An effort to ban caste discrimination in California has touched a nerve

This is not an argument I recall people making much in other ban discussions across the political spectrum such as (a) banning discrimination on sexuality, (b) banning abortions, (c) banning guns, (d) banning censorship, so I'm very skeptical without historical examples? Generally those have been hotly-fought battles where the "no action" course would not have resulted in it simply going away - see also the 100 years after the civil war and racial discrimination in the US persisting - so the claim of "ignore it and it'll be ok real soon now, promise" doesn't appear to have much merit.

Some idiot ages ago (lets call them M) thought it was a good idea to build a system where people could bake in a heirarchy that dictated and guard railed what one could do, be and have. M's f****ery was well recognized by BR Ambedkar(one of the founding fathers of the Constitution) who baked into the constitution that this was basically not just illegal but also we needed tons of affirmative action just to repair the damage. And it has not gone away.

If someone(like I mistakenly did once) talks about equality to push back against reservation, they are missing the point. You have the luxury to not see, nigh rail, against what is never wrought on you. You may thus have the luxury to not see caste.

You have to understand one thing. What ever the vedas, puranas and upanishads are or have , they have nothing[2] (atleast nothing remotely consistent) on the the modern form of jurisprudence present in most democracies i.e. no one who wrote those things seemed to care or understand anything about the idea of Equality, Liberty and Fraternity before the law.

So if you hear someone say about indian culture was much more "advanced" socio-economically ages ago. Ask for context, Ask them about M[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manusmriti [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manusmriti#Chronology

And what was the nuance of the Indian approach you saw? E.g. you can say "racism is bad and racial discrimination in employment and housing and services should be illegal" and you don't really need a whole lot of nuance. Is there something about Indian caste discrimination that requires nuance here, in the setting of the US?

Note, I support the idea of adding castes to common discrimination clauses. That is incidental to the issue of codification, which I am interested in.

It's important to note that the civil rights department voluntarily dismissed its case against both the supervisors and court filings show very little evidence to support the discrimination case.

The truth is, there are definitely some folks who discriminate, both here and in India. Growing up as an adult in an small India city (I'd say fairly Urban area), I can't remember an instance where someone asked me what my caste was or discussed about caste until the affirmative action phase came up (in India, the government enables people of certain castes, irrespective of their economic status, by providing them with easier access to top educational institutions, federal and state government employee roles, and sometimes even promotions). Some folks were salty about the fact that one of their fellow classmates got into a better institution/position than themselves despite scoring much less than them. That was pretty much it. (My personal take is that after 75 years of Indian independence and enforcing reservations on the basis of caste, it's time to move on to a criteria that's based on the family's economic status)

Of course, things are different in rural India. We often see instances of discrimination on the basis of caste, sometime with violent endings. And as immigrating to US becomes more and more common, you'll see people from all over India, with different backgrounds, move here. Some are casteist, some are misogynist, and some are racist - just like any other group.

My personal take has always been to stay away from folks who bring up the topic of caste, religion, race or language. That's just me, and I'd say I am slowly becoming the minority.