“I personally see this as something that does not exist in society,” said Praveen Sinha, a professor of accounting at California State University, Long Beach, who filed a lawsuit last year challenging the university system’s addition of caste to its discrimination policy.
Opponents say that expressly naming caste as a protected characteristic disproportionately makes South Asians more vulnerable to unfair accusations of discrimination for actions that may have nothing to do with caste.
They see redemption in the state dropping its case against the two managers at the heart of the Cisco case, though its lawsuit against the company is still ongoing.
The State Legislature, in an attempt to address such concerns, amended Senator Wahab’s bill this summer to make caste a subset of ancestry discrimination rather than its own class.
Some say that writing caste into state law will draw greater attention to outdated South Asian distinctions rather than dissolve them.
Persons:
“, ”, Praveen Sinha, Wahab’s, Samir Kalra
Organizations:
California State University, Cisco, State Legislature, Hindu American Foundation
Locations:
India, Long Beach, America