Affirmative Action in India and the United States
By Ashwin Deshpande. 2005
I. The Problem: Caste in India and race in the USA are often compared for their institutional similarities, and also because these categories form the social basis on which the affirmative action program in the two countries is based. While disadvantage and discrimination produce similar outcomes for certain groups within casteor race-divided societies, it is important to understand the differences between the two systems. If race is a system of ascriptive or color-based disparities, caste can be called a system non-ascriptive or non-color based disparities. (For a detailed discussion of the lack of a clear link between skin color and caste, see Deshpande and Darity, 2003). The caste system is prevalent primarily in the Indian subcontinent, but there are several other examples of noncolor-based disparities in large parts of Asia, Africa and Europe.
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Citations in the corpus
- Religion, social class, and entrepreneurial choice (2013, background): “A fundamental difference between race or ethnicity based and caste-based identities is that caste does not depend on the color of the skin (Deshpande, 2005).”
- Does Affirmative Action Work? Caste, Gender, College Quality, and Academic Success in India (2016, background): “, Darity, Deshpande, and Weisskopf (2011), who draw parallels between the Indian and U.S. cases, and evaluate how affirmative action programs might affect admission prospects for potential beneficiaries in the two societies. These authors also provide reference to the earlier literature. (For resear”