Seattle considers historic law barring caste discrimination

https://apnews.com/article/seattle-discrimination-india-religion-49843c779c8f3d60720bc1e2c71a952a

8 6 3 years ago

This article doesn't go into any detail about the proposed law, but it goes to great lengths to demonstrate a caste discrimination issue in America. It's not clear how this law would apply to other cultures, ones that don't have a caste system, but one in which could be created for a legal argument.

Making it harder to discriminate against someone based on their skin, color or culture is a good thing, but caste seems too intangible. This law could open a very nasty can of worms.

bongoman37• 3 years ago

Actually caste is far more tangible than something like skin color. It is encoded into birth certificates etc in India and is immutable. You can change religions but your caste carries into the new one.

sidm83• 3 years ago

This is a false assertion. I have gone through sample birth certificates of multiple states in India, I did not find any of them mentioning caste. Caste certificate is a separate document, issued only upon application, which can then be used as proof for applying for reservation benefits.

Ref https://www.nriway.com/nri-service/nri-birth-certificate https://www.indiafilings.com/learn/caste-certificate-in-indi...

parasense• 3 years ago

Yeah, exactly.

Presumably caste discrimination is Hindu-on-Hindu.

From what I remember from Humanities class, the low-tier caste are not capable of transcending the Hindu religious pyramid scheme, and... all non-Hindu's are by default equivalent to the lowest echelon, or even outside the tier structure entirely.

I'm always interested to know more about slang, slurs, and pejorative language from any /all cultures. So I'm curious to find out Hindu pejoratives that I could say to the high caste, low caste, and everything between? This kind of discrimination needs to expand beyond the Hindu culture, but I'm mostly interested in flipping the script where the high-caste are treated like poo.

How do I easily identify the high caste? Can I know by their long sur name?

pella• 3 years ago

dups:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34876082 (>= 241 points )

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34877249 (>= 72 points )

jdmtheNth• 3 years ago

This is exactly why North America was supposed to be a melting pot - so that people could choose a better culture and give up their own.

Seattle considers historic law barring caste discrimination

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