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America's race system is stupid too, but it persists anyway. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898574852/its-more-than-racism-isabel-wilkerson-explains-america-s-

America's race system is stupid too, but it persists anyway. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898574852/its-more-than-racism-isabel-wilkerson-explains-america-s-caste-system https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898574852/its-more-than-racis...

gigatexal 5y ago
Not an apples to apples comparison because in your example a black person say could not marry a non-black person (just change low caste for black and higher caste for white or the other way around it still works) in the US when that's not been the case for years and years. Sure, that's true for some families and some people do think like that but on the whole culturally mixed race unions are commonplace -- now try the same with mixed caste folks in India...
- roywiggins 5y ago
  I didn't say it was the same, just that it's equally stupid and persists anyway. It's easy for Americans to look at caste systems in other cultures and see them as transparently silly, even though our own racial hierarchies can seem self-evidently real and serious to us.
  - lsiebert 5y ago
    One of the ways racial hierarchies persist in the US in the culture are taught they are normal, natural, deserved when they are instead being perpetuated by culture and institutions and those who benefit from them. The effects of discrimination serve to justify and/or perpetuate the discrimination. My take away from this is that there is nothing natural about one caste having an advantage in business, that success in any field has much more to do with who has financial and social capital than with what caste someone is.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  There have been no inter caste marriage restrictions in India either since 1954. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Marriage_Act,_1954 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Marriage_Act,_1954 Obviously, just like mixed race marriage took a while to be culturally accepted in the US, it is a similar situation in India. More importantly, it almost always comes down to socioeconomic class rather than caste or race. The upper socioeconomic “castes” or “tribes” or whatever you want to call them have been inter marrying forever, and no one cares. I would easily bet if a Brahmin kid brought home a significant other worth a billion dollars, their parents would not give a crap if the SO was a lower caste person. By definition, just being worth a billion dollars would somehow elevate them out of their caste. Same with white and black and Asian and Latin American or any other tribal designation.

gigatexal 5y ago

Not an apples to apples comparison because in your example a black person say could not marry a non-black person (just change low caste for black and higher caste for white or the other way around it still works) in the US when that's not been the case for years and years. Sure, that's true for some families and some people do think like that but on the whole culturally mixed race unions are commonplace -- now try the same with mixed caste folks in India...

roywiggins 5y ago
I didn't say it was the same, just that it's equally stupid and persists anyway. It's easy for Americans to look at caste systems in other cultures and see them as transparently silly, even though our own racial hierarchies can seem self-evidently real and serious to us.
- lsiebert 5y ago
  One of the ways racial hierarchies persist in the US in the culture are taught they are normal, natural, deserved when they are instead being perpetuated by culture and institutions and those who benefit from them. The effects of discrimination serve to justify and/or perpetuate the discrimination. My take away from this is that there is nothing natural about one caste having an advantage in business, that success in any field has much more to do with who has financial and social capital than with what caste someone is.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
There have been no inter caste marriage restrictions in India either since 1954. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Marriage_Act,_1954 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Marriage_Act,_1954 Obviously, just like mixed race marriage took a while to be culturally accepted in the US, it is a similar situation in India. More importantly, it almost always comes down to socioeconomic class rather than caste or race. The upper socioeconomic “castes” or “tribes” or whatever you want to call them have been inter marrying forever, and no one cares. I would easily bet if a Brahmin kid brought home a significant other worth a billion dollars, their parents would not give a crap if the SO was a lower caste person. By definition, just being worth a billion dollars would somehow elevate them out of their caste. Same with white and black and Asian and Latin American or any other tribal designation.