I am anonymously writing as a queer and trans Ethnic Studies scholar based in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University--the birthplace, home, and foundation of the Ethnic Studies legacy--to call on other Ethnic Studies scholars and scholars of race and ethnicity across the nation to recognize the national right-wing efforts to ban the teaching of critical race theory as interconnected with the fight to halt the recognition and teaching of caste.

For the past months, I have been working alongside an intercaste, interfaith, multiracial coalition of students, staff, faculty, and community leaders from across the state under Dalit feminist leadership to push the CSU to add caste as a protected category and ban caste-based discrimination. Caste is a system of exclusion based on birth and an assigned level of “spiritual purity” with its roots in South Asia, and similar hierarchical systems are found throughout the world including Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Despite caste being so rampant in American institutions, as exposed by surveys conducted and testimonies shared by Dalit and caste oppressed peoples, conversations of caste continue to be marginalized and silenced to ensure an environment of impunity and complicity that privileges dominant/upper caste peoples. And when these stories, testimonials, and cases of lurking caste discrimination are brought forth, they are met with intense retaliation, gaslighting, invalidation, and violent threats, pushed back into the margins to restore the peace of complicity. We have witnessed this every step of the way, with a clear example being the Cal State Student Association (CSSA) public hearing where, when caste oppressed students, staff, and faculty took the immense risk of outing themselves as Dalit and raising their voices to share their experiences with caste within the university setting, they were met with blatant and shameless public gaslighting, invalidation, and intimidation tactics to silence those voices again.

As an Ethnic Studies scholar, I could not help but think about how similar those hearings for caste protections have been to the hearings all across the nation where right-wing groups have been mobilizing to ban the teaching of critical race theory. A lot of the statements made by these white supremacist groups share the same scripts with the statements used by these caste bigots. Recently, the National Education Policy Center published a guide and report to better understand the attacks on critical race theory, where they highlighted these continuous attempts seeking to “ban historical information and critical analysis related to race and racism in public school classrooms.” These attacks on critical race theory have been on the basis that “providing students with information on race and racism is un-American, divisive, and itself racist.”

We are facing very similar statements by our opposition, who are arguing that by adding caste protections which will enforce coming to terms with caste privilege and the rampant caste violence, “it is going to create divisions where they simply do not exist” (letter by Hindu American Foundation). However, as scholars of race and ethnicity, we know that structural inequalities do not just go away if we choose to ignore their existence and choose complicity. In fact, such organizations are arguing that the “the addition of caste is a striking departure from the well-established practice of facially neutral policies that apply broadly and generally to all employees regardless of background” because the mention of caste will “apply to only particular faculty on the basis of their national origin, ethnicity, ancestry, and religion, is by definition not only a restriction, but denial of rights.” We are all too familiar with such statements, which are articulations of the discomfort that arises from address caste and race privilege as discrimination. And as Ethnic Studies scholars, we also are very aware that there is no such thing as “facially neutral policies,” but policies have always been political, with racialized, gendered, sexualized, components that need to be accounted for. The fight for caste protections is the fight to account for these inequities. Policies and education have always been political, governed by structural power that produces privileges and marginalization.

These hearings for caste protections also carry a larger history, placed in lineage with the California Textbook Battles during which an alliance of Hindu American Foundation (HAF), Uberoi Foundation for Religious Studies, Hindu Education Foundation, and the Dharma Civilization Foundation (DCF) tried to “erase the complex histories of South Asia and replace them with a sanitized mono-cultural story for the entire subcontinent.” During these battles, the same statements and scripts being used now to deny caste protections were used to ban the teaching of caste from textbooks, as these groups fought to erase mention of “Dalit.”

Here, I want to turn back to National Education Policy Center’s guide again to help us contextualize these interconnected histories. NEPC argues that attacks on critical race theory need to be understood as part of a “larger ideological effort to delegitimize historically accurate presentations of race and racism in American history; to thwart attempts by members of marginalized groups to participate fully in civic life; and to retain political power.” Both the attacks on recognizing and addressing racial and caste inequities isolated efforts of discomforted individuals, but amount together to maintain very specific ideologies--the ideologies of white and caste supremacy. Through banning mentions of race and caste, these groups are fighting to maintain structural inequality, and given that they have been privileged by these systems, equity feels like oppression to them.

We have also continuously witnessed the power of creating spaces for the most marginalized. When Ethnic Studies was implemented at Tucson High School in Arizona, the high school dropout rate for Mexican American students that previously was at 48% significantly decreased, with 93% of the enrolled students going on to graduate from high school. And it was because of the power of creating such spaces of empowerment of the marginalized--spaces that promised the bridging of equity gaps--that Arizona lawmakers took extensive efforts to ban Ethnic Studies. We are continuing to witness this right now as well, as caste bigoted groups mobilize to “negate and nullify the struggles of women, Dalits, Adivasis, and religious communities like Buddhists, Sikhs, and Muslims.” The promise that caste protections and anti-caste education offers in bridging equity gaps is also similarly threatening.

I call on fellow Ethnic Studies scholars and scholars of race and ethnicity to understand these interconnected issues, interconnected struggles, and interconnected liberations. The attacks on caste protections and recognition need to be understood in conversation with the attacks on critical race theory, with additional complexities as the perpetrators of caste violence hide with a claim to their racialized marginalization without attending to their own complicities in the structural violence of over 2,000 years. It is only within such interrogations that we can find coalitional possibilities that can are necessary to fight against these growing fascist powers.

The following are a few of the recommendations, developed by Dalit feminist-led organization Equality Labs, on how to promote caste equity in your educational institution.

Add caste as a protected category in your department, college, university, and union’s anti-discrimination policy.
Implement diversity and inclusion training for faculty and staff to build caste competency.
Build caste competency amongst students through the curriculum and syllabi.
Invest in Dalit organizations for external contracts.
Hold a public briefing on caste.
Collect data on caste exclusion to set KPI's for measuring progress on caste equity.
Program for Dalit History Month to create spaces centering caste oppressed students, staff, and faculty.