[locofocos]

Precisely. I'm trying to understand the resistance in good faith, but the article didn't explain their position very clearly.

"It's already prohibited" - so why the fierce opposition?

"Passing a law against discrimination of X will stigmatize X" - Imagine someone was making this argument for an existing federally protected class.

[tekla]

People do not want to import this shit into the US.

They left these systems behind, and making a law codifies the system into law, which is kinda fucked up.

I myself have seen discrimination in non obvious ways (not Indian but exact same idea where your birth dictates certain societal ideas about you) , and would be absolutely pissed if anyone made a law that protects against that because discrimination is already protected against.

I REALLY do not want the Govt to literally categorize me into a bucket I do not give a shit about, and now everyone wants to codify a system that I would rather just fade away into time.

[catlover76]

This makes so little sense I can't really tell whether or not this is in good faith.

> People do not want to import this shit into the US.

You realize people discriminating on this basis are the ones "importing this shit into the US", right?

> I REALLY do not want the Govt to literally categorize me into a bucket I do not give a shit about

You realize that this law wouldn't involve the government compiling a list of the caste background of every Hindu in America from ahead of time right?

> now everyone wants to codify a system that I would rather just fade away into time.

How does it "codify" the caste system to allow people who are being discriminated on its basis to have a better shot at obtaining legal redress for the wrong being done to them?

[ribosometronome]

>absolutely pissed if anyone made a law that protects against that because discrimination is already protected against

Why would this piss you off? It's a little redundant, I suppose, but that hardly seems particularly upsetting. Specifically, this bill looks like it updated CA's definition to clarify that ancestry based descrimination include caste, where caste was defined as:

>(aa) “Caste” means an individual’s perceived position in a system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status. “A system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status” may be characterized by factors that may include, but are not limited to, inability or restricted ability to alter inherited status; socially enforced restrictions on marriage, private and public segregation, and discrimination; and social exclusion on the basis of perceived status.

I'm not really seeing where the government is codifying you into a group you don't want to be in. The idea seems to be based on the discrimanator's perception of what groups you are in. Without this clarification, though, I'm not sure how Newsom (or anyone) can be confident of judicial interpretation of law, especially given that he notably was complaining recently about a judge's interpretation of the law.

>I would rather just fade away into time.

Would you say that most of the progress on dismantling caste-related issues has been by way of the government actively ignoring its existence?

I'm pretty American and thus largely ignorant about most things but especially India's history and how this issue has been addressed and changed over time, but American history doesn't have many examples of places where the things people discriminated on simply faded away. Most have required active efforts to get to where they are today and obviously where it's at is still not a great place.

[idopmstuff]

> because discrimination is already protected against

Some discrimination is protected against, but this statement is far too broad to be accurate. I can discriminate against you because of who you vote for or what car you drive or which NFL team you root for.

[olliej]

What are you talking about?

The whole point of caste based discrimination is that people are putting you, as you say, in a bucket and then discriminating on that basis. By having such discrimination be legal you ensure that such discrimination is (a) legal, and (b) gets to be entrenched in the US.

[0thgen]

there is an interview with a person from India involved in a caste discrimination lawsuit that people should watch: https://youtu.be/XhGZUE1ABuo?si=r9DVUDAoexoS0-aB

they make similar arguments about why they feel the bill is a bad idea

[bsder]

> People do not want to import this shit into the US.

It already exists whether you wish to acknowledge it or not.

The question, at the end of the day, is whether or not existing law is sufficient. Presumably we are expecting that caste falls under "religion or creed" in terms of protected characteristics.

Has that actually been established?

[dataflow]

No idea what the actual reason is, but I could potentially understand the argument that passing such laws would suggest to courts that other categories that they might've thought were already intended to be protected perhaps actually weren't so.

Moreover, every new law carries a risk of having unintended consequences. So the argument may well be as simple as, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

(That said, I don't get the impression everyone who opposed it did so for the same reasons.)

[phpisthebest]

>>so why the fierce opposition?

Because anytime you pass unnecessary laws you open the future up to some judge somewhere, or some prosecutor some where twisting the words to mean something completely different

Happens all the time in society and the fact that people believe it is acceptable to simply duplicate laws is very dangerous

We need a massive curbing of the number of laws in society as it is, personally in think for every law that is passed they should be forced to repel one.

[ethanbond]

Would make sense if this wasn't being proposed specifically in response to specific real things happening in actual reality today which the law is failing to address.

[huytersd]

Codifying into law a dying system only prolongs it. Unless you have people from hyper local regions working together, no one can even tell caste. People from different parts of the same state in India can’t even tell apart castes.

[catlover76]

The one good faith argument is that Hindus feel targeted by it because, de facto, this is about higher-caste Hindus discriminating against low-caste Hindus.

Whether or not that's particularly convincing or a reason not to pass it is debatable, but I think it's a valid reason that merits consideration.

Any reasoning beyond this ends up being gobbledygook.

[bradleyjg]

This is not a reasonable complaint unless there is no discrimination. If there is discrimination then it’s entirely reasonable to target it.

[olliej]

I mean there are plenty of caste based systems in many religions, perhaps of relevance to the US are Mormonism and Scientology which both have ranking systems that determine options for people in the religion (and who have tried to leave it).

It's also worth noting that if you are born in a specific caste, and convert from your religion, you will still be subjected to caste discrimination from the folk in the original religion.

Obviously under the rules of the current Supreme Court anyone can claim their bigotry is because "religion" and carry on doing it. Don't want to serve someone? claim doing so violates your religious beliefs. Renting a property? ditto. Employment? again.

[belltaco]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/30/anti-sharia-...

[bigstrat2003]

> "It's already prohibited" - so why the fierce opposition?

Because making something double illegal is a waste of time at best, and at worst would be actually harmful if there are unforeseen negative consequences.