[medler]

That NPR story was great, thanks. The transcript is definitely worth reading for anyone curious about this.

In a nutshell, people can sometimes tell by your last name, and if they can’t, they will ask you questions about your background, such as what town and/or neighborhood your family is from, until they figure it out.

In one example in the story, a guy is outed as a Dalit by a coworker who knew him from college.

[hef19898]

Outing a co-worker is pretty mean. And asking all kinda of private background questions in order to judge someone's social standing and treat them accordingly is intrusive and bigotted. As usual, racists are more often than not mean bigots.

It is somewhat different if you grew up in the caste system, and the discriminatory behaviour was just ingrained. If you start falling back to that based on, e.g., surname it's hard to avoid. Actively seeking information you can use to treat people like shit is a different level all together!

[ryandrake]

> And asking all kinda of private background questions in order to judge someone's social standing and treat them accordingly is intrusive and bigotted.

This also happens in the west and it's not caste-related. Go to a suburban barbecue or something, and observe: people will ask what you do for a living, which neighborhood you live in, how long have you been living here, where did you originally come from, and so on. Often they are doing this kind of small talk just so they can figure out where you are on the social totem pole.

[mmcnl]

I often ask these questions as well, and mostly it's just to find something common, doesn't have anything to do with the social totem pole.

[hef19898]

Sure, small talk is fine. Only that under the Indian caste system the consequences, and intentions, are much more sinister and severe.