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Comment by dghlsakjg | Hacker News Reader

All this needs is a single court ruling that caste is synonymous with race to make this illegal (in employment, housing, etc). I personally don't think there's a distinction. Both are social constructs used to arbitrarily lump people into categories. The people in this article claiming that caste discrimination doesn't exist are telling on themselves. If it doesn't exist, then there should be no objection to outlawing it.

AFAICT the caste system is just a subcategory of racism.

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Your race could be a factor in a medical diagnosis. Whereas your caste is completely irrelevant

> According to geneticist David Reich, "while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today's racial constructs are real."

Every single question regarding race that I have come across lumps over half the world’s population into one race, “Asian”.

True that around 60% of the world population lives in Asia. I’d say “Asian” is more a geographic classification rather than race. Asia is huge and contains multiple races within.

Even smaller continents like North America or even Australia/Oceania has multiple races within them

So as the word “race” is applied in the US, race is not very correlated with genetic ancestry.

How so? Sorry I’m not as aware of race or racism as much I am of caste and casteism.

In the US, based on someone’s answer to a question on which race they belong to, you would not have very good odds on determining their genetic ancestry.

You are confusing race with ethnicity. Race is a made up thing, a construct with no basis in reality

>AFAICT the caste system is just a subcategory of racism.

It is all subcategories of tribalism, except the boundaries are blurred between skin tone, ancestry, traditions, diet, occupation, wealth, etc.

The major distinction is that, in theory, some of those tribes are by choice, and some are unable to be changed. In the US, discrimination against unchangeable characteristics is illegal in many cases (skin color, gender, etc...)

I can choose to join the vegetarian tribe, and I can choose to leave it.

I cannot choose the color of my skin or my race.

> If it doesn't exist, then there should be no objection to outlawing it.

I don't think that is a valid argument. Laws are a hazzle to deal with etc.

It is also a sort of "have you stopped beating your wife?", "nothing to hide" etc.

I am buying caste discrimination is a big problem in the US though.

The more apt comparison would seem to be a law banning something else described as imaginary.

Would anyone object as strongly to a Unicorn ban as they would to a ban on caste based discrimination? We might think that the law is a waste in many ways, but no one could seriously object to the content of a Unicorn ban since it would have no real effect. The same would be true of explicitly making caste a protected class/race.

It's literally classism, not racism. Just as objectionable but, sadly, "class" is not a protected category and so discrimination based on it is legal in the US unless a new law is passed to address it.

No it's not. You can change your class you can't change your caste - your caste is literally determined exclusively by birth. It's a form of race and has nothing to do with social standing.

What’s funny is that you can change your religion. But you still can’t change your caste!

It’s even more interesting how norms and customs predate even caste. For instance, missionaries came to India and offered a better status within Christianity to Hindus from lower caste. This led to some caste based discrimination against Indian Christians. Now, Pakistan as a country doesn’t really have caste system being a Muslim country. But there are restaurants in Pakistan where Christians are still not allowed to eat in the same plate regular customers eat!

Source: A White Trail: A Journey Into the Heart of Pakistan's Religious Minorities Book by Haroon Khalid

Isn't it the case that social class is not just about how much money you have, it's about where you went to school, your social etiquette, way of speaking, mannerisms, the clothing you wear, etc?

Isn't social class specifically evolved to not simply be traversed by attaining more money, and that's the whole distinction between "new money" and "old money" and how they say "money can't buy class"?

That being said, I think perhaps the caste system is sort of neither about race nor class but some unique blend of those things and more. It seems to have its own characteristics and I'm not sure we can dumb it down.

Those mechanisms only exist because class is malleable. You don't need to worry about old or new money of etiquette or mannerisms or anything with caste because it's immutable, period. You can't get out it even by changing your religion. No amount of generations matter, where you went to school doesn't matter. No other mechanisms or such complications are needed because you can never change it, end of story. It's a form of race.

The one first-gen in the US Indian couple I know, the man is light skinned and the woman is darker skinned. So the man has been disowned by his family over this Caste thing. I don't know that the underlying nature is racist, but it kinda looks that way to me.

It’s weird. India has a problem of casteism, colourism and classism.

What you’re describing is probably a mix of casteism + colourism.

There is no strict correlation between skin colour and caste. The current Prime Minister Narendra Modi is fair skinned and from a lower caste while a cricketer like Hardik Pandya who is darker skinned is from an upper caste.

The Indian word for caste, "varna" literally means color.

It does not seem “color” is referencing skin tone here.

>The word appears in the Rigveda, where it means "colour, outward appearance, exterior, form, figure or shape".[4] The word means "color, tint, dye or pigment" in the Mahabharata.[4] Varna contextually means "colour, race, tribe, species, kind, sort, nature, character, quality, property" of an object or people in some Vedic and medieval texts.[4] Varna refers to four social classes in the Manusmriti.[4][5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)

>The terms varna (theoretical classification based on occupation) and jāti (caste) are two distinct concepts. Jāti (community) refers to the thousands of endogamous groups prevalent across the subcontinent. A jati may be divided into exogamous groups based on the same gotras. The classical authors scarcely speak of anything other than the varnas; even Indologists sometimes confuse the two.[63]

Once you're in America the etymology is irrelevant. If it can tangentially relate in any way to race then it must be about race and viewed through a racial lens at all times.

Agreed. Honestly I think these bills are purely symbolic since casteism is racism is discrimination against a protected class. So if they don't matter and are purely symbolic, what's wrong with passing the bill?

The only argument against these bills that id be sympathetic to (that I don't really see that many people making) is that specifically focusing on caste might create a legal precedent that casteism and similar forms of discrimination aren't covered under existing statutes and lay the groundwork for other systems of discrimination to be shielded from anti-discrimination laws. But I don't see how just reaffirming that caste is a protected class is objectionable beyond, well, beyond the obvious reasons.

I certainly don't appreciate a bunch of casteist whackos with too much political power pretending to represent me as a part of the "Indian American community" to Gavin Newsom. Y'all can fuck right off with that bullshit.

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