A Dalit is an “untouchable” in India. As I was reading this article in the NY Times I kept thinking, kind of sounds like the gap between the wealthy and the poor here in America… and then this paragraph:
“Dalits still lag behind the rest of India, but they have experienced gains as the country’s economy has expanded. A recent analysis of government survey data by economists at the University of British Columbia found that the wage gap between other castes and Dalits has decreased to 21 percent, down from 36 percent in 1983, less than the gap between white male and black male workers in the United States. The education gap has been halved.”
I bolded the text to signify what stood out to me.
Read the full article here…http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/world/asia/indias-boom-creates-openings-for-untouchables.html?ref=world
notjustmythoughts.
notjustmythoughts 
What makes the link between Dalit and African Americans so much more common are the simple and very obvious facts. After living in South Asia for a while and being a person of color, I noticed the skin complexion of many of the Dalits. They were un-surprisingly very dark in complexion. Although, people in India are broken down more by class than color (opposite of the dynamic in the US), one’s color is still subject to oppression regardless of what region of the world one can be in. Is this the effect of colonialism? Or does this phonemenum predate the effects of British occupancy? If you pick up the paper and read the matrimonial sections, you can notice 90 percent of the ads start by equating beauty and fairness as appealling selling point. The people that held the dirtiest jobs I. India were virtually blue black in complexion. If the reality show “dirtiest jobs” were shown from India in America, it would most likely be shown on BET. The status of Dalits have changed somewhat over the years since it’s most unjust beginnings, but have people of color really come that far in the States? Inequality is still a fact globally and to get excited over a few bread crumbs tossed to peons (which is a word stilled used in India), can we really appreciate stories that falsely promote advancements in overtly stratified societies?
Hey ! I personally really like the logic and judgement of the actual article author. Fantastic to view such concepts talked about on the web. You definitely should encourage website visitor communication and chat. Keep up the excellent effort!