6 ms·

Why is caste not a subset of national origin or race? Do Indians who discriminate on the basis of caste also discriminate against non-Indians of a lower caste,

by abduhl 4y ago

Why is caste not a subset of national origin or race? Do Indians who discriminate on the basis of caste also discriminate against non-Indians of a lower caste, or is it solely confined to other Indians? If not directly a protected class, why would this not clearly be a disparate impact type of case?

elteto 4y ago
It’s not that it is or it isn’t. The US legal system is based on precedent so if there’s little history of previous cases where this was decided then it’s very hard to know how it will go in court. Everyone loves citing precedent but nobody wants to be the first one to try and set it.
saalweachter 4y ago
It might be! I'm not a lawyer, and have no idea if there is already precedent in the US specifically regarding castes, but there is a motion that national origin covers ancestry. It's entirely possible that the legal department in the story above thought it was a cut and dry case and that's why they pushed hard to shut it down before it became one.
- ummonk 4y ago
  Yeah it sounds like legal saw it as cut and dry at least that he could be fired (and possibly that they also had a requirement to do so), while HR folks were making nonsensical arguments of the kind we're seeing here from non-lawyers.
pc86 4y ago
My understanding is that non-Indians are simply outside the caste system entirely. So to the extent that there are Indians who view themselves as better than non-Indians, that's less caste discrimination and more good old fashioned racism.
- sreevisakh 4y ago
  Do you know of any Indians who treat all non-Indians as inferior? My understanding is that non-Indians are judged based on their skin color. That is most certainly racism, but not based on nationality. Another thing that puzzles me is how you differentiate caste discrimination from racism. The underlying motivations are different. But the treatment, politics and tactics used are almost the same in both cases. I'm curious about your perspective on these.
  - pc86 4y ago
    Personally I think they're the same - equally abhorrent, and people who act that way should be shunned from the industry entirely (there's a comment I made I think a week ago saying basically the same thing). Legally though, racism == illegal discrimination while caste discrimination == legal discrimination.
lambdasquirrel 4y ago
Morally, it may be obvious to us that that's how it should be, but the law doesn't work like that. The law runs on precedents. Taken another way, the law is like code. The "architects" of the code are the legislature who write the laws, and the "programmers" are the judges, who decide exactly what goes in the if-else conditions, based on their interpretation of the law, and those become precedents the next time someone revisits that condition. The U.S. law on the matter doesn't explicitly mention caste. There are constitutional originalists who take a very "conservative" approach to applying the law, and they might say it isn't illegal until the law is changed to explicitly forbid caste discrimination. When I was growing up, I knew some conservative Indians who would've taken that stance. The Cisco discrimination suit is the first test of the law, and is likely setting the first precedent. Apple has decided its position (make of that what you will), and chosen to get ahead of the game.
- abduhl 4y ago
  Applicable precedent is basically already set for this, especially in the liberal Ninth Circuit. This is the language of Bostock regarding LGBTQ discrimination, decided in 2020 6-3 and written by a conservative constitutional originalist (Gorsuch): "An employer who fired an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. But the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit." Replace "homosexual or transgender" with "different caste" and "different sex" with "different race/national origin/ancestry (in California, ancestry is a protected class)" and the passage quite obviously still applies: An employer who fired an individual for being [from a different caste] fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a [different race]. [Race/National origin] plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. But the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.
toast0 4y ago
I don't think a subset is a protected class. If you don't want to hire/promote/etc people from Oklahoma, that's not explicitly prohibited, because state origin isn't a protected class. If you only hired/promoted/etc people from upper castes, that would be discrimination on national origin, because anyone who isn't from the historic India region wouldn't be eligible. But if you're promoting upper castes and not lower castes, and you promote people from outside the region, there's not a clear discrimination on national origin. I'm an outsider to the caste system, but I don't think caste is considered to be the same as race? Especially not in the US, where federal race has very limited categories {(select one: Hispanic/Latino, not Hispanic/Latino), (select at least one: American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, White)}. Of course, IMHO, the underlying anti-discrimination intent is to treat people based on their skills and abilities etc, not based on the circumstances of their birth, and discriminating based on caste is clearly not within that intent.
- colpabar 4y ago
  > Of course, IMHO, the underlying anti-discrimination intent is to treat people based on their skills and abilities etc, not based on the circumstances of their birth, and discriminating based on caste is clearly not within that intent. This is what really bugs me about DEI policies and the people who advocate for them. A lot of comments seem to say "well, caste isn't a protected class so they didn't know what to do," which to me means "the company isn't afraid of getting sued for explicit discrimination because it isn't illegal, so no one is going to do anything." HR is not interested in making things more diverse, or helping the oppressed, or any other "good thing" that DEI claims to do. They are interested in preventing lawsuits. It is disgusting to me that so many people seemingly know this full well and still advocate for DEI policies as if their HR department was founded by MLK.
  - toast0 4y ago
    > A lot of comments seem to say "well, caste isn't a protected class so they didn't know what to do," which to me means "the company isn't afraid of getting sued for explicit discrimination because it isn't illegal, so no one is going to do anything." The company is probably also afraid of getting sued for firing the Indian person doing the discrimination that's not explicitly prohibited. With the right presentation, that looks like discrimination based on national origin, because only Indian origin people would be fired for caste discrimination.
gautamdivgi 4y ago
The rough equivalence in american terms is probably someone from a well established New England family discriminating against an underprivileged southerner assuming both are white. If you’re not Indian you don’t have a caste. Discrimination against you would be covered under other forms of discrimination (national origin, religion, color, etc..).
- saalweachter 4y ago
  Maybe university-pedigree in the US? "Ivy league" isn't quite as closed as the caste system, but multi-generational matriculation is at least perceived as common, pop culture equates attending one of a select number of universities with success/intelligence/power/wealth, and 8/9 SCOTUS Justices graduated from 2 law schools. You also get a hierarchy of social standing with Ivy league at the top, community colleges and no-college at the bottom, and some arcane ordering of various public and private institutions in between which you need to be a cultural insider to parse.

by abduhl 4y ago

elteto 4y ago

It’s not that it is or it isn’t. The US legal system is based on precedent so if there’s little history of previous cases where this was decided then it’s very hard to know how it will go in court. Everyone loves citing precedent but nobody wants to be the first one to try and set it.

saalweachter 4y ago

It might be! I'm not a lawyer, and have no idea if there is already precedent in the US specifically regarding castes, but there is a motion that national origin covers ancestry. It's entirely possible that the legal department in the story above thought it was a cut and dry case and that's why they pushed hard to shut it down before it became one.

ummonk 4y ago
Yeah it sounds like legal saw it as cut and dry at least that he could be fired (and possibly that they also had a requirement to do so), while HR folks were making nonsensical arguments of the kind we're seeing here from non-lawyers.

pc86 4y ago

My understanding is that non-Indians are simply outside the caste system entirely. So to the extent that there are Indians who view themselves as better than non-Indians, that's less caste discrimination and more good old fashioned racism.

sreevisakh 4y ago
Do you know of any Indians who treat all non-Indians as inferior? My understanding is that non-Indians are judged based on their skin color. That is most certainly racism, but not based on nationality. Another thing that puzzles me is how you differentiate caste discrimination from racism. The underlying motivations are different. But the treatment, politics and tactics used are almost the same in both cases. I'm curious about your perspective on these.
- pc86 4y ago
  Personally I think they're the same - equally abhorrent, and people who act that way should be shunned from the industry entirely (there's a comment I made I think a week ago saying basically the same thing). Legally though, racism == illegal discrimination while caste discrimination == legal discrimination.

lambdasquirrel 4y ago

Morally, it may be obvious to us that that's how it should be, but the law doesn't work like that. The law runs on precedents. Taken another way, the law is like code. The "architects" of the code are the legislature who write the laws, and the "programmers" are the judges, who decide exactly what goes in the if-else conditions, based on their interpretation of the law, and those become precedents the next time someone revisits that condition. The U.S. law on the matter doesn't explicitly mention caste. There are constitutional originalists who take a very "conservative" approach to applying the law, and they might say it isn't illegal until the law is changed to explicitly forbid caste discrimination. When I was growing up, I knew some conservative Indians who would've taken that stance. The Cisco discrimination suit is the first test of the law, and is likely setting the first precedent. Apple has decided its position (make of that what you will), and chosen to get ahead of the game.

abduhl 4y ago
Applicable precedent is basically already set for this, especially in the liberal Ninth Circuit. This is the language of Bostock regarding LGBTQ discrimination, decided in 2020 6-3 and written by a conservative constitutional originalist (Gorsuch): "An employer who fired an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. But the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit." Replace "homosexual or transgender" with "different caste" and "different sex" with "different race/national origin/ancestry (in California, ancestry is a protected class)" and the passage quite obviously still applies: An employer who fired an individual for being [from a different caste] fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a [different race]. [Race/National origin] plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. But the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.

toast0 4y ago

I don't think a subset is a protected class. If you don't want to hire/promote/etc people from Oklahoma, that's not explicitly prohibited, because state origin isn't a protected class. If you only hired/promoted/etc people from upper castes, that would be discrimination on national origin, because anyone who isn't from the historic India region wouldn't be eligible. But if you're promoting upper castes and not lower castes, and you promote people from outside the region, there's not a clear discrimination on national origin. I'm an outsider to the caste system, but I don't think caste is considered to be the same as race? Especially not in the US, where federal race has very limited categories {(select one: Hispanic/Latino, not Hispanic/Latino), (select at least one: American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, White)}. Of course, IMHO, the underlying anti-discrimination intent is to treat people based on their skills and abilities etc, not based on the circumstances of their birth, and discriminating based on caste is clearly not within that intent.

colpabar 4y ago
> Of course, IMHO, the underlying anti-discrimination intent is to treat people based on their skills and abilities etc, not based on the circumstances of their birth, and discriminating based on caste is clearly not within that intent. This is what really bugs me about DEI policies and the people who advocate for them. A lot of comments seem to say "well, caste isn't a protected class so they didn't know what to do," which to me means "the company isn't afraid of getting sued for explicit discrimination because it isn't illegal, so no one is going to do anything." HR is not interested in making things more diverse, or helping the oppressed, or any other "good thing" that DEI claims to do. They are interested in preventing lawsuits. It is disgusting to me that so many people seemingly know this full well and still advocate for DEI policies as if their HR department was founded by MLK.
- toast0 4y ago
  > A lot of comments seem to say "well, caste isn't a protected class so they didn't know what to do," which to me means "the company isn't afraid of getting sued for explicit discrimination because it isn't illegal, so no one is going to do anything." The company is probably also afraid of getting sued for firing the Indian person doing the discrimination that's not explicitly prohibited. With the right presentation, that looks like discrimination based on national origin, because only Indian origin people would be fired for caste discrimination.

gautamdivgi 4y ago

The rough equivalence in american terms is probably someone from a well established New England family discriminating against an underprivileged southerner assuming both are white. If you’re not Indian you don’t have a caste. Discrimination against you would be covered under other forms of discrimination (national origin, religion, color, etc..).

saalweachter 4y ago
Maybe university-pedigree in the US? "Ivy league" isn't quite as closed as the caste system, but multi-generational matriculation is at least perceived as common, pop culture equates attending one of a select number of universities with success/intelligence/power/wealth, and 8/9 SCOTUS Justices graduated from 2 law schools. You also get a hierarchy of social standing with Ivy league at the top, community colleges and no-college at the bottom, and some arcane ordering of various public and private institutions in between which you need to be a cultural insider to parse.