This isn’t about caste though, usually it’s about self preservation

1. Indian Hindus have had a caste system since it was introduced in the Vedas 3500 years ago. It was initially intended as means of organizing society and not necessarily hierarchical.

2. It wasn’t necessarily systemized until it was legally codified by the British during the colonial era. Indian historians have debated the fluidity of caste prior to this time and concluded that while caste endogamy was clearly the norm, caste was much more fluid historically.

3. There are thousands of castes in India. When the British came across this system, for the purposes of census administration, they limited self identification to only one of the four castes as described in the Vedas, legally codifying it as a hierarchy.

4. The idea of one group of people seeing itself as superior to others is a common theme throughout human history. The US had a race based caste system for most of its history with the addition of legally codified chattel slavery and segregation of African Americans.

5. Pulitzer prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson argues that America still has an invisible caste system to this day.

6. America utilizes DEI to remedy past and present caste discrimination. India outlawed caste discrimination at its inception in article 17 of it’s constitution.

7. Some regressive Indians bring a casteist worldview with them. The government of the United States and its supporters are currently working at establishing a caste system where those of European heritage are high caste and those of other races or heritages are low caste. Both are wrong.

I say this mainly because I come across many people that see caste as a uniquely regressive institution the likes of which has not existed in other societies. Every hierarchical system based on race or ancestry is casteist and essentially every human society in civilizational history has had and likely currently continues to have that bigotry deeply ingrained within.

Nothing you said is wrong. Just adding context for a better understanding.

It’s a little funny when they realize they’re near the bottom of the American caste system

Am an immigrant, not true.

Not entirely true, many want to bring their family (see settler immigrants in early America) and there are still many that don’t want to eliminate immigration entirely.

Yeaaaaah, no, that’s a tired, old argument that’s been used by xenophobes at least since Irish and Italian immigrants started coming over (and almost certainly has been used long before that. But I’m not a historian.) Just because people prefer being around those who understand them doesn’t mean they’re “shunning” everyone else.

The entire idea that it’s somehow “wrong” for people to hold onto the way of life they’ve always known is really messed up. Nobody needs to do things the way you do, just because you’re their neighbor. My lifestyle is probably vastly different from yours, and if I were to find a community filled with others like me, that wouldn’t mean we’re “shunning” you or trying to change what you’re doing.

Also don’t forget, integration becomes easier with younger generations. You might think the “old waves” of immigrants integrated “better,” but that’s just what happens when you’re immersed in a culture for a longer period of time. Did the Irish and Italians turn the country into Ireland 2.0 and Italy 2.0? Of course they didn’t. They may develop centers rich in another culture, like “Little Italy” in NYC, but I fail to see what’s wrong with that.

How is this like the third outright racist comment I’ve seen on Lemmy this morning? Fuck off.

My kid just called from his college excited that he had mango lassi French toast. That’s integration

I promise the immigrants other immigrants hate on likely aren’t saints and were actively hating them for assimilating first

My parents get heated when they see them using soap at beaches and sht, they know they arent supposed to, they ignore the rules because they think they are above them, theyll say as much

I mean, racism against brown people ranges pretty far and wide on the internet and I’d frankly be shocked if lemmy proved to be an exception

Sectarianism will always exist. One can argue that the resurgence in white supremacy here is a manifestation of that (a group of Europeans and their descendants thinking their sect is superior / innately worthy of more resources).

I think one would be hard pressed to defend the argument that racism is a “white export” but what is undeniably true is that colonial Europeans were obsessed with race and saw the world through the lens of a race based caste system.

They assumed that all human progress could be distilled to lighter skin people being more advanced and darker skin people being more primitive.

They created entire scientific fields around this and interpreted their religion in a way to support this.

In India, they interpreted indigineous systems of social hierarchy such as caste and took them a step further, defining those that were darker skinned and lower caste as inherently criminal, keeping them under the watchful eye of their surveillance state.

They perceived lighter skin Muslims and upper caste Hindus as more “civilized” than darker skin low caste Hindus and gave the former administrative opportunities because of this perceived superiority.

They had an explicit policy of divide and conquer, promoting hateful and divisive rhetoric that resulted in communal violence so that people would be distracted from fighting against them.

Then when Nazi Germany destroyed their infrastructure in WW2 such that they could no longer financially maintain their institutions of colonialism, they drew an arbitrary border which cut through incredibly culturally and linguistically diverse communities and left.

In summary: Would there be animosity between Pakistan and India without the mismanagement of partition and the empire going out of its way to promote hate? Probably.

Would racism and sectarian violence not exist in the absence of the European world view being spread globally through colonialism? No we would still have that.

Were these made substantially worse by colonial powers promoting those divisions around the world over centuries? I think absolutely yes.

So while I take your point that such divisions didn’t originate in the West, it very much was a core component of their worldview and they stoked and exacerbated those divisions everywhere they went. I find it difficult to let colonists off the hook for that.

But to your general point on human nature, I agree. The reason why I hold America toa different standard is it calls itself the land of oppurunity and takes pride in that.

Human nature is a copout. Humans have removed themselves so far from nature that it isn’t even relevant anymore.

Its totally natural to fear humans that look significantly different than anyone you are familiar with. That’s believable as a basic survival instinct.

But that isn’t the world people are born in. We aren’t born hundreds of miles away from people who look radically different…often times we are born with them in the same room.

The problem is cultural and, as a result, inherited. In the modern world, racism is a learned behavior.

Then it reciprocates, and then becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy.

People suck, yea, but I’m done believing racism is human nature. That’s racist conditioning. Its taking a believable factoid like “humans naturally fear people who look different” because yeah, it makes sense, from a survival standpoint, in a world where your breeding pool was separated by an impenetrable mountain for thousands of years. It doesn’t make sense now.

From the regressive perspective, if you’re nonwhite and poor you’re a leech on society and if you are well off you must have took it from them by gaming the system. The core is not seeing others as equally human.

Being financially secure is a multiplier to their bigotry as they feel it challenges 1) their collective power and 2) their worldview that anyone that shares their melanin level is innately superior in every way.

They are damn good spices and put my American cooking to shame. Share your secrets to Vindaloo or GTFO.

I mean when I eat a lot of curry I smell like curry

Its often a one bedroom in an indian household, with daughters, thats why its usually woman only too, but they act like theyre perverts, its normal for indian households to support immigrant woman and accept them more because its safer for the woman in the house