Interesting, thanks for the link! I had a vague sense that Central / South America had a more complicated understanding of race than the white/black dichotomy,

Interesting, thanks for the link! I had a vague sense that Central / South America had a more complicated understanding of race than the white/black dichotomy, and this is helpful. I think that Americans are very familiar with systematic discrimination based on race or skin color. The distinction that I think confuses people not from SE Asia is that caste discrimination is between different classes of people who appear to be the same race and ethnicity from the outside. Perhaps discrimination against Irish and Italian immigrants would be analogous, though that faded so long ago that even my Irish NY grandparents knew that it happened but just kinda thought it was funny.