The actual bill: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
No one I know supports the caste system and as a person with Indian parents living in California I cheer this bill happening. People from South Asia aren’t a monolith, and my understanding is that caste based discrimination is more common in the Bay Area than other parts of the state, but either way discrimination based on religion, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, income, or any sort of box you can end up in that you don’t choose to be in should be illegal under the civil rights act.
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.
That seems weak.
One should not (and legally may not) discriminate on the basis of being Indian, which is a SE Asian phenomenon. One should not discriminate on the basis of having Native Hawaiian ancestry, which is a Hawaiian phenomenon. And one should not discriminate on the basis of how many of someone’s ancestors happen to have been slaves in America, which is an American phenomenon (although there are surely analogues elsewhere).
But IMO it's fine, because banning discrimination based on ancestry in general is better than banning discrimination on the basis of ancestry only when caste is involved.
Mrs. McCoy shouldn't be able to discriminate against Mrs. Hatfield on the basis of last name either.
The bill has already been modified to use that verbiage.
"Eventually, Wahab agreed to place caste under “ancestry” rather than list it as a standalone category"
So it seems that those still opposed to the bill are not satisfied with that amendment.
Discrimination based on ancestry shouldn't be allowed regardless of whether it's on a short timeframe (caste) or a long timeframe (race).
What we're seeing now is what happens when people in positions of nonzero power who are used to getting to discriminate, are told not to. We saw the same thing in the American south when people were told they had to stop discriminating against people of African ancestry.
https://www.hinduamerican.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/HAF...
They claim:
"We share the admirable goals of protecting civil rights and eliminating all forms of prejudice and discrimination, including based on caste. As such, the question is not whether we deal with allegations of caste discrimination, but how. If and when caste discrimination allegations emerge, they should be adjudicated under the existing protected class of ancestry, just as the state of California did in California Department of Fair Employment Housing v. Cisco Systems, Inc."
In https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u0jxQY_cLti2XP3nEw0d9OBa... they state:
"There is only one legal case on the issue of caste-discrimination in the United States to date. It involves an allegation of caste-based discrimination in the US."
and give some facts related to that case.
I am reading between the lines so. Would be a stretch to speculate about the caste make-up of said association?
>In 2010, HAF issued a report titled "Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste" alleging that Christian missionaries were able to push their proselytizing agenda only because of the prevalence of caste discrimination in India; it went to argue that caste cannot be considered to be an intrinsic definitional aspect of Hinduism—due to a lack of theological sanction in its most sacred texts—and urged for reforms led by Hindus themselves. This led to a flutter in conservative Hindu circles of India and the next year, HAF toned down their report; they cautioned against the trend of passing resolutions against caste discrimination adopted by various global organizations and held caste to be an internal affair of a sovereign India. HAF has since portrayed castes as occupational guilds which had brought stability to premodern India before being reified under British colonialism; it has vehemently opposed drawing parallels between caste-discrimination and racism, and even any depiction of the caste-system as a rigid birth-determined pyramid of hierarchy.
They started off fighting against the caste system, until the elites in India told them no. Ever since, they've minimized the impact the caste system had and still has -- not just in India.
Japan comes to mind, e.g. the Burakumin aka Japanese Untouchables
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin
> Burakumin (部落民, 'hamlet/village people', 'those who live in hamlets/villages') is a term for ethnic Japanese people who are believed to be descended from members of the pre-Meiji castes which were associated with kegare (穢れ, 'defilement'), such as executioners, undertakers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers, and tanners...Due to severe discrimination and ostracism in Japanese society, these groups came to live as outcasts, in their own separate villages or ghettos. After the caste system was abolished, the term burakumin came into use to refer the former caste members and their descendants, who continued to experience stigmatization and discrimination.
South Asian, not South-East Asian.
It is unfortunately too late to edit the original post :(
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.
I couldn't find details in the article (I just skimmed it though), but what if a non-Indian with almost no understanding of the caste system wakes up and decides they want to take their bigotry to the next level and starts discriminating based on caste just for the hell of it? Wouldn't they still be guilty under this law?
2. Opponents of this say that it only targets a certain group of people, but for the exact same reasons, it also only protects one group of people.
A Muslim or Christian or Sikh Indian, Pakistani, etc., would not be targets for caste discrimination lawsuits, under the logic.
Of course, as a legal matter, that's not true; anyone could be accused of caste discrimination if the law passes, whatever their religion, race, or national origin.
Having left law to once again be a software engineer, I almost never find myself curious about the development of caselaw, but I think I'd follow that case lol
Hinduism codified and forms the basis for the caste system but every other religion evolved later or was forced upon people who already had caste.
There are definitely things like social stratification based on wealth or ethnic group, and you can see things which, I suspect, are remnants of things adjacent to the caste system, such as Jatis, in the form of things like the Memon community.
Granted, even though I am talking about a range of ethnic groups, I'm still talking about north-west Indian ethnic groups: Gujratis, Panjabis, UP/Delhi people, and Pashtuns. Thus, maybe what you're saying holds true in other parts of the subcontinent--or perhaps just in very rural areas (?)
I replied to "that only indians can be convicted of" but as you point out AND THAT I POINTED OUT it's about Hindus, not Indians. There are big populations of Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
Basically you just replied "not really; exactly what you wrote".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34615972
Japan has generally moved on with heavy government crackdown.
Not a legal expert but this is extremely far fetched. You must have a great deal of contempt for the US legal system if you think this.
The title was, that it hit a nerve, that bill. It seems that truely is the case...
This is an invalid argument. You are effectively defending a practice based on the argument that it's not widespread. That's the same as saying that we don't need to protect transgender issues because they hardly ever get discriminated against. No -- for one, you cannot say for certain how widespread the practice is (and "I'm transgender myself" does not make you an authority on that), and second: low prevalence is not a reason for not prohibiting something. What's next? We shouldn't make laws against police violence because they kill less than 100 people/year?
If you really want to see casteism dissolved, you should not oppose laws trying to codify exactly that.
That's absurd. The laws aren't for people who wouldn't discriminate. They're for the people who demonstrably do.
E.g. you can be white manager and not a racist and promote a better-qualified white employee rather than a less-qualified black one, and then be sued. "Just because I automatically found myself being white!"
The solution is simply to have good documentation around the reasons for who you're promoting, and then the suit will lose. (In 99.99% of cases, the suit won't happen in the first place because no lawyer would take it if there isn't hard evidence of actual racial discrimination.) This kind of documentation is generally pretty easy, and it's good business practice besides.
This has worked pretty well at making a big dent in race-based discrimination. Why should it be any different for caste-based discrimination?
You can not get away from your race. But you can get away from religions and caste. I would like to get away from my religion and caste. This bill makes it impossible.
That seems to be factually untrue. And you can't cite the lack of court cases as evidence, because court cases aren't brought unless there's a law in the first place.
> I would like to get away from my religion and caste. This bill makes it impossible.
No, the bill is a path to do precisely that. What you're saying makes as much sense as "passing anti-racism laws makes it impossible to get away from race as issue". That's not how it works.
Others probably have more expertise than me, but I would highlight the following points:
1) The only way such a lawsuit would be successful is if he actually did something to indicate some decision was based off of caste.
2) Everyone can already be sued based off of attributes they have inherited against their will. People can be sued for discriminating against the opposite (or even the same!) gender, people can be sued for discriminating on the basis of race. Your son didn't choose to get born Indian, but he could still be sued for promoting Indians over Hispanics or something.
3) It is not only higher caste Hindus that can be sued for caste discrimination if that's a protected status. A manager of no religion or any religion could also be theoretically sued for discriminating against low-caste Hindus--or descendants of Japanese butchers, which, to my knowledge, constitute a low caste in Japan.
It's disappointing that companies lack the ability to deal with this issue in a mature way because having a policy and culture of inclusivity _should_ be enough to address this.
I realize this is all derived from an optimistic viewpoint, but I think it's still worth sharing.
I get the feeling the author is heavily pro-caste and is carefully selecting data to fit their narrative.
Not sure why south Asians in general would be any more enlightened.
Concepts like "affirmative action" and "protected categories" (more appropriately known as "preferential policies") are probably not as popular as you think they are. Even Californian voters have rejected affirmative action twice in 1996 [1] and 2020 [2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_California_Proposition_20...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16
Affirmative action = you can give someone an advantage in a hiring process because they're not white, with the intention of correcting historical discrimination
They are closely related in that they deal with race, gender, and class distinctions. But the ethics of the two are quite different. Banning discrimination by protected categories is uncontroversial. People have a lot more disagreements about affirmative action.
Right, but it often also means that you can refuse to hire (or admit) someone because they are white (or a man). That's what makes it a preferential policy.
Discrimination against whites is not a hot topic in America because of the historical and social context, but the law makes no distinction.
Do you generally oppose all race/gender/etc. based anti discrimination laws?
With the recent SCOTUS ruling, things have changed a little bit. Unfortunately, that really doesn't prevent people from finding ways to get around the ruling. [2]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_C...
[2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/thomas-jefferson-high-school-fo...
*request, there was only a single request.
Also, you had already applied a whole lot of restrictions to my account before the "request", without any warnings or explanations.
So, who cares? I'm not playing on a level playing field. You are definitely politically biased, in the sense that you don't apply your rules consistently. And you don't seem to care about that.
Also, you guys definitely use dishonest moderation techniques, which you don't like to call "shadow-banning". But the issue isn't what we should call it, it's that the dishonesty.
And if the ban was really because you thought I am not contributing to the community (and just using it as tool for "ideological battle), then why one of my submissions is on the front-page at this very moment? [1]
Far from not playing on a level field, we cut you way more slack than you had any reason to expect, given how badly you've been breaking both the letter and spirit of HN's rules.
The restrictions you're taking about, such as rate-limiting, apply to accounts regardless of what ideological flavor they favor, so none of that is relevant. The way to not get restricted is to use the site as intended. That's not bias, that's just trying to have a particular kind of site. This tedious mentality of turning everything one doesn't like into "bias against me" is one of the many tedious things that make ideological battle off topic for HN in the first place.
p.s. I'm sorry for saying "requests" if there was only formal request, but I've replied to you so much that I don't believe you didn't get the message.
I don't know, I can't even provide a sample larger than one for that. But I think the rate-limiting thing should be due to something being triggered recently. It's not just a fixed rate limit, like the one you get when you submit too many articles in a short amount of time (which says something like "please don't post so many things that you dominate the new submissions page").
Also, ideological or not, restricting a user's privileges (in my case downvoting, flagging, vouching, probably upvoting and even submitting things) without telling them what the restrictions are, why they are being applied, and a straightforward process to appeal the decision isn't very friendly.
I even had trouble with rate-limiting when posting this very comment. It really seems that you think that I "obviously" should have self-censored [1] if I wanted to continue posting to HN. I don't plan on doing that. There is some value in standing for the good, the true, and the beautiful.
That would be our farewell, I guess. So long, and thanks for all the fish :-)
I’m also genuinely surprised and frankly intrigued by how quickly this topic gets flagged off HN. It seems there is serious disagreement about this in the tech community.
If anyone here can explain the emotional significance of the bill to someone who is not South Asian I'd appreciate it!