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Or it's like a "POC" saying that you can't be racist against white people despite it being clearly evident that racism against all people - including white - is

Or it's like a "POC" saying that you can't be racist against white people despite it being clearly evident that racism against all people - including white - is happening every day. Everyone is receiving racism but it's the truly privileged that can do so and claim they aren't guilty of it themselves.

fmajid 4y ago
It would be just as not OK for a lower-caste person to discriminate against a Brahmin. The law works both ways.
- manigandham 4y ago
  What is a lower-caste person? Your other comments argue that people are being dismissive yet you're using the very language that furthers caste segregation.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    This is exactly how discrimination persists. They’re not “using the very language that furthers caste segregation”, they’re describing reality. Caste exists. It didn’t need to, but people invented it. Pretending it isn’t real and doesn’t affect people’s lives is not how to fix this.
    - manigandham 4y ago
      It isn't real. That's the point. It's made up arbitrary classification. Continuing to use it by calling people "lower-caste" is how it persists. You're not describing reality since there is no such thing as a "lower-caste person". Stop thinking, talking, and acting as if there is. You can't legislate your way out of it, you just stop doing it, including the language.
      - jakelazaroff 4y ago
        Race is made up, yet racial discrimination happens all the time. Money is made up, yet we all use it every day. Just because something is “made up” doesn’t mean it isn’t real. We made it real.
        manigandham 4y ago
        You're missing the point. Instead of a law to stop "lower" and "upper" caste from discriminating against each other (like that comment was saying), the entire concept of caste needs to be purged. That won't happen if you continue to use those very terms and then say it's (describing) reality. The sooner people stop dealing with it, the sooner it stops being a (real) thing.
        jakelazaroff 4y ago
        I’m not missing the point, I disagree with it. Like, who is “we”? In any situation where one group has structural advantages over another, there are going to be people who are very much not on board with merging the groups. If your plan to equalize everyone is just “pretend the groups don’t exist”, it will fail, because you’re simply ignoring a status quo that others are actively working to preserve.
        MockObject 4y ago
        Exactly true. Race, money, and caste all vanish from existence if nobody continues to use the concepts.
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        There are people who want caste discrimination to exist. Given that reality, should the people who don't want caste discrimination to exist simply pretend caste doesn't exist (and therefore caste discrimination doesn't exist) or acknowledge that the former group exists and try to do something about it?
      - fmajid 4y ago
        It actually has a genetic basis. According to David Reich in his outstanding book Who we are and how we got here, the varna/jati castes and sub-castes have been able to maintain a level of endogamy stricter than Ashkenazi Jews for millennia and there is 2-3x more genetic distance between two different jati groups coexisting in the same village than between North and South Europeans. So basically you had a group of invaders who came to India, proclaimed themselves both racially and morally superior, and enforced a rigid system of miscegeneation laws to prevent themselves from being diluted. Makes the wildest dreams of white supremacists tame in comparison. Of course, none of that justifies the discrimination. I don't know how to fix it either, India tried but hasn't succeeded. B. R. Ambedkar, the author of India's Constitution came to the conclusion that Hinduism is unreformable and that former untouchables like himself should convert to Buddhism, but that hasn't happened on a large scale. Subhas Chandra Bose proposed to abolish the caste system through socialism and inter-caste marriages, but he was an authoritarian bordering on Fascist. Your idea of abolishing the concept of caste system is noble, but it has been tried and failed in India. Just as you could say making people color-blind would solve racism (setting aside the problem of reparations for past injustice), but how do you make it happen? It's a social problem, and there are seldom simple solutions. Banning the language won't make it disappear, just as (effectively) banning the N-word hasn't made racism go away.
    - badcppdev 4y ago
      So Castes exist but should people start using the phrase different-caste instead of higher-caste, lower-caste, etc.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    One could of course combat it by totally transforming the original language and rituals of the culture, so that they can’t be used anymore. That is what communists tried to do with the Bible for instance. But if you want to refer to things in a really widespread system by their name, then you show respect to the people practicing the system and may have more success in saying — keep believing what you are believing, but in this context you cannot enforce it. You may have an easier time getting it adopted then. In the case of the caste system, my initial reaction was like the sibling comment but then I realized that I personally (and many Indians today) no longer believe it has anything to do with reality and is in fact just a self perpetuating mass delusion. So the question is, do we therefore have a right to gaslight and disrespect the beliefs of those who do believe it if they come to live in our country. My guess is yes.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    The hierarchy of castes (and the untouchables) is intrinsic to the caste system, I am not the one making a value judgment. It's like saying "upper class" vs. "middle class" vs. "working class", which are within the reference frame of the class system.
- pstuart 4y ago
  “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
  - cld8483 4y ago
    I won't speak to the situation in India, but in America it is certainly possible for somebody from a 'lower caste' to be in a position of authority over somebody from a 'higher caste'. If for no other reason than because Americans with no understanding of the caste system might find the 'lower caste' person to be more competent and capable than the 'higher caste' person and promote accordingly.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > not OK for a lower-caste person to discriminate against a Brahmin Unfortunately, U.S. discrimination laws have a long history of replacing perceived, hard to demonstrate/prove discrimination with actual explicit discrimination in the other direction... so although you may be morally correct, you're likely to be legally incorrect.
rguiliani 4y ago
[dead]
yeahbutiguess 4y ago
[flagged]
- adql 4y ago
  > You can discriminate against white people because they are white, but that's different than racism. That's racism. I think you're just trying to excuse your own racism here.
  - yeahbutiguess 4y ago
    There is a categorical difference between an individual discriminating based on race, and a dominant culture discriminating based on race.
- nayroclade 4y ago
  This seems like a definition of racism that, at the very least, doesn't align with everyday use of the word and most people's conceptual understanding of it. What makes your minority interpretation of racism the correct one? It seems to me that defining racism like this is less about reflecting some ground truth, and more about trying, through linguistic prescriptivism, to change an expansive term into something more proscribed, in order to focus attention only on a particular subset of activity. But doing so in a somewhat underhanded way, that avoids acknowledging or justifying the motivations behind the redefinition and instead attempts to make it a definitional fait acompli, saying "your definition is wrong, and mine is right".
  - yeahbutiguess 4y ago
    The goal is simple - individual discrimination and systemic discrimination are fundamentally different things. And systemic discrimination is what has been used to oppress minorities in the US for as long as the US has existed. Indeed, I believe the opposite position (that all discrimination against all people based on race is racism) is the underhanded approach, as it waters down the concerns around systemic discrimination by emphasizing the individual discrimination over the systemic discrimination. Discrimination against someone based on race is wrong. Full stop. But it's critical we understand that what Black people in America face isn't just a few individuals with backwards ideas. It's fundamentally and categorically different than a few people hating me because I'm white.

fmajid 4y ago

It would be just as not OK for a lower-caste person to discriminate against a Brahmin. The law works both ways.

manigandham 4y ago
What is a lower-caste person? Your other comments argue that people are being dismissive yet you're using the very language that furthers caste segregation.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  This is exactly how discrimination persists. They’re not “using the very language that furthers caste segregation”, they’re describing reality. Caste exists. It didn’t need to, but people invented it. Pretending it isn’t real and doesn’t affect people’s lives is not how to fix this.
  - manigandham 4y ago
    It isn't real. That's the point. It's made up arbitrary classification. Continuing to use it by calling people "lower-caste" is how it persists. You're not describing reality since there is no such thing as a "lower-caste person". Stop thinking, talking, and acting as if there is. You can't legislate your way out of it, you just stop doing it, including the language.
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      Race is made up, yet racial discrimination happens all the time. Money is made up, yet we all use it every day. Just because something is “made up” doesn’t mean it isn’t real. We made it real.
      - manigandham 4y ago
        You're missing the point. Instead of a law to stop "lower" and "upper" caste from discriminating against each other (like that comment was saying), the entire concept of caste needs to be purged. That won't happen if you continue to use those very terms and then say it's (describing) reality. The sooner people stop dealing with it, the sooner it stops being a (real) thing.
        jakelazaroff 4y ago
        I’m not missing the point, I disagree with it. Like, who is “we”? In any situation where one group has structural advantages over another, there are going to be people who are very much not on board with merging the groups. If your plan to equalize everyone is just “pretend the groups don’t exist”, it will fail, because you’re simply ignoring a status quo that others are actively working to preserve.
        MockObject 4y ago
        Exactly true. Race, money, and caste all vanish from existence if nobody continues to use the concepts.
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        There are people who want caste discrimination to exist. Given that reality, should the people who don't want caste discrimination to exist simply pretend caste doesn't exist (and therefore caste discrimination doesn't exist) or acknowledge that the former group exists and try to do something about it?
    - fmajid 4y ago
      It actually has a genetic basis. According to David Reich in his outstanding book Who we are and how we got here, the varna/jati castes and sub-castes have been able to maintain a level of endogamy stricter than Ashkenazi Jews for millennia and there is 2-3x more genetic distance between two different jati groups coexisting in the same village than between North and South Europeans. So basically you had a group of invaders who came to India, proclaimed themselves both racially and morally superior, and enforced a rigid system of miscegeneation laws to prevent themselves from being diluted. Makes the wildest dreams of white supremacists tame in comparison. Of course, none of that justifies the discrimination. I don't know how to fix it either, India tried but hasn't succeeded. B. R. Ambedkar, the author of India's Constitution came to the conclusion that Hinduism is unreformable and that former untouchables like himself should convert to Buddhism, but that hasn't happened on a large scale. Subhas Chandra Bose proposed to abolish the caste system through socialism and inter-caste marriages, but he was an authoritarian bordering on Fascist. Your idea of abolishing the concept of caste system is noble, but it has been tried and failed in India. Just as you could say making people color-blind would solve racism (setting aside the problem of reparations for past injustice), but how do you make it happen? It's a social problem, and there are seldom simple solutions. Banning the language won't make it disappear, just as (effectively) banning the N-word hasn't made racism go away.
  - badcppdev 4y ago
    So Castes exist but should people start using the phrase different-caste instead of higher-caste, lower-caste, etc.
- EGreg 4y ago
  One could of course combat it by totally transforming the original language and rituals of the culture, so that they can’t be used anymore. That is what communists tried to do with the Bible for instance. But if you want to refer to things in a really widespread system by their name, then you show respect to the people practicing the system and may have more success in saying — keep believing what you are believing, but in this context you cannot enforce it. You may have an easier time getting it adopted then. In the case of the caste system, my initial reaction was like the sibling comment but then I realized that I personally (and many Indians today) no longer believe it has anything to do with reality and is in fact just a self perpetuating mass delusion. So the question is, do we therefore have a right to gaslight and disrespect the beliefs of those who do believe it if they come to live in our country. My guess is yes.
- fmajid 4y ago
  The hierarchy of castes (and the untouchables) is intrinsic to the caste system, I am not the one making a value judgment. It's like saying "upper class" vs. "middle class" vs. "working class", which are within the reference frame of the class system.
pstuart 4y ago
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
- cld8483 4y ago
  I won't speak to the situation in India, but in America it is certainly possible for somebody from a 'lower caste' to be in a position of authority over somebody from a 'higher caste'. If for no other reason than because Americans with no understanding of the caste system might find the 'lower caste' person to be more competent and capable than the 'higher caste' person and promote accordingly.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> not OK for a lower-caste person to discriminate against a Brahmin Unfortunately, U.S. discrimination laws have a long history of replacing perceived, hard to demonstrate/prove discrimination with actual explicit discrimination in the other direction... so although you may be morally correct, you're likely to be legally incorrect.

rguiliani 4y ago

[dead]

yeahbutiguess 4y ago

[flagged]

adql 4y ago
> You can discriminate against white people because they are white, but that's different than racism. That's racism. I think you're just trying to excuse your own racism here.
- yeahbutiguess 4y ago
  There is a categorical difference between an individual discriminating based on race, and a dominant culture discriminating based on race.
nayroclade 4y ago
This seems like a definition of racism that, at the very least, doesn't align with everyday use of the word and most people's conceptual understanding of it. What makes your minority interpretation of racism the correct one? It seems to me that defining racism like this is less about reflecting some ground truth, and more about trying, through linguistic prescriptivism, to change an expansive term into something more proscribed, in order to focus attention only on a particular subset of activity. But doing so in a somewhat underhanded way, that avoids acknowledging or justifying the motivations behind the redefinition and instead attempts to make it a definitional fait acompli, saying "your definition is wrong, and mine is right".
- yeahbutiguess 4y ago
  The goal is simple - individual discrimination and systemic discrimination are fundamentally different things. And systemic discrimination is what has been used to oppress minorities in the US for as long as the US has existed. Indeed, I believe the opposite position (that all discrimination against all people based on race is racism) is the underhanded approach, as it waters down the concerns around systemic discrimination by emphasizing the individual discrimination over the systemic discrimination. Discrimination against someone based on race is wrong. Full stop. But it's critical we understand that what Black people in America face isn't just a few individuals with backwards ideas. It's fundamentally and categorically different than a few people hating me because I'm white.