information:extraction, structural:summarization, information:filtering
United States

In the opinion of W. Lloyd Warner, discrimination in the Southern United States in the 1930s against Blacks was similar to Indian castes in such features as residential segregation and marriage restrictions. In her 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, journalist Isabel Wilkerson used caste as an analogy to understand racial discrimination in the United States.

Gerald D. Berreman contrasted the differences between discrimination in the United States and India. In India, there are complex religious features which make up the system, whereas in the United States race and color are the basis for differentiation. The caste systems in India and the United States have higher groups which desire to retain their positions for themselves and thus perpetuate the two systems.

The process of creating a homogenized society by social engineering in both India and the Southern US has created other institutions that have made class distinctions among different groups evident. Anthropologist James C. Scott elaborates on how "global capitalism is perhaps the most powerful force for homogenization, whereas the state may be the defender of local difference and variety in some instances". The caste system, a relic of feudalistic economic systems, emphasizes differences between socio-economic classes that are obviated by openly free market capitalistic economic systems, which reward individual initiative, enterprise, merit, and thrift, thereby creating a path for social mobility. When the feudalistic slave economy of the southern United States was dismantled, Jim Crow laws and acts of domestic terrorism committed by white supremacists prevented many industrious African Americans from participating in the formal economy and achieving economic success on parity with their white peers, or destroying that economic success in instances where it was achieved, such as Black Wall Street, with only rare but commonly touted exceptions to lasting personal success such as Maggie Walker, Annie Malone, and Madame C.J. Walker. Parts of the United States are sometimes divided by race and class status despite the national narrative of integration.

A survey on caste discrimination conducted by Equality Labs found 67% of Indian Dalits living in the US reporting that they faced caste-based harassment at the workplace, and 27% reporting verbal or physical assault based on their caste. However, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study in 2021 criticizes Equality Labs findings and methodology noting Equality Labs study "relied on a nonrepresentative snowball sampling method to recruit respondents. Furthermore, respondents who did not disclose a caste identity were dropped from the data set. Therefore, it is likely that the sample does not fully represent the South Asian American population and could skew in favor of those who have strong views about caste. While the existence of caste discrimination in India is incontrovertible, its precise extent and intensity in the United States can be contested".

In 2023, Seattle became the first city in the United States to ban discrimination based on caste.