Jason Y writes:
Actually caste systems exist in other parts of the world, including the US. If you don’t have the money to live in at least a decent middle class neighborhood like my brother lives in, then tough luck !!!
No, nobody in the US is rubbing it in, calling lower castes trashy people. Instead, it’s just a subliminal message thing, assuming the middle class ever comes into contact with the lower class which is rare.
All or almost all countries have class systems. You simply cannot get away from it. And by the way, this country Jason is defending here, India, not only has one of the worst social systems on Earth called caste, but it also has one of the greediest and most viciously classist systems on Earth. Indians are 10 times more classist than Americans.
Jason, although caste does have some correlates in some other societies who have equally vile systems, in general, you cannot compare caste with any other system on Earth. Caste is placed you at birth like race, and there is no escape. Economic class theoretically is a result of decisions someone has made in life, and hence in a lot of ways, the classes made their own bed. Yes, there are places with zero social mobility, but that’s not common in the West.
Poor people were not born poor! They were not born with a poor label with no way to climb out of it no matter how hard they try.
I live in a city full of low income and poor Hispanic people. Before that, I lived in a city full of low income and poor White people. Trust me, almost no one treated anyone poorly due to class. In both places, everyone of all classes was more or less treated equally in the public space. This was true in both White and Hispanic towns. Yes, there is class in the US, but it is somewhat invisible and it’s often hard to find it. I have a low income, but I almost never hear anything about it. A few rightwing shits on the Net attack me over it, but they’re not in Meatspace. No one in Meatspace ever treats me like crap for having a low income. It doesn’t happen.
Now for Jason or these malignant Hindutvas to compare caste to class systems all over the world is just flat out wrong. Class systems are a step up from caste systems, let’s face it. At one time, the world was much more heavily caste-based than it is now. Many ancient societies were caste-based. It was almost normal. Same for most ancient religions – also caste-based. Hinduism has caste because it is a throwback to a pre-Abrahamic caste-based world. Hinduism is literally stuck about 3,000 years back in time. And they love it that way!
One more thing I would like to point out is that what Jason always does is typical of what can be called the Regressive Left. I dislike that word, but in this case, it makes sense. According to the Regressive Left, we Whites and Westerners can’t criticize any other culture on Earth because of muh White racism, muh Western superiority, muh White Supremacism, etc.
Every time we in the West or anywhere else in the civilized world criticize any of these primitive, backwards, barbaric, savage or uncivilized cultures and peoples, Regressive Leftists like Jason stand up and yell that we have no right to criticize them because White people do it too, or Westerners do it too. This mindset is unbelievably illiberal because the Regressive Left ends up defending the most utterly barbaric and backwards cultures and peoples on Earth. The Left in other words is defending the worst people on Earth.
What makes it worse is that with cultural relativism, cultural equivalence and insane antiracism, the Cultural Left ends up defending the most reactionary, savage and brutal crap that goes against everything that the Left and they themselves stand for. All because if we allow Westerners and Whites to criticize backwards or barbaric non-Whites, that’s muh White racism and muh Western superiority, so it needs to be shot down. So the worst cultures and the worst people on Earth get off scot-free or I suppose get a pat on the back by the Cultural Left in the name of some crazy antiracist ideal. When antiracism demands that I defend or support the worst people and cultures on Earth, I am off this antiracism train. I will move over to the Right and call myself nonracist instead. Antiracism has become sheer poison.