Caste discrimination in the United States


Caste discrimination in the United States is a form of discrimination based on the social hierarchy which is determined by a person's birth. Though the use of the term caste is more prevalent in South Asia and Bali, in the United States, South Asian Americans also use the term caste.
Caste is not officially recognized by law in the United States, except in Seattle, Washington. On February 21, 2023, Seattle became the first U.S. jurisdiction to add caste to its list of categories protected against discrimination. In other places such as California, caste is implicitly covered as a subset of other categories under anti-discrimination laws. The existence of caste discrimination in the U.S. tech sector was also acknowledged by a group of Dalit female engineers from Microsoft, Google, Apple and other tech companies. In 2021, the student body of California State University system passed a resolution against caste discrimination.

Overview

History of caste in the United States

The U.S. Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to "free white persons," forcing immigrants to determine their racial classification in federal courts. In 1910, the Asiatic Exclusion League argued that people of Asian origin should be denied citizenship through naturalization. The league described Hindu ancestry as "enslaved, effeminate, caste-ridden, and degraded" and Hindus as the "slaves of Creation."
In 1913, A. K. Mozumdar, an immigrant from Bengal living in Washington State, applied for United States citizenship. Mozumdar argued that as a high-caste Hindu of what he described as Aryan descent, he shared racial origins with Europeans. His application was accepted, making him one of the earliest South Asian immigrants to obtain U.S. citizenship.
In 1953, W. Norman Brown, founder of the Department of South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote that "a large number of Americans...have a picture of India as a land of meditating omphalopsychites, hypnotic swamis, naked ascetics, bejewelled princes of fabulous wealth and incomparable harems, gross superstition, bare-skinned, poverty-stricken, famine-ridden masses, where everyone is a beggar and caste is more important than life."
Caste discrimination may have accompanied immigrants to the US from India, Nepal and other South Asian countries. Based on the 2017 American Community Survey, about 5.9 million South Asians live in the U.S. Despite being one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups, caste discrimination may be underreported despite its potential influence on job opportunities and marriage prospects among
South Asian immigrants. Indian migrants account for a large number of high-skilled workers in STEM fields, which could lead to an issue of caste discrimination in the workplace in areas such as Silicon Valley. Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director of Equality Labs, said, “Wherever South Asians go, they bring caste."

Race and caste

Several observers see parallels between race in the United States and caste. When Martin Luther King, Jr. visited India in 1959, he was introduced by the principal of a school with Dalit students as a "fellow untouchable from the United States of America". Although taken aback by this description, King agreed with it after reflection, thinking, "Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable."
In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson argues that racial stratification in the United States is best understood as a caste system, akin to those in India and in Nazi Germany.
Caste activists in India have found common ground with the struggles of African Americans in the US. The activist group Dalit Panthers was inspired by the American Black Panther Party.

Legal position

Caste is not explicitly recognized as a category under most anti-discrimination laws in the U.S. According to some commentators, this was because caste was an unknown concept when these laws were originally passed.
It has come to light only in recent times due to reports of discrimination. Others have said that categories such as ancestry as in California law already cover caste discrimination. Legal scholars have also argued that caste discrimination is cognizable as race discrimination, religious discrimination, and national origin discrimination.
In August 2002, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination approved a resolution condemning caste or descent-based discrimination.
In February 2023, Seattle became the first city in the United States to explicitly ban caste-based discrimination.

California Senate Bill 403

In 2023, California State Senator Aisha Wahab introduced SB 403, a bill that would have made California the first state in the nation to include caste in the list of legally protected categories against discrimination. The bill defined caste as "an individual's perceived position in a system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status," which could be determined by several factors including the "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." SB 403 added caste to existing anti-discrimination protections in housing, employment, and public education. The bill did not mention a specific ethnicity or religion. The bill was supported by some Dalit rights groups and opposed by some Hindu organizations, who claimed the bill was unnecessary and unfairly singled out Hindu Americans.
The state legislature approved the bill, but it was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom, who wrote that pre-existing anti-discrimination laws already prohibited caste discrimination.

Studies on caste in the United States

According to a 2003 study by the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, 1.5% of Indian immigrants were Dalits or members of lower classes. Another 2016 study found that the 'high' or 'dominant' castes make up more than 90% of Indian migrants.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a study in 2021 and reported that 47% of Hindu respondents identified with a caste. The research concluded that the majority of respondents do not identify with caste, especially among those born in America. Of those that identified with a caste, roughly 1% each identified with scheduled caste and scheduled tribe categories.
A survey on caste discrimination conducted by Equality Labs
found 67% of Indian Dalits living in the U.S. reported that they faced caste-based harassment at the workplace, with 27% reporting verbal or physical assault based on their caste. The survey also documents personal anecdotes about discrimination and isolation at schools, workplaces, temples and within communities. The Carnegie Endowment researchers pointed out that the study used a non-representative snowball sampling method to identify participants, which might have skewed the results in favour of those with strong views about caste.
The Carnegie Endowment study, using a sample from YouGov, found 5% of Indian Americans reporting they faced caste discrimination. A third of them said that they faced discrimination from other Indian Americans, another third said they faced it from non-Indian Americans, and a final third said that they faced it from both Indian and non-Indian Americans. The researchers found this response perplexing as non-Indians would not have had caste as a salient category.
Homophily based on caste, i.e., tendency to associate with the people of the same caste, was reported by 21% of the respondents; 24% said that they did not know the caste of the people they associated with. The remainder said that they associate with some or most people of their caste.
The Ambedkar King Study Circle collected testimonies of how caste consciousness and discrimination are practiced by the Indian diaspora. The testimonies record various types of discriminatory practices in schools, workplaces, social gatherings and neighborhoods. Usually this discrimination borders on the sense of notional and real 'untouchability'.

Psychosocial toll

Caste-based discrimination imposes psychological distress on its victims, especially from lower castes. Dalits suffer at the hand of discrimination, being referred to as "untouchable" and "dirty". Dalits are often bullied by upper-caste classmates and treated differently by teachers, which is trauma that translates from one generation to the next. South Asians report experiencing diminished self-esteem, feelings of isolation, and enduring anxiety and fear. The Equality Labs study in the US found that those from lower castes "fear retaliation and worry about being "outed" and hence "hide their caste." This fear of being outed can manifest in several ways; for example, some families opt to change their surnames to one considered more "caste neutral" in order to avoid ridicule and isolation. The long-term impact on mental health can be severe.

Discrimination issues

Discrimination issues in the workplace

The existence of caste discrimination in the US tech sector was acknowledged by a group of Dalit female engineers from Microsoft, Google, Apple and other tech companies.
Ambedkar King Study Circle, a US based activist group, along with 15 other organizations, sent an appeal to top American companies including Google, Apple, Microsoft demanding that the CEOs intervene immediately to address the issue of caste discrimination. The AKSC wanted the companies to bring in caste sensitivity training similar to the gender, race, sexuality training practices. AKSC emphasized fair and equal opportunity recruitment, retention and appraisal policies.
In May 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Akshardham in Robbinsville Township, New Jersey to investigate slavery and forced labor of lower caste Indian workers. The workers were brought to the U.S. on religious visas. The FBI removed about 90 workers from the site.
In April 2022, Google cancelled a planned talk by Thenmozhi Soundararajan as part of its Diversity Equity and Inclusivity programme. It was allegedly done under pressure from employees, accusing her of being Hinduphobic and anti-Hindu. Some felt their lives would be endangered if the talk went ahead. Rather than bringing their community together, it caused division and rancor, according to the Google spokesperson. The senior Google manager who invited Soundararajan resigned over the incident.