Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

politico.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 324 posts

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

#91

Post by amluto »

KenArrari wrote: post #58
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #16

I'm legitimately confused about the strength of opposition to the measure. It seems like it should be a small, uncontroversial, update to protected categories. Are people opposing the term "caste" appearing in U.S. law? Is the concern that the law will cause other Americans to judge Indian/Nepalese/Sri Lankan communities? If anyone here can explain the emotional significance of the bill to someone who is not South As…

I do kind of get the argument that this creates a category of crime that only indians can be convicted (or even accused) of. At least, nobody is openly saying that they're opposing the law because they want to do caste discrimination but if someone wants to be taken seriously they need to give a good answer for how they'll be addressing it.

You could absolutely accuse or convict a non-Indian of caste discrimination. It might be unlikely, but not impossible. For example, I doubt most non-Indian Americans could competently discriminate on the basis of caste, but there is moderately compelling evidence that quite a few Californian companies do so.

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

#92

Post by mutant_glofish »

whimsicalism wrote: post #74
mutant_glofish wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sorry but your effort to conflate protected categories and aff am seems completely wrong to me.

To me, it seems that they are very closely related.

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

#93

Post by lannisterstark »

Imagine migrating to one of the more open nation-states and bringing your backward-ass practice there.

Even in this very thread there are people going "But maybe it's nuanced!" No. It's not. Imagine thinking that someone having to flick water at you to purify you just because you got touched by an untouchable is a nuanced issue and not blatant idiocy.

(Before any of you start Reeeing, I'm Indian).

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

#94

Post by whats_a_quasar »

zozbot234 wrote: post #50
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, caste has no direct analog in U.S. or European culture. It isn't shocking that a staffer in the California state government would need to be educated about an issue, the first time it's become a political issue in the U.S.

> caste has no direct analog in U.S. or European culture Wait, what? Systemic racism in what's now the U.S. was literally codified as a caste system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta And we're still dealing with the legacy of that, many centuries since.

Interesting, thanks for the link! I had a vague sense that Central / South America had a more complicated understanding of race than the white/black dichotomy, and this is helpful.

I think that Americans are very familiar with systematic discrimination based on race or skin color. The distinction that I think confuses people not from SE Asia is that caste discrimination is between different classes of people who appear to be the same race and ethnicity from the outside.

Perhaps discrimination against Irish and Italian immigrants would be analogous, though that faded so long ago that even my Irish NY grandparents knew that it happened but just kinda thought it was funny.

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

#95

Post by ramraj07 »

eklavya wrote: post #71
ramraj07 wrote: post #43

If I have to count the number of times someone senior to me or some colleague has judged me or severed ties with me because of my caste, it will be 8-10. All in the United States. If anything it’s far worse here than when I grew up in India. I’m not of the “lowest caste” as it’s perceived but by looks I am often mistaken to be a Brahmin, one of the highest ones. So my fellow Brahmins get offended when I’m not strictl…

I am sorry you have had such a bad luck with your company. All the education in the world can't teach basic human decency. You can probably take some solace in the fact that I have not seen any such behaviour in the Indian tech scene so far. Maybe give it a shot and come here (trade a different set of problems). It must be an absolutely horrible of a mix in the US for this to be 8:10.

Half of it came during my academic phase though!

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

#96

Post by grayhatter »

tfsh wrote: post #68
grayhatter wrote: post #13

As someone completely ignorant in this cultural phenomenon, given it seems to be hurting some people what are the arguments for not banning it as discrimination? (I was hoping to read at least one in the article, but perhaps I'm blind?)

The caste system dates back to the Vedic period (around ~1500 BC), it's engrained into the fabric of indian society and through the years this hasn't really diminished. For instance the British reinforced the notion of the Caste system, and so did Gandhi, for many it's not seen as something that should be stamped out, but a way of organising a social hierarchy. Modern Indian politics is controlled by the elite - all…

Yeah, I understood that argument. I don't want people who I feel contempt for to have any human rights, was a pretty obvious argument against it. But I didn't think I needed to specify that I was only interested in arguments against it that are both sane and ethical.

I don't want to give up my monopoly on power and privilege is what I was assuming it was. I was asking if there's some other aspect or argument that I'm missing that's not a toxic bigoted fallacy?

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

#97

Post by tremon »

margalabargala wrote: post #47
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #16

I'm legitimately confused about the strength of opposition to the measure. It seems like it should be a small, uncontroversial, update to protected categories. Are people opposing the term "caste" appearing in U.S. law? Is the concern that the law will cause other Americans to judge Indian/Nepalese/Sri Lankan communities? If anyone here can explain the emotional significance of the bill to someone who is not South As…

What's mentioned in the article is that as caste is a primarily SE Asian phenomenon, this is a bill that targets SE Asians. People tend not to like being singled out on the basis of their race. Mentioned in the article was one person who tried to address this by banning discrimination "on the basis of ancestry, including caste" which seems to me to be a completely reasonable adjustment.

Maybe caste discrimination in the US is primarily a SE-Asian phenomenon, but there's plenty examples of caste systems in African nations as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_systems_in_Africa?useski...

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

#98

Post by mkoubaa »

dudus wrote: post #18

When the subject came up at Google I didn't know much to contribute to the discussion. I noticed white people were against it while Indians had a more nuanced approach. But I always thought the way the predominant Indian leadership, Sundar included, completely ignored the matter was weird. That spoke louder than anything else they could have said.

I'd be interested to know more about this

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

#99

Post by lannisterstark »

eklavya wrote: post #71
ramraj07 wrote: post #43

If I have to count the number of times someone senior to me or some colleague has judged me or severed ties with me because of my caste, it will be 8-10. All in the United States. If anything it’s far worse here than when I grew up in India. I’m not of the “lowest caste” as it’s perceived but by looks I am often mistaken to be a Brahmin, one of the highest ones. So my fellow Brahmins get offended when I’m not strictl…

I am sorry you have had such a bad luck with your company. All the education in the world can't teach basic human decency. You can probably take some solace in the fact that I have not seen any such behaviour in the Indian tech scene so far. Maybe give it a shot and come here (trade a different set of problems). It must be an absolutely horrible of a mix in the US for this to be 8:10.

> It must be an absolutely horrible of a mix in the US for this to be 8:10.

The US is quite large so this is a YMMV thing. I solve this issue by just not associating very much with my ex-countrymen. I get enough of them when I go to visit my parents, I don't need to constantly mingle with more Indians. I have a solid set of diverse friends (one or two are Indian).

It helps that in my workplace I tend not to think of anyone as a 'friend' and just keep my interactions professional.

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

#100

Post by ramraj07 »

whatsup7123 wrote: post #84
ramraj07 wrote: post #43

If I have to count the number of times someone senior to me or some colleague has judged me or severed ties with me because of my caste, it will be 8-10. All in the United States. If anything it’s far worse here than when I grew up in India. I’m not of the “lowest caste” as it’s perceived but by looks I am often mistaken to be a Brahmin, one of the highest ones. So my fellow Brahmins get offended when I’m not strictl…

The new law that is being passed will not solve your personal issues with socializing. The law is designed to protect you from unfair discrimination by your employer, i.e. being fired due to your caste.

Analogy here would be, I’m saying I almost got robbed, robbery is real. You’re coming and saying, “this new law won’t solve your issue, it’s for actual robbery only.”
Post reply on HN