Caste Deserves a Seat at the Psychology Research Table

Discrimination on the basis of caste, a descent-based identity marked by handed-down ways of life and custom-based social rules, burdens the daily life of millions of marginalized citizens in South Asia and its diaspora. Yet, this type of discrimination has received little focus in psychology, possibly because of psychology’s over-focus on US contexts, at the expense of contexts in places like South Asia. In this paper, we examine how psychological frameworks designed to explain intergroup relations have been influenced by the history of race in the United States. Frameworks of intergroup phenomena can benefit from centering a construct that is shaped by a distinct historical context and manifests as a covert characteristic, like caste. Unlike forms of racial bias that are considered to be characterized by inner conflict, bias against disadvantaged caste groups can be both uncensored and overt. We compare and contrast the perception, categorisations, legal restrictions, and the nature of bias of race and caste-based discrimination, and argue that equating caste in South Asia with descent-based identities in North America could hinder efforts to combat intergroup discrimination in other parts of the world, especially when we use the causes of bias to develop effective prejudice-reducing strategies.