proposed solution also include forgetting the benefits members of higher castes have historically received?

Because that sounds a lot like telling someone to pull themselves up from their bootstraps after stealing their boots.

There’s already a 30-50% quota in most public institutions that is very successful at giving lower castes an advantage. No bootstraps required.

Will those affirmative actions extend how long the caste system stays around? Probably but they’re meant to be in place for a couple of generations (40-80 years) which should be an acceptable amount of time to level the field.

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