Concerns over discrimination according to Indian caste differences are gaining ground in the USA.
Back in April, over 450 Indian Americans debated the Dilemma of caste in a hearing held by the Santa Clara County Human Rights Commission at California.
The hearing was in reaction to queries within caste discrimination being increased at a number of those Silicon Valley technology firms that employ tens of thousands of highly skilled employees of Indian origin.
Before the Cal State Student Association (CSSA) — a pupils’ body which reflects 23 campuses of the California State University program — had passed a resolution encouraging the accession of caste as a safe group against discrimination.
The pupils’ body led the college board of trustees to include caste from the machine anti-discrimination policy and supply assets to its members to better comprehend the topic.
The CSSA settlement, passed in April this year, also noted that a poll from Equality Labs — a US-based South Asian business working to stop caste apartheid,” gender-based violence, Islamophobia, white supremacy and religious consequences — on’caste from the United States’ that stated 25 percent of Dalits reported physical or verbal attack based on their own caste in america.
The poll said that one in 3 Dalit pupils reported being discriminated throughout their schooling in the nation.
Two from 3 Dalits surveyed reported being treated satisfactorily in their office.
This settlement is said to be an important step in fixing caste-based discrimination , and this has been overlooked by most American associations.
Significantly, the Brandeis University had been the very first US college to prohibit caste-based discrimination.
University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, also, have started to investigate caste problems on their own campuses.
But not many Indian Americans think that discrimination based on caste ought to be recognized as a distinctive class and view is, in actuality, sharply split on the matter.
In the Santa Clara commission hearing, Suhag Shukla — executive director and legal counsel of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) — had stated in her testimony which certain incidents of caste-based discrimination on the job and school ought to be attracted to light, completely researched, and also rectified under present legislation, and by extension, present county and business policies.
“The remedy to Shifting caste-based discrimination isn’t in the introduction of caste as a particular class, but instead enforcing existing legislation, teaching people of the faith, ensuring businesses are compliant with their own legal duties, and cultural proficiency training because our communities and employers develop more diverse,” she explained.
In her view, caste is a stereotype uniquely connected with Indians and Hindus along with also a proposal to make another group of caste-based discrimination could organically aim South Asians, Indians, along with Hindus such as ethno-religious profiling, tracking, and so forth.
HAF, as a business, takes the position that although quitting possible and alleged episodes of caste-based discrimination is still a significant target, the remedy to the dilemma is employing present non-discrimination law.
“Adding caste as a distinct group are the sole legal group which applies uniquely to a group of individuals and it might be almost impossible to execute without profiling this category, and could finally be counter-productive to only using present prohibitions on discrimination based on national origin, cultural ancestry, and such,” Mat McDermott, senior manager of communications in HAF, informed TIMESOFINDIA.com.The bigger context of the discussion on caste will be California’s continuing lawsuit against Silicon Valley-based technology important Cisco Systems alleging caste discrimination at work.
Moreover, Ambedkar International Centre, also a live-in non-profit firm, has recently filed an amicus curiae brief with the court for a party that has an interest in the results of the situation.
Lately, the Alphabet Workers Union, representing employees of their parent firm of Google and many subsidiaries, stated it stood in aid of their current”historical” lawsuit filed with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing from Cisco for offenses on the grounds of caste.
The Union continues to be a step farther and passed a resolution demanding that caste be inserted as a protected group both in Alphabet in addition to in the USA.
The direction of this union considers that casteism is becoming a cause for concern in US offices.
“The current litigation against Cisco highlights the way caste discrimination impacts American employees, and also my coworkers in Google have reported similar experiences.
Caste discrimination and casteism are present in the American tech sector and about the globe,” Andrew Gainer-Dewar, an applications engineer at Google’s Massachusetts office and also a part of this Alphabet Workers Union, advised TIMESOFINDIA.com.
“US labor laws protect employees from discrimination on the grounds of certain special characteristics, such as race, gender, and national origin, however, it doesn’t explicitly prohibit caste discrimination.
So the current national legal framework isn’t sufficient to deal with casteism at work ”