Racism Is UniversalHistory shows that bigotry is not a uniquely white problem.
JUNE 20, 2022
CASEY CHALK
“In California,” NPR reported in May, “accusations of caste-based prejudice at the workplace and on college campuses are growing louder.” One student, a member of the Dalits or so-called “untouchables,” the lowest echelon in the millennia-old social, economic, and political system of India, claimed to suffer caste discrimination from fellow South Asian students at Cal State, East Bay.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported earlier this month that the Hindu-nationalist movement has spread from India to the diaspora community in the United States, including Silicon Valley. A woman scheduled to give a talk at Google on Dalit History Month was labeled by some employees as “Hindu-phobic” and “anti-Hindu.” The talk was subsequently canceled despite appeals to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who comes from an upper-caste Indian family. “Many Indians have moved to the United States to work in tech companies, and several Big Tech CEOs are of Indian origin,” the Post notes. “Some employees allege the patterns of discrimination [found in the caste system] have been replicated within Silicon Valley companies.”
This is not a new phenomenon. The Atlanticreported on it last year, as did the New York Times. The Washington Post reported on it in 2020, and NPR reported on it in 2018.
We shouldn’t necessarily be surprised by the importation of the caste system. After all, our country’s elite institutions increasingly disparage assimilation into American society. Indeed, they often argue that immigrants should be permitted, if not encouraged, to retain their cultural identities. And, they argue, American citizens (and employers) should make all necessary adjustments to accommodate, and even learn from, these other cultures.
The caste system, though officially abolished only a few years after Indian independence, remains ubiquitous in Indian society. It would be difficult for recent Indian immigrants not to bring some vestiges of that system with them to the United States, whether intentionally or not. Especially when eight in ten Indian-Americans who identify with a caste claim to be of an upper one.
This presents a problem for those (typically on the left) who adhere to the narrative that white, “Eurocentric” culture is uniquely or preeminently racist and prejudiced. And when it comes to the Indian caste system, you can’t blame colonialism or imperialism, given that the Indian socio-economic and political system predates not only the British Empire, but Christendom, and even what we now understand as Europe.
Indeed, the globe is filled with examples of “persons of color”—a useless, fabricated concept if ever there was one—oppressing or abusing other “persons of color.” I lived in Bangkok, Thailand for three years, and the Thais are notoriously prejudiced, not only against black, mostly West African immigrants, but even other Southeast Asians, including minority ethnic groups who have been in the country for centuries. Many Thais despise and mistreat the Cambodians and the Burmese, many of whom are economic migrants working on the margins of Thai society. Some detest the ethnic Malays living in the country’s Muslim-majority southern three provinces.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/bigotry-is-not-an-american-problem/
