caste / casteism
What to know
Caste is an artificial hierarchical social system in which things like social status, perception of beauty or intelligence, access to resources, and accepted social or romantic interactions are determined by the social group someone is born into. Casteism refers to the systemic marginalization — segregation, stigmatization, and more — that arises from the hierarchies set in place by the caste system, determined by racist, colorist, and classist criteria.
Caste systems historically have been associated with Hindu societies. The four varnas, or social classes, of Hindu societies are thought to have originated from a hymn in the Rig Veda. One verse in the hymn describes how the varnas were derived from differing locations on Purusha’s, or the “supreme being’s,” body, with the Brahmin (priest) class appearing from the head and the Shudra (labor) class from the feet.
In the US, several states and cities have recently moved to ban caste discrimination, which some South Asian diaspora communities say is prevalent in the US and leads to discrimination in housing, employment, education, and other areas. In February 2023, Seattle became the first major non-South Asian city to explicitly ban caste discrimination; California proposed a bill that would add caste as a protected category in anti-discrimination laws, though some South Asian groups opposed the bill, and the governor ultimately vetoed it. Major companies and platforms such as Facebook and Apple have adopted policies against casteism as well; the tech sector in particular employs a large population of highly skilled workers from India, and some workers have alleged that casteism runs rampant in the industry.
Civil rights authors and activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and author Isabel Wilkerson have used the term casteism to describe the race-based hierarchy present in the US. Wilkerson has argued that the term is better suited than “racism” to describe the conditions Black people and other people of color face in America. Caste, she says, is “more precise [than race]; it is more comprehensive, and it gets at the underlying infrastructure that often we cannot see, but that is there undergirding much of the inequality and injustices and disparities that we live within this country.” Because this use of the term may not be familiar to all audiences, explaining the arguments in favor of its application in this context is useful for clarity.
If using the term to describe the historical system, it may be helpful to note the difference between its legal and practical statuses. For instance, while the caste system was constitutionally abolished in India in 1950, that does not match the lived realities of people who experience its social, professional, and material consequences today, in India and elsewhere.
Additional resources
- What is India’s caste system? Is it contentious in U.S.? (Associated Press)
- It’s More Than Racism: Isabel Wilkerson Explains America’s ‘Caste’ System (NPR)
- Does America Have a Caste System? (The Conversation)
Summary
Caste is an artificial hierarchical social system in which things like social status, perception of beauty or intelligence, access to resources, and accepted social or romantic interactions are determined by the social group someone is born into. Casteism refers to the systemic marginalization — segregation, stigmatization, and more — that arises from the hierarchies set in place by the caste system, determined by racist, colorist, and classist criteria. Some civil rights activists have used the term casteism to describe the race-based hierarchy present in the US. Because this use of the term may not be familiar to all audiences, explaining the arguments in favor of its application in this context is useful for clarity.