Seattle City Council provides caste to metropolis’s anti-discrimination legal guidelines, turning into the primary US metropolis to particularly outlaw caste discrimination.
(AP)
Seattle has develop into the primary US metropolis to
outlaw caste discrimination, after its native council
voted so as to add caste to town’s anti-discrimination legal guidelines.
Tuesday’s transfer addresses a difficulty vital to the realm’s South
Asian diaspora, significantly the Indian and Hindu communities.
India’s caste system is among the many world’s oldest types of inflexible
social stratification.
“The struggle towards caste discrimination is deeply linked
to the struggle towards all types of oppression,” Kshama Sawant, an
Indian American Seattle City Council member, mentioned.
The caste system dates again 1000’s of years and permits
many privileges to higher castes however represses decrease castes. The
Dalit group is on the bottom rung of the Indian Hindu caste
system and have been handled as “untouchables.”
“Caste discrimination doesn’t solely happen in different
nations. It is confronted by South Asian American and different
immigrant working individuals of their workplaces, together with within the
tech sector, in Seattle and in cities across the nation,”
Sawant mentioned when her workplace launched the proposal to ban
caste-based discrimination in Seattle.
Caste discrimination was outlawed in India over 70 years
in the past, but bias persists, in accordance with a number of research in current
years, together with one which discovered individuals from decrease castes have been
underrepresented in higher-paying jobs.
Even although India has banned untouchability, Dalits nonetheless
face widespread abuse throughout that nation, the place their makes an attempt
at upward social mobility have at occasions been violently put down.
Debate over the caste system’s hierarchy is contentious in
India and overseas, with the problem intertwined with faith.
Some
individuals say discrimination is now uncommon. Indian authorities
insurance policies reserving seats for lower-caste college students at prime Indian
universities have helped many land tech jobs within the West in
current years.
Activists opposing caste discrimination say it’s no totally different from different types of discrimination like racism and therefore ought to be outlawed. US discrimination legal guidelines ban ancestry discrimination however don’t explicitly ban casteism.
Source: Reuters
Source: www.trtworld.com
