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> What's shocking is that this caste system is being continued in the US. There are no overseas communities of majority Indian subcontinental origin that maint
by barry-cotter 6y ago
> What's shocking is that this caste system is being continued in the US.
There are no overseas communities of majority Indian subcontinental origin that maintain rigid caste distinctions. Not even Mauritius which is majority ethnic Indian or Fiji or Guyana where they’re about half the population. Caste will not be maintained in America for the same reason no ethnic group maintains itself without religious endogamy or continuing immigration; People socialize and mate with those they spend time with unless there are powerful reasons not to. All will be assimilated in time.
- C1sc0cat 6y agoYour being naive Caste discrimination does exit in communities overseas in the UK for example.
- barry-cotter 6y agoI believe you. It just doesn’t matter. Once immigration stops these people will all dissolve into the general population like the Huegenots, Flemings or other old ethnic groups. When mass immigration from the subcontinent stops caste based discrimination will go from a lot less than in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh to non-existent in short order.
- C1sc0cat 6y agoThat's going to be a long time. Look at northern inland there are places in Ireland and parts of Scotland and even the USA where I would have to be careful as I am a product of a mixed marriage and I also was a a "crown servant for 15 years" and have a southern ie catholic last Name.
- barry-cotter 6y agoParts of the UK that have so much immigration from India that the local population are majority desi are few and far between. There’s nothing like historical Irish immigration to Britain. Scottish Catholics before 1970 or so were all descendants of the Irish and that’s what ~40% of the Scots? There were so many Irish in Liverpool they elected Irish Parliamentary Party MPs before the Irish Civil War. And still assimilation proceeds rapidly. Wayne Rooney Player for England, not Ireland. Out marriage is the death of ethnic identity. Look at the US. There are actually people identify as White, or as Asian American. How far does a Chinese, Vietnamese or Japanese person have to be divorced from their culture to think the most important thing about their ethnic identity is their skin color? Similar dynamic earlier in US history when the ethnic marriage markets collapsed into religion bounded marriage markets, when Herberger wrote Catholic Protestant Jew. Once people are willing to marry out assimilation is a matter of time absent continued immigration. Irish immigration to the US dropped off a cliff in the 1990s. One day South Boston will be known for some other group, not the Irish, just like Little Italy turns into Chinatown.
- fmajid 6y agoI've seen it explicitly at work in the US, e.g. in choosing which partners to marry. Ironically, it is breaking down in India because of female infanticide creating a skewed gender distribution (around 1.14:1, when the natural distribution is 1.05:1), and men having no choice but to look outside their caste if they want to marry.
- dirtyid 6y agoI was told US Indian diaspora has disproportionate high caste due to historic migration patterns which lets the system self-perpetuate more readily. At least that's the experience repeated by Canadian Indians who works in the US. All will be assimilated in time, but some issues needs to be addressed actively.
- dcolkitt 6y agoI think a counterpoint to this view is that Englishmen with Norman last names still make more money than average.[1] Despite the fact that the British regime hasn't discriminated along the Norman-Saxon divide since the 1300s. I doubt if the average English person today is really even consciously aware of the Anglo-Normans being higher class. Certainly there's no easily visible divide or overt discrimination in modern times. Yet the legacy of the caste system left by William the Conqueror continues to shape society a thousand years later. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8424904/People-with-Norman-names-wealthier-than-other-Britons.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/842...
- robocat 6y agoSame same but different “The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest families in Florence”: https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14...