casteism

American  

[kast-iz-uhm] / ˈkæstˌɪz əm /

noun

1. discrimination or hereditary social distinction based on caste, especially discrimination against those of lower caste.

2. any rigid hereditary system of social stratification similar to the system of castes found in India.

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Example Sentences

Popular culture from Tamil Nadu, the southern state where “Annapoorani” was made, has routinely taken aim at casteism for nearly a hundred years.

From New York Times

Angana Chatterji, a scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, said that caste discrimination has a "pernicious hold" that impacts South Asian communities in the United States and that the California bill "recognized the basic and fundamental right to equality for all who are targets of casteism."

From Reuters

During the summer of anti–police brutality protests spurred by George Floyd’s murder, Americans newly introduced to sociopolitical concepts like systemic racism and mutual aid likewise got their first glimpses of casteism.

From Slate

In August of that year, Pulitzer-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson published the acclaimed book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents, which compared the U.S.’s history of racism to India’s more vicious forms of casteism; despite some criticism from lower-caste scholars, the book was a bestseller and has inspired an upcoming Ava DuVernay film.

From Slate

In the years since, caste has only entered the public consciousness more in America: There have been allegations of casteist workplace environments fostered by Silicon Valley’s South Asian workers and executives, emerging scholarship on casteism’s worldwide presence, anti-caste-discrimination policies adopted at colleges like the University of Michigan and Rutgers, a successful Seattle City Council ordinance to ban casteist discrimination, and even an appearance in the 2024 GOP primary, with the Ron DeSantis campaign singling out Vivek Ramaswamy’s high-caste background as a potential attack line.

From Slate