The caste system is a disgrace to India and I fully condemn it as an Indian. I hope this kind of shit can be abolished not only in Silicon Valley but in India as well.
I do, however, want to be sensitive to the fact that it may have some secondary effects that I'm not aware of, having never experienced firsthand.
Not all morality is relative to culture, some things are bad/wrong independent of cultural context.
I wrote about this in more depth here (specifically 'on the ethics of burning children'): https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
I'm all for respecting cultures and traditions, right until it gets in conflict with the above. We live in a global world and it is a good thing that some basic fundamental values should be expected from everyone.
I would cite Japan's "tradition" of cutting kids from one of their parents after a divorce, thus not respecting the UN's Child Rights Convention, as an sallient case in point that it's not OK to just let circumventions go on the basis of "it's their culture".
I think she's right that caste is a better way to view the issue in the US.
It's extremely rare to find a Manhattan family where the child would be disowned and completely cut out of the family for marrying someone from the Ozarks. You can't say the same for a "pro-caste" Brahmin family in India.
A plumber might make a lot more money than an associate professor, but it's crystal clear who's in the higher social class.
There’s a famous LBJ quote about this:
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.“
I advocate we draw the line where people are harmed. In other cases it may not be as clear, but in this one it is. There is no real question whether a caste system harms people, and as a concept it is not compatible with humanist values.
US and state law (for the most part) prohibits this type of discrimination. That reflects the view of most--but not all--Americans that such discrimination is not tolerable.
I'm an upper caste male from India (now in Silicon Valley), and there is absolutely no redeeming quality to caste. It's abhorrent and barbarous. Thankfully, it's nowhere near as widespread as it used to be in India, and I can see it becoming a non-issue in the coming decades.
The line is drawn exactly where the law is. If a culture or tradition doesn't adhere to it, then it shouldn't be allowed. Either you live in a country and respect the law or you have to deal with the consequences - no exceptions. We should all be equal before the law and there shouldn't be any exceptions for voluntary actions of a group.
Culture and traditions do not supersede law. They are impediments to all kinds of progress, scientific, educational, social or otherwise, and that shouldn't be acceptable.
If it's been long-standing, of course it is. A tradition need not be wise, or good, or beyond criticizing.
There is also a rich double standard in the US. Crazy practices from non-white countries are tolerated by “woke” liberals.
Yet if you are from a white country you are expected to follow every American cultural norm and etiquette to the letter.
I see this in international cooperation. E.g work happening across many countries. Americans will often insist on making American sensibilities universal disregarding the that what may be regarded as rude in America is not necessarily rude or inappropriate elsewhere.
I see the same with American companies operating in my native Norway often insisting on practices that run counter to local culture and sensitivities. But somehow because we are white we are supposed to have the same values as Americans because Americans have racialized culture.
In a very literal way: https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa...
You can pretend like you gifted me this but in reality you didn't. I took it through my hard work. And you can try to stop me but I'll beat you, even though you have the advantage of having been born here. Because I'm better.
People "born into it" had a whole lot to say about policy, and provided you the opportunities to be here. You seized them. It should be a good deal for both sides, but to the extent that each tries to make it adversarial and zero-sum, the benefits of the deal evaporate for everyone.
Just playing, just playing.
People think they are gifting you, because they don't realize how irrelevant they are and how little control have in their lives, let alone the lives of others.
P.s. if we wanna talk about integration, Americans, for example, should watch themselves abroad.
They are absolutely the less capable of understanding what "this is not the way we do things" means.
I think expats anywhere should integrate. That doesn't mean to give up everything from your home culture, but it doesn't mean to form a walled enclave with little cultural interaction, either.
Travelers/tourists/etc, is different. I don't expect any integration-- just a basic effort at courtesy.
That's exactly what I was talking about.
I will talk about Americans simply because I know what they do when they live abroad in my country, for many reasons, one being they hang out in the same neighborhood I was born and raised.
Probably there are similar problems with people from my country somewhere, but let me tell you what I know first.
Here in Italy American tourists are less of a problem, they do silly things sometimes, but who doesn't in an mostly unknown country on the other side of the World?
As you said, the real problem come from expats, students for example, but also military personnel who usually form walled enclaves.
If you hang out in certain neighborhoods in Rome, it's very easy to spot the "Americans only" places. There are quite of few of them.
The reasoning is simple: they come here in Europe for the culture and the relaxed way of living (Barcelona is ranked very high among expats from US exactly for that reason) but they don't have the cultural tools to handle the lack of restrictions they have to face home.
Drinking at the age of 16 is quite normal in Europe, it is not in USA and more often than not Americans are the ones sh*tfaced outside bars and clubs or engaged in alcohol fueled scuffles.
One can argue that's what youngsters do, we are not used to that, but at young age (almost) everyone is forgivable.
Except when they kill police officers in the streets of course
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/world/europe/italy-police...
But there's also another cultural issue with them: they are used to be a ruling country, they don't accept to be questioned or put in their place or be simply asked to act as a reasoning person.
Consider that for a US citizen until not long ago Canada, Mexico and many cruises were passport free (but not the contrary), consider the fact that in Europe there are many US military bases, consider that police officers in Europe are not heavily armed and you end up with situations like this one
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/01/23/us-troops-vic...
When I was in LA my friends told me to avoid certain parts of the city because they were dangerous, "how much dangerous?" I asked, I come from Rome after all, I know how to handle myself, "you can get shot" they told me.
Turns out LA this year will top the 2009 for number of homicides and reach the staggering number of 300 homicides in a year.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-29/gangs-ho...
In Chicago on June 2020 there have been 18 homicides in 24 hours.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/8/21281998/chicago...
I don't know but I suppose that it is something that it is considered I won't say normal, but not far from something in USA they expect from a city like LA.
Maybe not 300 homicides in a year, but 200? Maybe yes.
In Rome, a bit smaller than LA, more or less the same size of Chicago, there were 12 homicides in the whole 2019.
In the entire Italy (60 million people) in 2019 homicides were "only" 276.
I couldn't believe it when I was staying there that dangerous really meant "Escape from New York" dangerous.
My point is it's easy to say to expat to "integrate" when you are living in a violent society and where police on the street is armed to the teeth enforcing God only knows what law.
It's much less easy to adapt to foreigners when they are the ones not integrating and bringing their violent culture at your doorstep.
Should they not be allowed to cook their own food? Speak their own language? Practice their own faith? Hold their own values?
This is xenophobic bullshit and has no place on a forum like this.
The more you watch it, the more it's people shooting each other over a bar fight or people killing themselves to get a promotion at work or competing in general over things that have no real connection with happiness.
That's why many don't care about it and spend their time with people more like them that share a common background.
Understanding each other is more important that following every single rule to "integrate" in a culture that have basically no historical background other than avoiding taxes in their homeland.
Mexicans, on the other hand, have been there for millennia.
EDIT: I'm sensing a lot of guilty conscience from the downvotes (always appreciated when it's about exposing atrocious ways of thinking) but this time it was simply explaining what the natural consequence of that sentence woul be: US would not exist.
And maybe all of us would be better off, who knows...
On the one hand, the caste system is one of those things that many non-Indian people seem to be willing to come out and condemn. Frankly, it seems awful to me, and fundamentally at odds with a lot of human and civic rights norms in America.
At the same time, however, it's a tradition from a society that is very different from the one in which I was raised. I don't feel like I'm educated enough to judge it thoroughly. See also: France, and the ongoing Dialogue with Muslim communities regarding headscarves.