And this... Is... to go... even further beyond!
And this... Is... to go... even further beyond!
And this... Is... to go... even further beyond!
I guess the real racism was the enemies we made along the way :)
Ive never met anyone more racist than a new Zealand Indian talking about an Indian who just arrived from India. Its like they know exactly where to strike to inflict the most damage. (Except maybe a south African talking about a non white south African)
For me it was an old acquaintance in college. Dude was Japanese and the things he said about other Asian groups was distressing.
People talk about racism in America, and yes it's a problem, but having spent time with people from around the world, holy hell. America is probably the least racist country in the world. Absolutely dwarfed by the weird, vitriolic, oddly specific racism basically everywhere else.
Because people in America think it's a problem and thus they view it as an issue that needs to be reflected on. Many countries have not gotten to that stage yet and still either think it doesn't exist or isn't a problem.
I think that's because you have a lot of racially motivated crimes.
Don't you think that's because you're traveling and seeing it through a traveler's eyes? Also, you're probably white. A few of my friends have been opening up lately about how bad it is and don't forget the BLM years. America is fucking racist.
Yeah traveling and meeting people, then getting them to talk about their neighbors or immigrants is eye opening.
I don't really talk politics (especially while traveling) and definitely don't share or hold racist or nationalistic opinions. Folks from around the world are happy to share their hatred of others...not being on my turf, I nod and disengage.
All I see are DEI hires
It is like Syrians and Lebanese hating on one another when I can’t tell them apart.
Pretty much any ex British colony is heavily biased against darker skin tones, America, India, Israel, it happened to pretty much all of them
For India specifically it's more a continent than a country. There's a bunch of different ethnic groups lumped together, and for most of its history it was never unified. Then the Brits decided they're all Indian and combined them because that makes corruption easier.
The British did not create the caste system.
The British didn't create the caste system from scratch, but they had a huge role in shaping what became the modern caste system. I'm sleepy, so I'm going to quote direct from this BBC article (though it's a good amount article, if you have the time. It does a good job for a summary, imo)
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Apologies for just quoting at length at you. I fear that presenting info this way will give the sense that I am lecturing you, but that is not my intention; a large part of why I share this info is because I learned of this relatively recently and I was astounded by how significant Britain's role was.
I don't think their point is that the caste system didn't existed before English colonization, but that India was not an unified and centralized country.
You're right. They also didn't create colorism, which has existed in every human society since the dawn of time.
What they did do is institutionalize and entrench caste. They applied their racialized view of the world and interpreted caste as "low caste = dark skin = bad" and "high caste = fair skin = good" There is nothing in ancient Indian literature that connects caste to skin tone.
There is however significant literature tying caste to virtue. Low caste individuals in India are disenfranchised similar to African Americans in the US.
The British didn't help the issue by identifying certain castes as innately criminal, subjecting them to constant police surveillance and even imprisoning them premptively.
The Indian government, at its inception, outlawed caste discrimination and there are several affirmative action plans in place to provide increased oppurunities to disenfranchised castes but, similar to the African American community in the US, execution of such plans and positive outcomes are still lacking.
During his visit to Kerala, India in 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. was being introduced by a school principal: "Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America" Initially shocked, he reflected and then responded: "Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States is an untouchable"
It's honestly not very unified today. Their national languages are Hindi and English, yet only 55% of the population consider Hindi to be their first or second language. In fact, I asked my coworker from S. India where Hindi is pretty rare, and he said he'd use English if he traveled around India because he's not very comfortable w/ Hindi (despite studying it in school), though he could use Hindi if he had to.
Somehow the government holds things together. I guess people see themselves as Indian despite the extreme differences between regions. So I guess that's something the Brits somehow got right, though they completely screwed up Pakistan (many Indians believe Pakistan and India should be the same country, despite their fierce rivalry).
From what I've heard about Modi it's pretty much the opposite...
It's not a unified system where everyone gets along, it's a rigid caste system (I think technically outlawed but not enforced) where people with power are ok with it because they're not on the bottom, and the people on the bottom don't have enough power to change anything.
There's a reasons Modi's friends are trump, putin, and kim.
Oh, so I'm racist. Fuck you maybe?
You're an ex British colony?