California moved closer to becoming the first U.S. state to ban caste discrimination after a bill to outlaw the practise passed the California Assembly late on Monday.
U.S. discrimination laws ban ancestry discrimination but do not explicitly ban casteism. California’s legislation targets the caste system in South Asian immigrant communities by adding caste to the list of categories protected under the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
The bill was introduced and authored by state Senator Aisha Wahab, an Afghan American Democrat, in March. An earlier version of it passed the state Senate before undergoing revisions.
Does anyone know how caste discrimination is usually accomplished? Unlike with racism or sexism, the basis of the bigotry shouldn’t be remotely visible, and unlike bigotry based on sexuality or religion, it’s not even determinable from the person’s knowledge: everyone knows what they’re attracted to and their own philosophical views, but almost no-one knows who their great-great-great grandparents were. It seems a curious thing to be bigoted based on something so challenging to assess.
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The diet thing sounds like classical bigotry for sure, like refusing to promote someone if you know they like matzoh because you assume they’re jewish. I wonder what foods they associate with lower castes.
It is classical bigotry.
And we do it in the U.S. through classism too though it’s much less apparent (mostly because Americans like to believe in ‘upward mobility’).
How you talk, what you eat, what kind of music you like. All of this can betray caste (or class) and keep you out of job positions or even schools if the person interviewing you has conscious or subconscious biases.
The rich have a term, new money, which is a way of saying, you don’t belong in our caste. Or class. Pick your term for bigotry.
the level of bigotry in the US is nothing compared to caste discrimination in south asia
If being a bigot was socially acceptable here we’d see more abuses in broad day light like Asia
But people still get murdered and tortured for being different in the U.S. And there’s still tons of covert and overt bigotry in every level of society from housing, to work, to school, to medicine.
So, I get you. In Asia it’s acceptable to treat people this way which means there’s fewer legal protections. It still happens in the U.S. And I’m sure the victims and their families couldn’t care less if we argue about where it’s worse.
Yeah, it has many names and often less obvious terms to describe the same thing.
I have only ever seen “new money” used when referring to someone coming into money and blowing it all on something dumb like a giant, inefficient luxury car or some other depreciating asset.
Honestly I learned it from books that take place in New Orleans. Families that have had plantation houses and estates in their family since before the civil war.
I don’t hang out with old money people to first hand know how they talk behind closed doors. Just have read some authors that do.
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last name, skin colour sometimes, city of origin
i’ve been on hiring teams and seen resume come through with photos of applicants (a big no no), religion (also a big no no), father’s name (unheard of usually), and caste (again, unheard of otherwise)
I was a hiring manager for a US company hiring in Kuala Lumpur. I got a ton of resumes with that kind of stuff that’s illegal for me to ask. I asked one of the existing employees from KL what was up with it and he explained it’s normal there because ethnic Chinese people are disliked there. So a lot of the companies based in KL require a photo so they can throw out anyone that looks Chinese.
isnt malaysia like 30% chinese?
Something like that. But if you’re not Chinese and you know there’s lots of racists out there, attaching a photo helps you. I got some that didn’t have photos too.
Because different castes are generally different ethnic groups. Most people can tell Chinese, and Japanese people apart just by looking at them. You can do the same.
I’m not Indian, I’m Pakistani and while there isn’t a caste system in Pakistan, there is definitely discrimination based on ethnicity in Pakistan.
And while most people can’t tell Pakistani people from each other in the west, Pakistani people themselves can look at each other and tell if one is Muhajir, or Siraiki or Pathaan or Sindhi.
i’m not sure this is true
One of my Filipino buddies gets told to go back to Mexico a lot. Racists are dumb.
They ask innocent, shallow questions that don’t seem to get much information from you: last name, home town, schools, diet, temple where you worship. Add that to visual clues like whether you have a string around your chest, where you have a dot placed on your face or how big the dot is or whatever, etc. Put all those small, innocent little bits of information into a big picture and it’s basically a logic puzzle of finding enough clues to narrow down the caste.
exactly
Might be wrong, but I believe it’s based on family name. You could avoid it by changing your name, but obviously a lot of people don’t want to do that.