Subramanian Shankar argues that America is casteist. Erika
"It’s significant that the great mid-20th-century Indian reformer B. R.
Ambedkar called not for learning to 'live together as brothers and
sisters,' as Martin Luther King Jr. did, but for the very 'annihilation
of caste.'
"Caste, in other words, is societal difference made
timeless, inevitable and cureless. Caste says to its subjects, 'You all
are different and unequal and fated to remain so.'
"Neither race
nor class nor race and class combined can so efficiently encapsulate the
kind of of social hierarchy, prejudice and inequality that marginalized
Americans experience."
