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Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

politico.com

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

#101

Post by clumsysmurf »

jstarfish wrote: post #81
huytersd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who even knows someone’s caste in the US. As an Indian living in the US for 20 years, I have never once even heard it come up in any conversation even in passing. How would you even tell? I grew up in India and I can’t tell.

Not Indian, but from observation in America, Indians get weirdly interested in specific information about the other party's hometown and family when making workplace introductions. It only happens between Indians and the same questions have never been asked of me. I assume this is how all the caste stuff surfaces.

During an interview, my team lead was asking the interviewee strange questions. I thought they were benign... Afterwards, she plainly stated she was trying to find out what caste he was from. I was ignorant, thinking this is like, are you from the east coast, west coast, etc. My biggest mistake was not going to HR. I later suspected if this was going on, I was probably going to receive the same treatment sooner or later. Then it happened, and I left the company.

You don't have to be from Southeast Asia to get caught up in this stuff.

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

#102

Post by btilly »

singlow wrote: post #47
olliej wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the many documented examples of caste discrimination who have been unable to do anything because caste discrimination is legal?

I think he means it would be better proof if you simply gave an example case which was dismissed because a Judge ruled that it didn't qualify as a civil rights violation.

That isn't how it works. The issue is that cases are not brought because it is hard to prove it illegal.

https://www.equalitylabs.org/castesurvey documents that 2/3 of Dalits in the USA report being mistreated at work. I'm only aware of one lawsuit about it. That was the CISCO case. No federal agencies got involved because it does not fall into race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information. Therefore discriminating by caste is legal under federal law.

California may be a different story. The case against CISCO is the only one ever brought. You can read about it at https://hulr.org/spring-2021/caste-in-cisco-understanding-ca....

Remember. Only case ever brought, when surveys indicate that 2/3 of Dalits are discriminated against on the job in the USA. And it is definitely legal under federal law.

In the absence of any case, ever, saying that it is illegal to discriminate on caste in the USA, it is almost certainly generally legal.

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

#104

Post by AnimalMuppet »

theogravity wrote: post #5

> “not only target and racially profile South Asian Californians, but will put other California residents and businesses at risk and jeopardize our state’s innovative edge.” How? Because south asians can't be caste-ist against others now?

Look, I'm really not in favor of the caste system. People are people; they are not the slot they got stuffed in by the system in the old country. But...

A lot of whites got really frustrated by White Fragility. The claim that all whites are inherently racist was offensive (with some good reason). Well, isn't this kind of the same? This is at least being read as "all Indians are caste-ist".

That's for the "target" part, and maybe the "racially profile" part. The rest is just hyperventilating.

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

#106

Post by belltaco »

addicted wrote: post #70
huytersd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who even knows someone’s caste in the US. As an Indian living in the US for 20 years, I have never once even heard it come up in any conversation even in passing. How would you even tell? I grew up in India and I can’t tell.

You have to be upper caste to not have to think about caste. That being said, I’ve seen very little evidence of this as well. Which makes it even more perplexing why groups would oppose the addition of caste among the list of factors on which someone can be discriminated. I do think Newsom is right in that it’s covered under current ancestry laws (proponents point to a case in NY decades ago when ancestry wasn’t incl…

I am not upper caste and I don't think about caste. Nor does any of my friends or family ever talk or mention someone's caste except rarely in very limited circumstances about older parents in India caring about their children's potential spouses' castes. And even that is dying out fast with society liberalizing extremely fast and the generational turnover.

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

#107

Post by belltaco »

ribosometronome wrote: post #60
silenced_trope wrote: post #16

I agree with Newsom, this is covered already. > The veto dealt a blow to state Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward), a first-term lawmaker who shepherded one of the more controversial bills of the session through the Legislature. It's like when a new VP joins the company you work for and suddenly there's a useless project of some kind. A new initiative or re-org that they are spearheading to justify their position/salary. I…

Would you use the same logic to argue in favor of California updating it's law to remove listing race, sex, color, and ancestry from the list of explicitly defined prohibitions? The argument in the case of caste is that it's already covered by way of the law presently prohibiting discrimination based on "ancestry". But additionally, the law prohibits discrimination based on "genetic information", which seems like it…

> But additionally, the law prohibits discrimination based on "genetic information"

That sounds specific to using DNA tests for things like health insurance or work fitness. In most of the cases you don't need to swab DNA to find someone's race, sex or ancestry. You can find those by other means. So that law won't prohibit discrimination based on sex, race and ancestry.

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

#108

Post by Bajeezus »

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…

An absolutely disgusting response, to the point where I don't think you read the article or have a vested interest in preventing action.

This isn't about "the US recognizing the caste system" or even about who is responsible for it. It's about preventing very real, very tangible discriminatory effects happening to people TODAY, right now. When the time comes to prevent actual, quantifiable harm, slippery slope arguments and debates about the origin of the problem help absolutely nobody.

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

#109

Post by belltaco »

olliej wrote: post #61
chmorgan_ wrote: post #49

Do we need laws against every specific thing if another law already covers it? I'd argue no, we don't need to call out special groups as protected, then there is precedent for doing so for every special group. Keep our laws general and comprehensive, with as few special cases as possible, especially when it comes to protecting rights.

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 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?

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

#110

Post by TMWNN »

serial_dev wrote: post #88
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.

No, it is not. If I propose adding "don't be sneaky little hobbitses" to the MIT license and people don't want to add it, is it evidence that we have sneaky Hobbits infiltrating the software developer community? Or something more serious, people who are against the PATRIOT Act are evidence that we need the laws and they are not patriots, anyway? Is it the level of discourse we want? You take what's in the bill at fac…

>Then, as this gets more and more common, companies stop hiring people from South Asia because they don't want to deal with this.

And what is wrong with this solution, compared to the alternative of American companies and the American people being forced to deal with foreign prejudices and beliefs imported into their country?

When children get into a fight, adults intervene by separating the combatants and sending them home regardless of who is "right". As a non-Indian American, I don't know who is "right" regarding the existence and extent of caste-based discrimination. I don't care. I shouldn't care. I shouldn't have to know or care in the first place!

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