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

Same. No one even brings up caste at all, except very rarely in the context of someone's parents back in India wanting a spouse for their child overseas (for arranged marriages) to be of a similar caste(like date/marriage racial preferences in the west). Things are changing fast in India and that is becoming rarer as time goes on.

Very strange that it comes up a lot on HN for some reason. I'm not higher caste and I never felt anyone has ever mistreated me in professional or personal life.

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 included). Clearly the CA govt actually believes that because they’re sued Cisco over caste discrimination a few years ago.

But again, I don’t see why people are opposing adding it to the list. If it’s added and redundant it makes no difference, except then they can point to the lack of caste based discrimination in the U.S. based on the low number of such cases that have succeeded.

I am not upper caste and I don't think about caste. Nor does any of my friends or family talk or mention 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.

Seconded. Not upper caste, never came up in the US.

This entire bill feels so alien to the lived experience of every Indian I know in the US.

Not GP - but I come from a lower caste family. Although I was born and raised in the U.S, I cant recall a a single time someone wanted to know my caste or made it an issue. I have several friends who like me are of South-Ancestry. A diverse multi-ethnic group whose parents came from all over India. None of us are even aware what caste hierarchy we fall into.

My wife is South Indian, and her dad is a very proud Brahmin (I think that's the highest on the pole). He has mentioned it at least once or twice at some point when I was around him. We do not know if he discriminates anyone based on their caste or not, but he is a hardcore traditionalist.

(I realize this is an anecdote and it doesn't speak for anyone else).

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.

> I assume this is how all the caste stuff surfaces.

Stop making assumptions about things that you have no clue about.

Govt of India did a caste census in 2011, they came up with 4,673,034 categories of caste, sub-caste, synonyms, different surnames, gotras in the caste and clan names [1]

At that scale, no one can tell someone's caste by asking such generic questions about hometown and family.

[1] - https://www.deccanherald.com/content/489752/socio-economic-c...

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the ability for the executive to veto the work of the legislature serves only conservatives and turns any legislative body into a farce.

The California legislature has more in common with the USSR’s legislature than the UK.