[tomcam]

Easy for me to say, but if I were you, assuming you’re in the USA, I’d own the hell out of it. To be ashamed of it here is to give power needlessly to whole populations who do not own you. And the States love an underdog.

This is the country where “Yankee Doodle” started out as an anti-American insult by the Brits and ended up being one of the nation’s favorite songs. The nation that used the N-word seriously until around 1965, then by 1975 it had been completely co-opted by people like Richard Prior, and later hip-hop artists. Just so you know, I am married to someone whose parents forbade her to go out with me because of my race. Before I married her another girlfriend stopped dating me because I wasn’t black. Before that, another girlfriend’s parents tried to stop her relationship with me because I wasn’t Jewish. Now that I have a passel of mixed-race kids... guess who makes endless racial jokes? All of us. It drives our friends crazy.

I’d have a DALIT license plate. I’d have a line of DALIT T-shirts. I’d shove it right in people’s faces for the sheer enjoyment of it. I would totally kill it with the DALIT merch.

My heart goes out to you, and my best to you and yours. What a nightmare.

[dnautics]

I have seen a DALIT license plate in the bay area. It was on an Audi A4, I think. Anyways a luxury car.

[naruvimama]

I can with fair certainity say that he/she may have earned the wealth to afford one by promoting caste based christian evangelism or politics.

Caste based conflicts are the highest among the Christians, because the church was way too successful in exploiting social divisions, just like they did elsewhere in the world like Rwanda.

Caste is a poisson, but when it is bread and butter for some people they would like nothing better than to keep it alive.

[sameerds]

This has been tried in India many times. The trouble is that it has always been done with the intention to polarize people for political gains. It completely skews the conversation, and most people automatically steer clear of anyone flaunting their "social identity" (not necessarily caste) like that.

EDIT: Replaced "origin" with "social identity", which seems like a better fit.

[james412]

This is one of those replies that rekindles my faith in the always double-edged HN spirit for another few months :) "Dalit and proud" could literally be the baseball cap powered cultural revolution India needs to be swept up by, assuming it didn't lead to more civil unrest along the lines of cow vigilantism

[twic]

I'm thinking DALIT STRONG T-shirts.