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When you find a southeast Asian person talking about "neighborhood" or "neighbors", e.g. "he's from my neighborhood", "they're from a neighborhood over", unders
by mjh2539 4y ago
When you find a southeast Asian person talking about "neighborhood" or "neighbors", e.g. "he's from my neighborhood", "they're from a neighborhood over", understand that these are nearly always thinly veiled references to caste (that, or they merely serve as proxies to talk about caste in a socially acceptable manner). You will almost never, ever, hear your everyday person talk about caste.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- putlake 4y agoI'm South Asian, have lived in the US for over 15 years, and don't know wtf you're talking about. Neighborhood doesn't ever mean caste. The reason you never hear people talking about caste is because they don't.
- belltaco 4y agoAnother South Asian here, you're 100% correct. I can't even imagine what the parent poster is talking about, even twisted 100 ways I've never heard someone imply caste like that.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoI have never heard this either in my time around Nepali and Indian coworkers.
- bodhiandpysics1 4y agoYou may be confusing "neighborhood" with the more common euphemism "community" (which can also refer in India to religion). Another common way of referring to caste euphemistically is that someone comes from a good family. That being said, it's relatively rare, especially outside of india, for people to explicitly talk about caste.
- hackerlight 4y agoDo you mean South Asia?
- chupchap 4y agoI use it to refer to folks from my city when I'm out of India, irrespective of religion or caste. Have you heard this reference made often?