In another significant moment for the movement against caste discrimination in the United States, a Bill to make caste discrimination illegal was passed by the California State Assembly on Monday, August 28, with 50 votes in its favour and only three against it. It was earlier passed by the state’s Senate in May this year. With its passage in the state Assembly, California will become the first US state to ban caste discrimination. The legislation will add caste as a protected category under ‘ancestry’ in California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, Education, and Housing codes.
However, the Bill met strong opposition from a section of Indian-American residents who argue that it will ‘discriminate against Hindus’ and ‘racially profile select communities on the basis of their ethnicity and ancestry for disparate treatment’.
Religious extremists love saying not being able to oppress everyone else is somehow oppressing them…
Saying other groups are equal somehow hurts your group only makes sense if one of your groups foundational beliefs is oppressing others.
And as far as I know that’s not part of Hinduism. But it’s a central tenet of far right extremism
They want to keep harrassing, humilitating, and persecuting people because the alternative is to accept that all humans are indeed equal which means their claim to superiority and pure-veg purity is & has been just b.s . It also means they and their casteist friends and their casteist families and their casteist ancestors are sadistic bastards without a shred of humanity.
The Nazis implemented their Ubermensch-untermensch discrimination for only 12 years, India’s oppresor uppercastes perfected it thousands of years back. Christianity & Islam fucked up their systemised sadistic game by introducing the idea of equality, educating the oppressed, and offering them a way out of the oppressive Hindu caste system.
Meh
Christen missionaries weren’t saying everyone was equal, they were saying Christians were all equal, and they’d go after oppressed minorities because they were most likely to change religions.
Far right religious extremism is the issue, the flavour of religion doesn’t really matter.
Hinduism doesn’t say Hindus are all equal. Christianity and Islam do. There are no castes in Christianity or Islam, and that is the reason many from the oppressed castes renounced Hinduism and accepted those religions. It’s also one of the many reasons why Hindu supremacists hate those religions.
Right. Christianity and Islam say we’re all equal…
Unless of course, you’re lgbtq, or a woman, or an atheist, or a member of another religion, or anyone they don’t like really.
But other than that we’re all equal.
Unless of course, you’re lgbtq, or a woman, or an atheist, or a member of another religion, or anyone they don’t like really.
so does Hinduism. We’re discussing caste here though, which does not exist in Christianity and Islam.
Your argument was that Christianity and Islam preach that we’re all equal. I am saying that is not true (Or actually, that it preaches that while simultaneously preaching the opposite). It simply lacks one layer of inequality.
Every layer of equality mattered and matters to those who face that inequality elsewhere.
Yeah apparently a law that says everyone is equal profiles against Hindus, right. These idiots just want to bring the caste problems from India and spread it even more here.
I’m also surprised it’s Indian-Americans talking about this and not Republicans. There’s been a caste system in the US since its inception based on race and income.
Anyone who is under the impression that Indian-Americans are progressive & hate discrimination needs to know that Indian-Americans carry within them the oppressive caste system that they’ve been trained into by their families & communities since birth.
Even those born outside India are trained into & practice caste oppression. Since developed countries look down on discrimination, so caste atrocities are carried out behind closed doors and in devious ways. Indian newcomers to college/ work place are asked their full name, because the last name/ surname is a caste marker. They’re invited to a pool party to check whether they wear the Brahmin caste thread, or a friendly hand is placed on their left shoulder to check whether they’re wearing the Brahmin caste thread under their clothes. Once info on their caste is gathered, they’ll either be welcomed as one of ‘ours’ or severely discriminated against by the oppressor upper castes a discreetly as possible.
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, a victim of caste oppression, India’s first Law Minister, and the architect of India’s Constitution had said this “If Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem”
You’re acting like they’re two separate groups, I doubt these far right religious extremists are democrats
You’ll be suprised, Many are good at wearing a progressive mask in public and behaving otherwise in private.
I am Indian and know people who have moved to the US. Irrespective of which party they supported in India, most Indian-Americans support the Democrats in the US. This is because of two reasons:-
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The Indian political landscape is to the left of the US landscape. So right-wing parties in India are often similar, policy-wise, to centrist Democrats or moderate Republicans.
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Even rich, upper-caste Indians face racial discrimination in the US.
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I love how they’re complaining that this will
‘racially profile select communities on the basis of their ethnicity and ancestry for disparate treatment’
when that’s exactly what they’re doing by putting people into castes in the first place. lamf, indeed.
DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offendor) or projection?
Why is this worldnews when it is about a state in a country.
Caste oppression is not confined to ‘a state in a country’. Every pusbback against casteism a win for humanity everywhere, hence this news is in worldnews.
What does caste mean?
Caste is associated primarily with cultures of the Indian sub-continent. According to those who practise and promote it, Caste is determined by birth and cannot be changed. Each Caste continues in a state of social paralysis, antagonistic and hostile towards the others’ interests, with inter-marriage discouraged if not prohibited. Whereas, in a class-based system there is the possibility of vertical mobility, this is denied in a Caste-based system.
There are four caste categories, each ranked differently in terms of social honour. Brahmin men are on the very top of the caste pyramid as they authored religious texts on caste and put themselves on top, and their only claim to superiority and excuse for the many cruelties they’ve created & imposed on everyone else is based on the caste system that they created. Dalits & Adivasis are at the very bottom, and are at the receiving end of every violence and indignity that the oppressor castes come up with.
Yet caste discrimination is not limited to South Asian countries. As Indians have migrated outside India to study, work, and stay, they’ve carried the ideology and practice of the caste system with them.
The notion that the Dalit community is by nature ‘impure’ and therefore inherently bound to servitude continues to create social divisions across South Asia. Although Dalits are the most severely affected group, caste-based discrimination ouside India is pervasive, affecting all communities among the South Asian diaspora because of the entrenchment of caste as a social paradigm.
Discrimination based on one’s caste holds similarities to discrimination based on one’s ethnic background or race; members of one group hold prejudice and exercise discrimination towards the group that they deem to be inferior. However, it is important to note that while the discrimination experienced can be similar to racism, caste is different from race.
While ‘race’ is a way of classifying people into groups based on physical traits, ‘caste’ is a system of social stratification, where groups are assigned a way of life defined primarily by occupation. Caste is not just a division of labour, it is the division of labourers.
Caste has no distinguishable physical feature and members of the same ‘race’ group may be of several different caste groups. In Britain for example, Dalits have progressed economically and do not follow their traditional occupations of cleaning toilets and skinning dead animals, but they encounter caste-based discrimination in social interactions. Unlike race discrimination, caste discrimination is intra-racial and is practised among those of the same nationality, ethnic origin and/or cultural background.
