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.
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 face value and believe it has only positive effects, and don't even consider why others might be against it.
NYT mentions that the bill "would make South Asians (...) more vulnerable to unfair accusations of discrimination."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/us/south-asians-are-divid...
My attempt to understand their argument: imagine you are from India, living your life, conducting interviews, working to the best of your abilities, then someone sues you, alleging that you only didn't hire him, because of his cast. Now, you'll spend months if not years trying to prove that you didn't, while people around you will believe the accusations and start treating you like a casteist bigot. Then, as this gets more and more common, companies stop hiring people from South Asia because they don't want to deal with this.
Now, is this true or is it their only argument against it? I don't know, but you can see how people could be against it for other reasons than "oh I want to discriminate so hard and this bill won't let me".
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!
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 mean, you can say that the South Asian presence in the UK is because of the legacy of empire and all that. You can kind of sort of make the same argument for Canada. But that in no way applies to the US. The US has zero obligations of any kind to India. Like all immigrants Indians should be evaluated on their potential to contribute to the US in positive and negative ways.
That certainly doesn't sound blanket racist against an ethnicity of 1.5 billion people...
Land of free speech indeed.
Yes, and I want to keep it that way.
I ask again: What is the obligation for America, or Americans, to host intra-South Asian arguments and their arguers? Arguments that do not, in theory, involve any non-South Asians whatsoever? Is the only allowed outcome one in which the number and volume of said arguments hosted by America increase?
As I said:
>Like all immigrants Indians should be evaluated on their potential to contribute to the US in positive and negative ways.
There is no inherent right for South Asians to enter the US other than on the US government and its people's sufferance of same. If Americans decide that the disadvantages from the presence of South Asians (or Kenyans, or Danish, or Guatemalans, or New Zealanders) exceed the advantages, there can and should be consequences regarding immigration, visa, and naturalization laws. What should not happen is to preemptively squelch any efforts toward determining this as "blanket racism", any more than existing laws that apply uniformly toward all of a particular national origin are such.
Its almost as if American citizens of South Asian origins don't exist. How can people of South Asian origin even be Americans? Am I right?
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.
This TMWNN person is literally saying this about this entire matter
>> When children get into a fight, adults intervene by separating the combatants and sending them home regardless of who is "right"
They actually see themselves as the "adult" and this matter as a children's fight even though its been ongoing for several hundred years prior to Columbus ever set sail to find India and accidentally found TMWNN's america.
And as the other commenter noted, this person has also argued in favor of deportation and blanket censorship on discussing caste matters.
I don't think its fair to continue assuming postive intentions at this point. If not racist, they are extremely condescending at the very least.
"racism, also called racialism, the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races”; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioural features" (Encyclopedia Britannica; emphasis mine)
I assume the original poster means to keep out the discussion of the caste system by keeping out its supporters. Disregarding the feasibility of such a plan [1] it does put this proposal in a different light: keeping out supporters of a system or ideology which divides people based on unalienable characteristics is something which those who claim to be against racism should welcome.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/attitudes-ab... shows that support for the caste system is less prevalent among higher educated Indians who are more likely to immigrate based on employment opportunities so in that respect it would be feasible. Given this fact a rule to keep out caste supporters could be easily construed as an attempt to keep out less educated people by those seeking to weaponise identity for political purposes.
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.
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.
So the following is a snippet from your earlier comment where you are clearly saying that arguers as well as the arguments should not be in the US in the first place.
>> 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.
Since you specifically mention arguments, please tell us how is this not asking for censorship?
Not at all. I am saying that
* if there is a real problem with caste-based discrimination between South Asians (as one not such, I have to go by anecdotes and reports), then
* one possible outcome is to prevent further entry by South Asians and, perhaps
* the revoking of visas of the non-citizen South Asians already in the US
The third step isn't so important; as I noted elsewhere, if caste-based discrimination exists in the US I expect the US-born children of South Asian immigrants to not participate, so if there is a problem it will work itself out as long as it is not constantly refreshed by newcomers. Regardless, revoking visas is not censorship, any more than any other country doing so for any other non-citizens living among them means those noh-citizens are being censored; expelling non-citizens for any reason that the state deems is reasonable is, again, a fundamental right of the Westphalian state.
That's it. Nowhere, despite your and others' fevered imaginations, have I proposed violating the First Amendment or the revoking of US citizenship from those of South Asian ethnicity.
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.
This bill wasn't proposed by a South Asian impacted by caste. It was done by an Afghan immigrant.
The irony is that she is not doing anything against Sunni-Shia violence/discrimination which is a larger problem in the US [1] and globally.
Where is the protection for short-bearded men and women who don't cover up fully as they are persecuted in Afghanistan?
Won't immigrants to the US from Afghanistan carry these biases over?
The agenda is so clear and moronic and borders on "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
[1] https://time.com/6205521/albuquerque-muslim-murders-shiite-s...
If caste-based discrimination is rampant then certainly it should be a bigger part of the screening process for immigrants. You can even refuse entry for immigrants from South Asia entirely - though I suspect this is a massively losing proposition for the US as a whole.
What you cannot do (as you seem to be implying) is wholesale cast out American citizens based on their ethnicity or place of birth. Or at least I would hope not!
I am a Canadian citizen, born in India. I have the exact same rights as any other Canadian - any Canadian telling me “your problems are not Canada’s” would be incorrect, and I would consider them a racist as well. I don’t practice any caste based discrimination. I wouldn’t even know the caste I might have belonged; the caste of anyone I know; or how to determine caste! I would still vote against this bill.
It is inevitable. That does not mean that we can, or should, tolerate all such examples indefinitely.
>Sometimes these American soil conflicts spill back out onto the motherland countries in a big way, as Cuba, Ireland, and Israel/Palestine can all attest.
I am well aware. But all those conflicts occur "back home". Boston Irish support for the Nationalists in Ireland may not have been a wonderful thing to other Americans, but at least Americans did not have to deal with the conflicts on their own soil. Miami anti-Castro Cubans did not fight Miami Cuban Communists on American soil.
On the other hand, the reports of widespread celebrations in heavily Arab-immigrant sections of European cities during the current Hamas attack on Israel, and the well known huge rise in attacks on native Jews by said immigrants (and, more worryingly, their descendants) in France in recent years, ought to be very concerning to Europeans.
>If caste-based discrimination is rampant then certainly it should be a bigger part of the screening process for immigrants. You can even refuse entry for immigrants from South Asia entirely - though I suspect this is a massively losing proposition for the US as a whole.
Maybe. Probably. At least the sheer diffuseness of the issue of caste-based discrimination—we can't quantify its existence, and as a non-Indian I cannot personally speak to its existence, one way or another—makes that calculation likely. If the problem were so widespread and visible that non-Indians were routinely witnesses to it, that might be a different story.
>What you cannot do (as you seem to be implying) is wholesale cast out American citizens based on their ethnicity or place of birth. Or at least I would hope not!
Nowhere have I suggested such. I have only said that if there is a widespread caste-based problem, one solution is to reduce or block further entry by those of South Asian origin to the US, and possibly revoke the visas of non-US citizen South Asians. The frenzied claims by others that I have proposed to revoke First Amendment protections on South Asians in the US, or that I advocate the expulsion of all South Asians (regardless of US citizenship), are only in their minds.
>I am a Canadian citizen, born in India. I have the exact same rights as any other Canadian - any Canadian telling me “your problems are not Canada’s” would be incorrect, and I would consider them a racist as well.
I disagree. As a naturalized Canadian citizen part of the duties and responsibilities that accompany receiving a new citizenship is to abandon the detrimental parts that came with the old. That includes prejudices and behavior that would cause societal turmoil in the new country. The onus is on the new citizen, and not the new citizen's new country.
>I don’t practice any caste based discrimination. I wouldn’t even know the caste I might have belonged; the caste of anyone I know; or how to determine caste!
Again, speaking as a non-Indian, how is this possible? Were you naturalized as a small child, and your parents never once spoke of the caste they belonged to? I thought every Indian in India was aware (whether they like it or not) of their caste.
Please read about the Fenian raids for example - these things did have impacts in North America and to a very violent/impactful degree.
> That includes prejudices and behavior that would cause societal turmoil in the new country. The onus is on the new citizen, and not the new citizen's new country.
No, the onus is on my country to uphold the charter of rights for every citizen. If I was the victim of caste based discrimination I would absolutely expect my government to protect me, not deport me or reduce my rights in any way, simply because the issue originated abroad.
The same thing would apply if I belonged an Indian religion and was discriminated for it. Whether the prejudice was developed in India, or Europe, or Canada, is irrelevant- I expect my government to act to protect me.
Anyone saying this is not Canada’s problem would be wrong. It is in fact Canada’s problem because I am Canadian and it is happening on Canadian soil.
> Again, speaking as a non-Indian, how is this possible? Were you naturalized as a small child, and your parents never once spoke of the caste they belonged to
I was naturalized as a child and caste is never spoken of with my family. The city I live in has lots of south Asian immigrants of all stripes and I have never discussed caste wit anyone. I asked my mom today, who spent most of her life in India, she would also not be able to determine someone’s caste.
Keep in mind she is non-Hindu, and grew up in a big city more insulated from caste based identities & issues. Nevertheless, any kind of blanket prejudice would apply to her (and me) as well.
I didn't say that. I even noted
>Boston Irish support for the Nationalists in Ireland may not have been a wonderful thing to other Americans, but at least Americans did not have to deal with the conflicts on their own soil.
And yes, I am well aware of the Fenian raids, as well as the (myth of) the "no dogs or Irish" signs, and other aspects of Irish American history. I can tell you what "26 + 6" means.
My point is that the Irish Americans that supported NORAID, and predecessor organizations in earlier decades, at least did so regarding activities that occurred outside the US. Same with the Fenian raids; Irish Catholic Americans did not launch quasi-military expeditions against British/Irish Protestant entities located on US soil. And, more importantly, as the decades passed the American assimilation engine won out, just as I expect any intra-South Indian conflicts that go beyond name-calling to go away as long as giant waves of newcomers don't keep arriving and refreshing the impetus.
>No, the onus is on my country to uphold the charter of rights for every citizen. If I was the victim of caste based discrimination I would absolutely expect my government to protect me, not deport me or reduce my rights in any way, simply because the issue originated abroad.
I agree that the Canadian or US government's responsibility is to defend your rights as well as those of others.
That is not the same thing as, if intra- or inter-ethnic conflicts become a serious societal concern—a concern great enough to require the enshrinement of yet another protected class (to use the US legal term; I am sure Canada has some equivalent) into US law—being willing to indefinitely support the entry of the group or groups that are involved in such conflicts, whether they are the victims or oppressors. It is always possible for the people (speaking collectively) to decide that the net benefits to their society do not justify the continued fueling of such conflicts through the indefinite entry of the kindling, so to speak. As I said, it is their right to do so.
Further, as a non-US citizen your rights are legally limited in the US. Unless you have a green card you do not have the right to indefinite residency in the US, and even if you do, said right comes with some requirements (such as being present in the US for a certain number of years for each given period, and otherwise obeying the law). Beyond which, the US can at any time change the law and remove indefinite residency, and tell any non-citizen (whether permanent resident or not) to leave immediately. Canada can do the same for its landed immigrants. Ultimately, any country can change the rules as it sees fit for non-citizens within its borders (or those seeking entry) at any time. Again, it is the country's people's right to decide to do so.
>Keep in mind she is non-Hindu, and grew up in a big city more insulated from caste based identities & issues. Nevertheless, any kind of blanket prejudice would apply to her (and me) as well.
Interesting. From what little I know of caste I gather that it is a Hindu-specific thing? That Christians are excluded from it?
You don’t even seem to think caste conflicts are a pronounced or big deal, so I’m not sure what we were even arguing about.
And yeah, caste is supposed to not matter for Christians, muslims or sikhs - but in practice that matters where you are.
Please read about the Fenian raids for example - these things did have impacts in North America and to a very violent/impactful degree.
> That includes prejudices and behavior that would cause societal turmoil in the new country. The onus is on the new citizen, and not the new citizen's new country.
No, the onus is on my country to uphold the charter of rights for every citizen. If I was the victim of caste based discrimination I would absolutely expect my government to protect me, not deport me or reduce my rights in any way, simply because the issue originated abroad.
The same thing would apply if I belonged an Indian religion and was discriminated for it. Whether the prejudice was developed in India, or Europe, or Canada, is irrelevant- I expect my government to act to protect me.
Anyone saying this is not Canada’s problem would be wrong. It is in fact Canada’s problem because I am Canadian and it is happening on Canadian soil.
> Again, speaking as a non-Indian, how is this possible? Were you naturalized as a small child, and your parents never once spoke of the caste they belonged to
I was naturalized as a child and caste is never spoken of with my family. The city I live in has lots of south Asian immigrants of all stripes and I have never discussed caste with anyone. I asked my mom today, who spent most of her life in India, she would also not be able to determine someone’s caste.
Keep in mind she is non-Hindu, and grew up in a big city more insulated from caste based identities & issues. Nevertheless, any kind of blanket prejudice would apply to her (and me) as well.
Americans are not "adults" of the world and others are not "children". Stop with this patronizing and condescending bullshit. The world doesn't revolve around your ass.
> I don't care. I shouldn't care. I shouldn't have to know or care in the first place!
Same. Hard Same.
Next time when one of your european self appointed "adult" attacks another european self appointed "adult", don't cry like a b---h when the rest of the world continues to live their life like it doesn't matter.
So with those priors, I simply cannot put much weight in “people accused of being discriminatory are worried they will be accused of being discriminatory.”
That argument can be leveled against any civil rights action.
Better evidence would be someone who would have been eligible to bring a case under the new law having been denied justice under the existing laws.
Source(s)?
Should be easy to link if there are many, and they're documented as you say.
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.
That's not how it works. You're conflating court cases vs court decisions.
> documents that 2/3 of Dalits in the USA report being mistreated at work
That's an online self reported survey conducted by a partisan foundation. It certainly didn't cover all Dalits in the US, nor was it a random or representative sample.
If there were actually that many people facing discrimination, there would be more court cases, and then you can point to court decisions potentially finding that discrimination by caste is or is not illegal. The absence of such cases and decisions could also be caused by no one being discriminated against on the basis of caste.
As linked in some sibling comments, the CISCO case was withdrawn because they didn't find discrimination and were actually discriminating and making assumptions about the alleged perpetuators and publicizing it.
Not all forms of discrimination would be illegal even if discrimination on the basis of caste was banned. For example, a Dalit in the poll might have reported as discrimination that a coworker didn't invite them to their home after work but invited a different coworker who wasn't a Dalit. That happens all the time in the US and the world on the basis of race, sex etc. and certainly is not illegal even if provable. Just like the super common racial discrimination in dating that hasn't been made illegal. The examples given on the site in your link are more on the lines of those, stories about being invited to a religious ceremony and not allowed to share meat based food.
No, I just understand how precedence works in a Common Law system.
First, by default things are legal unless specifically forbidden. Being forbidden is based on some theory based upon the law, the Constitution, and a web of precedent called Common Law.
In this case, there is no law specifically written covering caste. There is no precedent regarding caste. Therefore any case alleging that it is illegal to discriminate on caste must be based on an untested theory based on the law. There is no particular reason to believe that a judge will accept your theory about the implications of the law, rather than some other theory that the other side comes up with.
If you take your theory to court, the other side will almost certainly come up with an opposing case. The judge will be weighing two theories. And likely will also be presented with the argument that the untested theory that discriminating on caste is illegal is untested exactly because other lawyers have consistently concluded that the law doesn't say that it is illegal.
This argument is not without merit. I do not know of a clear argument from the law. Maybe there is one that I don't know. But if there was, then I'd expect some prosecuting attorney to have brought it long ago. It doesn't help my confidence that the only attorneys to have brought such a case turned out (as you point out) to have been stretching the facts. What are the odds that they were also stretching the law?
Therefore the lack of cases really is evidence that the law really doesn't cover caste. (I'm quite confident that federal law doesn't cover it.)
>Therefore the lack of cases really is evidence that the law really doesn't cover caste. (I'm quite confident that federal law doesn't cover it.)
Or the lack of cases is because it's very rare or even non-existent in a workplace environment, based on many comments here, including my own, and it happens more in the personal sphere like how there's strong race based preferences in dating and friendship in the US. That's not prosecutable.
I’m curious if those people filed a lawsuit of any kind? I would imagine that discriminating against them would fall under in-group vs out-group type of discrimination and companies discourage this. Workers get unhappy about work and other co-workers, this doesn’t mean laws were broken.
https://theprint.in/opinion/dismissal-of-cisco-case-proves-e...
This bill, however, is proscriptive: it is saying that you cannot perform an action. It's a hard case to say that we shouldn't put that restriction into law while also believing that discrimination should be restricted.
"It's already prohibited" - so why the fierce opposition?
"Passing a law against discrimination of X will stigmatize X" - Imagine someone was making this argument for an existing federally protected class.
Moreover, every new law carries a risk of having unintended consequences. So the argument may well be as simple as, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
(That said, I don't get the impression everyone who opposed it did so for the same reasons.)
They left these systems behind, and making a law codifies the system into law, which is kinda fucked up.
I myself have seen discrimination in non obvious ways (not Indian but exact same idea where your birth dictates certain societal ideas about you) , and would be absolutely pissed if anyone made a law that protects against that because discrimination is already protected against.
I REALLY do not want the Govt to literally categorize me into a bucket I do not give a shit about, and now everyone wants to codify a system that I would rather just fade away into time.
Some discrimination is protected against, but this statement is far too broad to be accurate. I can discriminate against you because of who you vote for or what car you drive or which NFL team you root for.
Why would this piss you off? It's a little redundant, I suppose, but that hardly seems particularly upsetting. Specifically, this bill looks like it updated CA's definition to clarify that ancestry based descrimination include caste, where caste was defined as:
>(aa) “Caste” means an individual’s perceived position in a system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status. “A system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status” may be characterized by factors that may include, but are not limited to, inability or restricted ability to alter inherited status; socially enforced restrictions on marriage, private and public segregation, and discrimination; and social exclusion on the basis of perceived status.
I'm not really seeing where the government is codifying you into a group you don't want to be in. The idea seems to be based on the discrimanator's perception of what groups you are in. Without this clarification, though, I'm not sure how Newsom (or anyone) can be confident of judicial interpretation of law, especially given that he notably was complaining recently about a judge's interpretation of the law.
>I would rather just fade away into time.
Would you say that most of the progress on dismantling caste-related issues has been by way of the government actively ignoring its existence?
I'm pretty American and thus largely ignorant about most things but especially India's history and how this issue has been addressed and changed over time, but American history doesn't have many examples of places where the things people discriminated on simply faded away. Most have required active efforts to get to where they are today and obviously where it's at is still not a great place.
> People do not want to import this shit into the US.
You realize people discriminating on this basis are the ones "importing this shit into the US", right?
> I REALLY do not want the Govt to literally categorize me into a bucket I do not give a shit about
You realize that this law wouldn't involve the government compiling a list of the caste background of every Hindu in America from ahead of time right?
> now everyone wants to codify a system that I would rather just fade away into time.
How does it "codify" the caste system to allow people who are being discriminated on its basis to have a better shot at obtaining legal redress for the wrong being done to them?
Just to give a perhaps contrived example based on what the GP said. We can imagine that companies start worrying about the caste of their employees (or just if they're indians) when they otherwise wouldn't, and constrain their actions lest they be exposed to higher legal jeopardy down the line.
I was merely pointing out several inane things about the post to which I was replying. That post raised no reasonable arguments for its position, and showed a lot of ignorance about what the law would actually do.
It makes a degree of sense. Pick some other non standard "trait" for dividing people and imagine that we need laws for all of them for anti discrimination.
Anti-discrimination laws for your astrological sign, for the color of your chi, for the phrenological map of your skull, maybe ones for your INTJ profile, your New Thought energy types, the amount of toxins in your blood, your blood type, the balance of your humors, your aura, your chakras, your graphology.
I'm not sure I would really want a law codifying astrological signs and banning discrimination based on them. Not because I think you should be discriminating based on astrological signs, but because I don't think our government should be giving any serious legal weight or discussion to the concept of astrology at all. If it's a serious enough problem, I'd rather we work on crafting a law that more specifically codifies the few things we do allow discrimination on, than the innumerable things we won't.
The whole point of caste based discrimination is that people are putting you, as you say, in a bucket and then discriminating on that basis. By having such discrimination be legal you ensure that such discrimination is (a) legal, and (b) gets to be entrenched in the US.
You can [and people do] use family names as an effective proxy for caste, and if you’re planning on discriminating on caste that’s more than enough. The Dalit's (in the case of Cisco) are not all the same "village" as the people they're claiming are discriminating against, and it's bizarre you would think that clusters of immigrants from a country of a billion people would magically already know each other.
I know of people who through marriage had their family name change from a lower caste to a higher one, and experience an immediate drop in questions of the “how could you get here?” Form.
More to the point: if it were already impossible to discriminate based on caste then this law would not impact anyone.
South India it's pretty impossible, since it went through the self respect movements and basically got rid of surnames. Most south indians have surnames based on their fathers names.
But it is definitely common to use surnames as proxies in North Indian communities (unfortunately)
they make similar arguments about why they feel the bill is a bad idea
It already exists whether you wish to acknowledge it or not.
The question, at the end of the day, is whether or not existing law is sufficient. Presumably we are expecting that caste falls under "religion or creed" in terms of protected characteristics.
Has that actually been established?
Whether or not that's particularly convincing or a reason not to pass it is debatable, but I think it's a valid reason that merits consideration.
Any reasoning beyond this ends up being gobbledygook.
It's also worth noting that if you are born in a specific caste, and convert from your religion, you will still be subjected to caste discrimination from the folk in the original religion.
Obviously under the rules of the current Supreme Court anyone can claim their bigotry is because "religion" and carry on doing it. Don't want to serve someone? claim doing so violates your religious beliefs. Renting a property? ditto. Employment? again.
I'd be interested to know whether any other major religion has anything quite like the caste system.
There may be a degree of mobility between ranks, but mormonism at least makes it explicit that a black person for instance starts at a subservient rank, and can never reach the top rank, as that is reserved for white people.
Your position in a job, or the availability of that job, or housing, or in fact anything, should never be restricted simply due to some religious doctrine.
Because anytime you pass unnecessary laws you open the future up to some judge somewhere, or some prosecutor some where twisting the words to mean something completely different
Happens all the time in society and the fact that people believe it is acceptable to simply duplicate laws is very dangerous
We need a massive curbing of the number of laws in society as it is, personally in think for every law that is passed they should be forced to repel one.
That is today we seem to be moving away from the "melting pot" of multiculturalism were we are all one nation made of many, to a salad bowl of multiculturalism where we lose the "one nation" part, and communities are splintering / siloing themselves off from one another inside one geographic bloc
We need the melting pot to return... that is the only way multiculturalism actually works.
Because making something double illegal is a waste of time at best, and at worst would be actually harmful if there are unforeseen negative consequences.
"...the unlawful discrimination is in part based on a person's sex, race, color, religion, *ancestry*..."
Thanks for sharing your thoughts + info!
I reminded of that scene in "Mad Men" where Pete Campbell is denied a sale by a McDonald.
You know, because of the 1692 Massacre at Glencoe and related. https://www.ccsna.org/the-campbells-and-macdonalds.
Then there is the Balkans ....
> There's a vast array of prejudices and grievances in most cultures. Are you going to enumerate them all?
Are you going to enumerate them all in defense of caste discrimination on the faulty logic that we have to eliminate every other possible injustice before we tackle caste discrimination?
The argument here is that ancestry already covers caste so it’s unnecessary.
Adding caste, assuming Newsom’s argument is correct, would then be the equivalent of adding religious denomination because an Evangelical Christian is concerned a Catholic is discriminating against them.
And most likely that would never even see the light of day because people would reasonably argue that’s already covered under discrimination based on religion.
It seems that there is caselaw in California indicating that courts do not believe ancestry covers caste (?)
It's unclear really; nobody in this thread has posted any caselaw either way. It could be that the issue is so unsettled that maybe it would make sense for advocates of the law to first try to establish that ancestry covers it--or build up some clear precedent that ancestry is inadequate in the process.
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|Jewish] people of India) is ridiculous. America is not a macrocosm for the rest of the world.
- The senator who presented the bill is a first generation Afghan muslim. This adds to the suspicion among Hindus that this is a Hindu-phobic action. It is kind of like a Palestinian senator pushing a bill to protect Sephardi and Misrahi jews from discrimination by Ashkenazi jews in Californian workplaces.
- The bill was based on a questionable survey by Equality labs - this survey has been challenged as unscientific and biased. For e.g. see [1] Anatomy of a Dishonest survey.
[1] https://medium.com/@rachelgotham5/equality-labs-caste-report...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/30/anti-sharia-...