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I find the underlying question of this issue fascinating and challenging. Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respe

I find the underlying question of this issue fascinating and challenging. Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respect for traditions that are not strictly yours? Are you bound to honor cultural traditions that are outside your laws and norms for civic rights and presence? On the one hand, the caste system is one of those things that many non-Indian people seem to be willing to come out and condemn. Frankly, it seems awful to me, and fundamentally at odds with a lot of human and civic rights norms in America. At the same time, however, it's a tradition from a society that is very different from the one in which I was raised. I don't feel like I'm educated enough to judge it thoroughly. See also: France, and the ongoing Dialogue with Muslim communities regarding headscarves.

LockAndLol 6y ago
> Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respect for traditions that are not strictly yours? Are you bound to honor cultural traditions that are outside your laws and norms for civic rights and presence? The line is drawn exactly where the law is. If a culture or tradition doesn't adhere to it, then it shouldn't be allowed. Either you live in a country and respect the law or you have to deal with the consequences - no exceptions. We should all be equal before the law and there shouldn't be any exceptions for voluntary actions of a group. Culture and traditions do not supersede law. They are impediments to all kinds of progress, scientific, educational, social or otherwise, and that shouldn't be acceptable.
ponker 6y ago
My opinion: admittance to a country is a gift. Don’t give it to people who won’t fully integrate.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  I guess that's exactly what native Americans should have done EDIT: I'm sensing a lot of guilty conscience from the downvotes (always appreciated when it's about exposing atrocious ways of thinking) but this time it was simply explaining what the natural consequence of that sentence woul be: US would not exist. And maybe all of us would be better off, who knows...
- cushychicken 6y ago
  What's "full integration", though? Should they not be allowed to cook their own food? Speak their own language? Practice their own faith? Hold their own values?
  - ponker 6y ago
    My father fully integrated but does all of those things. If all of your friends are from your culture, if you watch TV only from your own culture, etc. you’re not fully integrated. If you do the host country stuff AND your native stuff you are.
    - Retr0spectrum 6y ago
      I do not watch TV from my own culture, am I not fully integrated in my native country?
    - pc86 6y ago
      How many hours of American television are you going to require immigrants to watch? Lets use folks from Mexico as an example. Does Spanish-language television created in the US count? What about English-language content that was created in Mexico but for Mexican-American consumption? How many non-American friends do you have? What ratio of American friends does an immigrant need to have before it's okay for them to be here? This is xenophobic bullshit and has no place on a forum like this.
    - romanoderoma 6y ago
      I've watched thousands of hours of Americans television over the past 45 years, read a lot of their authors, especially underground and subcultures like comics, I've heard a lot of their music, immersed in a lot of their culture, have many friends who are Americans, I lived there for a few years, but I still think that fully integrating with US culture is a big mistake, because it's simply not relevant enough to give up other cultures. The more you watch it, the more it's people shooting each other over a bar fight or people killing themselves to get a promotion at work or competing in general over things that have no real connection with happiness. That's why many don't care about it and spend their time with people more like them that share a common background. Understanding each other is more important that following every single rule to "integrate" in a culture that have basically no historical background other than avoiding taxes in their homeland. Mexicans, on the other hand, have been there for millennia.
- giantg2 6y ago
  That's basically what immigration restrictions do. Only it is done through restricting the number of people from any one area rather than require complete cultural whitewashing.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Nice. My opinion as an immigrant is the opposite: I'm clinging to this rock like a tenacious fucking barnacle. And as far as I know, I probably have a better right to it than you. At least I earned it. You were just born into it. I made it here. You can pretend like you gifted me this but in reality you didn't. I took it through my hard work. And you can try to stop me but I'll beat you, even though you have the advantage of having been born here. Because I'm better.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Man, surely there's some kind of middle path without all the forced adversarial stance, isn't there? People "born into it" had a whole lot to say about policy, and provided you the opportunities to be here. You seized them. It should be a good deal for both sides, but to the extent that each tries to make it adversarial and zero-sum, the benefits of the deal evaporate for everyone.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Sure. I see it as Tit-for-Tat with default cooperate. We can both play for the win together and I'll start there. Or someone else can start a fight that I will finish.
      - mlyle 6y ago
        I love internet tough guys.
        renewiltord 6y ago
        Haha! Whatcha gonna do about it, huh? Let's take this outside. I'll put you in the ground. Just playing, just playing.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    People saying this BS have no idea of what it means to leave everything you know behind and how many home-cultures are simply better than the ones immigrants find themselves living in, but they had to leave because (put the name of some super power) decided that it was the right spot to start a war and destroy everything to seize control of some resource or out of spite to some competing super power People think they are gifting you, because they don't realize how irrelevant they are and how little control have in their lives, let alone the lives of others. P.s. if we wanna talk about integration, Americans, for example, should watch themselves abroad. They are absolutely the less capable of understanding what "this is not the way we do things" means.
- Bhilai 6y ago
  And did Europeans integrate fully into the native Indian culture before they migrated to the American continent?
yawz 6y ago
Regarding the US, I’m currently reading the book called Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. It’s been an eye-opener to the US caste system.
- cushychicken 6y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation. That's going on my reading list.
- fossuser 6y ago
  I thought this interview about the book was pretty good: https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/americas-caste-system-with-isabel-wilkerson/ https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/americas-caste-system-with-isabe... I think she's right that caste is a better way to view the issue in the US.
- golemotron 6y ago
  We need to recognize that caste is class and we have the same issue in the US. People from the Ozarks don't marry into families in Manhattan.
  - smogcutter 6y ago
    I think this is largely true but not complete: the interaction between race and class in the US is complicated. Race is frequently used to divide people who on the face of it should be united by class issues. There’s a famous LBJ quote about this: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.“
    - golemotron 6y ago
      It's all out-group enmity. We are very selective about which kinds we notice.
      - smogcutter 6y ago
Udo 6y ago
> Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respect for traditions that are not strictly yours? I advocate we draw the line where people are harmed. In other cases it may not be as clear, but in this one it is. There is no real question whether a caste system harms people, and as a concept it is not compatible with humanist values.
quackquackquack 6y ago
I was born in India, am of Indian Brahmin (i.e. the "top" caste) blood, and all I can say is this: The caste system is a disgrace to India and I fully condemn it as an Indian. I hope this kind of shit can be abolished not only in Silicon Valley but in India as well.
- cushychicken 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing your perspective. It seems like an awful thing to endure. I do, however, want to be sensitive to the fact that it may have some secondary effects that I'm not aware of, having never experienced firsthand.
  - yandie 6y ago
    How can you justify discrimination based on somebody's origin in any modern society? What kind of negative "secondary effects" that anti-discrimination would bring to a society? It's not like this is a small country or the first time we're talking about this issue.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Slavery was also a cultural say of life in America many places all over the world. There were probably secondary effects. But that doesn't matter because the practice is and always was, objectively evil.
fossuser 6y ago
This comes across as a moral relativism argument. Not all morality is relative to culture, some things are bad/wrong independent of cultural context. I wrote about this in more depth here (specifically 'on the ethics of burning children'): https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
socialdemocrat 6y ago
This is a no-brainer as cast discrimination is not allowed in India either. There is also a rich double standard in the US. Crazy practices from non-white countries are tolerated by “woke” liberals. Yet if you are from a white country you are expected to follow every American cultural norm and etiquette to the letter. I see this in international cooperation. E.g work happening across many countries. Americans will often insist on making American sensibilities universal disregarding the that what may be regarded as rude in America is not necessarily rude or inappropriate elsewhere. I see the same with American companies operating in my native Norway often insisting on practices that run counter to local culture and sensitivities. But somehow because we are white we are supposed to have the same values as Americans because Americans have racialized culture.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > But somehow because we are white we are supposed to have the same values as Americans because Americans have racialized culture. In a very literal way: https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333 https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa...
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Obligatory warning, per Josh Barro, that Newsweek ceased publication in 2012. Some random company just acquired the name rights. The thing to do with "Newsweek" stories is, (1) put quotes around "Newsweek", and, (2), track down the byline on the story. The person who wrote this was an SEO content spinner until like last year.
    - cpach 6y ago
      What a fate.
vikramkr 6y ago
Caste is a thing plenty of Indians are willing to come out and condemn too. My line is pretty simple. Is it a tradition that involves harm being done to an individual without their consent? Then I'm not honoring it. Is it a tradition involving personal behavior and decisions or interactions between people with all parties consenting? Then it's none of my business. Discrimination falls very clearly on the first side of that line. Something like caste is "mild" enough that it's only really worth the energy to fight in the US when it crops up, but things that are more severe (like outright genocide) are things that I would argue we go beyond "not honoring" into the realm of "time to actively intervene." The Rohingya genocide is being committed by a society "very different from the one in which I was raised." I feel no desire to exercise tolerance towards the practitioners. I guess that makes me a bit more of a hawk than the average American right now.
vesh 6y ago
A system of oppression that benefits some at the cost of others isn’t tradition. If it somehow seems that the system is accepted by those oppressed it is simply because of not being able to make meaningful change for generations.
- wnoise 6y ago
  > A system of oppression that benefits some at the cost of others isn’t tradition. If it's been long-standing, of course it is. A tradition need not be wise, or good, or beyond criticizing.
chanakya 6y ago
The dialog in France is important one for a democracy to have, and deals with real questions. I'm an upper caste male from India (now in Silicon Valley), and there is absolutely no redeeming quality to caste. It's abhorrent and barbarous. Thankfully, it's nowhere near as widespread as it used to be in India, and I can see it becoming a non-issue in the coming decades.
hodgesrm 6y ago
If you are living in the US the answer is simple: NO. US and state law (for the most part) prohibits this type of discrimination. That reflects the view of most--but not all--Americans that such discrimination is not tolerable.
sheepdestroyer 6y ago
The fundamental principle of Human Rights is that they are "Universal and Inalienable". They by definition apply equally to everyone, everywhere, at all times. I'm all for respecting cultures and traditions, right until it gets in conflict with the above. We live in a global world and it is a good thing that some basic fundamental values should be expected from everyone. I would cite Japan's "tradition" of cutting kids from one of their parents after a divorce, thus not respecting the UN's Child Rights Convention, as an sallient case in point that it's not OK to just let circumventions go on the basis of "it's their culture".
alisonkisk 6y ago
That's like saying foreigners can't judge chattel slavery.

LockAndLol 6y ago

> Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respect for traditions that are not strictly yours? Are you bound to honor cultural traditions that are outside your laws and norms for civic rights and presence? The line is drawn exactly where the law is. If a culture or tradition doesn't adhere to it, then it shouldn't be allowed. Either you live in a country and respect the law or you have to deal with the consequences - no exceptions. We should all be equal before the law and there shouldn't be any exceptions for voluntary actions of a group. Culture and traditions do not supersede law. They are impediments to all kinds of progress, scientific, educational, social or otherwise, and that shouldn't be acceptable.

ponker 6y ago

My opinion: admittance to a country is a gift. Don’t give it to people who won’t fully integrate.

romanoderoma 6y ago
I guess that's exactly what native Americans should have done EDIT: I'm sensing a lot of guilty conscience from the downvotes (always appreciated when it's about exposing atrocious ways of thinking) but this time it was simply explaining what the natural consequence of that sentence woul be: US would not exist. And maybe all of us would be better off, who knows...
cushychicken 6y ago
What's "full integration", though? Should they not be allowed to cook their own food? Speak their own language? Practice their own faith? Hold their own values?
- ponker 6y ago
  My father fully integrated but does all of those things. If all of your friends are from your culture, if you watch TV only from your own culture, etc. you’re not fully integrated. If you do the host country stuff AND your native stuff you are.
  - Retr0spectrum 6y ago
    I do not watch TV from my own culture, am I not fully integrated in my native country?
  - pc86 6y ago
    How many hours of American television are you going to require immigrants to watch? Lets use folks from Mexico as an example. Does Spanish-language television created in the US count? What about English-language content that was created in Mexico but for Mexican-American consumption? How many non-American friends do you have? What ratio of American friends does an immigrant need to have before it's okay for them to be here? This is xenophobic bullshit and has no place on a forum like this.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    I've watched thousands of hours of Americans television over the past 45 years, read a lot of their authors, especially underground and subcultures like comics, I've heard a lot of their music, immersed in a lot of their culture, have many friends who are Americans, I lived there for a few years, but I still think that fully integrating with US culture is a big mistake, because it's simply not relevant enough to give up other cultures. The more you watch it, the more it's people shooting each other over a bar fight or people killing themselves to get a promotion at work or competing in general over things that have no real connection with happiness. That's why many don't care about it and spend their time with people more like them that share a common background. Understanding each other is more important that following every single rule to "integrate" in a culture that have basically no historical background other than avoiding taxes in their homeland. Mexicans, on the other hand, have been there for millennia.
giantg2 6y ago
That's basically what immigration restrictions do. Only it is done through restricting the number of people from any one area rather than require complete cultural whitewashing.
renewiltord 6y ago
Nice. My opinion as an immigrant is the opposite: I'm clinging to this rock like a tenacious fucking barnacle. And as far as I know, I probably have a better right to it than you. At least I earned it. You were just born into it. I made it here. You can pretend like you gifted me this but in reality you didn't. I took it through my hard work. And you can try to stop me but I'll beat you, even though you have the advantage of having been born here. Because I'm better.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Man, surely there's some kind of middle path without all the forced adversarial stance, isn't there? People "born into it" had a whole lot to say about policy, and provided you the opportunities to be here. You seized them. It should be a good deal for both sides, but to the extent that each tries to make it adversarial and zero-sum, the benefits of the deal evaporate for everyone.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Sure. I see it as Tit-for-Tat with default cooperate. We can both play for the win together and I'll start there. Or someone else can start a fight that I will finish.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      I love internet tough guys.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        Haha! Whatcha gonna do about it, huh? Let's take this outside. I'll put you in the ground. Just playing, just playing.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  People saying this BS have no idea of what it means to leave everything you know behind and how many home-cultures are simply better than the ones immigrants find themselves living in, but they had to leave because (put the name of some super power) decided that it was the right spot to start a war and destroy everything to seize control of some resource or out of spite to some competing super power People think they are gifting you, because they don't realize how irrelevant they are and how little control have in their lives, let alone the lives of others. P.s. if we wanna talk about integration, Americans, for example, should watch themselves abroad. They are absolutely the less capable of understanding what "this is not the way we do things" means.
Bhilai 6y ago
And did Europeans integrate fully into the native Indian culture before they migrated to the American continent?

yawz 6y ago

Regarding the US, I’m currently reading the book called Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. It’s been an eye-opener to the US caste system.

cushychicken 6y ago
Thanks for the recommendation. That's going on my reading list.
fossuser 6y ago
I thought this interview about the book was pretty good: https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/americas-caste-system-with-isabel-wilkerson/ https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/americas-caste-system-with-isabe... I think she's right that caste is a better way to view the issue in the US.
golemotron 6y ago
We need to recognize that caste is class and we have the same issue in the US. People from the Ozarks don't marry into families in Manhattan.
- smogcutter 6y ago
  I think this is largely true but not complete: the interaction between race and class in the US is complicated. Race is frequently used to divide people who on the face of it should be united by class issues. There’s a famous LBJ quote about this: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.“
  - golemotron 6y ago
    It's all out-group enmity. We are very selective about which kinds we notice.
    - smogcutter 6y ago

Udo 6y ago

> Where is the right place to draw the line between your state's civic values, and respect for traditions that are not strictly yours? I advocate we draw the line where people are harmed. In other cases it may not be as clear, but in this one it is. There is no real question whether a caste system harms people, and as a concept it is not compatible with humanist values.

quackquackquack 6y ago

I was born in India, am of Indian Brahmin (i.e. the "top" caste) blood, and all I can say is this: The caste system is a disgrace to India and I fully condemn it as an Indian. I hope this kind of shit can be abolished not only in Silicon Valley but in India as well.

cushychicken 6y ago
Thanks for sharing your perspective. It seems like an awful thing to endure. I do, however, want to be sensitive to the fact that it may have some secondary effects that I'm not aware of, having never experienced firsthand.
- yandie 6y ago
  How can you justify discrimination based on somebody's origin in any modern society? What kind of negative "secondary effects" that anti-discrimination would bring to a society? It's not like this is a small country or the first time we're talking about this issue.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Slavery was also a cultural say of life in America many places all over the world. There were probably secondary effects. But that doesn't matter because the practice is and always was, objectively evil.

fossuser 6y ago

This comes across as a moral relativism argument. Not all morality is relative to culture, some things are bad/wrong independent of cultural context. I wrote about this in more depth here (specifically 'on the ethics of burning children'): https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html

socialdemocrat 6y ago

This is a no-brainer as cast discrimination is not allowed in India either. There is also a rich double standard in the US. Crazy practices from non-white countries are tolerated by “woke” liberals. Yet if you are from a white country you are expected to follow every American cultural norm and etiquette to the letter. I see this in international cooperation. E.g work happening across many countries. Americans will often insist on making American sensibilities universal disregarding the that what may be regarded as rude in America is not necessarily rude or inappropriate elsewhere. I see the same with American companies operating in my native Norway often insisting on practices that run counter to local culture and sensitivities. But somehow because we are white we are supposed to have the same values as Americans because Americans have racialized culture.

rayiner 6y ago
> But somehow because we are white we are supposed to have the same values as Americans because Americans have racialized culture. In a very literal way: https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333 https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa...
- tptacek 6y ago
  Obligatory warning, per Josh Barro, that Newsweek ceased publication in 2012. Some random company just acquired the name rights. The thing to do with "Newsweek" stories is, (1) put quotes around "Newsweek", and, (2), track down the byline on the story. The person who wrote this was an SEO content spinner until like last year.
  - cpach 6y ago
    What a fate.

vikramkr 6y ago

Caste is a thing plenty of Indians are willing to come out and condemn too. My line is pretty simple. Is it a tradition that involves harm being done to an individual without their consent? Then I'm not honoring it. Is it a tradition involving personal behavior and decisions or interactions between people with all parties consenting? Then it's none of my business. Discrimination falls very clearly on the first side of that line. Something like caste is "mild" enough that it's only really worth the energy to fight in the US when it crops up, but things that are more severe (like outright genocide) are things that I would argue we go beyond "not honoring" into the realm of "time to actively intervene." The Rohingya genocide is being committed by a society "very different from the one in which I was raised." I feel no desire to exercise tolerance towards the practitioners. I guess that makes me a bit more of a hawk than the average American right now.

vesh 6y ago

A system of oppression that benefits some at the cost of others isn’t tradition. If it somehow seems that the system is accepted by those oppressed it is simply because of not being able to make meaningful change for generations.

wnoise 6y ago
> A system of oppression that benefits some at the cost of others isn’t tradition. If it's been long-standing, of course it is. A tradition need not be wise, or good, or beyond criticizing.

chanakya 6y ago

The dialog in France is important one for a democracy to have, and deals with real questions. I'm an upper caste male from India (now in Silicon Valley), and there is absolutely no redeeming quality to caste. It's abhorrent and barbarous. Thankfully, it's nowhere near as widespread as it used to be in India, and I can see it becoming a non-issue in the coming decades.

hodgesrm 6y ago

If you are living in the US the answer is simple: NO. US and state law (for the most part) prohibits this type of discrimination. That reflects the view of most--but not all--Americans that such discrimination is not tolerable.

sheepdestroyer 6y ago

The fundamental principle of Human Rights is that they are "Universal and Inalienable". They by definition apply equally to everyone, everywhere, at all times. I'm all for respecting cultures and traditions, right until it gets in conflict with the above. We live in a global world and it is a good thing that some basic fundamental values should be expected from everyone. I would cite Japan's "tradition" of cutting kids from one of their parents after a divorce, thus not respecting the UN's Child Rights Convention, as an sallient case in point that it's not OK to just let circumventions go on the basis of "it's their culture".

alisonkisk 6y ago

That's like saying foreigners can't judge chattel slavery.