California is a trendsetter. What happens here spreads to other states. For the most part, this has been a good thing – think health or technology. But California has also started some really bad trends, like the targeting of ethnic groups through laws that appear rather benign, but are not.
One example? The 1913 Alien Land Law. This law targeted Japanese in the state, but also applied to Chinese, Koreans, and South Asians, denying them rights to land. And over a century later, freshman senator, Aisha Wahab, is making a xenophobic splash with the hopes of kickstarting a similar trend. Her bill, SB403, seeks to add ‘caste’ as a specific category under California’s nondiscrimination laws, this time targeting South Asians, but also applying to Japanese, Africans, and South Americans, denying them rights to equal protection and due process.
Under the guise of addressing an exceedingly rare form of community-level discrimination — one that is already covered by existing bans on ancestry-based discrimination — Senator Wahab has even made wild accusations both in her legislation, as well in statements to the media, to promote her discriminatory bill.
The accusations?
That South Asian Californians, whether in schools, the workplace, their community institutions, or whereever they go, are engaging in horrible acts ranging from bias and discrimination, to torture, rape, murder, even human trafficking, on the basis of caste.
The proof of such heinous actions? None.
Adding insult to injury is that Senator Wahab’s district has a significant number of prominent South Asians and major South Asian institutions. None were consulted prior to the introduction of her discriminatory bill about whether caste discrimination was a problem or whether existing laws failed to deliver justice to anyone alleging such discrimination.
Instead, Senator Wahab not just overlooks them, but vilifies those among her own constituents who have reached out to convey their real fears about the stigma she has unleashed against them, and the devastating impact her bill will have on their ability to work or their children’s to go to school without being ethnically profiled.
We all are opposed to discrimination and support advancing civil rights, but SB-403 achieves neither.
Existing nondiscrimination law applies to everyone. Every Californian has a race, an ancestry, a gender identity, an age. Not everyone has a caste. SB-403 throws away the very foundation of equal protection and due process.
A ‘Yes’ vote to SB-403 creates a law that applies to only certain people based on their national origin or ancestry. A ‘Yes’ vote to SB403 is to deny all South Asians of all caste backgrounds, including those who don’t identify by caste, their right to be treated equally under the law.
SB-403 adds a standalone category that has no consensus definition other than inaccurate stereotypes. It preemptively declares a class of “oppressed” South Asians, leaving anyone who is not deemed or perceived as that to be an “oppressor” South Asian, thereby institutionalizing a presumption of guilt.
SB-403 also engages in verbal gymnastics as it suggests that the personal choices South Asians make in terms of who we marry, are friends with, or our dietary choices, are indicators of caste discrimination.
No other race or ethnicity is misjudged in this way under nondiscrimination law.
In spite of several senators on the Judiciary Committee expressing concerns on the serious legal ramifications of the bill, they seem to have caved to the pressure of public perception and politics, and voted to pass it out of Committee. And now it’s been rushed through a Senate floor vote, passing without any discussion.
Supporters of this bill have painted their opponents as being “for” discrimination. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re asking not whether we need to deal with caste discrimination, but rather how.
California lawmakers need to show moral courage here, support the notion that all Californians, regardless of their ancestry, deserve equal protection and due process, and vote No on SB-403.
