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Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

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Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#141

Post by ethanbond »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #89
ethanbond wrote: post #2

The large and vocal constituency activated against the bill is good evidence that in fact it is not already accounted for under existing civil rights law.

I don't think this is very good logic. I'm not South Asian, but I can understand not wanting to be subjected to the judgements of a majority who neither knows or cares about the nuances of my culture, yet has to judge me through the lens of that culture. The amount of times in these and other threads where people just try to explain the culture by simply analogizing to American history (X are the [Black|Mexican|Jewis…

Well the thing about American laws is that they apply to America and American culture. A pluralistic society like ours has no reason nor obligation to import (or even respect) ass-backwards concepts like caste.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#142

Post by innagadadavida »

TMWNN wrote: post #120
innagadadavida wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't care. I shouldn't care. I shouldn't have to know or care in the first place! Newsom vetoing the bill is on similar grounds - no one should care or talk about cast and certainly it should not be mentioned in any CA bill.

I know. I am going further, and stating that if South Asians are arguing *in the US* about the existence and extent of caste-based discrimination, and it's gotten to the point that a law was proposed and almost enacted, maybe we Americans should question whether we should have the arguers, as well as the arguments, in the US in the first place. I mean, you can say that the South Asian presence in the UK is because of…

> maybe we Americans

The tech industry in CA is basically Chinese and Indians. jFYI "You Americans" have no special rights and cannot do anything to disenfranchise. Free speech rights granted by the US constitution doesn't care if you are a citizen or not.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#143

Post by TMWNN »

innagadadavida wrote: post #142
TMWNN wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I am going further, and stating that if South Asians are arguing *in the US* about the existence and extent of caste-based discrimination, and it's gotten to the point that a law was proposed and almost enacted, maybe we Americans should question whether we should have the arguers, as well as the arguments, in the US in the first place. I mean, you can say that the South Asian presence in the UK is because of…

> maybe we Americans The tech industry in CA is basically Chinese and Indians. jFYI "You Americans" have no special rights and cannot do anything to disenfranchise. Free speech rights granted by the US constitution doesn't care if you are a citizen or not.

>jFYI "You Americans" have no special rights and cannot do anything to disenfranchise.

We Americans can certainly, should we choose to do so, reduce or even eliminate the entry of South Indians or any other nationality/ethnicity. That is not an American peculiarity, but that of any nation to protect its borders as it sees fit. It goes back as far as the concept of the Westphalian state, and really much further than that.

That some Americans deny or have forgotten that we have this right—no, obligation—does not mean that it does not exist.

If there is a real problem with caste-based discrimination among and between South Asians in the US, I am pretty sure (at least, I hope) that it is not being committed by the American-born among them.

>Free speech rights granted by the US constitution doesn't care if you are a citizen or not.

I am not talking about censorship.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#145

Post by huytersd »

ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote: post #91

Good. The West does not understand caste. Their only comparison is slavery which is completely irrelevant. The closest thing to caste in the West is class. This is the British social classification experiment all over again where they came to India, invented criminal tribes and martial races, and took the fluid jati/varna system and froze everything as part of law instead of letting society deal with its problems at…

Exactly, the west thinks applying everything they learnt from the civil rights movement applies here. Not even close. You can’t forget racism because the superficial differences are too stark. The caste system is a dying system and the strategies applied to fighting racism would only serve to prolong an archaic system that by definition can’t survive in a cosmopolitan world.

I don’t see anyone fighting for laws that prevent discrimination against former European serfs. You forget those differences and move on.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#146

Post by TMWNN »

innagadadavida wrote: post #142
TMWNN wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I am going further, and stating that if South Asians are arguing *in the US* about the existence and extent of caste-based discrimination, and it's gotten to the point that a law was proposed and almost enacted, maybe we Americans should question whether we should have the arguers, as well as the arguments, in the US in the first place. I mean, you can say that the South Asian presence in the UK is because of…

> maybe we Americans The tech industry in CA is basically Chinese and Indians. jFYI "You Americans" have no special rights and cannot do anything to disenfranchise. Free speech rights granted by the US constitution doesn't care if you are a citizen or not.

>The tech industry in CA is basically Chinese and Indians.

Funny that you should mention the Chinese. Although China is 91% Han, the Han are themselves very divided by language and regional origin/culture. The emergence of Taiwan added another division to the mix; as I understand it, there are significant tensions between the mainland and Taiwanese Chinese communities in the US. (It would be a surprise if there were none.)

That said, there are zero calls for a need in the US for legal protection of the mainland-born Chinese from Taiwanese, or vice versa.[1] They have (and certainly their children have), in the US, by and large moved beyond such divisions. Just as Catholic and Protestant Irish did so in the US and the rest of the Anglosphere outside the UK and Ireland. I bet that if everyone of South Asian ethnicity in the US were born and raised in the US, there would similarly be zero calls for this law that Newsom vetoed.

You mentioned the Indian dominance of the California tech sector. I know you intend that to be a veiled threat, but that to me says that unwary Americans unnecessarily imported caste divisions en masse in a place where such divisions did not previously exist (and there was and is no shortage of other, preexisting divisions). From this non-Indian, non-Chinese perspective, if (again, if) there is a real problem with caste-based discrimination in the US among South Asians, it seems like South Asians aren't doing as well as the Chinese in terms of assimilation.[2] Is this really the place you want to make a stand on?

[1] Maybe I've overlooked rampant blatant instances of discrimination. But I doubt it.

[2] Again, I am not differentiating between the alleged oppressors and alleged victims. As I have said, their dispute should never have occurred on American soil in the first place. It is not our business and not our concern.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#147

Post by olliej »

belltaco wrote: post #95
olliej wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we know the discrimination happens, and currently is not prevented by courts. The harm to businesses, is that say you own a business and don't want to serve people of the wrong caste, now you can't. That's very damaging to you as you want to be a bigot but you've lost that freedom.

You're making a lot of assertions with no sources across multiple comments. >Well we know the discrimination happens, and currently is not prevented by courts. How do 'we' know that? > The harm to businesses, is that say you own a business and don't want to serve people of the wrong caste, now you can't. That's very damaging to you as you want to be a bigot but you've lost that freedom. You're also losing business an…

> How do 'we' know that?

This particular law came about in response to a suit against Cisco iirc in which a significant problem was "is caste discrimination illegal" that led to the case being dismissed.

Or you could do a fairly quickly search on twitter or mastodon for many people talking about how they directly experienced caste based discrimination. A person I followed talked about how that discrimination occurred until they married a "higher" caste person and suddenly semi-regular questions about how they got to the US, how they could get their job, etc disappeared when they took their partner's name.

> You're also losing business and violating laws.

You're only violating laws if the discrimination is illegal. You aren't losing business as we're talking about people you're actively choosing to discriminate against, if anything you're being forced to accept more business, not less.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#148

Post by olliej »

belltaco wrote: post #109
olliej wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is that existing laws do not clearly do so: they aren't discriminating against gender, race, religion, politics, or any of the other examples Newsom pointed to. That this discrimination is occurring is not up for debate, it is objective fact, which demonstrates the existing laws are not sufficient.

Newsom pointed to ancestry, which covers caste perfectly because it's all about ancestry. > That this discrimination is occurring is not up for debate, it is objective fact Source for this so called objective fact? > which demonstrates the existing laws are not sufficient? Even it true it doesn't doesn't demonstrate that. There are strict laws against murder, theft, assault etc. and they happen quite frequently. The…

> Source for this so called objective fact?

This law came about after a case about caste discrimination against Cisco was dismissed. Or you can do some basic searches of twitter and mastodon for first hand accounts.

> Even it true it doesn't doesn't demonstrate that. There are strict laws against murder, theft, assault etc. and they happen quite frequently. The fact that they are occurring doesn't automatically mean existing laws are not sufficient. Is there any country in the world where crime has been totally eliminated by just passing a million laws?

What?

The whole point of this is that caste discrimination exists, and it happens, and it's not illegal. Pointing to things like murder, theft, etc is bizarre: all of those things are illegal, so when they happen the person responsible has broken the law. That's literally the point. Currently caste discrimination is not explicitly against the law, so your example would only ever be relevant if murder, theft, or assault were not already illegal.

Seriously, I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. It's also explicitly illegal to discriminate based on race and gender and that happens, but the victims can sue precisely because it is illegal.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#149

Post by eesmith »

huytersd wrote: post #145
ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote: post #91

Good. The West does not understand caste. Their only comparison is slavery which is completely irrelevant. The closest thing to caste in the West is class. This is the British social classification experiment all over again where they came to India, invented criminal tribes and martial races, and took the fluid jati/varna system and froze everything as part of law instead of letting society deal with its problems at…

Exactly, the west thinks applying everything they learnt from the civil rights movement applies here. Not even close. You can’t forget racism because the superficial differences are too stark. The caste system is a dying system and the strategies applied to fighting racism would only serve to prolong an archaic system that by definition can’t survive in a cosmopolitan world. I don’t see anyone fighting for laws that…

Religion is also a dying system[1][2], yet there are many laws to fight religious discrimination.

[1] "Why is religion suddenly declining?" - https://blog.oup.com/2020/12/why-is-religion-suddenly-declin...

[2] "Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/22/us-churches-...

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#150

Post by serial_dev »

belltaco wrote: post #125
TMWNN wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I am going further, and stating that if South Asians are arguing *in the US* about the existence and extent of caste-based discrimination, and it's gotten to the point that a law was proposed and almost enacted, maybe we Americans should question whether we should have the arguers, as well as the arguments, in the US in the first place. I mean, you can say that the South Asian presence in the UK is because of…

> maybe we Americans should question whether we should have the arguers, as well as the arguments, in the US in the first place That certainly doesn't sound blanket racist against an ethnicity of 1.5 billion people... Land of free speech indeed.

It may sound like that, but let's assume positive intentions.

This person might wanted to point out that the people who argue about the bill (which is certainly not 1.5B people), can't escape from and leave behind their mental prison of casteism, and they import a new form of racism into the US, which is not ideal.

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