Jati and varNa are not same. They are actually opposites.
Ja means birth. Jati is that comes from birth. All people of a jAti are related by birth. They have 1 common ancestor somewhere. Its an inborn characteristics.
VarNa means paint. Its an external application. People adopt a profession to contribute to society and thats an external paint they wear. Unlike jAti thats inborn, varNa is something that people choose.
Bhagavad gita is not casteist by any yardstick of imagination. It does not talk of jAti. It talks of varNa.
In this sloka 4.13
chātur-varṇyaṁ (four varnas) mayā sṛiṣhṭaṁ (my creation) guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśhaḥ (by guna karma divisions)
tasya kartāram api māṁ (though i am the doer of this) viddhya (do understand) akartāram avyayam ( i am eternal non-doer).
Krishna says he creates 4 professions for all his creations including living and non-living by their guna and karma divisions. Though he creates them he is not responsible for their guna or karma, as he is eternal nondoer (just witnessing as sAksi).
In His creation, plants are primary food providers (vaizyas). Animals are service providers (ksatriyas). Humans are knowledge providers (brahmanas). Parasitic creatures are unskilled labor (zudras).
The four varnas in any group are those who seek and provide knowledge (brahmanas) to the society, who seek and provide service (ksatriyas), who seek and provide materials/goods (vaizyas), who seek and provide just instantaneous pleasure (zudras). Zudras seek their instantaneous pleasure just by offering their physical labor.
Human beings organize amongst them in these 4 ways. Some are knowledge providers (teachers, researchers, scientists etc), some are service providers (soldiers, doctors, etc), some are material providers (farmers, businessmen etc) and some are simply unskilled labor (most of us includng software engineers are zudras as their skill becomes outdated by AI and new paradigms).
How does a living being or human adopt a varNa..? It is based on the guna and Karma of the being.
For eg., a tiger has a certain guna and does certain karma. But when it got stuck in an Island, the guna of tiger changed and it started hunting small birds and reptiles and eventually evolved into cats The environment affected the karma and karma affected the gunas and gunas influenced the varNa or profession of that being.
The same thing happened to human beings.
A jAti may adopt a ksatriya profession in some part of the land . As a part of the jAti migrate to other lands, they may adopt vaizya or sudra profession. In some places they even adopt brahman profession. Based on their environment, their karma changes and based on karma, their gunas change and these lead to further change in themselves and their varNa.
Human beings lost hair when they started living under shelter. When they switched to agriculture from hunting, they lost some skills and gained some new skills changing their karma, guna and hence the varNa. The vaizyas who sought and provide food just by hunting, differentiated themselves into kshatriyas (service providers) as they were able to stock food/cattle/wealth with agriculture and have to provide security. To maintain their edge in new skills, they had to seek and provide knowledge and some became brahmanas.
Even in modern society, there are always knowledge providers, service providers, material/goods providers and those who provide labor. People adorn this external paint based on their environment and they develop new gunas evolving them in new forms and ways.
That's what Krishna says in Gita. He says karma (driven by environment) affects guna and these in turn affect varNa the profession. In modern terms, we call it evolution.
He just adds that all actions of beings are done by the being themselves. He is not the doer. He is an eternal non-doer (just remains a witness).
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