Holup

Caste system isn’t based on skin colour

The caste system is not based on skin color. That was a misreading of ancient Indian texts by colonizers in the 1800s. There are darker skinned people of an upper caste background in South India and vice versa in North India.

It is based purely on pedigree / who you are born to.

The caste system is medieval feudalistic bullshit that needs to be eradicated in all forms from every society.

"The British class system is so complex, so riddled with microscopic nuances and unspoken rules, that it functions essentially as a caste system. It is not about how much money you have; it is about an intricate tribal code of accent, vocabulary, and behavior that is almost impossible to learn later in life."

Anthropolgist Kate Fox: Watching the English

"Class is a skin on the back of caste... In England, the class system is so rigid, so tied to ancestry, accent, and birth, that it functions essentially as a caste system"

Isabel Wilkerson: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent

"Nevertheless, the essential point about the English class-system is that it is not entirely explicable in terms of money. Roughly speaking it is a money-stratification, but it is also interpenetrated by a sort of shadowy caste-system; rather like a jerrybuilt modern bungalow haunted by medieval ghosts."

George Orwell: The Road to Wigan Pier.

Colourism is different from caste. We're not Hindu, so we don't have castes, but I was told as a child how it was a shame that I and my oldest sister got darker skin, not nice light skin like our other two sisters. Boomer generation in my family still says things like, "Look at white things when pregnant so you have a white baby."

They love the idea of one of their kids marrying a white person, but hate the idea of them marrying a black person.

*Colorism

Sidenote: whitewashing comes from lime washing houses.

The meaning is: Whitewashing is the act of minimizing or covering up vices, crimes or scandals, or of exonerating the guilty by means of a perfunctory investigation or biased presentation of data with the intention to improve someone's reputation.

I feel that annoyance. For example when people call middle-easterners "brown," happens even on lemmy, but I think it's used as more of a rhetoric device meaning "non-european" here so it's not as bad.

That you've noticed.

Whether conscious or not is up for debate but race is often used in movies around the world to show the contrast between good/attractive/wealthy (white) vs bad/ugly/poor (dark skinned) characters. Even within the same country, main characters are white and tall while servants and background characters are darker and shorter.

I know it's not even about local populations in the US because a lot of immigrants in LA specifically are light-skinned but those actors usually end up playing white characters more often.

In Asia preference toward lighter skin tone existed before race idea introduced. Basically peasants working outside got tanned vs nobles staying indoors, it was class-based discrimination. It's by no means pretty back then and later meld with western racism and got messier

Yash, who plays Ravana, and Sai Pallavi, who plays Sita, are both South Indian and not typically considered fair skinned. Sai has particularly spoken out against colorism in Indian film industries.

With our Racism combined, I am Almost Appropriate!

Not the female actors.

I haven’t unlocked the Tamil in Skyrim yet. Is there like a hidden side quest I missed?

(I’m new and didn’t know Tamil is a real world thing but it sounds like a race inSkyrim 🙂)

How so?

For non Indian films, yeah, stereotype. For Indian films, it is racism (as in not the obsolete concept of race, but of judging based on physical characteristics)