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Out of curiosity, for Indians working in America, how hard is it to hide your caste or pretend to be of another caste altogether? Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians? Do names tend to correlate to you caste? And if so, do people change them as a way of hiding their family caste?
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I work predominately with Indian coworkers. You are exactly correct in my view. Racism has technically been banned in the United States wholesale since the Civil Rights act, yet we struggle with the effects still today. This is a step in a right direction, but it should be seen as only as the beginning.
Casteism, while bad, is not racism. Saying casteism is ingrained in Indians on the other hand is racism.
This is always fascinating to me. I would call it "culturalism", though I'll agree it does depend hugely on how the author meant it, and thus is open to interpretations. (I live in Canada now, and though I consider myself 99% "a Canadian" culturally, and very intentionally so, I'm still amused seeing people get Up in the arms when somebody makes a generalist comment about culture or societal norms of my country of birth, while I chuckle and say Yup. That is indeed the general culture and societal norm of that region.:)
I cannot change my race, or ethnicity, or country of birth (and "Indian" may refer to these immutable qualities) . But I can change my values and moral framework, my culture (and I have; consciously and determinedly so), and sometimes "Indian" or "Bosnian" or whatever is meant to refer to culture and dominant societal framework of that country. I don't believe I don't have right to judge other people's value framework, i.e. their culture. It is within each of our purview and ability and mandate to consider and evaluate and choose and as needed change our own value frameworks. If somebody's cultural values and habits say "it's ok to throw acid in girls eyes", or "people in this randomly selected immutable group are bad" I will judge that value framework or moral axiom or culture/society negatively and strive to change it and convince them otherwise.
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However when you get into the situation of Indians managing other Indians then all the old country stuff comes into play really quickly, and most companies are completely blind to it.
looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him It’s all lip service. Nepotism is rampant at FAANG
At a large semiconductor company, the same could be said for many groups: Chinese hiring other Chinese, one group hiring native Americans mostly, others with Hispanic origin…
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"Conservative" doesn't mean "racist." There are racists of all political and social backgrounds. Some of the most racist people I've met have been very "liberal."
> lawsuit about alleged casteism Why is it just not called racism? Introducing new terms kind of derails the problem. India (and Africa, China, Asia...) has a system where people with lighter skin are consider as "better". People with fair (whiter) skin are considered aristocracy, that never had to work outside on fields. And castes could not intermarry for couple of thousands of years, it is legitimate to consider t…
Casteism is the correct term for this. This isn't a different race of people, it's the same race of people in a different class. I agree with you that there are many similarities between Casteism and Racism, but I think it's good to separate it out.
From what I've learned on the topic, with Racism someone sees the color of your skin and can make assumptions from there. With casteism thought it's more about your family name, as someone from the lowest caste can look like someone from an upper caste.
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> Where is their concern for other violence that is more prevalent? Isn't this just straightforward whataboutism? If every person that is advocating against a problem in society has to advocate against every problem in society they will never get anything accomplished because there is always another injustice.
Out of curiosity, for Indians working in America, how hard is it to hide your caste or pretend to be of another caste altogether? Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians? Do names tend to correlate to you caste? And if so, do people change them as a way of hiding their family caste?
> Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians?
It starts casually with "where are you from?" and the questions get more invasive.
> Do names tend to correlate to you caste?
In India, yes it does family name is derived from caste. I had some friends adopt English names to get from under their caste names. So quite a few Johnsons, Smiths, Matthews, Pauls out there.
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> Casteism, while bad, is not racism Open to this argument. But every definition of race I’ve seen constructed to exclude caste seems contrived. The system has imprinted itself as far down as hair shaft diameter [1]. > Saying casteism is ingrained in Indians on the other hand is racism Sympathetic to this. It’s like saying all white people are racist. It’s ingrained in the Indian culture, and I think anyone coming fr…
There are some correlations between phenotypes and caste (and there is a lot of genetic stratification when you look at ancestry), but caste really cuts across race - there are lower caste groups in North India that look more "white" than upper caste groups in South India.
Definitions of race don’t require a skin-color gradient. Plenty of Asians are lighter skinned than white Mediterraneans.