California Assembly passes anti-caste Bill, soon to make it official state law
www.thenewsminute.com
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.

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.

    • xuxebiko@kbin.socialOP
      5·
      1 year ago

      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.

      Hinduism is a collection of castes. It’s communities are based on caste and it’s foundation is the caste system. the caste system is hierarchial and almost always there’s someone lower on the hierarchy who can be oppressed. The sadism of this makes the person forget that almost always there’s someone higher on the hierarchy who can oppress, humiliate, and persecute him. This hierarchial system of oppression is so pervasive that there are sub-castes within a caste which makes every caste itself hierarchial and makes it difficult for people of a caste to unite. In every caste & every subcaste, women are the bottom. This ensures patriarchy is maintained by all castes & subcastes, and gives every frustrated man someone he can punch down to take his anger & frustrations out on. How can any such man who practices hierachial oppression within the confines of his own home take a stand against the hierarchial oppression he suffers from other men out of his home?

      The caste system allows a person to wield power over others without earning it, just by being born into a oppressor caste family. Oppressor upper castes call this power ‘merit’ to demean affirmative action that help a oppressed lower caste person strive for an education or a job. Incidentally, oppressor upper castes love affirmative action in foreign countries which benefit them.

      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.

      India has a law to fight casteist oppression and violence against Dalits & Adivasis called the Prevention of Atrocities against SC/ST Act. But those in charge of implementing this law are from the oppressor upper castes. So the law is rarely applied even though caste atrocities abound.

      Caste is a barbaric system and as Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar has rightly said, caste must be annihilated.

      Caste-based discrimination, harassment, and oppression is rife among Indians outside India. Laws preventing caste discrimnation, like the one passed in California & before that in Seattle, are essential to ensuring basic human dignity to all, Pro-Hindu groups oppose these anti-discrimination efforts as being Hinduphobic. Maybe they think Hinduism is casteist persecution?

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/22/caste-discrimination-us-modi-visit-hindu?ref=upstract.com

      https://time.com/6146141/caste-discrimination-us-opposition-grows/

      https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/seattle-caste-discrimination-proposal-kshama-sawant-indians-in-us-hindus-in-america-2338186-2023-02-22