By Suhag A. Shukla
Dec. 21, 2022 6:00 pm ET
The seal of Brown University sits atop the Van Wickle Gates at the edge of the main campus in Providence, Rhode Island, Aug. 16.
PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
The Supreme Court is considering whether universities can legally discriminate against Asian applicants in the interest of assembling a “diverse student body.” Meanwhile Brown University has adopted a policy that discriminates against certain Asian students in the name of nondiscrimination.
Brown announced Dec. 1 that it has “added a new provision to its nondiscrimination policy that explicitly prohibits caste oppression,” which it described as “a subtle, often misunderstood form of structural inequality.” There has apparently never been a “caste”-related complaint at Brown.
While ending discrimination is a worthy goal, Brown’s policy is itself discriminatory, and therefore unlawful. As the announcement acknowledges, it applies only to students and faculty of “South Asian descent.”
What’s especially bewildering is that Brown’s vice president of institutional equity and diversity, Sylvia Carey-Butler Brown, was quoted in the announcement as acknowledging that the policy is unnecessary: “The previous policy would have protected people experiencing caste discrimination.”
The law, and Brown’s policies, already proscribed discrimination based on race, national origin, sex and more. These are facially neutral policies and completely appropriate as they apply to all kinds of discrimination without singling any group out with presumptions about who is subjugating whom.
Yet Ms. Carey-Butler said she and Brown “felt it was important to lift this up and explicitly express a position on caste equity,” because (in the announcement’s paraphrase) “as the South Asian population in the U.S. increases, caste discrimination is a growing issue on college and university campuses across the country.”
In adding a specific category to its nondiscrimination policy—one that categorically and uniquely applies to a single ethnic group, Brown has created a policy that is discriminatory on its face. The policy change violates the Civil Rights Act (and, at a public university, would also violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause) by treating South Asian students disparately on account of their ethnicity under a presumption—for which no evidence is proffered—that South Asians on campus have a propensity to engage in a form of invidious discrimination, hitherto unknown on campus.
Brown defines “caste” only as a South Asian affliction. It fails to specify how the university would decide which students or faculty members belong to “esteemed” or “oppressed” castes. Having a caste complaint lodged against a South Asian student or staff member could unleash a labyrinthine formal complaint process reserved only for South Asians, without any guidance as to how accusations would be adjudicated other than presumptions of guilt and negative stereotypes.
Caste is an administrative construct under Indian law that resulted from colonial British censuses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These laws institutionalized reductive British ideas about what was actually a diverse Indian society. Interlaced with these ideas of caste was the theory that “higher” castes were lighter-skinned descendants of European progenitors and “lower” castes hailed from darker-skinned indigenous people.
This theory racializing South Asians has been rejected by an overwhelming majority of scholars and scientists studying India and Indians. It is why caste is often conflated with race and why South Asians are often labeled today as “caste privileged” and “white adjacent.” These colonialist misconceptions have placed “caste” into the lexicon of “diversity” and enforcement on college campuses across the country.
That Hindus and many South Asians have a “caste system” is one of the most lasting stereotypes we face. Yet we know caste to be localized to certain communities in South Asia, and surveys find that in the U.S. discrimination based on caste is rare. The Carnegie Foundation’s 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey found that only 5% of respondents had “personally felt discriminated against” because of their caste in the preceding 12 months.
The Carnegie survey also found that caste and other social and ethnic markers become less relevant to the identities of subsequent generations of Americans with South Asian heritage.
Caste discrimination does occur in South Asia, and it can be brutal. But how should American college campuses address this South Asian brand of discrimination? In the same way they would address discrimination faced by Ahmadis in Muslim communities or discrimination based on skin color among Latinos when it occurs on campus—through existing law. Creating policies that apply to only one community of students and faculty is a dangerous precedent that institutionalizes biases no one should accept.
Ms. Shukla is executive director and legal counsel of the Hindu American Foundation. She represents two faculty members who are suing to challenge a similar policy at California State University.
Source (Archive)
Dec. 21, 2022 6:00 pm ET
The seal of Brown University sits atop the Van Wickle Gates at the edge of the main campus in Providence, Rhode Island, Aug. 16.
PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
The Supreme Court is considering whether universities can legally discriminate against Asian applicants in the interest of assembling a “diverse student body.” Meanwhile Brown University has adopted a policy that discriminates against certain Asian students in the name of nondiscrimination.
Brown announced Dec. 1 that it has “added a new provision to its nondiscrimination policy that explicitly prohibits caste oppression,” which it described as “a subtle, often misunderstood form of structural inequality.” There has apparently never been a “caste”-related complaint at Brown.
While ending discrimination is a worthy goal, Brown’s policy is itself discriminatory, and therefore unlawful. As the announcement acknowledges, it applies only to students and faculty of “South Asian descent.”
What’s especially bewildering is that Brown’s vice president of institutional equity and diversity, Sylvia Carey-Butler Brown, was quoted in the announcement as acknowledging that the policy is unnecessary: “The previous policy would have protected people experiencing caste discrimination.”
The law, and Brown’s policies, already proscribed discrimination based on race, national origin, sex and more. These are facially neutral policies and completely appropriate as they apply to all kinds of discrimination without singling any group out with presumptions about who is subjugating whom.
Yet Ms. Carey-Butler said she and Brown “felt it was important to lift this up and explicitly express a position on caste equity,” because (in the announcement’s paraphrase) “as the South Asian population in the U.S. increases, caste discrimination is a growing issue on college and university campuses across the country.”
In adding a specific category to its nondiscrimination policy—one that categorically and uniquely applies to a single ethnic group, Brown has created a policy that is discriminatory on its face. The policy change violates the Civil Rights Act (and, at a public university, would also violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause) by treating South Asian students disparately on account of their ethnicity under a presumption—for which no evidence is proffered—that South Asians on campus have a propensity to engage in a form of invidious discrimination, hitherto unknown on campus.
Brown defines “caste” only as a South Asian affliction. It fails to specify how the university would decide which students or faculty members belong to “esteemed” or “oppressed” castes. Having a caste complaint lodged against a South Asian student or staff member could unleash a labyrinthine formal complaint process reserved only for South Asians, without any guidance as to how accusations would be adjudicated other than presumptions of guilt and negative stereotypes.
Caste is an administrative construct under Indian law that resulted from colonial British censuses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These laws institutionalized reductive British ideas about what was actually a diverse Indian society. Interlaced with these ideas of caste was the theory that “higher” castes were lighter-skinned descendants of European progenitors and “lower” castes hailed from darker-skinned indigenous people.
This theory racializing South Asians has been rejected by an overwhelming majority of scholars and scientists studying India and Indians. It is why caste is often conflated with race and why South Asians are often labeled today as “caste privileged” and “white adjacent.” These colonialist misconceptions have placed “caste” into the lexicon of “diversity” and enforcement on college campuses across the country.
That Hindus and many South Asians have a “caste system” is one of the most lasting stereotypes we face. Yet we know caste to be localized to certain communities in South Asia, and surveys find that in the U.S. discrimination based on caste is rare. The Carnegie Foundation’s 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey found that only 5% of respondents had “personally felt discriminated against” because of their caste in the preceding 12 months.
The Carnegie survey also found that caste and other social and ethnic markers become less relevant to the identities of subsequent generations of Americans with South Asian heritage.
Caste discrimination does occur in South Asia, and it can be brutal. But how should American college campuses address this South Asian brand of discrimination? In the same way they would address discrimination faced by Ahmadis in Muslim communities or discrimination based on skin color among Latinos when it occurs on campus—through existing law. Creating policies that apply to only one community of students and faculty is a dangerous precedent that institutionalizes biases no one should accept.
Ms. Shukla is executive director and legal counsel of the Hindu American Foundation. She represents two faculty members who are suing to challenge a similar policy at California State University.
Source (Archive)
Source (Archive)
