California moved closer to becoming the first U.S. state to ban caste discrimination after a bill to outlaw the practise passed the California Assembly late on Monday.
U.S. discrimination laws ban ancestry discrimination but do not explicitly ban casteism. California’s legislation targets the caste system in South Asian immigrant communities by adding caste to the list of categories protected under the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
The bill was introduced and authored by state Senator Aisha Wahab, an Afghan American Democrat, in March. An earlier version of it passed the state Senate before undergoing revisions.
If being a bigot was socially acceptable here we’d see more abuses in broad day light like Asia
But people still get murdered and tortured for being different in the U.S. And there’s still tons of covert and overt bigotry in every level of society from housing, to work, to school, to medicine.
So, I get you. In Asia it’s acceptable to treat people this way which means there’s fewer legal protections. It still happens in the U.S. And I’m sure the victims and their families couldn’t care less if we argue about where it’s worse.