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Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by function_seven on Saturday October 07, 2023 @09:25PM (#37807036)
They would be the only group “exposed” to this law. The vast majority of non-Indian people in California have very little idea how caste works, and how to identify membership, etc.

So now there’s this new law that de facto only applies to a specific ethnicity of Californians. I guess you could argue that all Californians—regardless of their ethnicity—are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of caste. But to me that sounds a lot like “all Californians, both rich and poor, are prohibited from sleeping under a bridge.”

Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by bradleyjg on Saturday October 07, 2023 @09:35PM (#37807092)
But to me that sounds a lot like “all Californians, both rich and poor, are prohibited from sleeping under a bridge.”

In the saying (by Anatole France) the point is not so much that the poor get arrested while the rich don’t, it’s that the poor need to sleep under the bridge because they have no where else to sleep.

If non South Asians aren’t being targeted by the law because they aren’t discriminating—-that’s a good thing. No one wants more discrimination so that laws against it can be fairer.

Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by catlover76 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @09:42PM (#37807117)
> I guess you could argue that all Californians—regardless of their ethnicity—are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of caste.

The law would literally prohibit everyone from discriminating on the basis of caste. There's nothing arguable or debatable about that.

As I posted above, I think it's a valid point for Hindus to make that they feel kind of targeted, but the flip side of that is that they feel that way because they are the only major religion where this is a pervasive problem. The rest of us are known for other problems and faults lol...

Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by function_seven on Saturday October 07, 2023 @09:58PM (#37807208)
> The law would literally prohibit everyone from discriminating on the basis of caste. There's nothing arguable or debatable about that.

I'm not debating the literal law, I'm debating the effects of the law. Harsher sentencing for crack cocaine literally applied to everyone of all races. But... yeah, it was done that way to target Black offenders, sentencing them more harshly for a couple rocks than White stock brokers got for a kilo of powder.

Just because a law technically applies to all, doesn't mean it does so in practice.

This law does target Hindus. They may have a pervasive problem, but I'd prefer the solutions to be neutral to nationality or religion, like the ones we have now. Step up enforcement of existing laws so you can deal not only with caste-ism, but also sectarian strife among other groups. Shia or Sunni, Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox or Reformed, etc.

Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by catlover76 on Sunday October 08, 2023 @12:41AM (#37807919)
> Step up enforcement of existing laws so you can deal not only with caste-ism, but also sectarian strife among other groups. Shia or Sunni, Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox or Reformed, etc.

That's a pretty good point that nobody here has raised yet

If there was a way to ensure basically that people didn't discriminate against people of their own broad religion who were of a different sect, and that such a law would automatically cover caste discrimination by people of upper caste background against people of lower caste background (whether or not either claim to profess any specific religion termed Hinduism), that would certainly be better.

There are a couple issues with this in practice, however, and this suffers even more strongly from the conceptual problem that discrimination between a Shia and Sunni or between a Catholic and Protestant, etc., is almost certainly already covered under religious discrimination, whereas caste apparently isn't.

A big part of the problem with this bill is that we actually don't seem to have a clear answer on the latter question--it seems like almost everyone is kind of just assuming that caste is or isn't already covered by existing law based on their preferences.

Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by huytersd on Saturday October 07, 2023 @09:46PM (#37807141)
Indians can’t even tell castes unless they are from essentially the same county/local cluster. This is only really a problem because you have a lot of people from the same part of Andra pradesh coming and working in the tech sector.
Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by theogravity on Saturday October 07, 2023 @09:51PM (#37807170)
I thought they can also sometimes identify via last name?
Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by miscaccount on Saturday October 07, 2023 @10:16PM (#37807291)
not really, many of the states does not use last name and many take up their fathers name as last name. It also varies from state to state, so the probability of you identifying another person caste from their last name is very small.

With many people taking different names that are modern from parents ,its really hard to know .

Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by theogravity on Saturday October 07, 2023 @10:24PM (#37807335)
My wife has her father's name as her last, so what you say definitely tracks.
Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by nitwit005 on Sunday October 08, 2023 @12:56AM (#37807976)
You can always ask about someone's background, or look it up.

Google suffered a backlash in Japan when they made ancient maps easy to find, as people feared it'd make it easy to connect them to frowned upon ancestry: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7514420&page=1

Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by huytersd on Sunday October 08, 2023 @01:04AM (#37807996)
You can’t look up this stuff, it’s too local and none of it is written down or relevant even if it was. Just families classifying families in their towns.
Re:Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in C... by sachislife on Sunday October 08, 2023 @04:31PM (#37814152)
> You can always ask about someone's background, or look it up.

Seems easy enough. There are only 4.6 Million possibilities to choose from.

based on the number of subcastes Govt of India identified for a caste census in 2011. https://www.deccanherald.com/content/489752/socio-economic-c...