I do my best to get an understanding of the various sides, especially when tempers get this hot... but I've not yet seen a coherent argument against making ancestry a protected class. If anyone...
I do my best to get an understanding of the various sides, especially when tempers get this hot... but I've not yet seen a coherent argument against making ancestry a protected class. If anyone has a link, I'm all ears.
Edit: Just to be clear, I personally think it makes sense to explicitly codify that caste discrimination is illegal. I just wanted to explain why someone might reasonably believe that codifying...
Edit: Just to be clear, I personally think it makes sense to explicitly codify that caste discrimination is illegal. I just wanted to explain why someone might reasonably believe that codifying caste protections isn't necessary.
Original comment: It's not necessarily an argument against passing additional protections, but there's good reason to believe that caste discrimination is already illegal in the US under the Civil Rights Act. From this view, we should be focused on enforcing the existing laws since it's already a form of illegal discrimination. Why pass an additional law when the existing one just needs to be enforced?
This Essay contends that caste discrimination is cognizable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In particular, we argue that in light of our understanding of the caste system and the Supreme Court’s teaching in Bostock v. Clayton County, caste discrimination is a type of racial discrimination, religious discrimination, and national origin discrimination — all covered under Title VII.
the law review article you link to makes the opposite point... this is the sentence immediately after the part you quote: and from its conclusion, emphasis added: also, they are not passing a...
Why pass an additional law when the existing one just needs to be enforced?
the law review article you link to makes the opposite point...
this is the sentence immediately after the part you quote:
Recognizing caste discrimination as such provides potent tools to the relevant stakeholders to combat caste oppression. But more importantly, it also confers duties upon employers and government institutions to be vigilant in ensuring that employees are safeguarded from caste discrimination.
and from its conclusion, emphasis added:
While these arguments are strong, given that judicial interpretation of Title VII’s protections are in flux, the surest way to ensure that workers who experience caste discrimination are able to access recourse is to explicitly enshrine “caste” as a prohibited basis of discrimination, in both executive-branch policy and in the text of Title VII itself. The EEOC could issue an opinion letter or guidance clarifying that Title VII’s provisions prohibiting race, national origin, and/or religious discrimination forbid discrimination on the basis of caste. An even stronger protection, of course, would be for Congress to pass legislation that explicitly states that caste discrimination is unlawful under Title VII. Even in this time of extreme partisanship, this is uncontroversial and should garner bipartisan support.
also, they are not passing a brand-new law, they are clarifying the existing law to make it explicit that it applies to caste.
here is the actual bill. if you scroll all the way to the bottom, the additions to the existing law are in blue.
“Ancestry” includes, but is not limited to, lineal descent, heritage, parentage, caste, or any inherited social status. Nothing precludes a person from alleging discrimination on the basis of ancestry in combination with discrimination based upon other protected characteristics.
Thanks for providing additional context from the actual bill! I've edited my comment to clarify my position. It's definitely wise to explicitly codify protections, especially with the current US...
Thanks for providing additional context from the actual bill! I've edited my comment to clarify my position. It's definitely wise to explicitly codify protections, especially with the current US supreme court...
I feel as if it’s best to be explicit in Lea, rather than relying on interpretation of laws that should be broad. Especially with the recent Supreme Court, which has chosen to interpret many laws...
I feel as if it’s best to be explicit in Lea, rather than relying on interpretation of laws that should be broad.
Especially with the recent Supreme Court, which has chosen to interpret many laws more narrowly than they’ve been interpreted in the past.
Interesting; the question of how enforcement is going in the U.S. is as big as any legislative initiative, of course. For the cited case, though, I'd hasten to point out that individuals with...
Interesting; the question of how enforcement is going in the U.S. is as big as any legislative initiative, of course.
For the cited case, though, I'd hasten to point out that individuals with differing ancestry (going beyond caste) can share common racial, religious, and national origins.
Historically marginalized groups in other cultures, due to the nature of the American immigration system, have very little chance of even ending up here in large enough numbers for any...
Historically marginalized groups in other cultures, due to the nature of the American immigration system, have very little chance of even ending up here in large enough numbers for any discriminatory attitudes against them to actually operate in any meaningful way.
Subjecting members of minority communities to oversight and review by Americans with no cultural context to understand the nature of the marginalization or actually determine what constitutes “normal” or “discriminatory” behavior has potential to create a framework for discrimination against those minority groups through bad faith accusations. It’s not going to be informed or educated cultural experts making these calls, it’s going to be HR bureaucrats, university administrators, etc.
Would also cover people like the burakumin, who are not explicitly a caste but still face discrimination in Japan, and in Japanese communities in the US. It's just a better way of doing it.
Would also cover people like the burakumin, who are not explicitly a caste but still face discrimination in Japan, and in Japanese communities in the US. It's just a better way of doing it.
According to the opposers, there are no caste discrimination because there is no such thing as caste. Even if there were caste discrimination, it’s rare and overblown. Lastly, merely adding the...
According to the opposers, there are no caste discrimination because there is no such thing as caste. Even if there were caste discrimination, it’s rare and overblown. Lastly, merely adding the definition of caste is just an attack on Hinduism by western powers.
Changing the language to ancestry includes caste without being specific to hinduism and India/indians. Even one case would be too many. Such discrimination is counter to what the US stands for...
Changing the language to ancestry includes caste without being specific to hinduism and India/indians.
Even one case would be too many. Such discrimination is counter to what the US stands for among its citizens.
No argument here, and it can't hurt to include that in the guidance. But phrases like this: Are deeply troubling. The United States does not stand for being anti-discrimination by a long shot, and...
Changing the language to ancestry includes caste without being specific to hinduism and India/indians.
No argument here, and it can't hurt to include that in the guidance. But phrases like this:
Such discrimination is counter to what the US stands for among its citizens.
Are deeply troubling. The United States does not stand for being anti-discrimination by a long shot, and few American citizens realistically think this country succeeds at meeting that standard. The US is imperfect, just as India is and pretending our shit doesn't stink so that we can set India up as some kind of barbarous foil is simply not a productive starting point for conversation on this.
What becomes particularly concerning is that every discussion on this issue seems to be dominated by (largely White liberal tech guys) coming with a side dish of exactly these kinds of otherizing tropes that treat India and Indians as being inherently discriminatory and in need of some process of moral purification through Americanization. At that point, it stops looking like the core motivator is some deep concern with discrimination, and starts looking like Americans can't help themselves but take on the White Man's Burden to civilize foreign groups that get generalized into depictions as savage and barbarous races.
This exact process of fixating on historical or contemporary social ills in other societies as justification to employ heavy-handed and authoritarian controls on them is an inextricable part of the playbook of empire. We did the same thing with Afghanistan, pointing to concerns around the status of women and religious freedom, as a justification for invasion (and even catching Iraq in the "splash zone" by establishing an "Islam = anti-women" trope when we needed to create a moral justification for invading them as well).
What is wrong with this attitude toward female sexuality—whether expressed by clitoridectomy, the Libidian tradition, or our own culture—is its social purpose: to use sex as a means of subjecting women and depriving them of their chance to participate in society as equals. The major problem with clitoridectomy, then, is socio-political. Clitoridectomy is yet another way of oppressing women and locking them at home, of seeing them as the producers of children and as a source of pleasure to others. But if we will object to clitoridectomy on these grounds, the argument will seem very familiar, and will have clear implications for our own society.
Michael Walzer has argued that every morality has both a thin universal dimension and a thick contextualized content. The same is true of wickedness. Societies discriminate, dominate, and abuse their members in various ways, but there is something common to all expressions of oppression. We should place this core aspect, repeated in all traditions in different forms, at the center of our criticism. In the cases discussed here, it is not a particular practice but a set of ill-motivated efforts to control the sexuality of women and to restrict their ability to compete for social and political resources that we should find reprehensible.
Does the overwhelming disgust at clitoridectomy signal an emerging social commitment to structural change—to ensuring equal social, economic, and political status for women? I’m afraid not. Of course, the absence of such commitment is no justification for clitoridectomy. My purpose, however, is not to justify clitoridectomy, but to expose the roots of the deep hostility to it—to reveal the smug, unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current condemnation of clitoridectomy. Referring to clitoridectomy, and emphasizing the distance of the practice from our own conventions, allows us to condemn them for what they do to their women, support the struggle of their women against their primitive, inhuman culture, and remain silent on the status of women in our society.
It is time, then, to hold off on using the example of clitoridectomy. But this discussion also carries a more fundamental implication for current debate on multiculturalism. As I indicated at the outset, too often and too easily this debate produces condemnations of cultures other than our own. We do not usually discuss the way different cultures oppress women and compare our modes of oppression to theirs, but instead we ask, completely oblivious to our own vices, How can they do that to them? Yet as we have seen, their cultures show considerable continuity with ours.
Multicultural exchanges raise acute concerns not because they point to the incommensurability of cultures, or the impossibility of cross-cultural conversation, but because they confront us with our own deficiencies. Through them we are able to identify the roots of our own prejudices and injustices and see the devastating outcomes that may issue from them. One way to counter the anxiety such exchanges may incite is to concentrate on practices that appear to be as distant from our own tradition as possible. When we look closely at these practices, the differences start to fade. It is thus time to approach multicultural exchanges with a sharper vision of our own vices, and see the multicultural debate less as a way to understand them and correct their ways than as a way to understand and improve our own culture.
Ok. I appreciate that these issues are very sensitive and the last thing I want to do is be smug or condescending or rude. Here in the US, we have fought hard against great internal resistance to...
Ok. I appreciate that these issues are very sensitive and the last thing I want to do is be smug or condescending or rude.
Here in the US, we have fought hard against great internal resistance to reduce various forms of discrimination. We have lost tremendous ground in the Trump era with racists and sexists and hetero-supremacists coming into the public square and the legislatures and fighting for their perspective. We who value equality and rights have been losing ground.
However, the American tradition I was pointing to is encapsulated in the words We hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident that All Men Are Created Equal and are Endowed By Their Creator with Inalienable Rights and Among These are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Likewise, the amendments to the constitution following the Civil War reinforced and deepened our commitment to equality and to not mistreating each other based on inherent characteristics such as skin color or ancestry.
It is possible to both be part of an oppressed or marginalized group and be an abuser to others. Also, as a lawyer I am well aware that law is a blunt instrument and a double edged sword. Every law that makes it easier for a rape victim to bring a case also makes it easier to accused a possible rapist, who might be innocent.
I wish you and your community the best.
Edit, to the extent that there are religous obligations to stay separate, I am confident that this Supreme Court would support them as long as they concern private association. And I am going to stop there.
India's constitution was written by a Dalit. It takes explicit steps to rectify the marginalization of lower castes and tribes, including a mandate that the government maintain a quota of such...
However, the American tradition I was pointing to is encapsulated in the words We hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident that All Men Are Created Equal and are Endowed By Their Creator with Inalienable Rights and Among These are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Likewise, the amendments to the constitution following the Civil War reinforced and deepened our commitment to equality and to not mistreating each other based on inherent characteristics such as skin color or ancestry.
India's constitution was written by a Dalit. It takes explicit steps to rectify the marginalization of lower castes and tribes, including a mandate that the government maintain a quota of such members in its ranks to ensure their representation. It was actually among the first in the world to introduce such a system, at a time when most quota systems in the West were designed more to keep out Jews than to address social ills.
In it's preamble, it charges the nation as being established to promote Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity among it's citizens. In supplemental guidance on how to interpret those goals, the Supreme Court explicitly addresses social and economic inequality multiple times.
India seeks social, economic and political justice to ensure equality to its citizens.
(i) Social Justice: Social Justice means the absence of socially privileged classes in the society and no discrimination against any citizen on grounds of caste, creed, color, religion, gender or place of birth. India stands for eliminating all forms of exploitations from the society.
(ii) Economic Justice: Economic Justice means no discrimination between man and woman on the basis of income, wealth and economic status. It stands for equitable distribution of wealth, economic equalities, the end of monopolistic control over means of production and distribution, decentralization of economic resources, and the securing of adequate opportunities to all for earning their living.
(iii) Political Justice: Political justice means equal, free and fair opportunities to the people for participation in the political process. It stands for the grant of equal political rights to all the people without discrimination. The Constitution of India provides for a liberal democracy in which all the people have the right and freedom to participate.
The term 'equality' means the absence of special privilege to any section of society, and the provision of adequate opportunity of all the individuals without any discrimination.
This has been one of the animating drives behind the establishment of an independent Government of India. It is, in fact, so deeply ingrained as a part of the Indian political culture that even India's fascists are actively anti-caste discrimination. (Granted, they make a point of trying to eliminate caste divisions by rallying everyone together to hate Muslims instead so not great.)
All that to say, it's simply not the case that equality and non-discrimination is some uniquely American thing that Indians aren't aware of or committed to.
I am really not sure how you got to me asserting that this is uniquely american. I am not my country or my culture, but I am aware that there is a long history of people being overbearing and...
I am really not sure how you got to me asserting that this is uniquely american. I am not my country or my culture, but I am aware that there is a long history of people being overbearing and superior and moralistic in the name of Christian heritage culture derived from Europe. The US has fully embraced that moralistic superiority in its interactions world wide. I don't approve. Hoever, you suggested that the US does not have an egalitarian tradition and I strongly disagree.
The successful revolution of the Indian subcontinent amazed and inspired the world and rightly so in my view.
As for the question of persecution of Dalit's or not, I stand by my judgement that the article was news worthy. I really appreciated your thoughtful explaination of what you thought the problem might actually be.
However, to the extent that Dalit's live in the US and Canada, it makes sense to me, is plausible to me that they would face a certain amount of exclusion and even abuse. In my experience, bullies and abusers come from all cultures and backgrounds. Many tend to be secretive about it and choose targets who will not be believed or are not in a position to fight back. I am happy to hear that the government of India is fighting caste discrimination and that the constitution was written by a dalit, but even the most noble ideals in a culture will not restrain a psychopath.
Serious question, as I know nothing about this: I read on Wikipedia that 1.5% of Indian immigrants are Dalit caste, which is traditionally oppressed. But I can't find any reason given of why all...
Serious question, as I know nothing about this:
I read on Wikipedia that 1.5% of Indian immigrants are Dalit caste, which is traditionally oppressed. But I can't find any reason given of why all these people opposed the bill. What is the argument for allowing caste discrimination by all these people opposing the bill? Is it just that caste discrimination is still widely accepted, or is there for nuance I am missing?
I have read news articles from time to time about specific instances of caste discrimination, usually on the West Coast, whether Seattle or California. Typically within a corporation or at a...
I have read news articles from time to time about specific instances of caste discrimination, usually on the West Coast, whether Seattle or California. Typically within a corporation or at a university.
Some people feel entitled to discriminate by caste, just like some people are racist, just like some women face abuse from their partners, etc. It's a very old tradition. I'm sure some people see it as heritage and culture.
here's an article from the Seattle Times in February, when the Seattle city council was debating a similar change to our anti-discrimination law: How India’s caste system manifests in Seattle-area...
here's an article from the Seattle Times in February, when the Seattle city council was debating a similar change to our anti-discrimination law:
Maya is Dalit, the most oppressed caste in India’s caste hierarchy. She said when she arrived about 20 years ago, it was a rare thing for a young woman like her to be able to pursue a master’s degree, as caste-oppressed people often lack financial resources to do so.
Maya, who asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation from dominant-caste people for speaking out, now lives in the Washington, D.C., area and works for a Seattle-based tech company. She said she first experienced caste-based discrimination in the U.S. when she arrived as a student and lived in shared apartments with other Indians.
“People would only want to live with roommates from their own caste,” she said.
...
She also experienced caste discrimination working in the tech industry. Even though she was doing well in her job, when her dominant-caste manager found out she was Dalit, he began shunning her and ignoring her suggestions and ideas. It got so bad that her colleagues started raising the issue on her behalf.
When she volunteered for a project at work, she said her manager told her, “ ‘You better not touch the project because you’re ill-fated.’ And it might not sound like something major,” she said, “but for us, it completely resonates with the caste and untouchability because not touching is what all of the dominant-caste people have made rules around for so long. That’s why we are called untouchables. We’re not supposed to touch anything or anyone.”
...
Some argue you don’t need to call out caste specifically because other protected statuses would cover it. But Soundararajan recalled something a worker told her, “why would I even report to HR when they probably don’t even know where India is on a map?” (Much less, understand the complexity of caste.) Soundararajan said Sawant’s measure makes it explicit that discrimination based on caste will not be allowed.
Soundararajan said that while the measure would apply to South Asians, it would also apply to “any community that has an internal minority that is discriminated against based on descent, birth and work.” Examples could include the historically oppressed Roma people or Burakumin of Japan.
There is actually very little evidence that this is a real thing that’s happening, and basically all of the heat around it seems to be drummed up by a single NGO that’s committed to a specific...
There is actually very little evidence that this is a real thing that’s happening, and basically all of the heat around it seems to be drummed up by a single NGO that’s committed to a specific kinda-Maoist, kinda-liberation theology based ideological agenda that’s hard for people unaware of Indian political dynamics to fully wrap their heads around. It would be the equivalent of something like if Japanese people took all their cues on race relations in America from the Black Israelites or Nation of Islam. Desis can spot the crankery here almost instinctively, but Americans (even Indian-Americans who don’t have strong ties to Indian news media) don’t.
Razib Khan has done a couple of articles on the issues with the framing of it this way. The UnHerd piece he references goes into the actual evidentiary argument, but I’m linking this one because his closing section kind of sums it up.
Finally, there is the issue of caste discrimination in Silicon Valley, the one place where people argue Indian cultural dynamics are replicating due to the critical mass of immigrants from the subcontinent. People bring up the Cisco case as is if it’s case-closed, but it’s a single case, and the reality is that we don’t really know everything about the dynamics of the case and there’s been no verdict. Believe it or not, not all allegations of discrimination are found to be valid.
But many non-Indians (white people) now routinely tell me there is caste-discrimination in Silicon Valley, this is just a “truth” that is “known.” I’ll be candid that I think some prejudices naturally imbibed from high school, where the caste system is widely taught as constitute to Indians, along with Leftist media narratives about Indian American caste discrimination, are coloring peoples’ perceptions. The reason I wrote the UnHerd piece is that this is becoming the standard narrative and accepted truth for third parties who don’t have any biases or priors on the issue.
For example, when people say there is pervasive discrimination against Dalits in the Valley, I have to ask, what Dalits? Dalits are 15% of Indians, but 1% of Hindu Indian Americans. It could be possible that this 1% is suffering pervasive discrimination from the non-Dalit majority, 25% of whom are Brahmin and 80% as a whole are upper-caste, but there are opportunities in the US to work for non-Indians who won’t care or know. Indian American society, when it is caste conscious, is overwhelmingly upper-caste and privileged, so they’d have to discriminate against each other!
Yes, there is a level of nepotism and clannishness among Indian Americans, but this is not unique to them. Mark Zuckerburg famously recruited from his dorm and Harvard, and if you are not part of particular elite educational or professional circles you are on the “outside” in the startup world. The same seems true of Indian American entrepreneurs, but their particular ingroup preferences are always reified as “caste.” Though I”ve heard of the “Telugu mafia,” this seems to be the exception, not the rule. And, it is not uncommon for Indian Americans to have some affinity for each other (the majority born and raised in the US still marry Indians), but often this cross-cuts region and caste, rather than reinforcing them.
The fact is that regardless of what caste you are the primary form of discrimination you’ll deal with as an Indian-American will come from the fact that you’re an ethnic and religious minority. The only operative forms of discrimination worth worrying about among Indian-Americans I’d say is a pervasive anti-Muslim bias. But caste just isn’t a thing in the way people seem to think it is.
the article touches on this problem: and also interviews someone with direct experience with it: from the Seattle Times article I referenced in another comment: they link to the video of the...
There is actually very little evidence that this is a real thing that’s happening
the article touches on this problem:
Gupta is now in law school in New York. She said that one of the most frustrating parts of advocating for SB 403 has been the argument that caste discrimination isn’t occurring because there have been so few documented cases, calling it a “chicken and egg argument.”
and also interviews someone with direct experience with it:
Using a different surname to protect against discrimination is not uncommon, said Prem Pariyar, a delegate for the National Association of Social Workers and Cal State East Bay alum who helped lead a successful push last year for the CSU school system to include caste in its anti-discrimination policy.
Pariyar was born into a Dalit family in Nepal and came to California in 2015 to escape caste discrimination. Friends told him that the state was progressive, friendly to immigrants and accepting of different cultures. Instead, he recalled being alienated by his Nepalese coworkers, who refused to room in shared housing with him because of his caste. Pariyar said he was forced to live out of a van for a month, an experience he called depressing and scary.
Last week, nearly 60 people testified at a City Council meeting on the measure, many sharing their personal experience with caste, with all but a handful voicing support for the anti-discrimination measure.
they link to the video of the council hearing, it looks like public comment starts at 11m40s and runs for over an hour, but I don't know how much of that was related to Seattle's caste discrimination ordinance vs other measures.
This starts to sound like "I know it's out there, I just just need to find the evidence prove it!" I'm sure you can always find some examples of discriminatory attitudes if you look hard enough,...
Gupta is now in law school in New York. She said that one of the most frustrating parts of advocating for SB 403 has been the argument that caste discrimination isn’t occurring because there have been so few documented cases, calling it a “chicken and egg argument.”
This is all based off one lawsuit and a lot of "where there's smoke there must be fire" arguments. In this case the smoke seems to be produced entirely by a single coterie of activists who are deeply invested in proving that it is a thing, based almost entirely on anecdotal hearsay and speculations into the motivations of others (as with the Prem Pariyar account). So the confidence people seem to have that there is, for sure, a fire here seems unwarranted. I think the part in Razib Khan's piece where he says "I’ll be candid that I think some prejudices naturally imbibed from high school, where the caste system is widely taught as constitute to Indians, along with Leftist media narratives about Indian American caste discrimination, are coloring peoples’ perceptions," is spot on here.
Like I mentioned, there is a fringe political movement in India that has a specific ideological perspective on what Hinduism is and how caste inflects Indian society. It's based on a combination of historical facts and a not insignificant number of bad history and conspiracy theorist beliefs. In the American context, an analogy would be like that tankie group, the Black Hammer Party, folks with hearts in the right place but heads just completely turned around from committing too deeply to bad ideological frameworks. There are plenty of anti-caste and anti-discriminatory frameworks among Indian scholars and historians, as well as within Hindu religious groups, that could be consulted for education on this. But it doesn't seem like they get consulted before publishing any of these pieces, and if they do it's largely using that adversarial "The anti-discrimination people say this, but this (by implication pro-discrimination) person contends. . ." sort of both-sides framing that the American media can't seem to quit.
Generally, measured responses like "Yeah, include ancestry as a basis for interpreting anti-discrimination statues" make sense. That's just applying an existing rule to cover a previously ignored edge case. But I think it really is just an edge case. I don't see any justification for this larger meta-narrative being built up about this being a serious and endemic problem that necessitates a bunch of struggle sessions over. I find it particularly weird that largely White audiences are fascinated by and seemingly invested in having this be a thing though. In basically every discussion on this matter, every single Desi person I've talked to about it says that they've literally never seen or heard of anything like this happening and, believe me, I've asked around a LOT. Most even say they wouldn't really know how to identify and discriminate against anyone on this basis if they wanted to. A lot of the "tells" and surnames people reference are pretty nuanced behavioral quirks that are basically impossible to identify if you don't happen to come from the same village going way back, so I don't even really see how it's possible. (Though, I'll grant that maybe it's more prevalent in Nepal since it's a more culturally homogenous national population where it seems like everyone knows everyone). But then White people jump in and try to explain our own culture to us to assert that we can, in fact, discriminate based on surnames or something. Given the general resentments I see against Indian immigrant tech workers, I can't help but think if there might be a subconscious motivation behind why this topic seems to draw as much attention and get as much traction as it does. There is like, a monthly thread on this on Hacker News, despite there being basically no new developments, no new lawsuits, and maybe a couple of random universities making procedural updates to their codes of conduct or something. I've had a couple of cases now with people asking about my caste background which, in addition to being extremely gauche, I just find to be weird.
Let me first preface that I'm white and not Desi, but I work intimately with both onshore and offshore folks who are and have been for a couple of years now. I have seen some behaviors that appear...
This starts to sound like "I know it's out there, I just just need to find the evidence prove it!" I'm sure you can always find some examples of discriminatory attitudes if you look hard enough, in the same way you will find all kinds of people promoting all kinds of wild-assed fringe beliefs if you go searching.
Let me first preface that I'm white and not Desi, but I work intimately with both onshore and offshore folks who are and have been for a couple of years now. I have seen some behaviors that appear to be caste discrimination, but I realize there is a careful conversation to be had here. Your other comments are very insightful, but I do feel this is an issue ongoing in tech here in the US.
I've worked for various companies, but my first technical mentor was Bengali and we were on an all Indian team. He specifically dropped his surname because he wanted to avoid discrimination and I remember there was an awkward exchange between coworkers when they discovered he was Bengali. It's certainly not something where I am the appropriate person discuss this cultural interaction, but my mentor was kind enough to help explain that there are some historical/cultural tensions.
In my current role now it has become very apparent that one of the developers I work with will not work with devs from another team due to surname discrimination. He will only work with two other developers who happen to be from a similar high caste as him. Deadlines kept being missed or system components were straight up overlooked by him, and I could not understand why he regularly did this. It wasn't until I started working with the devs he refused to work with that it dawned on me how rudely he treated them when forced to collaborate. And when they do eventually collaborate, it's this weird authoritive manner where each seedling of information must be highly praised in addition to apologizing for his time.
I think part of the problem why you and others may think this isn't a real issue is it's difficult to bring up as an outsider while also not being culturally insensitive. I don't want to immediately leap to thinking this is caste discrimination via surname, but after seeing the lack of respect for no good reason and it literally preventing team collaboration, it's hard not to think it's a factor. Some of the interactions feel borderline like an abusive relationship dynamic that I have not seen elsewhere.
I think a lot of what people are seeing with this stuff is more often regional or religious (and, in a way, that is technically caste but not in the way anyone thinks about it). I have seen a lot...
Exemplary
I think a lot of what people are seeing with this stuff is more often regional or religious (and, in a way, that is technically caste but not in the way anyone thinks about it). I have seen a lot of that happen, and have gotten a bit of it myself. But since, to Americans, everyone's just Indian/South Asian it doesn't quite register that these are actually different ethnicities interacting with each other.
Like when you said this part:
He specifically dropped his surname because he wanted to avoid discrimination and I remember there was an awkward exchange between coworkers when they discovered he was Bengali. It's certainly not something where I am the appropriate person discuss this cultural interaction, but my mentor was kind enough to help explain that there are some historical/cultural tensions.
Not knowing any details my first assumption would that he was from Bangladesh (since they are also Bengalis) and made a point of stressing that his surname was not Muslim. Like I mentioned before, there is a pronounced anti-Muslim bias that definitely needs some attention (and it goes the other way too, with majority Muslim teams being generally dickish to others, but the numbers game usually doesn't work out that way). The regional differences can be pretty awkward too, particularly North/South tensions, but I can't imagine why someone would react that way to finding out someone was Bengali.
Deadlines kept being missed or system components were straight up overlooked by him, and I could not understand why he regularly did this.
This and what you described around it definitely sound like something along those lines is going on. Obviously I don't know the details here, but this seems like it's automatically grounds for coming down on someone regardless of the reasons behind it though. I actually recently had a similar dynamic where someone would just not interact with a gay coworker and didn't understand why it was a big deal. In his mind it was fine as long as he wasn't overtly hostile or rude and just sort of pretended they didn't exist nobody should have anything to complain about. We had to tell him to either get comfortable with it or get a new job because no team can function effectively with a dynamic like that.
In your shoes I would also be bewildered about where this behavior was coming from. I've had guys being inexplicably dickish to me like that before too, even though you can't infer anything from my surname unless you happen to be from the vicinity of the same dinky village my dad came from. If anything, people tend to assume I'm Brahmin just because of my general knowledge of Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy. (But jokes on them, I'm just a philosophy/mythology nerd!) My suspicion is that it tends to kick off once people find out I was a history and philosophy major in college and they think anyone who doesn't do STEM is some kind of moron. This is partly because I noticed them soften up once they find out which universities I got my "fluff" degrees from, with the prestige of the alma mater evidently making up for it.
It sounds weird to say, but India is so diverse and pluralistic that there are manifold axes along which people decide to discriminate against each other. They all get balled up as "caste" which is not necessarily inaccurate but also doesn't really say anything. This is mostly because what Americans think constitutes "caste," as like a stack ranked hierarchy of 4 units, doesn't really exist anywhere. What you actually have is more like if you imagine a bunch of different endogamous ethnic groups all living along side each other each practicing their own traditional folkways and customs. The closest analogy would be line in the way Jewish people sort of lived alongside "mainstream" European societies while maintaining a distinct subculture, every caste group in India was its own version of that. Instead of having a single "mainstream" the entire society is a bunch of individual sub-communities.
When you conceptualize it that way, then it becomes clear that the caste discrimination is basically the same thing as racial or ethnic discrimination. It's slightly exotic because of the different cultural context around how those ethnic lines got drawn. India, like America, is a highly pluralistic society. But unlike America, it is a very old society where this pluralism has persisted for many generations. There isn't much else about it one needs to understand, in the same way I don't need to know the details of ethnic politics between the Polish and Italian immigrant enclaves in Chicago (just picking stuff out of a hat there) to notice when two guys are being kinda weird with each other.
Americans tend to assume this operates on some sort of stack-ranking system with a group of people on top bullying those down below because that's kind of how American racial dynamics work with a "White" category acting as a monolithic and dominant force. India isn't really like that because the groups were subordinated by foreign powers (first by Turkic conquerors and then by the British) and mostly competed against each other without directly being able to call any shots. The exception is Dalits obviously, who were set apart and specifically put on the bottom of the ladder. But, as the Razib Khan article said, due to structural issues with access to education for Scheduled Castes, there are so few Dalits in the US that the chance people are encountering an appreciable number of such interactions is vanishingly small.
The complexity of all this is kind of what makes trying to do training about it basically impossible. Even Indians in India, where the structural factors are more set up to reinforce these things and you have a wider representation of marginalized communities, don't really have a picture of how these dynamics operate outside the little bubble of communities they directly interacted with growing up. In the context of a multi-national company, with a mix of people from all over, I don't get how a marginally interested HR rep or DEI consultant can hope to have a chance. There is so little cultural context to work from. But in terms of outcomes, it's pretty easy to just observe how people are treating each other, that a team member is unable to work productively with another team member, and take appropriate corrective actions based on that.
The generally stank attitude I mentioned from Indian coworkers I've also received from White, Black, and East Asian colleagues along the way. All of these interactions have been more the exception than the rule, but I don't really see a need to single out intra-Indian ethnic interactions rather than covering the umbrella challenge of managing a pluralistic and diverse working environment in general. What I don't get is how this seems to get translated through the activism sphere into requirements for some sort of general training and seminars and general struggle sessions where it's made out to be an endemic problem that underlies all interactions between Indian staff members. That seems to be a bridge too far, and strikes me as some kind of "brown peril" moral panic. I think the incongruity between assuming all Indians are just "Indian" rather than various subcultures of Indian makes this sort of interaction seem just exotic enough that it triggers some sort of strange fascination.
Wow, thank you for the excellent explanation and helping me understand the ethnic intricacies within what most people just label as "caste." I will admit, my base understanding of the caste system...
Wow, thank you for the excellent explanation and helping me understand the ethnic intricacies within what most people just label as "caste." I will admit, my base understanding of the caste system came from how I was taught about it in a US middle school world geography class. It was very much portrayed as an "Indian Thing" and that it was still a part of their lives. It failed to go to the depth that you offered and is probably a factor in these policy discussions when it comes to wording. It wasn't until I had a Sikh roommate from Mumbai, that I learned that India has so many states and cultures based on the groups that lived there. She even joked that there are probably as many pickles as there are states in India; that regional preferences influence their options.
She had her own stories too about dealing with the caste system and had one particular case of it being heavily enforced in a more rural areas of the country. She didn't interact with it much because Sikhs are sorta ignored in that dynamic, but others that she knew that weren't Sikh faced a particular hard time from locals. Looking back, I wonder of there was an ethnicity dynamic at play now due to how one person was vehemently targeted.
Overall, thank you for helping me learn something new today!
"this seems to be the exception, not the rule" This is a prime argument against a lot of civil rights movements, possibly every civil rights movement. "Not enough" people have spoken up from the...
"this seems to be the exception, not the rule"
This is a prime argument against a lot of civil rights movements, possibly every civil rights movement. "Not enough" people have spoken up from the group that is explicitly compelled not to. There's "not enough" evidence against the more dominant group, which is explicitly in a position to suppress or ignore evidence.
I think when it comes to passing this particular bill, "it isn't happening" isn't a very strong argument against it for exactly that reason. If it is happening, the bill is needed. If it isn't...
I think when it comes to passing this particular bill, "it isn't happening" isn't a very strong argument against it for exactly that reason. If it is happening, the bill is needed. If it isn't happening, it will continue not happening, no harm don't. I do agree that a greater degree of scrutiny is needed for the media narrative, but I think there is room for doubt both ways. We simply need more information.
I don't know but to speculate, often immigrants want to leave the bad habits of the old country behind, and maybe being in a different country seems like it should be distance enough to do that?...
I don't know but to speculate, often immigrants want to leave the bad habits of the old country behind, and maybe being in a different country seems like it should be distance enough to do that? It seems somewhat doable because caste discrimination is mostly invisible to non-Indian Americans.
(Yes, we do know about it, but we haven't learned to tell which caste is which, and it would probably be better if the "tells" didn't become generally known.)
I doubt this is a compelling argument for people actually suffering from it, though.
I think that for many affluent Indians that I meet, they're not so much leaving India as they are moving to the US. I know many who maintain very close ties with relatives and family friends back...
I don't know but to speculate, often immigrants want to leave the bad habits of the old country behind, and maybe being in a different country seems like it should be distance enough to do that? It seems somewhat doable because caste discrimination is mostly invisible to non-Indian Americans.
I think that for many affluent Indians that I meet, they're not so much leaving India as they are moving to the US. I know many who maintain very close ties with relatives and family friends back home, frequently going back and forth to attend lavish weddings and bring back gifts and whatnot. And for them, studying at a good American university, then working and living in America is the ultimate status tier within their social milieu.
As much as I hate government micromanaging this law seems like it's stopping something small from becoming a real problem. Maybe my sleep deprived brain is reading it wrong, but I would think more...
As much as I hate government micromanaging this law seems like it's stopping something small from becoming a real problem. Maybe my sleep deprived brain is reading it wrong, but I would think more people would support this.
The argument is that caste discrimination doesn't exist in America, and anyone who says it does is just racist against South Asians, or at least unwittingly helping perpetuate racism against such....
The argument is that caste discrimination doesn't exist in America, and anyone who says it does is just racist against South Asians, or at least unwittingly helping perpetuate racism against such.
I don't have a dog in this race, as I'm a good old-fashioned Northern European American mutt myself, but I'm always leery of arguments designed specifically to shut down discussion.
There's no room for caste discrimination in America
Sadly it exists. Such laws are needed.
I do like the amendment to change it to ancestry, I believe it was. It's much more general and it's not like it's bad to ban that.
I do my best to get an understanding of the various sides, especially when tempers get this hot... but I've not yet seen a coherent argument against making ancestry a protected class. If anyone has a link, I'm all ears.
Edit: Just to be clear, I personally think it makes sense to explicitly codify that caste discrimination is illegal. I just wanted to explain why someone might reasonably believe that codifying caste protections isn't necessary.
Original comment: It's not necessarily an argument against passing additional protections, but there's good reason to believe that caste discrimination is already illegal in the US under the Civil Rights Act. From this view, we should be focused on enforcing the existing laws since it's already a form of illegal discrimination. Why pass an additional law when the existing one just needs to be enforced?
https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-134/title-vii-and-caste-discrimination/
the law review article you link to makes the opposite point...
this is the sentence immediately after the part you quote:
and from its conclusion, emphasis added:
also, they are not passing a brand-new law, they are clarifying the existing law to make it explicit that it applies to caste.
here is the actual bill. if you scroll all the way to the bottom, the additions to the existing law are in blue.
Thanks for providing additional context from the actual bill! I've edited my comment to clarify my position. It's definitely wise to explicitly codify protections, especially with the current US supreme court...
I feel as if it’s best to be explicit in Lea, rather than relying on interpretation of laws that should be broad.
Especially with the recent Supreme Court, which has chosen to interpret many laws more narrowly than they’ve been interpreted in the past.
Interesting; the question of how enforcement is going in the U.S. is as big as any legislative initiative, of course.
For the cited case, though, I'd hasten to point out that individuals with differing ancestry (going beyond caste) can share common racial, religious, and national origins.
Historically marginalized groups in other cultures, due to the nature of the American immigration system, have very little chance of even ending up here in large enough numbers for any discriminatory attitudes against them to actually operate in any meaningful way.
Subjecting members of minority communities to oversight and review by Americans with no cultural context to understand the nature of the marginalization or actually determine what constitutes “normal” or “discriminatory” behavior has potential to create a framework for discrimination against those minority groups through bad faith accusations. It’s not going to be informed or educated cultural experts making these calls, it’s going to be HR bureaucrats, university administrators, etc.
Would also cover people like the burakumin, who are not explicitly a caste but still face discrimination in Japan, and in Japanese communities in the US. It's just a better way of doing it.
According to the opposers, there are no caste discrimination because there is no such thing as caste. Even if there were caste discrimination, it’s rare and overblown. Lastly, merely adding the definition of caste is just an attack on Hinduism by western powers.
Changing the language to ancestry includes caste without being specific to hinduism and India/indians.
Even one case would be too many. Such discrimination is counter to what the US stands for among its citizens.
No argument here, and it can't hurt to include that in the guidance. But phrases like this:
Are deeply troubling. The United States does not stand for being anti-discrimination by a long shot, and few American citizens realistically think this country succeeds at meeting that standard. The US is imperfect, just as India is and pretending our shit doesn't stink so that we can set India up as some kind of barbarous foil is simply not a productive starting point for conversation on this.
What becomes particularly concerning is that every discussion on this issue seems to be dominated by (largely White liberal tech guys) coming with a side dish of exactly these kinds of otherizing tropes that treat India and Indians as being inherently discriminatory and in need of some process of moral purification through Americanization. At that point, it stops looking like the core motivator is some deep concern with discrimination, and starts looking like Americans can't help themselves but take on the White Man's Burden to civilize foreign groups that get generalized into depictions as savage and barbarous races.
This exact process of fixating on historical or contemporary social ills in other societies as justification to employ heavy-handed and authoritarian controls on them is an inextricable part of the playbook of empire. We did the same thing with Afghanistan, pointing to concerns around the status of women and religious freedom, as a justification for invasion (and even catching Iraq in the "splash zone" by establishing an "Islam = anti-women" trope when we needed to create a moral justification for invading them as well).
Yael Tamir wrote a piece about this particular dynamic in regards to clitoridectomy that's worth understanding
Ok. I appreciate that these issues are very sensitive and the last thing I want to do is be smug or condescending or rude.
Here in the US, we have fought hard against great internal resistance to reduce various forms of discrimination. We have lost tremendous ground in the Trump era with racists and sexists and hetero-supremacists coming into the public square and the legislatures and fighting for their perspective. We who value equality and rights have been losing ground.
However, the American tradition I was pointing to is encapsulated in the words We hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident that All Men Are Created Equal and are Endowed By Their Creator with Inalienable Rights and Among These are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Likewise, the amendments to the constitution following the Civil War reinforced and deepened our commitment to equality and to not mistreating each other based on inherent characteristics such as skin color or ancestry.
It is possible to both be part of an oppressed or marginalized group and be an abuser to others. Also, as a lawyer I am well aware that law is a blunt instrument and a double edged sword. Every law that makes it easier for a rape victim to bring a case also makes it easier to accused a possible rapist, who might be innocent.
I wish you and your community the best.
Edit, to the extent that there are religous obligations to stay separate, I am confident that this Supreme Court would support them as long as they concern private association. And I am going to stop there.
India's constitution was written by a Dalit. It takes explicit steps to rectify the marginalization of lower castes and tribes, including a mandate that the government maintain a quota of such members in its ranks to ensure their representation. It was actually among the first in the world to introduce such a system, at a time when most quota systems in the West were designed more to keep out Jews than to address social ills.
In it's preamble, it charges the nation as being established to promote Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity among it's citizens. In supplemental guidance on how to interpret those goals, the Supreme Court explicitly addresses social and economic inequality multiple times.
This has been one of the animating drives behind the establishment of an independent Government of India. It is, in fact, so deeply ingrained as a part of the Indian political culture that even India's fascists are actively anti-caste discrimination. (Granted, they make a point of trying to eliminate caste divisions by rallying everyone together to hate Muslims instead so not great.)
All that to say, it's simply not the case that equality and non-discrimination is some uniquely American thing that Indians aren't aware of or committed to.
I am really not sure how you got to me asserting that this is uniquely american. I am not my country or my culture, but I am aware that there is a long history of people being overbearing and superior and moralistic in the name of Christian heritage culture derived from Europe. The US has fully embraced that moralistic superiority in its interactions world wide. I don't approve. Hoever, you suggested that the US does not have an egalitarian tradition and I strongly disagree.
The successful revolution of the Indian subcontinent amazed and inspired the world and rightly so in my view.
As for the question of persecution of Dalit's or not, I stand by my judgement that the article was news worthy. I really appreciated your thoughtful explaination of what you thought the problem might actually be.
However, to the extent that Dalit's live in the US and Canada, it makes sense to me, is plausible to me that they would face a certain amount of exclusion and even abuse. In my experience, bullies and abusers come from all cultures and backgrounds. Many tend to be secretive about it and choose targets who will not be believed or are not in a position to fight back. I am happy to hear that the government of India is fighting caste discrimination and that the constitution was written by a dalit, but even the most noble ideals in a culture will not restrain a psychopath.
Serious question, as I know nothing about this:
I read on Wikipedia that 1.5% of Indian immigrants are Dalit caste, which is traditionally oppressed. But I can't find any reason given of why all these people opposed the bill. What is the argument for allowing caste discrimination by all these people opposing the bill? Is it just that caste discrimination is still widely accepted, or is there for nuance I am missing?
I have read news articles from time to time about specific instances of caste discrimination, usually on the West Coast, whether Seattle or California. Typically within a corporation or at a university.
Some people feel entitled to discriminate by caste, just like some people are racist, just like some women face abuse from their partners, etc. It's a very old tradition. I'm sure some people see it as heritage and culture.
here's an article from the Seattle Times in February, when the Seattle city council was debating a similar change to our anti-discrimination law:
How India’s caste system manifests in Seattle-area workplaces and beyond (archive link)
There is actually very little evidence that this is a real thing that’s happening, and basically all of the heat around it seems to be drummed up by a single NGO that’s committed to a specific kinda-Maoist, kinda-liberation theology based ideological agenda that’s hard for people unaware of Indian political dynamics to fully wrap their heads around. It would be the equivalent of something like if Japanese people took all their cues on race relations in America from the Black Israelites or Nation of Islam. Desis can spot the crankery here almost instinctively, but Americans (even Indian-Americans who don’t have strong ties to Indian news media) don’t.
Razib Khan has done a couple of articles on the issues with the framing of it this way. The UnHerd piece he references goes into the actual evidentiary argument, but I’m linking this one because his closing section kind of sums it up.
The fact is that regardless of what caste you are the primary form of discrimination you’ll deal with as an Indian-American will come from the fact that you’re an ethnic and religious minority. The only operative forms of discrimination worth worrying about among Indian-Americans I’d say is a pervasive anti-Muslim bias. But caste just isn’t a thing in the way people seem to think it is.
the article touches on this problem:
and also interviews someone with direct experience with it:
from the Seattle Times article I referenced in another comment:
they link to the video of the council hearing, it looks like public comment starts at 11m40s and runs for over an hour, but I don't know how much of that was related to Seattle's caste discrimination ordinance vs other measures.
This starts to sound like "I know it's out there, I just just need to find the evidence prove it!" I'm sure you can always find some examples of discriminatory attitudes if you look hard enough, in the same way you will find all kinds of people promoting all kinds of wild-assed fringe beliefs if you go searching. And sure, those shouldn't happen. But it really looks like people are trying to rustle up evidence to support a narrative of there being endemic discrimination among Indian tech workers to justify headlines like: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley: Graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology are highly sought after by employers. They can also bring problems from home.
This is all based off one lawsuit and a lot of "where there's smoke there must be fire" arguments. In this case the smoke seems to be produced entirely by a single coterie of activists who are deeply invested in proving that it is a thing, based almost entirely on anecdotal hearsay and speculations into the motivations of others (as with the Prem Pariyar account). So the confidence people seem to have that there is, for sure, a fire here seems unwarranted. I think the part in Razib Khan's piece where he says "I’ll be candid that I think some prejudices naturally imbibed from high school, where the caste system is widely taught as constitute to Indians, along with Leftist media narratives about Indian American caste discrimination, are coloring peoples’ perceptions," is spot on here.
Like I mentioned, there is a fringe political movement in India that has a specific ideological perspective on what Hinduism is and how caste inflects Indian society. It's based on a combination of historical facts and a not insignificant number of bad history and conspiracy theorist beliefs. In the American context, an analogy would be like that tankie group, the Black Hammer Party, folks with hearts in the right place but heads just completely turned around from committing too deeply to bad ideological frameworks. There are plenty of anti-caste and anti-discriminatory frameworks among Indian scholars and historians, as well as within Hindu religious groups, that could be consulted for education on this. But it doesn't seem like they get consulted before publishing any of these pieces, and if they do it's largely using that adversarial "The anti-discrimination people say this, but this (by implication pro-discrimination) person contends. . ." sort of both-sides framing that the American media can't seem to quit.
Generally, measured responses like "Yeah, include ancestry as a basis for interpreting anti-discrimination statues" make sense. That's just applying an existing rule to cover a previously ignored edge case. But I think it really is just an edge case. I don't see any justification for this larger meta-narrative being built up about this being a serious and endemic problem that necessitates a bunch of struggle sessions over. I find it particularly weird that largely White audiences are fascinated by and seemingly invested in having this be a thing though. In basically every discussion on this matter, every single Desi person I've talked to about it says that they've literally never seen or heard of anything like this happening and, believe me, I've asked around a LOT. Most even say they wouldn't really know how to identify and discriminate against anyone on this basis if they wanted to. A lot of the "tells" and surnames people reference are pretty nuanced behavioral quirks that are basically impossible to identify if you don't happen to come from the same village going way back, so I don't even really see how it's possible. (Though, I'll grant that maybe it's more prevalent in Nepal since it's a more culturally homogenous national population where it seems like everyone knows everyone). But then White people jump in and try to explain our own culture to us to assert that we can, in fact, discriminate based on surnames or something. Given the general resentments I see against Indian immigrant tech workers, I can't help but think if there might be a subconscious motivation behind why this topic seems to draw as much attention and get as much traction as it does. There is like, a monthly thread on this on Hacker News, despite there being basically no new developments, no new lawsuits, and maybe a couple of random universities making procedural updates to their codes of conduct or something. I've had a couple of cases now with people asking about my caste background which, in addition to being extremely gauche, I just find to be weird.
Let me first preface that I'm white and not Desi, but I work intimately with both onshore and offshore folks who are and have been for a couple of years now. I have seen some behaviors that appear to be caste discrimination, but I realize there is a careful conversation to be had here. Your other comments are very insightful, but I do feel this is an issue ongoing in tech here in the US.
I've worked for various companies, but my first technical mentor was Bengali and we were on an all Indian team. He specifically dropped his surname because he wanted to avoid discrimination and I remember there was an awkward exchange between coworkers when they discovered he was Bengali. It's certainly not something where I am the appropriate person discuss this cultural interaction, but my mentor was kind enough to help explain that there are some historical/cultural tensions.
In my current role now it has become very apparent that one of the developers I work with will not work with devs from another team due to surname discrimination. He will only work with two other developers who happen to be from a similar high caste as him. Deadlines kept being missed or system components were straight up overlooked by him, and I could not understand why he regularly did this. It wasn't until I started working with the devs he refused to work with that it dawned on me how rudely he treated them when forced to collaborate. And when they do eventually collaborate, it's this weird authoritive manner where each seedling of information must be highly praised in addition to apologizing for his time.
I think part of the problem why you and others may think this isn't a real issue is it's difficult to bring up as an outsider while also not being culturally insensitive. I don't want to immediately leap to thinking this is caste discrimination via surname, but after seeing the lack of respect for no good reason and it literally preventing team collaboration, it's hard not to think it's a factor. Some of the interactions feel borderline like an abusive relationship dynamic that I have not seen elsewhere.
I think a lot of what people are seeing with this stuff is more often regional or religious (and, in a way, that is technically caste but not in the way anyone thinks about it). I have seen a lot of that happen, and have gotten a bit of it myself. But since, to Americans, everyone's just Indian/South Asian it doesn't quite register that these are actually different ethnicities interacting with each other.
Like when you said this part:
Not knowing any details my first assumption would that he was from Bangladesh (since they are also Bengalis) and made a point of stressing that his surname was not Muslim. Like I mentioned before, there is a pronounced anti-Muslim bias that definitely needs some attention (and it goes the other way too, with majority Muslim teams being generally dickish to others, but the numbers game usually doesn't work out that way). The regional differences can be pretty awkward too, particularly North/South tensions, but I can't imagine why someone would react that way to finding out someone was Bengali.
This and what you described around it definitely sound like something along those lines is going on. Obviously I don't know the details here, but this seems like it's automatically grounds for coming down on someone regardless of the reasons behind it though. I actually recently had a similar dynamic where someone would just not interact with a gay coworker and didn't understand why it was a big deal. In his mind it was fine as long as he wasn't overtly hostile or rude and just sort of pretended they didn't exist nobody should have anything to complain about. We had to tell him to either get comfortable with it or get a new job because no team can function effectively with a dynamic like that.
In your shoes I would also be bewildered about where this behavior was coming from. I've had guys being inexplicably dickish to me like that before too, even though you can't infer anything from my surname unless you happen to be from the vicinity of the same dinky village my dad came from. If anything, people tend to assume I'm Brahmin just because of my general knowledge of Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy. (But jokes on them, I'm just a philosophy/mythology nerd!) My suspicion is that it tends to kick off once people find out I was a history and philosophy major in college and they think anyone who doesn't do STEM is some kind of moron. This is partly because I noticed them soften up once they find out which universities I got my "fluff" degrees from, with the prestige of the alma mater evidently making up for it.
It sounds weird to say, but India is so diverse and pluralistic that there are manifold axes along which people decide to discriminate against each other. They all get balled up as "caste" which is not necessarily inaccurate but also doesn't really say anything. This is mostly because what Americans think constitutes "caste," as like a stack ranked hierarchy of 4 units, doesn't really exist anywhere. What you actually have is more like if you imagine a bunch of different endogamous ethnic groups all living along side each other each practicing their own traditional folkways and customs. The closest analogy would be line in the way Jewish people sort of lived alongside "mainstream" European societies while maintaining a distinct subculture, every caste group in India was its own version of that. Instead of having a single "mainstream" the entire society is a bunch of individual sub-communities.
When you conceptualize it that way, then it becomes clear that the caste discrimination is basically the same thing as racial or ethnic discrimination. It's slightly exotic because of the different cultural context around how those ethnic lines got drawn. India, like America, is a highly pluralistic society. But unlike America, it is a very old society where this pluralism has persisted for many generations. There isn't much else about it one needs to understand, in the same way I don't need to know the details of ethnic politics between the Polish and Italian immigrant enclaves in Chicago (just picking stuff out of a hat there) to notice when two guys are being kinda weird with each other.
Americans tend to assume this operates on some sort of stack-ranking system with a group of people on top bullying those down below because that's kind of how American racial dynamics work with a "White" category acting as a monolithic and dominant force. India isn't really like that because the groups were subordinated by foreign powers (first by Turkic conquerors and then by the British) and mostly competed against each other without directly being able to call any shots. The exception is Dalits obviously, who were set apart and specifically put on the bottom of the ladder. But, as the Razib Khan article said, due to structural issues with access to education for Scheduled Castes, there are so few Dalits in the US that the chance people are encountering an appreciable number of such interactions is vanishingly small.
The complexity of all this is kind of what makes trying to do training about it basically impossible. Even Indians in India, where the structural factors are more set up to reinforce these things and you have a wider representation of marginalized communities, don't really have a picture of how these dynamics operate outside the little bubble of communities they directly interacted with growing up. In the context of a multi-national company, with a mix of people from all over, I don't get how a marginally interested HR rep or DEI consultant can hope to have a chance. There is so little cultural context to work from. But in terms of outcomes, it's pretty easy to just observe how people are treating each other, that a team member is unable to work productively with another team member, and take appropriate corrective actions based on that.
The generally stank attitude I mentioned from Indian coworkers I've also received from White, Black, and East Asian colleagues along the way. All of these interactions have been more the exception than the rule, but I don't really see a need to single out intra-Indian ethnic interactions rather than covering the umbrella challenge of managing a pluralistic and diverse working environment in general. What I don't get is how this seems to get translated through the activism sphere into requirements for some sort of general training and seminars and general struggle sessions where it's made out to be an endemic problem that underlies all interactions between Indian staff members. That seems to be a bridge too far, and strikes me as some kind of "brown peril" moral panic. I think the incongruity between assuming all Indians are just "Indian" rather than various subcultures of Indian makes this sort of interaction seem just exotic enough that it triggers some sort of strange fascination.
Wow, thank you for the excellent explanation and helping me understand the ethnic intricacies within what most people just label as "caste." I will admit, my base understanding of the caste system came from how I was taught about it in a US middle school world geography class. It was very much portrayed as an "Indian Thing" and that it was still a part of their lives. It failed to go to the depth that you offered and is probably a factor in these policy discussions when it comes to wording. It wasn't until I had a Sikh roommate from Mumbai, that I learned that India has so many states and cultures based on the groups that lived there. She even joked that there are probably as many pickles as there are states in India; that regional preferences influence their options.
She had her own stories too about dealing with the caste system and had one particular case of it being heavily enforced in a more rural areas of the country. She didn't interact with it much because Sikhs are sorta ignored in that dynamic, but others that she knew that weren't Sikh faced a particular hard time from locals. Looking back, I wonder of there was an ethnicity dynamic at play now due to how one person was vehemently targeted.
Overall, thank you for helping me learn something new today!
"this seems to be the exception, not the rule"
This is a prime argument against a lot of civil rights movements, possibly every civil rights movement. "Not enough" people have spoken up from the group that is explicitly compelled not to. There's "not enough" evidence against the more dominant group, which is explicitly in a position to suppress or ignore evidence.
What's the actual falsifiability standard here? If both evidence AND no evidence means it's a serious thing that's out there?
I think when it comes to passing this particular bill, "it isn't happening" isn't a very strong argument against it for exactly that reason. If it is happening, the bill is needed. If it isn't happening, it will continue not happening, no harm don't. I do agree that a greater degree of scrutiny is needed for the media narrative, but I think there is room for doubt both ways. We simply need more information.
If they ally themselves with ... certain other political factions, I'm sure that would be on the chopping block too.
I don't know but to speculate, often immigrants want to leave the bad habits of the old country behind, and maybe being in a different country seems like it should be distance enough to do that? It seems somewhat doable because caste discrimination is mostly invisible to non-Indian Americans.
(Yes, we do know about it, but we haven't learned to tell which caste is which, and it would probably be better if the "tells" didn't become generally known.)
I doubt this is a compelling argument for people actually suffering from it, though.
I think that for many affluent Indians that I meet, they're not so much leaving India as they are moving to the US. I know many who maintain very close ties with relatives and family friends back home, frequently going back and forth to attend lavish weddings and bring back gifts and whatnot. And for them, studying at a good American university, then working and living in America is the ultimate status tier within their social milieu.
As much as I hate government micromanaging this law seems like it's stopping something small from becoming a real problem. Maybe my sleep deprived brain is reading it wrong, but I would think more people would support this.
The argument is that caste discrimination doesn't exist in America, and anyone who says it does is just racist against South Asians, or at least unwittingly helping perpetuate racism against such.
I don't have a dog in this race, as I'm a good old-fashioned Northern European American mutt myself, but I'm always leery of arguments designed specifically to shut down discussion.