Noëlle the 8-Bit🏳️🌈🎄
TIL about the Cagots, a group of people in France and Spain who experienced systemic hatred and discrimination because... they were Cagots.
They weren't any different from the other people living near them - same skin and hair color, same language, same religion, etc. - but if you were born to a Cagot family, you were a Cagot, and the rest of the people hated and shunned you. And nobody nowadays knows why; the origins of the discrimination have been lost to time.
@noelle This happens a lot in many cultures.
Cagots are similar to Japanese burakumin, Korean baekjeong, and India's dalits (often doing work considered "unclean").
In the case of the burakumin and dalits, they *still* face discrimination despite government protection. They differ in no way from their neighbours in language, but are still ostracised.
Chinese tankas (although they're possibly a separate ethnic group, no one knows where they come from) are also outcasts who live on boats.
@noelle (specifically in the case of the Tankas, it's known they come from China, but it's not exactly known what ethnic group they come from; the leading theory as far as I know is that they were the original inhabitants of Guandong before the Han Chinese displaced them)