[bluGill]

Maybe. The slave class in the US was in theory gone by 1870 (I don't care to look up the end of the civil war. 150 years latter a lot of people still know who is a descendant of that class. Somehow, something, fueled that through several generations.

[avisser]

I'm not sure how it fits in, but it's interesting that the first Black American president was not a descendant of that class.

[mywittyname]

Yeah, but it was pretty obvious who were the former slaves. There was no "nuance" about it.

When the tell-tale signs aren't physical, but small, subtle difference, they are easier to erase. You can change your name, religion, what you eat, and how you talk. So if those are the signs of your ancestors' caste, they probably won't last for generations in the west unless there's a conscious effort to preserve those distinctions.

[sulam]

One thing people clearly step around discussing is that the darkness of your skin is literally one of the main UC signifiers. Lighter skinned individuals are assumed to be UC.

So yes, this is a lot like racism in America.

[currymj]

a lot of this was legally enforced until the 1970s. see e.g. the Racial Integrity Act in Virginia for one example. the state had a legally-codified definition of race ("one-drop rule") and put a lot of bureaucratic effort into keeping records of everyone's race, so that they could enforce segregation and bans on interracial marriage.

if Reconstruction had succeeded and Jim Crow had never happened, who knows what the salience of this would be today?

[bluGill]

Not everywhere though. Northern states didn't have nearly as much, but even in middle of nowhere small towns where no blacks even live people still know about it.