[HN Gopher] Google cancelled a talk on caste bias
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Google cancelled a talk on caste bias
Author : devnonymous
Score : 447 points
Date : 2022-06-02 12:02 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| sandGorgon wrote:
| This is a followup to that news article -
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equality-labs-deman...
| rob74 wrote:
| > _Soundararajan appealed directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai,
| who comes from an upper-caste family in India, to allow her
| presentation to go forward. But the talk was canceled, leading
| some employees to conclude that Google was willfully ignoring
| caste bias._
|
| > _Pichai, the CEO, "is Indian and he is Brahmin and he grew up
| in Tamil Nadu. There is no way you grow up in Tamil Nadu and not
| know about caste because of how caste politics shaped the
| conversation," Soundararajan told The Post. "If he can make
| passionate statements about Google's [diversity equity and
| inclusion] commitments in the wake of George Floyd, he absolutely
| should be making those same commitments to the context he comes
| from where he is someone of privilege."_
|
| Sounds like Mr. Pichai has some explaining to do...
| devnull3 wrote:
| I doubt it. In fact attrocities on brahmins is rarely discussed
| [1]. Infact his state TamilNadu there is a strong anti-
| brahminism sentiment in political sphere. This is one of the
| reason why lot of upper-caste men/women go outside India.
|
| [1] https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/the-brahmin-files-why-
| atro...
| ethanbond wrote:
| Doesn't excuse any discriminatory behavior here in the
| States. Or, frankly, even in India.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| It's rather you to work on the explaining there. Pichai isn't
| claiming to be unaware of how caste politics may work. I think
| it's not only OK but desirable for companies to stop ruining
| the workplace with societal politics. There is a law and public
| debates for castes and how to address the (no doubt existing
| even outside India) problem.
|
| Prompting an employee of a tech company, even its CEO,
| reminding the audience of its ethnical background is what i
| find suspect.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > stop ruining the workplace with societal politics
|
| Isn't the failure to do so the subject of the talk?
| bgdam wrote:
| > There is a law and public debates for castes and how to
| address the (no doubt existing even outside India) problem.
|
| That's kinda part of the problem. In India there are laws
| dealing with caste based oppression and discrimination (how
| well they are enforced is another story). But in most other
| countries such laws do not exist. And caste-based
| discrimination is exceptionally easily and silently
| accomplished because for a vast majority of Indians, your
| last name gives away your caste.
| heretogetout wrote:
| I don't think workplaces should operate outside of and
| without influence from society. They're just a group of
| people in a building (metaphorical or otherwise).
| jcranberry wrote:
| >According to Gupta's letter and Soundararajan, the decision to
| cancel the talk came from Gupta's boss, Cathy Edwards, a vice
| president of engineering, who had no experience or expertise in
| caste.
|
| Truly puzzling decision.
| dekhn wrote:
| Nothing abot this is puzzling. beneath the surface of
| Google's attempts to "look happy", there is a huge amount of
| resentment between individuals, and between individuals and
| leadership. Even when I joined in 2007 it was noticeable, but
| by the time I left (the second time) in 2019, it was
| painfully obvious.
|
| Sundar's goal has been to smooth over this resentment and
| prevent events that would exacerbate it. That often occurs by
| cancelling a venue for discussion/healing. GOogle sort of
| evolved itself into a state of weaponized progressivism, and
| is now realizing just how unrealistic its naive view of using
| technology to transform the world for good was, and how it
| needs to turn into everything that it said it wasn't to
| continue to succeed in the face of more determined
| competitors.
| newsclues wrote:
| He doesn't have explaining to do because he holds the power and
| is choosing not to.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| California sued Cisco over caste discrimination in 2020 and it
| was discussed here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083
| thwjerjl23432 wrote:
| obnauticus wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ZF8xg
| dang wrote:
| Related threads - others?
|
| _Trapped in Silicon Valley's hidden caste system_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543
| comments)
|
| _India's tech sector reinforces old caste divides_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5
| comments)
|
| _The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5
| comments)
|
| _How Big Tech Is Importing India's Caste Legacy to Silicon
| Valley_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March
| 2021 (195 comments)
|
| _Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley 's richest tech
| companies_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct
| 2020 (322 comments)
|
| _India's engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its
| caste system_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 -
| Oct 2020 (6 comments)
|
| _How India 's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon
| Valley_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept
| 2020 (47 comments)
|
| _Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613
| comments)
|
| _Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14
| comments)
|
| _California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India's
| caste system_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 -
| July 2020 (56 comments)
|
| _California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian
| employee 's caste_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592
| comments)
|
| _Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6
| comments)
| jamesfisher wrote:
| https://archive.ph/16knM
| boredumb wrote:
| "rather than bringing our community together and raising
| awareness -- was creating division and rancor"
|
| Insert every social movement in the last 10 years. Absolutely
| hilarious that a company that goes out of it's way to participate
| in the US culture war identifies an actual systemic issue in the
| country where the CEO just happens to originate from, it is
| suddenly a divisive action to make half baked hyperbolic social
| statements.
| [deleted]
| jmyeet wrote:
| There's a lot of bias in the tech industry, not just caste. if
| your company is sufficiently large it will have various HR
| policies on this and in my experience they will enumerate the
| kinds of discrimination they don't tolerate.
|
| Here's an exercise for you: go through the list of US protected
| classes [1] and see which ones are explicitly stated and which
| ones aren't. It's actually enlightening. For example, I don't
| think I've ever seen ageism specifically called out.
|
| As for the impact of the Indian caste system in US tech, I can't
| really comment on that. It's not my lived experience. I've worked
| with many Indians. No idea what their castes were. Saying that,
| just like racism I find it incredibly plausible that if you grew
| up in such a system, the effects are pervasive and linger.
|
| So should Google allow such a talk? That's a difficult question.
| It's clearly a divisive issue. It reminds me of Meta telling
| employees to stop talking about abortion [2]. Now that issue
| _probably_ doesn 't lead to workplace discrimination (alleged or
| actual) although you might be able to argue that your political
| views could hurt you. There's something to be said to keeping
| your political views to yourself, particularly at work.
|
| I imagine (but, again, don't know from experience) that this
| might be on the level of racial discrimination in the US
| workplace. So it seems worth examining. I imagine to mahy
| outsiders it might not look "real" because at the end of the day
| they're all Indians (which, to be clear, is also a form of
| racism).
|
| Is a talk the best way to handle this? I honestly don't know. I
| can sympathize with avoiding divisive issues and also with the
| desire of a company to cover their ass and not create an HR
| nightmare. I really wonder if this ends in a lawsuit.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States
|
| [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/19/23131714/meta-ban-
| abortio...
| nemothekid wrote:
| This feels like whataboutism.
|
| First off, activism is uncomfortable - it's about changing the
| status quo and anyone who benefits will take issue with it
| _even if they don't actively perpetuate the system_. MLK wasn't
| met with open arms; he was harassed, arrested and ultimately
| assassinated.
|
| Personally I've worked with many Indians too and I have never
| heard anyone one of them bring up caste; but I'm not Indian, so
| why would they?
|
| A better benchmark is how many people of lower caste have you
| talked to and how do they feel about it? It may be the case
| that the structures of American Indians have already expunged
| all the lower caste Indians from your workplace.
| lthornberry wrote:
| Age discrimination is illegal by statute - the Age
| Discrimination in Employment Act. If you haven't seen that, it
| might give you pause about whether you have enough information
| about this subject to form an informed opinion.
| tristor wrote:
| > For example, I don't think I've ever seen ageism specifically
| called out.
|
| Ageism is illegal in the US, however the way the law is written
| it specifically only protects people over 40. I've always
| personally theorized that this is why tech ageism tends to
| start affecting people in their 30s, so that it doesn't wait
| until it's illegal and gets the job done of oppressing more
| senior employees earlier on.
| [deleted]
| NoGravitas wrote:
| As a leftist, one of the things that gives me pause about
| identity politics and the language of identity divorced from
| class struggle is how easily it is repurposed by reactionaries:
|
| > But Google employees began spreading disinformation, calling
| her "Hindu-phobic" and "anti-Hindu" in emails to the company's
| leaders, documents posted on Google's intranet and mailing lists
| with thousands of employees.
|
| I don't have a solution, just a depressing observation.
| 7952 wrote:
| You see weird reaction in debates about feminism. People go
| along with the belief that men and women are the same. And then
| use that to justify male anger about unfairness by just
| parotting the same talking points. When actually feminist could
| always accept that there were differences and that was the
| point. But the argument changes at different levels of
| abstraction. It's confusing. Individuals should be treated the
| same, but are different statistically and in aggregate.
| blueflow wrote:
| People see that "men and women are different" is used as
| justification for prejudice (like a person not getting a
| chance because people of the same sex did rarely have success
| previously). Which sucks and people feel its unfair. And when
| trying to conceptualize that unfairness into words, their
| contra opinion sometimes ends up being "so man and women must
| be equal" instead of "a persons sex does not justify
| prejudice".
|
| Peoples feelings about fairness and justice are always valid,
| but hell, many people suck so hard at putting it into words.
| whatshisface wrote:
| People can be equal before the law without being equal
| before a pole vault.
| jp57 wrote:
| What wasn't clear to me was whether they were claiming that her
| ideas about caste equality were specificall anti-hindu, or if
| it's just an ad hominem attack to try to shut her down.
| allenu wrote:
| It's definitely frustrating. Culture, religion, sexual
| orientation, skin color, and politics often get combined into
| one, so it becomes impossible to criticize particular cultural
| or religious practices and beliefs without getting jumped on as
| racist or ignorant. This strategy of calling someone anti-X is
| a great way to end actual discussion about specific issues.
| [deleted]
| oofbey wrote:
| Google's culture is dominated by arrogance. Management repeatedly
| tells employees they work on the world's hardest problems using
| the world's biggest computers and the world's smartest people.
| Doing anything less is "ungoogley".
|
| It doesn't necessarily follow that this would encourage racism.
| But it sure isn't surprising.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why would you assume "best" = "racist"?
|
| Also - which companies are saying they hire the worst people?
|
| I've worked at several companies - every single one of them
| claimed to hire the best. It's just corporate psychobabble at
| this point.
| rurp wrote:
| I once saw a job posting that claimed to only want world
| class developers. The pay? 40k.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| Corporate psychobabble and/or normalized supremacist.
|
| The idea of "best" is ultimately a lie and it's the same lie
| that supremacy tells.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| I'll bite with anecdotal pov. I think most of the people who
| are the "best" are advantaged from the beginning. Whether it
| is attending prep schools (40k a year or more private school
| for 12 years), having a home (not moving multiple times,
| sometimes in a year over many years), or honestly having the
| familial backing to "take risks".
|
| The last point is so wild when I hear it from some VCs or
| successful CEO. It's easy to take a risk when your parents
| and family are loaded, even if you have nothing to your name
| at the time. It's easy to say such things when your parents
| are doctors or entrepreneurs who put you through private
| school and then you got into Stanford. I'm sure they're
| smart, but they bought their way in when you reduce it. Sure
| they took it from 20-100, but many people can barely get from
| 1-10 due to socioeconomic circumstances. I respect the people
| who manage to go from 1-100 way more than someone who was
| bound to be reasonably successful at worst from birth.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| Racists tend to be ethno-supremecists, ie they think they
| belong to the "best" race.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So racists are inclined to think they're "the best".
|
| Why are people who think they're "the best" inclined to
| think it's in part / mostly / solely due to race?
| afiori wrote:
| Elitism comes with a lot of rationalizations to justify
| the beliefs about who is worthy or not.
|
| Typically one of them is "sharing these key
| characteristics with me make you better than those who
| don't", these characteristics often involve some kind of
| racial-like features.
| cafard wrote:
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Yeah, high school history tends to skip from the civil war to
| WW1, so most students miss out on reconstruction, and pretty
| much no curricula will talk about the explicit race
| discrimination in the GI bill/redlining.
| lthornberry wrote:
| This varies massively by school or district. I teach history
| to undergrads, and some of them come in having had entire
| high school classes on the history of civil rights--these
| students are usually either from majority-black districts, or
| from elite private schools. Others had history classes that
| don't even acknowledge that slavery was the cause of the
| Civil War.
| salawat wrote:
| What high school students curricula are you following?
|
| All of those topics were covered where I went.
|
| Though interestingly, the ones I do also tend to get across
| the point that caste discrimination was made illegal in
| India, and never tend to go into much explicit detail on how
| just because something is illegal, it doesn't mean it isn't
| done/is regularly enforced.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > high school history tends to skip from the civil war to WW1
|
| I very, very highly doubt that. In terms of US history, this
| period covers several important topics:
|
| * Reconstruction
|
| * Settling of the American West
|
| * Rise of the Granger and later Progressive movements
|
| * Burgeoning immigration to the US, and all the tensions that
| result from that
|
| * Second Industrial Revolution, which also fuels the Gilded
| Age and labor movements
|
| * Beginnings of American imperialism (and somewhat
| ironically, the end of it... the US becomes pretty
| uninterested in territorial expansion almost immediately
| after experiencing its first major bout of imperial expansion
| in the Spanish-American War).
|
| It's possible that you just don't _remember_ what you learned
| in US history classes in this time period, but completely
| excising a quarter of the country 's history would be rather
| surprising, especially when it's the part of the history that
| covers both the biggest shift in self-image (from an agrarian
| country distancing itself from world politics to an
| industrialized powerhouse increasingly engaged in world
| politics) _and_ the development of mass political
| consciousness worldwide in the late Long 19th Century.
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| I would love to live in a world where no racial violence has
| happened since the 1950s.
| [deleted]
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| True, but not germane to the article, which is discussing
| India's racial difficulties.
|
| Indeed, suggesting that deep-seated structural racism is far
| from a uniquely American problem also makes some people upset.
| lexapro wrote:
| The truth is in fact very upsetting, yes.
| [deleted]
| car_analogy wrote:
| Left unstated is the assumption that Brahmins limit their
| discrimination to Dalits.
| albert_e wrote:
| Oh while we are on this topic there are branches within
| Brahmins and each group gets to feel superior to other Brahmins
| because reasons.
|
| In some regions, there were also some devout worshippers of one
| God that take adverserial position about worshippers of another
| God (Shiva versus Vishnu)
|
| Luckily most of these (I think) are on their way out and don't
| manifest in professional workplaces of today.
|
| These tendencies must have definitely shaped careers and
| unfairly disadvantaged people as recently as a couple of
| decades ago.
| criddell wrote:
| I'm not understanding the implication. Does it matter how
| limited the discrimination is?
| car_analogy wrote:
| The implication is that it's not limited. If they
| discriminate against Dalits, they probably discriminate
| against others too.
| criddell wrote:
| > The implication is that it's not limited.
|
| Right, but what are the implications of it being limited or
| not? Is there a tolerable level of discrimination?
| psyc wrote:
| That has nothing to do with it. There's no tolerable
| level, but more is still worse than less, and GP's point
| means more people with a direct vested interest in
| calling for change.
| yunohn wrote:
| Which is true of all bigoted groups tbh. Quite harmful in
| how it manifests and grows, esp in corporate companies.
| usrn wrote:
| amriksohata wrote:
| Sadly most caste accusations come from a place of extreme hatred
| for Hindus. I have seen this when questioned by people who talk
| of Caste and the Hindu religion and when I dig deep, they often
| have a extreme dislike of Hindus more than anything.
|
| Caste comes from the Portuguese word "Castus". There is no
| literal translation found for this word in ancient Hindu Sanskrit
| texts. The quoted article comes written from a time under British
| Raj where peoples backgrounds were used to further divide society
| so that they would not rise up against the British. Caste in the
| same sense of occupational background exists in all cultures but
| was never used in such a divisive way like the British Raj did.
| For example people of the "Smith" surname used to be Goldsmiths
| or Blacksmiths. But the British put a sense of elitism into some
| communities in India, telling them they are higher than others.
| There is no Hindu scripture which says who is high or low, but
| merely responsibilities.
|
| Skilfully sidestepping any explanation of the metric being used
| to measure "high", the educated spiritual priests in British Raj
| times and intellectuals were all banded together into one and
| labelled "highest caste" because they represented the "highest
| threat" to Anglican domination and those who represented the
| "lowest threat" to the Anglican were pushed into the lowest
| caste.
|
| During the British Raj of the 540 principalities existent at that
| time, over 400 were ruled by Shudra Kings (Professor
| Vaidyanathan, IIM Bangalore) which the British denoted as low
| caste. When the British left, the second largest landowner in
| India after the Indian Government, was the Church and thus it's
| reasonable to note that the largest transfer of assets and land
| from was in fact from the Shudra groups (Lord Harries' so called
| low-castes) to the Church. Further, there is readily available
| overwhelming historical evidence that the Dalits "the
| Untouchables" were themselves a creation of the crushing
| sanctions created and imposed by the Anglican Colonialists of the
| Church of England as is clarified below. The castes and tribes
| "notified" under the 1871 Act were labelled as Criminal Tribes
| for their so-called "criminal tendencies". As a result, anyone
| born in these communities across the country was presumed a "born
| criminal", irrespective of their criminal precedents.
|
| Mixing castes was normal as it was based on deed back few
| thousand years ago, only recently caste mixing wasn't allowed.
| Some further reading:
|
| https://pragyata.com/caste-system-pointers-for-the-social-me...
|
| https://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-gene-data-reveal...
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Google outsources more than people realize. A lot of things
| happen out of India. The minimum amount of customer support that
| Google provides happens out of India. The mystery account bans,
| that sometimes get a lot of attention, happens out of India.
| lupire wrote:
| Corpos naturally have split personalities, but it wasn't
| "Google's plan". Mid-level people proposed it and high-level
| people blocked it.
|
| What's not often said clearly is that corpos don't want social
| justice which might come at the cost of rancor, they want "DEI
| PR" that they can charge to the marketing budget.
|
| In other words, they want the low-hanging fruit they can get by
| having recruiters source employees from more places, and artists
| and photographers draw multicolored graphics, and asking people
| to be less cruel _when all other tradeoffs are neutral_ ,and if
| that makes the world more fair, that's great.
|
| But they management won't allow anything that risks disrupting
| the moneymaking operations, regardless of long term potential
| benefits (which almost certainly don't exist -- racism exists
| because it works, locally, for economic and social benefits, not
| because people are moustache-twirling comic-book supervillains).
|
| This is why free markets alone can't solve injustice, and broader
| social movements are the tool that works.
| iepathos wrote:
| Ugh, bigotry is an ugly look Google.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| A good read for some additional context on caste discrimination
| in the American tech industry:
| https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...
| hef19898 wrote:
| It seems that, in some cases, immigrants import their biases
| with them, and stick to them instead of adopting cultural
| aspects of their host countries. This can, in a sense, make
| them less open minded and tolerant than non-immigrants. You can
| see examples of this all the way back to Gean immigrants to
| Russia and South America.
|
| I have no problem with this, after all immigrants are by no
| means obliged to be assimilated. It becomes a problem when
| politics come to play. E.g. Turkish nationalism, Erdogan has
| pretty solid approval ratings among German based Turks. This
| doesn't affect German culture much, so. In case of Indian
| nationalism, heavily leaning on India's caste system, it is
| different. Indian immigrants tend to end up in managemebr
| positions more often than, e.g., Turks do. So they affect
| company policies and culture more. And in the case of caste
| discrimination, something most non-Indians have a hard time
| understanding, it can co-opt whole organisations. And in the
| case of social media it can have a massive impact on culture in
| general.
|
| That's why those talks, like the cancelled one at Google, are
| so important.
| thelit wrote:
| As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience.
|
| https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101
| swayvil wrote:
| What if you just lie and tell everybody that you're brahmin
| (or whatever the alpha caste is)?
|
| Do you need identifying papers?
|
| Is there a big market for forgeries?
| vijaybritto wrote:
| I wish it were that easy. First of all lying like that is
| near impossible unless you know every single thing done in
| a Brahmin household, you'll be caught eventually. In a
| workplace setting, you might be boycotted but if this were
| in India, you have a high chance of getting murdered
| brutally.
|
| Dalits get killed for just riding a horse, walking through
| upper caste residential streets and many normal things. In
| this scale a Brahmin name would be deadly
| swayvil wrote:
| I'm a white american middle class guy. Worked for a
| couple brahmins. They treated us as disposable tools.
|
| Next time I meet those guys I'm gonna tell them I'm
| brahmin. Just to fuck with their head.
|
| Maybe double brahmin.
| dotopotoro wrote:
| Murdered by which caste? Allegedly of course. Brahmin or
| somebody else?
| bluesroo wrote:
| The parent comment died while I typed my response, so I'm
| just throwing it here to elaborate on your comment:
|
| I'm not Indian, but I read a lot about this when the
| Cisco stuff came out. The gist that I picked up from
| interviews with Indians dealing with this was that there
| is A LOT of cultural background that you'd be very
| unlikely to know if you hadn't grown up in a certain
| caste.
|
| A (likely shitty) analogy: You can learn about WWII all
| you want, but unless you were deployed it would be hard
| to fake that you were at a specific battle or did a
| specific training. There's probably minute details that
| were not written down, but people who were there would
| casually know. There may be habits or turns of phrase
| that would have been picked up. Maybe a certain landmark
| or destroyed thing that had a funny nickname. Maybe it's
| knowing a certain soldier or commander by a nickname that
| hasn't made it into the history books. "Oh you trained at
| X? Man I loved tuna Tuesdays even though noone would
| touch the stuff. Do you remember when private Y did..."
|
| Through casual conversation, it's very difficult to keep
| the ruse up. Now if the interlocutor is actively trying
| to root you out its basically impossible. In the
| interviews I was listening to, the best case scenario was
| that the higher caste member came away not knowing what
| caste your from, but definitely knew you were not a
| Brahmin... Because if you were, you'd casually bring up
| X, Y, and Z and use these phrases and these gestures and
| and and...
| moron4hire wrote:
| Shiboleths
| moab wrote:
| The claims made in this post are in dire need of
| citations, and don't strike me as believable. And just
| FWIW, most first-generation Indians in America couldn't
| give two shits about the caste system.
| rusticpenn wrote:
| It's pretty easy to find out. There are identifiers from
| the name to the dialect one speaks, what you eat etc
| okdood64 wrote:
| Hey there! Thanks for writing this.
|
| One question I've always had is, how do you know you're Dalit
| if you were born outside of India? How do others?
|
| Especially, say, when meeting other Indians in some tech
| company in the US?
| thelit wrote:
| If you're a Dalit, you'd know. As I mention in the post,
| membership to a caste is granted by birth. If both your
| parents are Dalit, you're a Dalit too.
|
| How do others know: it's not obvious. Dalits either change
| their last name to something common enough to not have any
| caste indicator. They'd avoid any discussion on caste. So
| effectively, they hide but there are some who don't and
| keep their last name. Still, not every other Indian could
| tell, but a more caste conscious Indian who belongs to the
| same region can tell. On top of it, it's common among
| Indians to just plainly ask other what their caste is.
| devnonymous wrote:
| Note that there are other 'cues' as well that casteists
| use to identify your caste, such as the food you eat
| (veg/non-veg), the social rituals/ceremonies or religious
| practices you engage in. In fact, you'd see enough
| Brahmins (in the US!) wear the scared thread[1] and
| embrace the entire identity of being at the 'top' of the
| caste system that knowing that you are a non-brahmin is
| sufficient for them to treat you as a Dalit.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanayana
| gabereiser wrote:
| We have that same view in software engineering as well.
| s/Brahmins/FAANGs and s/Dalit/Non-FAANG. Not saying it's
| everywhere but it exists, even on these very forums. How
| is one from a coding school or bootcamp ever to be seen
| as an equal to those that took a traditional route?
|
| For the most part, people treat people equally but I've
| seen this kind of behavior on here and in person on a few
| occasions.
| adiM wrote:
| The difference with caste is that caste is inherited. If
| you wear rose-coloured glasses, you can assume that
| hiring at FAANG is merit based and a non-FAANG can move
| to FAANG if they want. That's not possible with caste.
| devnonymous wrote:
| If you were born outside of India, it would be pretty much
| like any other national /racial identity -- inferred from
| family (based on family names for instance). Like mentioned
| in the GPs write-up:
|
| > Unlike race, it's easier to hide your caste, especially
| in a new country. Many dalits change their official last
| name to something common enough that it's hard to identify
| them.
| retrac wrote:
| There's touches of that elsewhere too (hiding race or
| ethnicity with a name change.) I have an extremely
| unusual surname in Canada, and most North Americans don't
| recognize it as European in origin, which has led to
| assumptions in the past. My grandfather said he
| considered changing it to something English in the 50s,
| but ultimately he kept it. I know that, at least
| historically, some Christian Arabs, Jewish people,
| probably others, have adopted "white" names upon
| immigrating, too.
| thebeardisred wrote:
| Thanks for writing that!
| richardfey wrote:
| Well written! Thanks
| sitkack wrote:
| Not just caste discrimination, but also sexism. I have worked
| at least three companies where if there were Indian women, the
| vast majority were in QA.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Yeah I worked at vmw and they have a huge caste/sexism
| problem. Funny how liberal Americans stand by and let it
| happen
| hef19898 wrote:
| Because for us Westerners this form of discrimination is,
| well, invisible. It is based on subtle things we don't see.
| It stays within a group, that to us, seems completely
| homogenous. Plus, how many Westerners actually are aware
| the Indian caste system exists at all?
|
| men discriminating and harrassing women? Sexism, check.
|
| White discriminating people of color? Racism, check.
|
| One Indian being a dick to another Indian? A personal thing
| between those two people. Only that ot is not, it is so
| much more, we Westerners just don't see it. And since we
| don't see it we have a pretty solid chance of intervening
| on the wrong side, if we intervene at all.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Agree there is a ton of nuance, at vmw I didn't notice it
| till I heard about it, then I did, but like you said its
| really hard to know how to intervene
| geodel wrote:
| Correct. Until I read feminist theory, QA is relatively easy
| job, good pay and anyway I hate coding. After I read, its
| deep rooted institutional bias against women to not be
| allowed to work in high paying, _high prestige_ software
| development jobs.
| dekhn wrote:
| not feminist- progressive. The feminists are fine with QA
| jobs because they allow for a lot of life flexibility.
| 30944836 wrote:
| I noticed the text of your comment ins grey, which means
| someone downvoted you. I disagree on first take of your
| comment, because QA to me doesn't represent a lower-tier of
| anything. It's a tech job. Women being in tech is good.
| Indian people being in tech is good. Will you share a bit
| more about your thinking? Why do you see this as being
| discrimination?
|
| Sidenote: I once glanced around a team I was working on a few
| years ago and found most of the product/program managers were
| gay or lesbian. Didn't strike me as discrimination, since
| there are, of course, gay and lesbian hardware engineers, gay
| and lesbian software engineers... it just happened that we
| all found each other on a particular team.
|
| So that's why I think that's what's going on here, but I'm
| eager to hear your thoughts, as they differ from mine.
| sitkack wrote:
| The comment is only at zero, it means nothing. I made no
| qualitative statement about QA being beneath anything.
|
| Most developers equate QA is beneath them. I also think QA
| is just as valid and not beneath dev, but I have also held
| nearly every roll in modern software companies. How we view
| QA doesn't mean that is how the tech job market sees it.
| Pay is lower, qual is lower and at companies that have a
| sizeable Indian workforce, I have witnessed that QA heavily
| skews female.
|
| I didn't even notice until I have been on interview loops
| with Indian men that I thought were nice and that I had
| professional and personal respect for and this weird tiger
| came out when it came to interviewing women (for dev roles)
| that didn't come out when interviewing men. This is just
| anecdotal, not all not all.
|
| This comment itself is going to get flagged or downvoted,
| but I can't put a caveat on every sentence.
|
| https://feminisminindia.com/2020/03/02/sexism-in-
| engineering...
|
| > A couple of women who I knew had studied STEM subjects
| but had changed their career trajectory after graduating,
| explained the systemic sexism that women face in
| universities in India which deterred them from pursuing it
| any further.
|
| And then I see those pressures in the hiring loop (for
| devs), we didn't interview QA, it would make sense that
| they get pushed into QA or get pushed out entirely.
|
| Sexism in tech is much stronger than men realize, women are
| fully aware.
| adolph wrote:
| > equate QA is beneath them
|
| I think the status quality of jobs is an interesting
| aspect of discrimination. Why do certain jobs have higher
| or lower status? If the perceived status of various jobs
| was flatter, would various discriminatory schemes
| (intentional or not) continue to operate? Would
| differences in income persist?
|
| My hypothesis is that demographic clusters of people
| within certain occupations are in part affinity and in
| part discriminatory which operate as a yin-yang.
|
| Another hypothesis is that the existence of under-
| represented demographic segments in certain fields of
| study/occupation such as STEM means that the over-
| represented demographic segments are under-represented in
| other fields. Changing representation has classically
| focused on importing under-represented folks into high
| status fields. This effectively overstuffs some fields
| which decreases effectiveness. A better approach would be
| to make the other fields more attractive/high status so
| that the over-represented demographic segments in fields
| like STEM grow interest in other fields.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| My hypothesis has always been that job status is largely
| driven by compensation and difficulty obtaining the
| position. If these are the drivers, I don't know how you
| would equalize status without overturning the job market
| at Large
| LargeWu wrote:
| One aspect I've noticed throughout my career is that the
| engineering problems QE engineers face are generally more
| straightforward, with well-defined parameters, and common
| patterns. The skills required to be a successful QE
| engineer require, generally, less breadth and depth of
| expertise than some other disciplines of engineering. I
| think it's a natural landing place for people who know
| how to write some code, but struggle to view problems at
| multiple levels of abstraction.
| avensec wrote:
| I am a Director-Level in Engineering/QA/Quality Engineering.
| I currently lead a team where our ratio of Female Indian
| women is higher than any other engineering group at the
| company. Every Quality Engineering team I have been apart of
| has had a higher ratio of females, but not necessarily of any
| specific background.
|
| My N=1 experience is that this can be related, but not always
| directly about discrimination or sexism. I would need to
| include cultural oppression, personal confidence, and others
| to accurately reflect a summation. I do not doubt that bias
| or discrimination exist, just that I culturally do my best to
| have a positive influence.
|
| A few years ago I wanted to understand better, so I asked for
| feedback from a previous amazing Indian female SDET (whose
| husband is the CTO of one of the big retail chains). She
| explained a lot to me about how a woman's position being
| higher than a mans was culturally challenging. She also had
| self-doubts about her ability to thrive in a mostly-male
| driven engineering organization. I worked with her on a
| transition into a Development team, and the resistance came
| mostly from _her_ fears of cultural bias and discrimination.
| The Dev team took less than five minutes to round-table agree
| that she was fit for the position.
|
| The bias and discrimination exist, but localized, the teams
| I've worked with are always very supportive and welcoming.
| thwjerjl23432 wrote:
| Layke1123 wrote:
| Is this a veiled criticism of Hinduism?
| charia wrote:
| I think it's more mocking the oversimplification of
| complex problems.
|
| That though caste discrimination causes significant harm
| and problems in the Indian and Indian diaspora
| communities, not every, "bad thing", stem from caste
| discrimination in specific.
|
| The idea that sexism and other terrible things can be
| prevelant issues that need to be addressed better but
| they are not necessarily related to caste.
| walkhour wrote:
| > Every Quality Engineering team I have been apart of had
| had a higher ratio of females
|
| Positive discrimination is also discrimination, why not
| look for the same ratio as the job market has? Over hiring
| from an underepresented group necessarily means lowering
| the competence, unless you purposely interview a
| disproportionate number of individuals from the
| underepresented group, is this what you have done?
|
| Edit: needing to interview a disproportionate number of
| individuals to be able to overhire from an underepresented
| group without affecting performance is just a
| straightforward statistical fact assuming the same
| competence across all groups.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's nothing on the GP about positive discrimination.
|
| If you hire based only on competence, you will probably
| get more people that suffer discrimination than the
| average. The stronger the discrimination, the higher the
| odds.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This ignores the possibility of an unbalanced applicant
| pool.
| walkhour wrote:
| True, although this is similar to what I described, I
| guess the distinction is purposely imbalanced and
| accidentally imbalanced. However I think the latter is
| less likely, the post I replied to originally mentioned
| doing this consistently across teams. Maybe the pool in
| QA is imbalanced? In that case we should compare to other
| QA teams to see if avensec is indeed an outlier. avensec
| made it seem like they was an outlier, and everybody in
| these comments is acting like this is the case. So I lean
| on the side of the pool being balanced.
|
| I'm trying to understand how this is achieved in
| practice, however I haven't got a good answer yet.
| bena wrote:
| Ever noticed how among professional bowlers, there are
| fewer conventionally fit guys?
|
| Why is that? You'd think they'd have the same ratio of
| fit guys as the rest of professional sports by your
| logic.
|
| Or.
|
| Is it because the current highest earning professional
| bowler has a lifetime career winnings of $5 million by
| 2019? Since he turned pro in 1980. So if you can, you
| play something else.
|
| Similar thing is going on here. There aren't people
| gunning for QA jobs specifically, there are people
| gunning for software related jobs in certain companies.
| People will get various offers from various companies for
| various positions. And the position you get is a
| reflection, in part, of the best offer for the best
| position the best company gave you.
|
| So while the entire pool may have applied for the QA job,
| some of the people who were given offers got better
| offers from better companies and/or for better positions.
|
| And let's not forget there could also be a variation of
| the Dead Sea effect going on. Where those who aren't
| Indian women get promoted or transferred out of QA at a
| higher rate, leaving more Indian women in QA. So you have
| twin effects going on. Where Indian women are getting
| accepted into QA positions more than other positions and
| Indian women being passed over for promotions and
| transfers keeping them in QA positions.
| peripitea wrote:
| A much more likely explanation on the bowling thing is
| that physical fitness is not required to be a good
| bowler. Consider:
|
| -There are lower-paying sports where fitness does matter,
| and they all have fit athletes at the top.
|
| -There are way more conventionally fit folks than there
| are pro athlete slots; It's not like the select few fit
| people in the world are being exhausted before they can
| fill the ranks of all professional athletics.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I know nothing about the parent or their experience [edit:
| and thanks to the parent for posting this]. I do know that
| commonly, people in positions of power (managers or people
| in the majority) believe the following but it's often not
| true; that is, the signal is always same, but not the
| reality. That is, the signal is meaningless as an indicator
| of the underlying situation, but when I find myself
| thinking it, it is potentially a signal that I'm missing
| something.
|
| > _" I ... have a positive influence."_ [note: not what the
| parent actually said; it's abridged for my example]
|
| > _" The Dev team took less than five minutes to round-
| table agree that she was fit for the position."_
|
| > _" I asked for feedback from ..."_
|
| A cause is that the people in a vulnerable position, the
| people who actually have the experience and know if you are
| having a positive influence or if they are accepted, don't
| have a voice, a safe way to speak about their experiences.
| Just saying 'you are safe', 'I support you', etc., doesn't
| make it so. Just having a conversation doesn't mean you
| know.
|
| _A useful rule for me is that if everything I hear feels
| relatively comfortable, then I am not hearing nearly
| everything._
|
| We've all been in situations where someone invites us to be
| open and frank (especially your boss!): How do you respond?
| You know that many say it without meaning it - because it's
| polite, or it's in the HR training, or because they don't
| seriously considering what they are asking for. You know
| that some even say it to trap you, and some say it because
| _they_ want to openly and frankly tell _you_ something -
| and they do, ignoring what you said and then going on a
| rant. Some mean it but then can 't handle it; they hear
| something disruptive to their worldview or needs (such as a
| stable, stress-free team or family), and react poorly,
| ignore it, or they bury their alarm and carry it around,
| associating it with you, degrading the relationship.
| Really, how often do you hear that invitation and then
| actually speak openly and frankly?
|
| Now imagine that it's about a highly inflammatory topic
| which has yielded bad results throughout your life, about
| which you carry a lot of trauma. It might be a relatively
| new experience to the person in power, but to the
| vulnerable person it's something they've dealt with daily,
| they have ways to cope without dealing with it afresh all
| the time, and they've tried that conversation many times
| with little success. Just imagine your boss invites you to
| speak openly and frankly about politics or Donald Trump,
| and you might have an idea.
|
| It's not hopeless, but there is an art and there are
| techniques for making it work, and plenty of expertise is
| available now that can guide people who are truly serious
| about hearing uncomfortable things.
| avensec wrote:
| As the parent, just wanted to give a quick reply with
| thanks.
|
| My reply here is meta given the topic, but I almost
| didn't submit my original comment because I've seen how
| these threads go. Any additional information in my
| comment would lead to even more complexity/areas to pick
| apart. Less information becomes easy targets for flame. I
| can understand why the talk was pulled, because they
| often seem to result in negative PR, more than any
| potential positive influence. I felt the same with
| submitting my comment.
|
| Thank you for offering positive suggestions and
| discussion to the topic.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Yes, and I hope it was taken as discussion. I am not even
| making suggestions to you, not knowing anything about
| you, your employee, or the situation. I do not for a
| moment think that I do know based on a couple paragraphs
| on the Internet.
|
| Thanks for submitting your comment. It's so valuable to
| have someone openly discuss these things.
| unixhero wrote:
| I was test manager (never again) on a large enterprise
| system (never again) and half of our QA team offshore in
| India were all females; I didn't reflect on that at the
| time.
| harperlee wrote:
| If you mean 50% of the india-based team was female,
| rather than all of the 50% of the team that were based in
| india, that shouldn't be surprising?
| unixhero wrote:
| I realize my sentence was unclear. My onshore team were
| all males, all offshore (all India, Bang8, Bang7) QA team
| members were female.
| guru4consulting wrote:
| cultural oppression - that might have been a valid reason
| many decades ago but not these days.
|
| Most of the men on H1B visa get married and their spouses
| arrive on dependent H4 visa. They cannot work with H4 visa
| (they can work with EAD these days though). Usually, there
| are a few years gap by the time they get back to
| workforce.. and what is the easiest field to enter without
| any programming skill? QA testing !! There are literally
| hundreds of QA training institutions who train home makers
| on QA testing and place them in a QA testing role
| (sometimes inflating the resumes with fake experience)..
| And there are other subtle reasons like low confidence
| level, assuming developer roles are more stressful with
| long hours of coding, cultural bias to focus more on family
| than career, etc. Outside the fancy startups and tech
| companies, QA testing is very slowly moving from manual to
| automated testing. So, it is still one of the easy entry
| points to the IT industry.
| vijaybritto wrote:
| Good team mates. This is non existent in India. A woman in
| a management position has much harder steps to reach there
| and will be impossible if she is from a lower caste.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I worked at two companies where the engineering base is about
| 90% male yet over half our managers were female.
|
| I also think it's counterintuitive to fixate on this stuff.
| It doesn't have to be sexism- it could be a fluke.
| lexapro wrote:
| There seem to be more women in QA in general. Genuinely
| asking: Is this also sexism?
| lyaa wrote:
| At least partly. When I was starting out, I would apply to
| dev positions only to get offers to interview for lower-
| paid QA positions. After changing to a gender-neutral
| nickname and removing all female-identifying terms from my
| resume, I got the interviews for dev positions.
| walkhour wrote:
| You claim "at least partly" and then proceed to prove it
| with anecdotal evidence. You'd need to prove it with a
| study similar to the ones that send identical CVs to
| companies, just changing one thing, which is what they
| want to discover if there's bias against.
| vijaybritto wrote:
| The onus is on the victims. Hmm, this sounds very
| familiar..
| walkhour wrote:
| Hmmm yes, we can't just make universal rules out of
| personal experiences, this sounds very familiar.
| caente wrote:
| I think anecdotal evidence is almost literally what
| "partly" means.
| walkhour wrote:
| Obviously not, see my other comment. Anecdotal evidence
| is part of the evidence, it doesn't allow you to claim
| part of the explanation is your anecdotal evidence.
| lyaa wrote:
| I am not obliged to defend every statement I make with a
| study for my thoughts and experiences to be worth
| sharing. Also, anecdotal evidence is evidence. Not as
| generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless
| as you seem to think.
|
| In any case, I have done the five minutes of googling you
| seem to want. Biases in evaluating resumes based on
| gender and other such factors are not new nor unknown:
| here is an early study from 1986[1], 1988[2], 1999[3],
| 2001[4], 2007[5]. Feel free to visit google scholar and
| look more studies by yourself.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002
| 2103186... [2] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.
| 1037%2F0022-3514.5... [3]
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018839203698
| [4] https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111
| /0022-4... [5]
| https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-23339-007
| walkhour wrote:
| You can sure share your thoughts, and I can share my
| thoughts on whether you're correct, I'm just pointing out
| it's not proven your personal experience proves
| discrimination is part of the explanation.
|
| None of those studies support your original claim. They
| support the more broader claim that women are
| discriminated in the job market.
|
| > Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as
| worthless as you seem to think.
|
| Sorry, a single data point, by itself, when you share it
| attempting to generalize, is worse than worthless, since
| it can be terribly misleading.
| lyaa wrote:
| Do you not see the logical link by which these more
| general studies contextualize and support my earlier
| statements?
| walkhour wrote:
| I see why you may think that way, but I don't think
| you're right.
|
| I guess for you it's a given QA jobs are "inferior" to
| SWE jobs. I guess you believe the articles you linked
| proof women tend to get "inferior" jobs just because
| they're women? (I haven't read the articles, although I
| believe this to be true).
|
| I just can't make the jump that this applies to QA jobs
| (granting they are "inferior"). That would imply
| "inferior" jobs are always overrepresented by women, and
| there are counterexamples to this, by almost any
| definition of "inferior".
| cycomanic wrote:
| So talking about generalities, there are plenty of
| statistics that show that women have lower paying jobs
| and get paid less even for the same jobs. We can argue
| about the reasons but the fact that they are paid less
| has been shown many times, so if you are disputing it you
| should be provide some compelling evidence.
|
| So the the question is are QA jobs lower paid or not.
| That's easy to check and is a pretty good (though not
| perfect) indicator of status. A quick Google would have
| shown you that this is generally the case. Funnily enough
| you will also find lots of dismissive posts which shows
| that at least some people think QA jobs are inferior,
| because "they don't code, but just use the software".
| walkhour wrote:
| > We can argue about the reasons but the fact that they
| are paid less has been shown many times, so if you are
| disputing it you should be provide some compelling
| evidence
|
| I state I believe this is true in one of my previous
| comments.
|
| > So the the question is are QA jobs lower paid or not.
| That's easy to check and is a pretty good (though not
| perfect) indicator of status. A quick Google would have
| shown you that this is generally the case. Funnily enough
| you will also find lots of dismissive posts which shows
| that at least some people think QA jobs are inferior,
| because "they don't code, but just use the software".
|
| This could be, but you need something else to prove it,
| otherwise lower paying jobs with different distributions
| than the job market distribution are always root caused
| in discrimination, is this your argument? There are many
| high paying jobs that result in a huge selection bias
| with respect to employees, just because many people
| simply don't want to put the hours. And thus
| discrimination is not the whole story in these cases. It
| may be the case in QA teams though (or part of the
| story), I'm simply saying it needs more research.
|
| Nevertheless this hasn't been my point, my point is
| simply a single data point by itself can't be used to
| account for part of the explanation.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The average salaries in QA are noticeably lower than
| those in SWE, so those are indeed "inferior jobs" - i.e.
| less attractive, and pushing some group from one to the
| other would be discriminatory because it would underpay
| that group.
| walkhour wrote:
| Good, did I deny this? I'm simply asking for proof and
| saying what has been provided in this thread is
| insufficient.
|
| By the way, lower salary doesn't mean "inferior", there
| are very high paying jobs, very stressful, that I
| wouldn't want, and work life balance is a huge component
| of a job.
| drewcoo wrote:
| No.
|
| A single anecdote is sufficient to merit "at least
| partly."
|
| You can say it's not generally proved. But it also wasn't
| a universal claim.
| walkhour wrote:
| At least partly means part of the explanation is what
| follows. Not that there's at least single case of what
| follows in the world.
|
| Do you realize how absurd language would be if what you
| claim is true? For example:
|
| - Is is true latino men are discriminated against when
| applying for florist positions?
|
| - Yes, it happened once.
|
| Literally any group would be "party discriminated" in
| every possible scenario according to how you define "at
| least partly".
| dahart wrote:
| > Genuinely asking: Is this also sexism?
|
| One way to look at it is that the disparity may be a
| symptom of complicated cultural biases, and we may not know
| the specific reasons. Since there's nothing gender or sex
| related to doing the job of QA, then if the disparity
| actually is measurable and widespread, it does reveal
| cultural bias. This is currently true for nurses and for
| elementary school teachers in the US, for example.
|
| It's important to note that this can happen without
| individuals who have any overtly "sexist" behavior at all.
| It can be the result of cultural attitudes and not
| prejudiced hiring practices. This is why using the word
| "sexism" on it's own might not be the best word for it,
| even if it's technically true. Perhaps better terms are
| "cultural sexism", or "cultural bias". I'm sure there are
| better terms. The problem with using the bare word "sexism"
| is it tends to be accusatory and out people on the
| defensive, where the issue may literally be with all of us.
| burrows wrote:
| > Since there's nothing gender or sex related to doing
| the job of QA,
|
| How do you know this to be true?
|
| > cultural bias
|
| What definition are you using for this term?
| dahart wrote:
| The question you need to be asking is the opposite: how
| can you demonstrate that bias has been eliminated? Sex
| bias was absolute and baked into law 100 years ago, and
| it has been slowly getting eliminated, but there has not
| been any point in time where we can demonstrate it's
| gone, precisely because we have evidence it's not gone
| yet. (Pay gap still exists, gender disparities between
| schooling and employment still exist, etc.)
|
| We know for a fact that bias hasn't been completely
| eliminated, because the ratios and disparities of many
| jobs including QA are changing quickly, they have not
| settled, and they are not the same from country to
| country. That is proof that cultural bias exists and is
| affecting today's distributions. You can't even
| reasonably ask the question of how to know how much a job
| depends on sex or gender until after you've eliminated
| cultural bias, because cultural bias masquerades as
| gender based preferences.
|
| This page for cultural bias is as good any any other
| definition for my purposes here, which was purely to say
| that "cultural bias" is _less_ inflammatory than
| "sexism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_bias
| burrows wrote:
| > The question you need to be asking is the opposite: how
| can you demonstrate that bias has been eliminated? Sex
| bias was absolute and baked into law 100 years ago, and
| it has been slowly getting eliminated, but there has not
| been any point in time where we can demonstrate it's
| gone, precisely because we have evidence it's not gone
| yet. (Pay gap still exists, gender disparities between
| schooling and employment still exist, etc.)
|
| I don't understand the meaning of the term "sex bias". So
| it's completely unclear to me that it existed previously
| and that I want it to stop existing.
|
| > We know for a fact that bias hasn't been completely
| eliminated, because the ratios and disparities of many
| jobs including QA are changing quickly, they have not
| settled, and they are not the same from country to
| country. That is proof that cultural bias exists and is
| affecting today's distributions. You can't even
| reasonably ask the question of how to know how much a job
| depends on sex or gender until after you've eliminated
| cultural bias, because cultural bias masquerades as
| gender based preferences.
|
| Cultural bias is about people from different cultural
| having different standards? What is the hypothetical
| 'fix', imposing uniform standards for judgement on
| everyone at all places in all times?
| dahart wrote:
| > I don't understand the meaning of the term "sex bias".
|
| This and "cultural bias" and "sexism" are all pretty well
| established terms you can Google, and are taught in
| social studies and history courses.
|
| Sex bias means a cultural bias or prejudice based on
| someone's sex. I'm using sex here more or less
| interchangeably with gender right now, but there are
| times where that distinction matters.
|
| > it's completely unclear to me that it existed
| previously and that I want it to stop existing.
|
| There's no question about whether sex bias has existed,
| nor whether society wants it to stop existing. Those are
| facts not being debated. The primary example I had in
| mind when I said 100 years is women's suffrage: the right
| to vote. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage)
| When women were legally barred from voting, or owning
| land, or initiating divorce, those things were sex based
| biases. Women gained the right to vote in the US a while
| ago, but it took longer before women started to appear in
| C-level corporate roles, that is still changing today.
|
| > Cultural bias is about people from different cultural
| having different standards?
|
| Please read the link I posted. Cultural bias is about
| having ingrained prejudices in large social groups. It
| can be, but is not primarily about people from different
| cultures in the sense of, say, Indians vs Americans.
| Indians have certain cultural biases, Americans have
| their own separate cultural biases. The idea that nurses
| should be women is an example of a cultural bias.
|
| > What is the hypothetical 'fix', imposing uniform
| standards
|
| The goal is to remove bias and prejudice that is hurting
| certain categories of people, preventing them from having
| equal access to opportunity to improve their lives, and
| to make decisions about people based on their interests
| and abilities, and to establish and respect some basic
| human rights across the board. I don't know what you mean
| by "imposing uniform standards for judgement on everyone
| at all places in all times", but this sounds like a straw
| man and that you're skeptical. It might be described as
| imposing _minimum_ uniform standards, perhaps.
|
| I will turn your question back on you: what is the
| alternative you're suggesting, do you support having
| different standards for men and women in QA? Why or why
| not? Do you support the idea that a woman developer who
| writes the same quality of code and works as hard and has
| the same level of experience as her male coworker should
| be paid the same amount?
| burrows wrote:
| > Ah, it sounds like you may need to study a little
| history if you're curious about these terms.
|
| I am a mind in thrall to delusion.
|
| > Sex bias means a cultural bias or prejudice based on
| someone's sex.
|
| Using the word "prejudice" to define "bias" doesn't help
| me to understand the term.
|
| > Cultural bias is about having ingrained prejudices in
| large social groups.
|
| Okay, so different people having different assumptions
| which they use to judge phenomena.
|
| > The goal is to remove bias and prejudice that is
| hurting certain categories of people, preventing them
| from having equal access to opportunity to improve their
| lives, and to make decisions about people based on their
| interests and abilities, and to establish and respect
| some basic human rights across the board.
|
| There are lots of things that lots of people will tell me
| are hurting them. Personally, I don't care about any of
| them. But how do you prioritize one claimed hurt over
| another?
|
| > but this sounds like a straw man and that you're
| skeptical
|
| Probably, I was just guessing.
|
| > I will turn your question back on you: what is the
| alternative you're suggesting, do you support having
| different standards for men and women in QA?
|
| I don't really care. The hiring/promoting practices of
| 2022 American QA departments doesn't interest me. Let the
| Harvest Gods have their day.
|
| > Do you support the idea that a woman developer who
| writes the same quality of code and works as hard and has
| the same level of experience as her male coworker should
| be paid the same amount?
|
| Depends on the context. Does disqualifying the woman help
| me to get what I want, then I'm all for it. Otherwise, I
| don't care.
| vijaybritto wrote:
| >> How do you know this to be true?
|
| Goto LinkedIn and search for QA engineers in Indian
| cities. I think that should be a very good proof for you
| burrows wrote:
| Searching LinkedIn will show me that "there's nothing
| gender or sex related to doing the job of QA"?
| thwjerjl23432 wrote:
| golemiprague wrote:
| How do you know it is "cultural bias" and even if it is
| why do you think it is a problem? It could be that men
| and women have natural different disposition to work in
| certain fields, it might be that even in fields where it
| is balanced it is the "cultural bias" that make it
| balanced rather than the natural disposition. I don't
| understand how something like that can even be proved,
| how do you control for all the parameters? I also don't
| understand why we should strive for balance? what is
| wrong with each group, whether grouped by sex or race or
| age or whatever else being specialised in different
| fields on average?
| drewcoo wrote:
| Yes. Institutional sexism.
|
| Often perpetuated by women as well as men, so this isn't
| man-blaming.
|
| And having a few token women in dev doesn't change the
| situation so much as it cements the status quo in place.
| walkhour wrote:
| The truth is that there are no studies (that I'm aware of)
| that research into whether there's sexism in QA. So the
| answers to your question are going to be filled with
| speculation.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's no sexism until I see a study, and I'm not doing
| a study if there's no sexism. Doing a study at all when
| there are no previous studies would be a clear case of
| anti-male bias.
| walkhour wrote:
| > I'm not doing a study if there's no sexism.
|
| Presumably you wouldn't know without a study, thus you do
| the study.
| chowells wrote:
| Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA than
| other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's 100% of
| the information required to determine that this is the
| result of sexism.
|
| However, a lot of people seem to think that describing
| reality is an insult to them, so I have to explain further
| - this is a result of systemic sexism starting at early
| childhood. It starts with what toys children are given to
| play with. It continues via socialization in schools. It's
| propagated via every surprised face when a woman shows up
| to learn about technology. No individual person involved in
| the process might have any malice at all. It's the result
| of entire systems of behavior, no individual part of which
| can be described as "the problem". You might call it
| systemic sexism.
|
| You don't have to be able to explain the entire method of
| operation to see the result. Is there a statistical
| difference in outcomes between groups that isn't explained
| by a difference between the groups? Then there's a systemic
| bias at work.
| tbihl wrote:
| >Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA
| than other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's
| 100% of the information required to determine that this
| is the result of sexism.
|
| Car mechanics aren't all women, even though women's hands
| fit much better into all those tiny spaces in the
| dashboard and engine bay? Sexism
|
| Nurses aren't overwhelmingly male, despite the fact that
| a significant part of the job is wrangling patients, who
| overwhelmingly skew obese? Sexism
| pessimizer wrote:
| Your point here is unintelligible for me.
| tbihl wrote:
| I was trying to show by example that grandparent's
| definition of sexism is ridiculously expansive to the
| point of choking out all other dimensions of life.
|
| I chose them as two things that don't often get cited as
| evidence of sexism (though mechanic isn't so dirty a job,
| and isn't dangerous at all. I have more personal
| awareness if mechanics, so that's what I chose.)
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Male nurses not being as prevalent is definitely cited
| often as an example of sexism in my circles.
| havblue wrote:
| I think QA is inherently unpopular. "Oh God are you really
| going to make me document this before you sign off???"
| [deleted]
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I can explain exactly how this happens, but won't, because
| that wouldn't be politically correct.
| vijaybritto wrote:
| Interesting fact: Talk to Indian upper caste women who claim
| to be feminists about caste; you'll be shut down quickly. I
| have had countless arguments only to be named "mansplainer".
| The activism from powerful groups will flow in the same
| social structure which does not affect their power.
| bell-cot wrote:
| This sounds _extremely_ similar the ~century-ago situation
| in American feminism. Lesser right for women of "lesser"
| racial, religious, social, etc. backgrounds were, ah, not
| much of a concern.
| pasabagi wrote:
| It's also the same the other way around: a lot of male
| anti-racism activists / communists / etc were very
| sexist. Some still are. I still think it's nice that
| feminists are, today and historically, generally ahead of
| the curve when it comes to these things.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Is QA lower tier work in most places? Isn't that bass-
| ackwards?
| chrismorgan wrote:
| As commonly _implemented_ , it's certainly a less-skilled
| job with a lot of banal repetition, tedious procedure, and
| not much scope for or need of original thought.
|
| As one familiar with the Indian education system (which is
| heavily rote-based and does not generally encourage
| understanding-based learning, especially before the
| tertiary level) and the mentality it produces in comparison
| with the western mind, I would say (and please don't
| misunderstand me; I'm making a dispassionate assessment of
| why it might be so, not whether it should or should not be
| so) that this is actually a pretty good match, and it would
| not surprise me--nay, I would _expect_ --to find Indians
| and especially Indian women fitting in better into that
| style of QA department than into other fields such as
| development; and when you _have_ a large fraction of people
| who think in such-and-such a way, it will tend to be self-
| reinforcing and -perpetuating. (This is also a significant
| factor in why these sorts of effects in how you think as a
| whole have a habit of lingering for a generation or two
| after transplantation into another country.)
| delecti wrote:
| It is definitely viewed as lower tier, which is unfortunate
| because it's incredibly valuable.
| bena wrote:
| Something can be both. Incredibly low-skilled and easy
| yet valuable.
| delecti wrote:
| I said QA is viewed as lower _tier_ , not less _skilled_.
| QA, especially SDET style QA, is plenty difficult, but
| gets very little respect.
| bena wrote:
| Yes, there are levels of QA. But QA, at its most
| difficult is also software development, but for the most
| part, is not.
|
| I would say, that on average, QA is a lower skilled
| profession than software development. If I were to make
| an analogy, QA is the nurse to the developer's doctor.
|
| And, yes, it is a lower tier. You hire developers before
| QA and fire QA before developers. But, like you said, it
| deserves respect. Just like all professions. And I'd say
| that a competent QA staff is the sign of a successful
| organization. Because while you can have your developers
| test, it's better to move those responsibilities off
| their plate so they can focus on their core work. Just
| like you could have your employees take out the trash and
| sweep up, but once you're beyond the "5 people in a
| garage" setup, you're going to hire a cleaning service.
|
| To the point of the higher up comments.
|
| It is an issue. Even if QA were more difficult,
| challenging, etc than development, we can't get around
| the fact that it is perceived as supplemental to
| development. It is a place where organizations put people
| who want to be developers but the organization doesn't
| want to be developers. Or a dumping ground for 1x
| developers. And it seems, a way to tweak diversity
| numbers without actually doing anything.
| havblue wrote:
| While it pays less I don't think I'd ever state that it's
| "lower tier". If QA is an integral part of your process,
| that the customer pays for, then you don't disparage
| people doing the necessary work.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| There are people in QA who are Patel. We have women from
| India who work at all levels, from ED to L1. All pillars are
| necessary.
|
| The biggest problem I've encountered is that they are
| sometimes socially isolated because Western colleagues don't
| know how to approach them, when they're really easy to talk
| to and have a lot to say!
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| >There are people in QA who are Patel
|
| What does this mean? I thought Patel was a surname.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| https://archive.ph/K9lux / https://theprint.in/india/who-
| are-patels-and-how-they-have-b...
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Fascinating, thanks. What's the closest parallel in the
| Western world?
| vijaybritto wrote:
| I'm afraid there is none. Also its better if people from
| the west do not try to draw parallels with their
| experiences and culture. It simply doesn't match. This
| would help you understand the caste system and once you
| do, you would literally see it in any place where Indians
| live/work. The revelations would be mind boggling for
| sure.
|
| For ex, if there are a bunch of Indians in a work place
| and a few of them are from lower caste, they will not be
| invited for lunches, dinners or any socialising event by
| their upper caste counter parts. Implicit untouchability.
|
| I have read that in the US tech companies this is far too
| common and since their white (only white specifically.
| Because they don't care about what their
| black/asian/latino colleagues think.) colleagues don't
| understand caste, there are no repercussions for any
| discrimination.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I don't buy this...even if white people don't understand
| caste, they would still understand random team members
| not being invited to group events and perhaps try to find
| out why it happened that way.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Any suggestions on how an European can tackle this? I now
| have quite a bunch of Indian collegues, and while I know
| what the caste system is and how it sucks, it is all just
| theory for me. If women are cut short in meetings I see
| it and can do something. If all Indians are excluded, or
| all Blacks, Asians,..., I see it and can do sometjing.
| Well, in theory. But of it is only affecting a sub-set of
| a group that is completely indistinguishable from the
| rest, it gets close to impossible. Plus, it feels like a
| really sensitive topic. Just wondering, not that I
| encountered a situation like that so far, or rather not
| that I saw one for what it was.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| " _Etymology The term patel derives from the word
| Patidar, literally "one who holds (owned) pieces of land
| called patis", implying a higher economic status than
| that of the landless,[6] ultimately from Sanskrit
| pattakila,[7] with the ending -dar (from Sanskrit "dhaar"
| - supporting, containing, holding) denoting
| ownership.[8]_"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patel
| [deleted]
| bobobob420 wrote:
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _There is no caste discrimination in US , he literally
| lives in a 2 million dollar home_
|
| Would you similarly reject the hardships of a successful
| black American? If he's facing such animus, why do you think
| it stops elsewhere?
|
| FYI, there are studies [1] and a lawsuit [2] documenting
| caste discrimination in America.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_discrimination_in_the
| _Un...
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit-
| idUSKBN2423...
| bobobob420 wrote:
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| civilized wrote:
| > There is no caste discrimination in US
|
| What makes you think you're qualified to make such a blanket
| statement? Especially since caste discrimination is pervasive
| in India and immigrants tend to bring their culture with
| them.
|
| I just don't think you could know this, and I wonder what
| else might be motivating you to make vast generalizations
| about things you don't know.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| civilized wrote:
| You're just one person. It's obvious that you don't
| personally know about caste discrimination in all of the
| United States. If you had data it would be another
| matter, but you presented none and I'm pretty sure it's
| because you have none.
|
| It's not a subjective matter, it's just transparently
| absurd.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? Your
| posts in this thread have been way over the line, and you've
| unfortunately done posted this way to other threads too. We
| ban accounts that do that.
|
| I'm not going to ban your account right now but we need you
| to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the rules if you want to keep posting here.
|
| On a topic like the current one, if you want to share some of
| your own experience and cut out the swipes and putdowns of
| others, that would be fine. Otherwise it's best not to post.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| Okay dang i will go ahead and read the guidelines. Sorry
| for being passionate and being myself, i will try to be
| someone else. Thank you for not banning my account even
| though I get ruthlessly downvoted for speaking my opinion
| and will never hit my karmic goal of being able to downvote
| posts.
| tristor wrote:
| Related, Washington Post previously published an anonymous open
| letter from Dalit women in 2020 in the wake of Cisco being sued
| for caste discrimination:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/a-statement-on-caste-...
|
| One of the most interesting things that stood out to me from this
| letter and that lawsuit was the assertion by those affected that
| discrimination on the basis of caste was more impactful and more
| severe than discrimination suffered due to immigration status,
| race, and gender in US society, and the letter goes so far as to
| state "We know that we thrive when we work under a non-Indian
| boss. Our work is seen and evaluated on merit, and we are
| integrated rather than being excluded."
|
| It makes these discussions of castes even more important,
| especially as Indian immigration continues to rise and Indian
| culture begins to take precedence in the tech industry. Being a
| white American from the Midwest, I had no awareness of caste or
| caste discrimination when I began my career, but as I got more
| experienced began to learn about it and unfortunately I have
| personally witnessed some incidents in the workplace during my
| career. I wish that Google had allowed this talk to move forward,
| because I think ending workplace discrimination is a critical
| path to ensuring a merit-based free market open to all.
| [deleted]
| anonymousab wrote:
| > After Gupta posted a link in the email group to a petition to
| reinstate the talk, respondents argued that caste discrimination
| does not exist, that caste is not a thing in the United States,
| and that efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United
| States would sow further division.
|
| > Some called caste equity a form of reverse discrimination
| against the highest-ranked castes because of India's affirmative
| action system for access to education and government jobs.
|
| > Others said people from marginalized castes lack the education
| to properly interpret Hindu scriptures around castes.
|
| Wow. I did not expect saints; every person and organization will
| be fallible and all that. Yet this is still so... absolutely
| stunning.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Companies only talk about equality because 1. Requires by title
| IX and 2. Advertising. It is immediately clear to anyone whom
| has done even the slightest research that no org with
| millions/billions sitting around can ever claim to support
| equality in any respect.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| To me, all of these statements 100% confirm caste
| discrimination exists in America. Whenever I hear confronting
| history and privilege as "sowing further division" I cringe
| hard. The parallels in American history are, well... very
| parallel.
| skyde wrote:
| The problem is "affirmative action" is just reverse
| discrimination and this is why it bring further division.
| Because people from both sides now, no longer feel reward is
| based on merit alone anymore.
|
| If there is another solution than "affirmative action" this
| might not be divisive.
| wumpus wrote:
| > The problem is "affirmative action" is just reverse
| discrimination
|
| Have you ever noticed that this opinion isn't the only one
| out there?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#Origins
| skyde wrote:
| is there other form of affirmative action that are not :
| - just a type of quota to give preferential treatment to
| a group of people not because of merit but simply as a
| way to increase diversity for some arbitrary measurement
| (gender, race ...)
| wumpus wrote:
| Yes, it's right there in the link I posted.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| There is no such thing as reverse discrimination it's a
| purely content free term. Discrimination is merely
| discrimination with the insertion of the word reverse
| having no additional meaning.
|
| It's normal for any system which creates an incentive to
| hire minorities to still be so biased in favor of white
| dudes that you are still much better off being a white
| dude.
|
| Basically for every minority that wouldn't have made it on
| merit it's likely you could find two white dudes with the
| same level of actual merit.
|
| This degrades substantially the virtue of complaints about
| such discrimination.
| skyde wrote:
| You are basically saying its ok for a white dude from a
| family of homeless to be doubly discriminated (1- because
| he does have money to go to college 2- because college
| reserve seat for non-white people)
|
| And you justify it because statistically if you take a
| random white people and a random black people the black
| person would deserve it more.
|
| While this is true this logic is morally wrong because
| you punish or reward an individual not because of this
| individual merit but because he happens to have the same
| skin color as other individual.
|
| It's as absurd as saying there are not enough
| professional basketball player that are redhead so we
| should have quota of redhead regardless of skill level.
| devnonymous wrote:
| > It's as absurd as saying there are not enough
| professional basketball player that are redhead so we
| should have quota of redhead regardless of skill level.
|
| If the end goal is that after a number of generations we
| finally have the proportionate number of redhead
| basketball players that would have existed if we didn't
| discriminate against recruiting redhead players in the
| past, then no, the idea isn't absurd at all.
|
| Note the keyword here is the end goal - of creating a
| equal and just basketball team... or society, if you reel
| in the ad absurdum.
| akavi wrote:
| I think the argument that "efforts to raise awareness of these
| issues in the United States would sow further division" isn't
| totally without merit.
|
| As an America-born Indian-American, I honestly don't know what
| my caste is beyond knowing I'm not Brahmin (I didn't do the
| string ceremony some of my childhood family friends did), and
| have basically zero idea of how I'd identify someone else's
| caste. I imagine that that's not terribly uncommon among ABCDs.
|
| Educating people like me about that would suddenly create the
| ability for them to identify a difference that they wouldn't
| have noticed before. This makes it unlike gender, racial, or
| age discrimination, where the categories are usually surface
| level obvious. That in turn could have a star-bellied sneetches
| effect, where people identify with the new categories that they
| wouldn't have considered before.
| devnonymous wrote:
| I've heard similar arguments being made about teaching CRT in
| school. Are you really saying ABCDs are so confused about
| their own identity that they'll cling on to n antiquated
| notion of a social hierarchy based on knowledge of the Vedas?
| akavi wrote:
| I think it's pretty normal as a human to attach oneself to
| various identity groups (An anodyne example being local
| sports teams), and the more you salience an identity, the
| more likely and more strongly individuals are to attach
| themselves to that identity.
|
| It seems like that could in fact an issue with race-centric
| DEI training, at least per the one study I found at short
| notice[0]. But that needs to be weighed against the
| potential benefits and the fact that race relations are a
| significant issue across America society regardless of
| whether we address it explicitly or not.
|
| With caste discrimination, the issue currently exists
| within a very small slice of American society (immigrants
| born in India). So even a small negative effect across the
| rest of American society would wipe out even the most
| significant improvements in that slice.
|
| [0]:
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550618780728
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > As an America-born Indian-American, I honestly don't know
| what my caste is beyond knowing I'm not Brahmin (I didn't do
| the string ceremony some of my childhood family friends did)
|
| That's not actually sufficient information to infer anything,
| since people from any of the four savarna castes can
| participate in the ceremony. It varies a lot by region and
| community.
|
| It's not actually unheard-of for Dalits to have it, although
| that's rare.
| akavi wrote:
| Oh huh, TIL!
|
| Well, then I have no idea at all what my caste is.
| ajross wrote:
| As an America-born white hippie, though... I have a hard time
| seeing an argument like that and not equating it with
| attempts to suppress discussion of racial equality issues
| here at home[1]. The fact that you don't experience
| discrimination doesn't mean that no one does. And you should
| know if people do, and why.
|
| Nothing gets better if the skeletons stay in the closet,
| basically. It's no different for caste awareness than it is
| for teaching slavery and segregation.
|
| [1] _Edit: and look what I did! "Here at home" clearly comes
| out making this seem like a "foreign" problem, but as you
| point out this is your home too! That's why we should all be
| hearing people speak out about it._
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| But I think the same argument _can_ be applied here in the
| USA, too.
|
| Your point about "security through obscurity" makes sense;
| I wouldn't attempt to conceal the history and the current
| problems.
|
| But the strategy here today seems to be trying to force
| people to own a given racial identity: at least some people
| are demanding that white people should stand up to publicly
| renounce their privilege, etc. And I'm afraid that this
| strategy of forcing people to self-identify as "white"
| rather than just "person" plants a seed in some minds that
| germinates into them sprouting into white nationalists and
| so forth.
| ajross wrote:
| FWIW: I think you're conflating things. Teaching kids
| about slavery and segregation, and teaching older kids
| the enduring effects thereof (which are quantifiable!)
| isn't the same thing as forcing them to pick a racial
| identity or renounce their privilege or whatever, even if
| some of the same people want to do both.
|
| You can oppose the latter without denying the former.
| From my perspective on the other side of this divide, I
| see a lot of people making arguments like yours as a way
| of shutting down discussion about inequality entirely.
| That's exactly what you claim not to support, right?
| [deleted]
| empressplay wrote:
| Um, no. The only division it would sow would be when you
| notice your Indian-born manager is discriminating against
| your Indian-born co-worker.
|
| The only people who really want to stop awareness of this are
| people like that manager.
| chasil wrote:
| A full video of a talk by Soundararajan in reaction to
| Google's cancelation was published to YouTube, link below.
|
| A few things that I found poignant in this talk:
|
| One in four people in the world live within a caste system.
|
| Soundararajan's father only admitted his dalit status to
| her in his late 70s.
|
| The reservation system in India is the earliest civil
| rights initiative, predating the movement in the U.S.
|
| The reservation system has expanded from its original role
| in university admissions to encompass reserved seats in
| parliament and corporate hiring.
|
| The final question in the talk was from a "closeted" dalit
| worker at Google who was terrified that she would be outed.
|
| As much as we hope that the caste system has no bearing in
| U.S. hiring, we must acknowledge that its effects are
| present.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2xykx777qZM
| uhuruity wrote:
| I am also a foreign born person of Indian descent and agree
| with the person you're replying to. I have never been aware
| of my cast, the cast of other Indians / Indian origin
| people I interact with, and think that's a good thing.
| Could you elaborate on why you think the negative effect -
| that making previously oblivious people aware of castes
| could increase discrimination - doesn't exist?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Funny that you are literally discounting an Indian
| American, telling them how they will think and feel about
| the topic.
| gomoboo wrote:
| Isn't this just relying on security through obscurity? The
| knowledge is already out there for anyone wishing to seek it.
| Why pretend it doesn't exist?
|
| For what it's worth, I am not of Indian descent.
| guenthert wrote:
| "Ignorance is bliss" is the phrase you're looking for.
| whack wrote:
| Take a look at the brown-eye-blue-eye experiment that a
| teacher did with her students. Everyone already knew the
| color of their eye, but no one gave it much significance.
| But as soon as the teacher started talking about the
| socioeconomic-status associated with eye color, students
| immediately divided themselves and started fighting over
| eye color.
|
| Never underestimate people's ability to segregate
| themselves using whatever demographic markers society tells
| them is important to their identity.
|
| > _The children with brown eyes were suddenly more
| confident -- and condescending. They hurled nasty insults
| at the blue-eyed kids. The children with blue eyes made
| silly mistakes and became timid and despondent. The two
| groups stopped playing together. Fights broke out._
|
| https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/karinabland/2017
| /...
| jjcon wrote:
| > efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United
| States would sow further division.
|
| I think is a real point and is true of many issues - the
| problem is how do you fix a problem silently in the background?
| Can it be done with better results than hyperfocusing on it? I
| would guess and hope there might be a way but don't know how.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Talking about social problems only "sows further division" in
| the sense that people who currently benefit from those
| problems get angry that you want to change things.
| skyde wrote:
| Well to be fair If in United States, I met/interview someone
| from India. I would have no idea which caste they are, so I
| don't see how I can discriminate one caste over another :)
| rhacker wrote:
| Ever get an offhanded comment from another co-worker (indian)
| that says something like, yeah I don't know about this guy.
| What if THAT was him thinking about the entire CASTES
| thing!?!?!?! I mean that's often enough to pass up entire
| people
| skyde wrote:
| So would that co-worker be able to guess the caste of the
| candidate during a 30minute phone interview ?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Casted are guessable simply by seeing someone's name.
| qorrect wrote:
| What are some obvious examples? Thx
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Anyone that really thinks the USA has no caste is in an upper
| level caste. It's less formalized here than in other countries,
| but it absolutely exists.
| pydry wrote:
| American caste is just money though.
| zeusk wrote:
| and skin color, gender, race or sexuality based on the
| local politics/religion.
| wumpus wrote:
| Money, education, Mayflower ancestor, eligible to join the
| Daughters of the American Revolution, distant relative of
| some famous or wealthy family, member of some social clubs
| (even inexpensive ones), and so on.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| That's not what caste is. Caste is a value assigned to you
| at birth that you cannot change no matter what you do. It's
| similar to race but stupider
| qorrect wrote:
| People are having a really hard time grasping this and Im
| not sure why.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| It's money and everything that comes along with it - social
| status, health (both because of access to healthcare, but
| being able to afford a healthy lifestyle), education, safer
| interactions with law enforcement, job prospects and
| advancement, etc. If you're born poor, it's very hard to
| break out of that. It's not literally impossible like
| changing caste is, but it's very difficult.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Money _and education_.
| beebmam wrote:
| I'm not Indian, I don't think there's a caste system for me.
| If people discriminate against me for not being Indian and
| thereby not having a caste, then I hope they get brutally
| fired and ridiculed, and their wealth is dispossessed.
|
| We should be treating people as individuals, not collectives.
| Anything less is profoundly immoral.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Anyone who thinks the USA has a caste system doesn't
| understand what a caste system is. People are not defined or
| restricted based on the occupations of their parents.
|
| Class mobility is celebrated, so much so that the successful
| often play-up any humble origins in their families.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| The US caste system absolutely exists; it's called old
| money. And old money communities absolutely limit
| occupations and opportunities based on this.
| beebmam wrote:
| That's not a caste system. Please read:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste
| dsr_ wrote:
| It's a class system, but nearly all Americans insist that
| they are middle-class: upper middle class, lower middle
| class, but definitely middle-class.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/middle-class.asp
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I have never been asked to put my parents occupations or
| net worth on a resume, or been asked it in an interview.
| killerdhmo wrote:
| You don't have to. It comes up with your universities,
| your hobbies, your zip code, even your name. That leads
| into what jobs you get, how much money you earn, and now
| what position your kids are in.
| josephg wrote:
| Social mobility has been declining in the rich world since
| the 40s. The USA doesn't have a formal class system, but
| it's increasingly rare for people from poor families to
| become wealthy in modern day America.
|
| We're right to celebrate people from humble origins
| climbing the social ladder. But it doesn't happen anywhere
| near as often as it should.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That is not a caste system.
|
| If you want to talk about social Mobility, we can talk
| about that as a separate topic.
|
| What does ideal social Mobility look like to you? Here is
| a baseline for discussion:
|
| https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/imag
| es/...
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >Some called caste equity a form of reverse discrimination
| against the highest-ranked castes because of India's
| affirmative action system for access to education and
| government jobs.
|
| I've heard some pretty horrible stories about this in
| particular; like Brahmin kids being legally adopted into Sudra
| families in order to get into a reserved position at a State
| University, and rich kids with private tutors getting given
| further advantage over poor kids doing all the work themselves
| because they happen to be of a lower caste.
|
| Just like in every other country, affirmative action does
| nothing but help members of a specific group who are already
| advantaged.
| india_usa wrote:
| There is 70% affirmitive action. If you are a Dalit with 50%
| mark you will get admission to a medical seat and you will be
| a cardiac surgeon, but if a brahmin girl gets 99% she will
| not get admission and will be a clerk. Go figure the Indian
| system. This is why you see thousands of Brahmins in Silicon
| valley as they are kicked out or disgusted with Indian
| political system of favoring lower castes. USA benefited
| immensely from it.
| manifestdissent wrote:
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Others said people from marginalized castes lack the
| education to properly interpret Hindu scriptures around castes.
|
| "If you're one of _them_ , you're too ignorant to understand
| why we're right". Absolutely repulsive.
| vt85 wrote:
| anonymousiam wrote:
| [deleted]
| salawat wrote:
| Which would give grounds on the hiring manager front for
| investigating one's employer for de-facto blacklisting.
|
| Which is illegal.
|
| Just because someone points out the elrphant in the room at a
| workplace does not make them "radioactive". Quite the opposite.
| Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Organizing a labor protest because of unfair working
| conditions, or as an attempt to unionize, is "protected" by
| US regulations (not necessarily laws). Organizing a labor
| protest because of a (real or perceived) culture of sexual
| harassment is not. If she had a valid and provable claim of
| wrongdoing, she should have approached an attorney and sued
| Google to elicit change (and maybe some compensation). I
| believe I read that her protest was staged to "bring
| awareness" to the issue. If you were an employer (regardless
| of your views on the topic), would this be okay with you?
|
| The same thing goes for trying to organize a meeting with a
| speaker who will talk about the caste system in Silicon
| Valley. Yeah, caste == bad, but is the employer obligated to
| host such a meeting (at their expense)? Obviously she could
| rent a venue and invite others to the presentation on their
| own time, but why must Google submit to her demands for them
| to pay for it?
| salawat wrote:
| >Organizing a labor protest because of unfair working
| conditions, or as an attempt to unionize, is "protected" by
| US regulations
|
| >Organizing a labor protest because of a (real or
| perceived) culture of sexual harassment is not.
|
| ...Pardon me, but do you not consider a workplace wherein
| sexual harassment is implicitly encouraged or tolerated to
| the point that someone feels the need to clarify or remind
| others this a workplace to not be a subset of unfair
| working conditions? I do. Generally it is something that
| hardly needs explaining in the majority of places I've
| been, but in the places that needed it, it was needed. It
| _can_ be overdone. Given recent history on Google however,
| I 'm willing to entertain the benefit of a doubt.
|
| >The same thing goes for trying to organize a meeting with
| a speaker who will talk about the caste system in Silicon
| Valley. Yeah, caste == bad, but is the employer obligated
| to host such a meeting (at their expense)?
|
| Does the employer outsource a sizable chunk of business to
| somewhere where these concerns are valid? Is management
| composed of people to whom these concerns should apply? If
| yes, then absolutely.
|
| Look, the bigger a collective unit of humanity you are, the
| higher my standards go. Everyone individually is prone to
| their own vices/biases/fallibilities/etc... but the entire
| point behind collectives is that not all component members
| are _hopefully_ having an evil day at the same time. So on
| average, behavior should tend away from blatant unethical
| or immoral behavior. This is doubly important, because
| group behavior is indicative of culture of the constituent
| parts.
|
| I understand there are some people who look at businesses
| as nothing but profit engines. I don't. If your business
| ends up perpetuating discriminatory practices because there
| is some executive at the top who is a caste-ist bastard,
| and you've got boots on the ground attestating that yes,
| that tendency shines through to them numerous enough, then
| it is absolutely a valid expenditure of our collective
| society's time.
|
| Should it eclipse everything else? No not necessarily. Is
| there a point where one needs to rein it in? Who should be
| entrusted with that decision?
|
| Certainly not those in power/up top. There are fewer of
| them, and the power they wield taints their impartiality.
| It is most safely ensconced amongst your workers.
|
| If one person asks for it, say no. Two or three do, start
| paying attention, possibly escalate. If it is worth your
| people's time to hear this person out, it is worth your
| time.
|
| Beside's which, as a leader, you are best thought of as a
| cache. If you haven't formed a stance or policy in it, do
| the expensive operation, then cache the result.
|
| Boom. Done. Everybody's happy. Ignoring the potential
| problem won't make it go away.
|
| Bottom up, not top down. Telling the bottom to chill out
| because Fearless Leader would never let anything _improper_
| happen is about the most unamerican thing I can possibly
| imagine... Nevermind the biggest bloody lie out there.
|
| In short; I tend to disagree with your standpoint. My job
| isn't to optimize your accountant's profit figures, it's to
| make sure that signals get handled so the people doing the
| real work can concentrate on that. The profit will
| generally take care of itself.
|
| People are complicated. Those that think they've simplified
| them enough are inevitably due for a refresher in human
| nature.
| kleinsch wrote:
| Only if someone is dumb enough to document in an email
| they're firing her for speaking out. In the real world if you
| spend your whole workday investigating and criticizing your
| employer, you'll eventually no longer work there. They'll
| find cases where you missed deadlines, bad performance
| reviews, etc.
| 0des wrote:
| A criminal attorney once said: If you can say it, don't
| write it. If you can communicate it without saying it, then
| don't speak it at all.
| zo1 wrote:
| Not sure I understand the usage of the term radioactive here?
| Did you mean toxic?
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I guess toxic is an adjective with a similar meaning, but a
| worse connotation in my view. Both words imply that she is to
| be avoided, and she will probably have some difficulty
| finding a new job after her very-public departure from
| Google.
| 0daystock wrote:
| Google has cancelled many discussions about various bias; their
| "Talks" have not been thought-provoking or even relevant for some
| years now, probably since middle management from other mediocre
| companies percolated the organization.
| [deleted]
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Democracy dies in darkness, please enter your credit card to
| continue.
| [deleted]
| Pigalowda wrote:
| There are 200+ million Dalits in India. These are the people
| which were previously called "untouchables".
|
| I work in medicine, many Indians work with me and most are
| Brahmins with a few Christian Malayali from Kerala.
|
| I think the Malayali have shown it is possible to escape the
| caste system and to have success.
|
| However I am worried Dalits have been at the bottom and treated
| as such for thousands of years that it has effected more than
| just their psychology. In a high population density area with
| food insecurity there will be high baseline stress, malnutrition,
| and starvation. Those will cause epigenetic modifications to DNA
| which are (surprisingly) heritable. Over thousands I imagine
| these effects will produce behaviors which are going to be hard
| to overcome.
| dundarious wrote:
| What are or should be the consequences of these worries of
| yours?
| Pigalowda wrote:
| The worry is that it will take many generations of
| significant investment back into the Dalit communities to
| bring them into parity with the rest of the Indian
| population. That even after the investment the longterm
| epigenetic effects from thousands of years of high
| intergenerational stress will show a significant increase in
| diseases of all types with higher all cause mortality/lower
| life expectancy.
| dundarious wrote:
| Lifestyle factors drastically dominate when it comes to
| mortality/life expectancy. Also, the whole idea is highly
| speculative and would/should have no implications for
| workplace/hiring practices regardless.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Yes it is true that with improvement in maternal/fetal
| survivability modifiable lifestyle factors drastically
| dominate life expectancy. However that's a throw away
| line to disregard significant differences. It's basically
| zooming out far enough to say it doesn't matter.
|
| And yes, its a speculative idea that I proposed, I
| certainly didn't suggest it was dogma. However this kind
| of observation is what would lead to a study.
|
| Lastly, while this discussion is tangential to Google
| hiring practices, it is a related topic. I'm sorry if you
| feel like I robbed you of your time.
| dundarious wrote:
| It's not "a throw away line to disregard significant
| differences" when I say that almost all the genetic
| factors you're concerned about are subordinate to
| lifestyle factors -- they are. Genetic factors can be
| governed (genes switched on/off) via lifestyle factors
| such as diet, activity, etc. Never mind that whole
| populations have endured famines, passing on harmful
| traits epigenetically, and yet, those populations have
| recovered well.
|
| I don't think you're wasting my or anyone else's time,
| but I think your post was missing crucial info,
| especially given the context. If there was a post about
| career achievement or discrimination of Finnish people, I
| wouldn't post about their unfavorable epigenetic profile
| since the famines of WW2, lest it be construed as partial
| justification.
| istjohn wrote:
| That sounds like a barely plausible, extremely convenient
| justification for bigotry that could be employed by any number
| of racial or ethnic groups.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Not barely plausible at all. For my epigenetic comment - Here
| is a relevant paper:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579375/
|
| And secondly, low SES populations have much higher rates of
| psychiatric disorders and pretty much all diseases. If one
| were to combine thousands of years of epigenetic effects and
| persistent unescapable low SES status, then it does not take
| a leap of faith to hypothesize there will be long term
| effects. Much less "barely plausible", a comment that only
| arises because this is not your domain, but it is mine.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This is likely an example why it may not always be a great idea
| to discuss politics at work. I know a lot of us have strong
| personal opinions on a lot of subjects, but making sure everyone
| on my team aligns with my beliefs is likely not conducive to
| teamwork. Quite the opposite.
|
| If I was not an IC now, I would definitely be trying to cut
| discussions like that in a bud.
| gman83 wrote:
| I think that discussing caste-based discrimination is great for
| a western company to do. Especially one with a lot of Indian
| workers. Most western workers/managers have little
| understanding of this topic, and will probably miss it if a
| coworker is being discriminated against because of their caste.
| Seems like a no-brainer to me.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > This is likely an example why it may not always be a great
| idea to discuss politics at work.
|
| If you're seeing discrimination in the workplace then it's no
| longer about politics, it's about the workplace and
| professionalism among staff.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| No. Everything is politics. You just happen to be too close
| and emotionally invested to see it as such. It is fine to
| hold strong opinions and consider some items 'obvious' or
| even 'inalienable', but pretending those are all not just a
| temporary set of values we agreed on as a society is silly.
|
| edit: Even saying 'I am apolitical' is a political statement.
| rob74 wrote:
| Except racism (and "caste-based discrimination" is also racism)
| shouldn't be considered "politics", everybody should be able to
| agree that it doesn't have a place in a modern company.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Having public messaging about negative social behavior often
| results in more of the negative behavior. Studies suggest
| lots of media about school shootings results in more school
| shootings. Similarly, messaging about getting help to reduce
| self-harm results in more self-harm. DARE resulted in no
| reductions in drug use.
|
| If the people creating these programs/talks don't understand
| this, they don't deserve the platform. And if they do
| understand it, they are evil and intentionally trying to make
| race/bigotry tensions worse. In cases such as this where the
| relevant psychology of the issue is essential to the career,
| I tend to assume the worst of anyone doing it.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| So the problem shouldn't be discussed? So for security
| vulnerabilities, disclosing them allows them to be
| exploited. So 0-days and their corresponding patches
| shouldn't be discussed or released?
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| A thoughtful person might change their behavior once they
| learn that their behavior is getting the opposite of the
| result they intended.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Why is it an exception and why is it not politics? Can you
| define politics and tell me why "cast-based discrimination"
| does not overlap with that definition?
| seneca wrote:
| "Except my special bugbear is special and should be exempt
| from basic social norms. Everyone should have to agree with
| me".
|
| The issue is that any and everything can be claimed to be
| racist, and therefore transferred to your special pre-
| political exemption.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Apart from the morality of the situation, the fact is that
| racial discrimination in the workplace is illegal in the US
| (and rightly so, in my opinion). Whether caste
| discrimination is a form of racial discrimination is the
| subject of current litigation in California. Given that
| there are legal requirements the company needs to stay in
| compliance with, this is squarely outside of "politics at
| work".
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This is likely the only reasonable counter to my opinion
| so far. That said, is caste of a racial nature? To my
| understanding it really more of a social construct more
| tied to ethnicity.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| To be clear, race is also socially constructed; they're
| different cultures' ways of stratifying social
| categories. That said, all that matters for the law in
| this case is what the courts say.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Eh, I hate this conversation. Maybe? If we follow that
| thread, everything is a social construct. It gets silly
| fast.
|
| Now, if were to look for a biological definition from
| Webster(1), race would be defined as:
|
| a group within a species that is distinguishable (as
| morphologically, genetically, or behaviorally) from
| others of the same species
|
| How is skin color not a distinguishable trait?
|
| Now.. it might not be politically polite thing to say,
| but it does not change the outcome here.
|
| 1:https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/race
| NoGravitas wrote:
| It's okay to just admit you don't know something. Here's
| the American Anthropological Association's public
| outreach site on the subject, so you can catch up on the
| relevant science.
|
| https://understandingrace.org/
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This may be where the disconnect is. The definition I
| provided was from a biology domain and not from
| humanities domain ( not that there no attempts to do the
| same in biology ). This is not discredit anthropology as
| it is a fascinating study. I just do not think it is
| relevant here.
|
| I do happen to think that, where there are clear physical
| differences ( gasp ) between white and black people, it
| may be a good idea not to try to cover it with yet
| another social construct. Unless, naturally there is a
| disagreement that there are real physical differences (
| for example, if we wanted to move from skin pigment,
| there are documented issues that affect black people more
| than whites ). Are those issues racist?
|
| That said, it is somewhat interesting that the main quote
| on the website provided does not come from a renowned
| representative of the group, but relatively unknown
| historian ("[Racism] is not about how you look, it is
| about how people assign meaning to how you look"). Quite
| frankly, that is not racism. That is otherism and it goes
| back to the previous comment about how the waters and
| definitions are muddied further to pigeonhole something
| for one reason or another.
|
| To be blunt, there is a good reason for a society ( and
| its members ) to not be focused on race, but pretending
| race does not exist is a disservice to that society as it
| is hiding the reality from its members.
|
| Maybe I am approaching it the wrong way. Maybe I should
| try Socratic method here.
|
| Are there black people?
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| According to people like Robin DiAngelo, white people are
| inherently racist, as she wrote in her book _White
| Fragility_.
|
| It's difficult to say that we can all agree to not be racist
| when some ideologues from whom's political ideas companies
| base DEI initiatives on claim that racism is an immutable
| characteristic that many of us are born with.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| It sounds like Robin DiAngelo is inherently racist.
| usrn wrote:
| These people often use Trotsky's definition of racism
| which means they can't be racist towards White people. We
| should all stop using the word because it means something
| different to extremists. "Racial bigotry" makes much more
| sense.
| rob74 wrote:
| I would say anyone who makes such broad statements about
| groups of people is at least guilty of bigotry, yes...
| zo1 wrote:
| I'd posit that 99.999% of people agree racism is bad. It's
| mostly when the definition gets muddied and expanded that
| people start disagreeing and it becomes political and touchy.
| Crabber wrote:
| knorker wrote:
| I don't think it's a matter of definition. Unless you mean
| "it's not racism when I say it. When I say it it's just a
| fact".
|
| Whether they use the N word, or saying "being on time" is
| "whiteness", racism is always defined as "not what I'm
| doing".
|
| Actually the only real definition of racism I would say is
| "mentioning race in any way, except the way I do it".
|
| For your 99.999%, I would say that WAY more than one in a
| hundred thousand would overtly say that their group (race,
| religion, skin color, gender) is "better" than another.
| Especially as you leave western countries.
|
| Though in some countries their racism doesn't even place
| themselves at the top.
|
| 27% of Americans say that homeopathy is an effective
| treatement. I've never met anyone who would admit to this.
| I know someone who believes in crystals and fortune tellers
| though.
|
| I don't know how many people are pro-racism, but it's not
| three orders of magnitude less than people who believe in
| the power of nothing.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think the problem is - and that is likely what OP was
| referring to - that if everything is racism then nothing
| is racism. And if being on time is racist, I guess
| everything already is racist.
|
| It is an odd frame of mind.
|
| >>> For your 99.999%, I would say that WAY more than one
| in a hundred thousand would overtly say that their group
| (race, religion, skin color, gender) is "better" than
| another. Especially as you leave western countries.
|
| Is it possible you are conflating racism with xenophobia
| ( which has slightly expanded to include foreigners )?
| aabceh wrote:
| mountainriver wrote:
| Google is so morally bankrupt at this point they have no idea
| what is right. The far left has given everyone the impression
| that standing up to this nonsense is racist
| kart23 wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see how this issue evolves with more
| american-born Indians entering the workforce. Hopefully it'll
| fade like a lot of other old-fashioned discrimination has.
| gedy wrote:
| Okay, what DEI talks have they not cancelled in that case? Might
| show their biases.
| bko wrote:
| Do we need every mega-corporation to weigh in on every social
| issue globally? The thing I like most about work is that its a
| relatively diverse group of people working together on shared
| goal. People have known for a long time that work should be
| professional and you should avoid politics and religion. But I
| guess people have to relearn these lessons every few decades.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| ubermonkey wrote:
| That's a DEEPLY blinkered take.
|
| It's not about Google weighing in. It's about Google being
| aware of these problems, and doing the work to keep those
| problems out of its workplace.
| draw_down wrote:
| otterley wrote:
| > Do we need every mega-corporation to weigh in on every social
| issue globally?
|
| It's called "leadership."
| m12k wrote:
| We don't need them to weigh in on social issues, but we do need
| them to not be part of the problem. E.g. if a company of
| Google's size had an issue where Indian employees tended to
| prevent qualified candidates from being hired because they were
| lower-caste, then that would both be a problem for Google
| (because they would be missing out on labor) and those being
| discriminated against.
| jspaetzel wrote:
| It wouldn't even be a "relatively diverse" group if we didn't
| work at it continuously. This is just the latest difficult
| step.
| rangersanger wrote:
| I'm wondering what you mean by weighing in globally. Do you
| mean publicly, or internally within the global google
| employment base? Google is big enough that I'm not sure
| public/internal can really be teased apart, but I guess
| intention might matter.
|
| Regardless, I've come to realize that not talking about
| politics and religion doesn't make political or religious
| action and impact go away, it just stays insidious.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Yes, we do need that, at least in the USA. The last 42 years of
| politics have neutered the federal and state governments when
| it comes to any kind of social issue. The only institutions
| that get respect are The Military, churches, very rich (and
| therefore very intelligent) men, and some big companies. The US
| government has so many checks and balances that virtually
| nothing has gotten done in years.
| rsstack wrote:
| They don't have to weigh in. But, if few Indian managers
| discriminate against Dalits, how are their non-Indian peers and
| managers supposed to correct that discrimination if they don't
| even understand what are castes? This isn't political, it's
| professional: US laws and Google policies forbid
| discrimination, and so people need to be trained in
| understanding what discrimination looks like. You don't
| categorize "security awareness training" as political either.
| bko wrote:
| > But, if few Indian managers discriminate against Dalits,
| how are their non-Indian peers and managers supposed to
| correct that discrimination if they don't even understand
| what are castes?
|
| Shouldn't the managers and decision makers be aware of the
| local customs, cultural issues and employment laws in the
| region they manage? You really think it's appropriate for
| some white American manager to lecture his Indian
| subordinates after spending a few hours in training?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > You really think it's appropriate for some white American
| manager to lecture his Indian subordinates after spending a
| few hours in training?
|
| If he/she sees a clear violation of discrimination
| laws/policies, then yes! Although "lecture" wouldn't be the
| best start. Asking questions to the alleged discriminator
| would be a better way forward. Find out what happened and
| why, and ask multiple people for their input. Start by
| assuming innocence and let evidence prove otherwise, not
| the other way around.
|
| The truth about a given situation is not completely
| inaccessible to people without "lived experience". That's
| why _words_ are so powerful - when used truthfully and in
| good faith, they enable to bridge gaps where we lack that
| personal experience, and make accurate judgments.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > when used truthfully and in good faith, [words] enable
| us to bridge gaps where we lack that personal experience,
| and make accurate judgments.
|
| That's why learning to express ourselves well, and listen
| well (including empathetically) is so important to a
| functioning society.
|
| As a society, we need a restored faith in the power of
| words to communicate _any_ truth (including truths people
| erroneously say are "inaccessible apart from lived
| experience") and be understood by those who will listen
| well.
|
| The problem isn't that truth is unknowable or
| incommunicable, the problem is that not enough people are
| speaking it, and of those who are, many don't speak
| intelligently and/or intelligibly. And not enough of
| those who listen do so carefully, thoughtfully, and
| empathetically.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the local customs, cultural issues and employment laws
| in the region they manage_
|
| This article concerns caste discrimination in the United
| States.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Amusingly caste discrimination is illegal in India too
| but laws alone rarely change culture it needs a healthy
| doses of death and destruction.
| rsstack wrote:
| That's their job. If they don't like it, they aren't fit to
| do it. If managers could only come from the exact same
| background as their subordinates, globalization would be
| screwed.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Shouldn't the managers and decision makers be aware of
| the local customs, cultural issues and employment laws in
| the region they manage?
|
| Google is a US company. In the US, the "local custom and
| employment law" is that companies don't accept caste based
| discrimination. (It's also technically illegal in India). I
| think not only is it appropriate for a white American
| manager to lecture Indian subordinates about stopping caste
| based discrimination, it's an obligation to do so and fire
| the subordinates if they continue.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >You really think it's appropriate for some white American
| manager to lecture his Indian subordinates after spending a
| few hours in training?
|
| Yes. Ethnic discrimination is absolutely unacceptable in
| any American workplace, full stop. There is no room for
| cultural relativism here. To imply otherwise (e.g. "it
| would be inappropriate for a non-Indian manager to tell off
| their subordinate for being caste-ist") is itself extremely
| racist.
| alex_smart wrote:
| How exactly would you determine that a manager is acting
| against an employee under them due to an internal caste
| bias and not due to lack of performance or
| insubordination (or whatever other valid grounds there
| are for acting against an employee)?
| hef19898 wrote:
| If a manager is acting against an emoloyee, someone
| should ask very pointed questions why. If caste might be
| at play, yes, saidanager ahould get a very stern talk
| from his superiors and HR explaining how this behaviour
| is unacceptable.
| alex_smart wrote:
| >If caste might be at play
|
| Again, _how_ is that determined? Do you assume that a
| caste angle might be at play every time the manager is
| upper caste and the employee 's of lower caste? Do you
| wait for the manager to be stupid enough to outright
| utter a casteist slur at the workplace?
| hef19898 wrote:
| As a manager, if you see one of your directs singeling
| out one of his emoloyees, it is your job to find out why.
| That includes talking to the employee. And _because_
| caste is so hard to grasp for non-Indians talks like the
| one cancelled by Google are so important.
|
| Maybe I have a different view on that, we German's are
| quite sensitive when it comes to anti-semitism. And as
| woth caste, if religion is never openly discussed, I have
| no idea how to spot a jewish co-worker. If that jewish
| co-worker would complain about about being discriminated,
| it's more than reasonable to follow up. Same goes for
| caste. It is up to the employer to create an environment
| where employees can raise those kinds of concerns openly,
| most fail. Honestly trying so actually goes along way.
| alex_smart wrote:
| >As a manager, if you see one of your directs singeling
| out one of his emoloyees, it is your job to find out why
|
| You are just saying that it is the job of the super-
| manager to find out why without answering how the job is
| supposed to be carried out. The manager says he is acting
| against the employee because of their lack of performance
| or insubordination. The employee says the manager is
| discriminating against them based on caste. You're the
| super-manager, what do you do?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Oh, you have talks with everyone involved. You consult
| HR. You get to the bottom of it. When you did, and it
| turns out that it was in fact discrimination, terminating
| the discriminating manager might be an option.
|
| Not sure what a "super-manager" is supposed to be.
| Everyone reports to someone, even the CEO reports to the
| board. And the board reports to the shareholders. If a
| company cannot figure out cases of discrimination it is
| already screwed.
|
| In real life, so, the disriminated party either gets a
| transfer or a _generous_ severance package. Even if the
| discriminating manager gets fired. Nobody likes people
| that make waves.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There's no silver bullet. It's equally hard to determine
| when a manager is acting against subordinates because of
| petty grudges, or when a manager is acting against
| subordinates because they're bad at effectively telling
| subordinates what they want. I think that's kinda the job
| you sign up for when you choose to join higher-level
| management.
| alex_smart wrote:
| Caste-based discrimination would be a pretty serious
| charge against a manager, surely sufficient grounds for
| termination. We need to have a talk of how we are going
| to determine when it's happening if we are seriously
| considering policies to act against it.
| otterley wrote:
| Why does it matter what the race of the speaker is?
| smugma wrote:
| Discrimination against protected classes is illegal. For
| example, until somewhat recently it was legal to discriminate
| based on someone's sexual orientation (don't ask, don't
| tell).
|
| Case law matters, and caste seems to not have clear answers
| as to whether it qualifies. If caste is considered equivalent
| to race, it would.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _US laws and Google policies forbid discrimination_
|
| Does U.S. law have precedent for discussing caste?
|
| There is a case for typing the lowest-caste Indians, the
| Dalits this cancelled talk was meant to discuss, as a race
| and thus protected class under U.S. and Californian law. But
| I don't know if this is legally precedented.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| CA brought a civil rights case against Cisco for caste
| discrimination. I believe its still in progress.
|
| https://thewire.in/caste/cisco-case-caste-discrimination-
| sil...
| rayiner wrote:
| Arguably it's not protected right? Caste is more or less
| like the old European class distinction between royals and
| commoners. Nobody contends that lower caste people are a
| different race than higher caste people. (And I would argue
| it would be problematic to try and reframe caste
| distinctions in racial terms.) As far as I know, class
| discrimination isn't illegal in the US.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Not under "race", but CA law lists "ancestry" as a
| protected characteristic. I'm having some trouble
| understanding how caste discrimination is anything other
| than ancestry discrimination.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's a good point--I was thinking of federal law.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Isn't racism fundamentally a type of caste/class
| discrimination? Not as well defined castes like seen in
| India, but "black people" are discriminated as a result of
| slavery, "asians" as a result of mass immigration. To the
| point where in many countries you were not allowed or able
| to marry outside your "caste", had different rights than
| locals/whites etc. People today don't feel racism as caste
| discrimination, but to say that there's no precedent in the
| West is being pedantic IMO.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| The word you are looking for is bigotry. That's the
| generalized equivalent of racism. Thing is, bigotry in
| general isn't illegal. Specific kinds of bigotry are in
| regards to hiring though. Racism is one of them. But
| caste isn't.
|
| A lawyer might be able to make the claim that it would
| fall under "national origin or ancestry" since, to my
| knowledge, caste is hereditary and hard to change.
|
| But if so then that makes these kinds of talks all the
| more important. Because it helps Americans recognize a
| form of illegal discrimination they would otherwise not
| recognize.
| kbelder wrote:
| Caste is inherited and runs in bloodlines. Why wouldn't
| it be considered racism?
| imbnwa wrote:
| 'Racism' is absolutely a caste system, since the
| fundamental point of a caste system is to proportion
| resource and opportunity between breeding pools, however
| devised those are. The differentiator is simply the terms
| used to draw these boundaries. Which matters because
| different terms, say religious terms vs medico-scientific
| terms, resource different graphs for further
| narrativization. Jewish folk from Europe know full well
| the difference between being narrativized according to
| religious lines and according to medico-scientific lines,
| neither even approaching something like true or right.
| Black folk in America have been hounded about their
| medico-scientific distinction from the get-go, right down
| to the resurgence of heritable IQ and multi-regional
| emergence theory today.
| labcomputer wrote:
| It might not be considered "racism", as such, in the same
| way that discrimination against women is not necessarily
| racism.
|
| But it certainly seems like caste would be a protected
| characteristic under California law--"Race, Color,
| National Origin, or Ancestry" are protected
| characteristics. Caste seems to obviously fall under
| ancestry.
| rayiner wrote:
| Being hereditary is necessary but not sufficient for a
| grouping to constitute a race. Blond hair and blue eyes
| are hereditary, but blue eyed people aren't a different
| race.
|
| "Race" is a fuzzy concept but generally distinguishes
| people of different ethnic origins. Indian castes aren't
| different races--low caste and high caste Indians can
| come from the same ethnic group. It's more like the
| European distinction between nobility and commoners.
| That's also hereditary, but it doesn't define different
| races.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Proportion of steppe/Aryan origin varies among caste
| groups (some places as you go farther from cow belt that
| were subject to Brahminization or like Kashmir are
| exceptions to this, however this doesn't mean all Hindus
| in Kashmir were Brahmins regardless of what certain
| recent films might claim on the subject) Physiognomy as
| some of the British attempted is not a golf way to go
| about studying it (see Native American skulls as to why,
| brachycephaly etc can be influenced by environment over
| generations) Markers like sickle cell trait (which I
| possess incidentally) are almost always found among
| aboriginal/tribal lower castes . It seems that story of
| "dasas" and Nishadas largely matches up with being forced
| into lower caste hood or untouchability as a result of
| losing wars.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Because your caste isn't a race. Caste is just taking the
| class system further. That's why its bigotry but not
| racism. I've no idea why people seem to want to extend
| racism to mean all of these things when there already
| exists a word for it.
| [deleted]
| auganov wrote:
| Extremely dishonest article. Tries very hard to trick people in
| believing "Hindu nationalists" didn't like her talk because
| they're great fans of the caste system. Yet it's common knowledge
| they're against the very idea of caste.
|
| > sites and organizations that have targeted academics in the
| United States and Canada who are critical of Hindu nationalism or
| caste hierarchy.
|
| Whatever the real grievance is, the article definitely doesn't
| talk about it. Presumably people felt her activism actually
| strengthens the caste system/division rather than combats it.
| samstave wrote:
| samstave wrote:
| [deleted]
| HidyBush wrote:
| This is what happens when a for profit company LARPs as an
| ethical one. On one hand they talk about diversity and on the
| other they desperately hire people they can pay less from areas
| of the world where "diversity is our strength" isn't really the
| norm. So in the end the company makes more money thanks to the
| cheap labor and it becomes even less inclusive and diverse.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Zigurd wrote:
| That's pretty harsh. Google would have no trouble hosting a
| police reform discussion because they have no local PD
| fearmongering through highly dependent local media. They do
| have a number of employees who could be made uncomfortable by a
| discussion of caste. That's hypocrisy. That's doing the easy
| things. But it isn't an indictment of for profit enterprise.
| yalogin wrote:
| The talk should have allowed to go through. The post I think said
| it right, people wanted to shut it down and the only way to do it
| is to discredit the speaker because they know there is truth to
| the arguments.
|
| However we should step back and think about how important it in
| the American context. What purpose is that talk going to serve? I
| don't know if it does anything other than satisfying esoteric
| learning needs of a few. It may be an issue in he US but the
| problem may be among single digit or double digit individuals at
| best. Is it worth spending cycles on it?
| ffggvv wrote:
| idk woke people are obsessed with protecting very small
| minority groups. in fact often the smaller the better in terms
| of virtue signaling points.
|
| so it just goes to show how hypocritical Google is being when
| they are mega woke on every other facet. probably because their
| ceo harbors a like for the caste system
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| FactolSarin wrote:
| Isn't the fact that it got shut down by higher caste Indians
| proof that the talk is important in some way?
| yalogin wrote:
| This is just assuming malice without any information.
| Dangerous to do in any situation
| [deleted]
| danso wrote:
| Google is the largest purveyor of information across the world.
| Having policies that deal with caste would seem to require
| making its American employees and managers aware and mindful of
| it, no?
| heretogetout wrote:
| Racism and bigotry are worth addressing at all levels, IMO. But
| I question your assumed figures: surely there are a lot more
| than 99 Indians of lower castes that are affected by caste-
| based bigotry in the US?
| PeterisP wrote:
| Even directly in USA Google (and other companies) employ very
| many Indians. The stats that I can find about Google say that
| in their USA offices 42% of them are Asian, and out of those
| the general tech industry stats tell me that roughly 40% would
| be from India, so caste might be relevant to something like 15%
| percent of the workforce; and I have no stats on caste
| distribution but if I guess that disadvantaged castes might be
| 1/3 of that i.e. 5% then that is a larger group than African
| Americans which are 4.4% in Google USA.
| throw93 wrote:
| >> _discredit the speaker because they know there is truth to
| the arguments._
|
| Source please.
|
| >> _the problem may be among single digit or double digit
| individuals at best._
|
| Why do you think it's in single or double digit "at best"? This
| is a huge problem in India and moving to US doesn't make a
| racist person inclusive automatically.
| bradlys wrote:
| ~70% of eng is Asian within SV. About half are Indian. Other
| half is Chinese.
|
| It's a very prevalent problem. A lot of people come from India
| and _keep_ their cultural values - including caste
| discrimination.
|
| It's a small issue in the general US but a huge issue within
| SV. Same as any Asian topic tbh. Most Asians don't exist
| outside the coasts - yet we talk about their issues cause
| they're in important cities in significant numbers.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I think you may be underestimating the number of people
| affected in the US.
| steve76 wrote:
| [deleted]
| istjohn wrote:
| https://archive.ph/16knM
| sashu123 wrote:
| I think in modern India people mistake disparate outcomes with
| discrimination. It is well known that Jews are extremely
| successful in US, they make a large number of profitable tech
| companies, win a large number of Nobel prizes (Almost a quarter I
| think) and most of them started out dirt poor (many escaped nazi
| Germany to come to US). Is US secretly discriminating against non
| jews? This is what I feel when people complain about caste
| discrimination in India. I think they imagined that by reserving
| 50% of the seats for colleges for lower castes, 50% of the
| government jobs, confiscating land from all rich upper caste
| members and redistributing it, ensuring political power is
| generally held by lower caste members (much more common at the
| state level, at the centre it's rarely upper caste but more
| commonly the business caste) somehow magically disparate outcomes
| would end. It didn't, if anything over times the gap widened and
| now people blame it on Brahmin/ upper caste discrimination. My
| family story would serve a useful anecdote (I'm a brahmin, one of
| the highest castes in India). My great grand father was a freedom
| fighter and gave away all his land after independence (Before
| Nehru mandated it with the Land reform laws). My grand father
| unfortunately suffered from a freak accident and became deaf
| since childhood. India was too poor to support disabled people,
| so my grandfather lived a poor life as a maths school teacher. He
| sent my father to military boarding school (read : free
| schooling) since he was 10. My father topped his school, did well
| in engineering, got into the most prestigious MBA in India (IIM)
| and subsequently became a reasonably rich. Then I lived a
| reasonably comfortable life and made it into IIT (a top
| engineering college), from which I'm now doing my PhD in computer
| science from a top US Grad school. I would guess that 90% of the
| Brahmins you ask have a similar story of having really poor grand
| parents/ great grand parents and being well off now mostly
| because one of their family members made it. It is rarely ever
| that they are holding on to generational wealth. Officially the
| government has provided a large number of subsidies/ benefits to
| lower caste members and none to upper caste members. I can assure
| you there is no hidden community of brahmins that look out for
| each other and help each other succeed and I doubt there is for
| most castes in India. The only community my father is a part of
| is his college friends group. By my father's generation no one
| cared about caste when making friends. I couldn't recognise
| Brahmin surnames until I grew up and learnt Sanskrit. They tend
| to have a variation of "learned one", "teacher", "sage", "priest"
| (In Sanskrit of course). (P.S One of the commenters mentioned
| brahmins have fair skin, generally not true. I'm a Tamil Brahmin
| and we have one of the darkest skin colours in India, I think
| skin colour correlates with location far more than caste) TLDR:
| No doubt lower caste members have disparate outcomes compared to
| Upper Caste but this is not due to "Caste Discrimination". It
| could hopefully be due to cultural issues which is fixable or
| more unfortunately be due to genetics (like I'm pretty sure is
| the reason for Jewish success, who are far too successful from
| far more diverse backgrounds for any other explanation in my
| opinion though I'm open to theories) which is less fixable.
| nyolfen wrote:
| > I can assure you there is no hidden community of brahmins
| that look out for each other and help each other succeed and I
| doubt there is for most castes in India.
|
| 2 seconds on google https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-
| lawsuit/california-...
| nyolfen wrote:
| 2 more seconds
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/nyregion/nj-hindu-
| temple-...
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| What was the result of the lawsuit? Is Cisco guilty?
| devnonymous wrote:
| > No doubt lower caste members have disparate outcomes compared
| to Upper Caste but this is not due to "Caste Discrimination".
|
| This sort of opinion forming based purely on personal anecdotes
| is why talks such as the one under discussion are needed.
| You've convinced yourself that caste discrimination doesn't
| exist just because you didn't happen to encounter it in your
| personal limited experience! Please listen, read and learn from
| first hand experiences of those that live it every day. Even
| today.
|
| Click on this on any random day and then come here saying caste
| discrimination doesn't exist
| https://twitter.com/search?q=dalit%20beaten%20&src=typed_que...
| trevorm4 wrote:
| Maybe someone that is a member of the caste that is accused of
| discriminating against lower castes shouldn't be deciding if
| that group is being discriminated against. It would be like if
| white people were the deciders of whether black people are
| oppressed in modern America. Numerous law suits have been filed
| about this very thing, so it is obviously still an issue in the
| workplace.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| I can believe caste discrimination is a serious problem. Though
| not in anything tech related yet, I've had Indian bosses and
| colleagues, and among them were some of the most spiteful and
| vitriolic people I've ever known in my life, especially to people
| from the 'wrong' parts of the Indian subcontinent. I dread to
| think how they'd abuse others if they got into higher management.
| mariodiana wrote:
| > In April, Thenmozhi Soundararajan [...] was scheduled to give a
| talk to Google News employees for Dalit History Month. But Google
| employees began spreading disinformation [...]
|
| That is not journalism. That's editorializing -- and in the very
| first paragraph, no less. This is how media like the _Washington
| Post_ encourages a kind of _caste_ of its own, by signaling
| "right-think" to its readers.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| It's not. You left out the rest.
|
| "...according to copies of the documents as well as interviews
| with Soundararajan and current Google employees who spoke on
| the condition of anonymity because of concerns about
| retaliation."
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _importing ethnicities means importing their ethnic conflicts
| too, always_
|
| Is there evidence for this? Couldn't null be valid: those
| choosing to emigrate are most likely to be willing or wanting
| to leave that nonsense behind?
|
| Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our
| founding values. Plenty of Indians emigrate while leaving their
| caste identity, and any will to act on it, behind. There may
| remain implicit biases. But these can be aspired to be
| corrected versus assumed to be the default.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "those choosing to emigrate are most likely to be willing or
| wanting to leave that nonsense behind"
|
| In the modern, technologically connected world, it is much
| harder to leave nonsense behind. Even if you move to the
| other side of the world, you will still be exposed to your
| home country's politics through easily obtainable TV channels
| and through your Internet acquaintances on worldwide social
| networks. In a way that was impossible in 1920 or 1820.
| zen_1 wrote:
| wizwit999 wrote:
| Don't both sides, there's no groups, the only military
| group there Americans are joining is the IDF.
| zen_1 wrote:
| Eh I'm sure you'll find a few American citizens fighting
| for various groups in Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan, but
| that's besides my point.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| That's might have been true of the more "enlightened" Indian
| engineers who immigrated to Silicon Valley in the 80s and
| 90s. There were also ambitious Indians who liked the old ways
| but lacked the opportunity to engage in such discrimination
| until they adapted or the opportunity eventually arose.
|
| Either way, as more and more of a certain ethnicity/race
| enter a country for the purposes of bettering their financial
| prospects, many of these immigrants reinvent the social
| dynamics of their origin country. This is how enclaves are
| created. And while many of the "enlightened" Indians have
| left behind explicit caste discrimination, they didn't leave
| other practices behind either ( e.g. parental
| authoritarianism, arranged marriages, etc.).
|
| A different geography doesn't necessarily produce a different
| worldview. Every immigrant arrives with his own family
| values, religious dogmas (or lack thereof), and modes of
| thought that lead to these aforementioned conflicts.
|
| > Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our
| founding values
|
| If we're excluding slavery as a de facto caste system, then
| sure. However certain behaviors being antithetical to our
| founding values doesn't make them easily solvable problems.
| hbosch wrote:
| >Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our
| founding values.
|
| "Caste" as being your ring in the social hierarchy is present
| in almost any culture or civilization, and prejudiced
| treatment of people in either higher or lower social rings is
| definitely (in my opinion) a part of American culture. This
| country definitely offers special treatment and privilege to
| those in higher "castes"... Hell, even just having a Southern
| accent in America will grant you a prejudiced treatment in
| many settings.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Indeed and in 19th century New England there was actually a
| term "Boston Brahmin." It was also based on surname and
| social standing. The term is still used, often in articles
| discussing people from white well-to-do, old money New
| England families.
|
| See:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Brahmin
|
| and
|
| https://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/15/the-new-brahmins/
|
| and
|
| https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/03/what-s-a-
| boston-...
| michael1999 wrote:
| The IRA visited Boston every year to pass the hat during the
| troubles. Sinn Fein is still raising money in the USA.
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-fein-
| raised-12...
| sumedh wrote:
| > Plenty of Indians emigrate while leaving their caste
| identity
|
| Caste is something most Indians grow up with, you dont really
| lose it just because you go to another country. Most kids of
| these Indians fortunately dont really care about caste.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you dont really lose it just because you go to another
| country_
|
| One may not lose it. But one _can_ reject it. That 's the
| gist of my implicit biases line.
| aahortwwy wrote:
| Happens pretty frequently.
|
| One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Irish_A
| mericans_in_...
| Crabber wrote:
| So which way do you want it then? Multiculturalism, with all
| the "nonsense" that comes from those cultures, or do you just
| want every brown person to come to america and start acting
| white?
|
| I thought one of the big benefits of multiculturalism (that
| all big businesses love to tout) is how it brings diversity
| of cultural values to the workplace. Well I guess mission
| accomplished because now you've got the indian caste system
| in the workplace.
| yunohn wrote:
| > due to current policies
|
| To be clear, are you talking about open immigration? Not that
| it's truly open or easy to immigrate, but you seem to be hand
| waving in that direction.
|
| What do you think should be done about this? It's not clear to
| me that closing borders somehow fixes anything.
| lupire wrote:
| Hiring local means hiring their ethnic conflicts also.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Question from a layman. How does one know that someone is from
| another caste? If I was someone from India, how would I know what
| caste my fellow Indian is from? Is there some kind of code? Or
| where you are from?
| yedava wrote:
| Aside from last names, diet is a big giveaway. If someone is
| vegetarian, it is highly likely that they come from the so
| called "upper" castes. In certain interpretations of Hinduism,
| which are now becoming the dominant ones in India, meat is
| considered polluting. If you eat meat, you are dirty, and this
| "dirtiness" is at the root of why some castes are still
| considered untouchable.
| thwjerjl23432 wrote:
| We go around wearing a label saying I'm so and so; born in so-
| and-so caste; respect my authority.
| alex_smart wrote:
| Usually you know someone's caste from their last name.
|
| I am someone who was not given a caste-based last name because
| my parents were influenced by a regional movement against
| caste. (I didn't even have a last name to begin with but
| eventually added a non caste-based one to avoid visa issues.)
| Whenever I traveled by train and chatted up with a co-
| passenger, almost surely they would ask my name and would never
| be satisfied with just knowing my first name. They would get
| visibly confused when I would tell them I didn't have a last
| name.
|
| Edit: Curiously, based on the last name of the person
| (Soundarajan) whose talk got cancelled, I would actually have
| guessed that they were upper caste (Brahmin - the highest).
| zajio1am wrote:
| So why people (specifically immigrants in other countries)
| just do not change their last name to ones associated with
| higher caste?
| deelly wrote:
| As far as I know (from some coworkers) they do. But last
| name is only the first step/flag in identifying to which
| caste person belongs. Sorry, I don't remember exact
| details, but there some additional steps like special
| clothes I think?
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Yeah, I think the Brahmins have a vest you can feel on
| the shoulder, so they do a shoulder grab to act close.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| The main benefit of caste comes from 2nd and 3rd degree
| connections from your family. Simply changing your name
| won't help you with that.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I'm curious: would you say the absence of a surname implied
| anything about caste? I've dealt with the children of people
| with leprosy (mostly SC, with a little ST and OBC) in the
| vicinity of Hyderabad, and it wasn't dreadfully uncommon for
| their parents or grandparents to have no surname on their
| Aadhaar card, at least, and perhaps even a few of the
| children.
|
| (In Telangana, surnames are almost exclusively _used_ as just
| an initial preceding the given name, and sometimes that's
| even all that ends up on official documentation.)
| alex_smart wrote:
| I don't know, in my personal case, this was definitely a
| _regional_ movement - with plenty of upper caste families
| also giving their children no surname or a generic non-
| caste based ones. That is why you will see a lot more
| "Kumars" and "Anands" and "Ranjans" and "Jyotis" from Bihar
| than from other parts of the country.
| sumedh wrote:
| Your parents tell you your caste. You can also get a caste
| certificate from you local municipal office which helps you
| take advantage of some perks if you belong to a "lower" class.
|
| Generally you wont be able to figure the caste of someone but
| there are clues like skin color, fairer skin generally is
| "upper" caste, sometimes your surname also gives away your
| caste.
|
| Unfortunately some Indians specially from the "upper"caste take
| this very seriously and think they are superior compared to
| other Indians.
| sashu123 wrote:
| fair skin thing is nonsense. I'm a Tamil Brahmin (Brahmin
| being the highest caste) and I'm one of the darkest skinned
| people in India. Most of my friends are far darker than most
| Indians from North India. It's much easier to identify
| through surname (Pichai I'm pretty sure is a brahmin
| surname), but certain states like Tamil Nadu banned surnames
| for this reason. If people ask me my surname, it is T. Every
| government document has T as my surname, I just go with that
| foolinaround wrote:
| > fair skin thing is nonsense
|
| Well it is a stereotype, and they are often true, but not
| always. eg, in TN, the average brahmin or upper class
| individual will be fair-skinned while the lower class one
| would be dark skinned.
|
| I guess up in the North, this does not hold.
|
| > but certain states like Tamil Nadu banned surnames for
| this reason.
|
| The govt did not ban it. It was more a social movement
| where one was looked down upon (and even discriminated
| against for showing they belonged to the higher castes).
| That's why there are still folks who continue to keep
| 'Iyer' in their name.
| alex_smart wrote:
| >I'm a Tamil Brahmin (Brahmin being the highest caste) and
| I'm one of the darkest skinned people in India.
|
| Do you have ancestral home in Mylapore? If not you're not
| real Tam-Brahm. (JK obviously)
| thwjerjl23432 wrote:
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Caste is a great illustration of how arbitrary racial
| identities are.
| jjaaammmmy wrote:
| this NPR podcast was pretty insightful about this issue
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/915299467
| medler wrote:
| That NPR story was great, thanks. The transcript is
| definitely worth reading for anyone curious about this.
|
| In a nutshell, people can sometimes tell by your last name,
| and if they can't, they will ask you questions about your
| background, such as what town and/or neighborhood your family
| is from, until they figure it out.
|
| In one example in the story, a guy is outed as a Dalit by a
| coworker who knew him from college.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Outing a co-worker is pretty mean. And asking all kinda of
| private background questions in order to judge someone's
| social standing and treat them accordingly is intrusive and
| bigotted. As usual, racists are more often than not mean
| bigots.
|
| It is somewhat different if you grew up in the caste
| system, and the discriminatory behaviour was just
| ingrained. If you start falling back to that based on,
| e.g., surname it's hard to avoid. Actively seeking
| information you can use to treat people like shit is a
| different level all together!
| ryandrake wrote:
| > And asking all kinda of private background questions in
| order to judge someone's social standing and treat them
| accordingly is intrusive and bigotted.
|
| This also happens in the west and it's not caste-related.
| Go to a suburban barbecue or something, and observe:
| people will ask what you do for a living, which
| neighborhood you live in, how long have you been living
| here, where did you originally come from, and so on.
| Often they are doing this kind of small talk just so they
| can figure out where you are on the social totem pole.
| mmcnl wrote:
| I often ask these questions as well, and mostly it's just
| to find something common, doesn't have anything to do
| with the social totem pole.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Sure, small talk is fine. Only that under the Indian
| caste system the consequences, and intentions, are much
| more sinister and severe.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| puranjay wrote:
| Here in New Delhi, people will straight up ask you, especially
| if they're older.
|
| Trying to get a house in Delhi as a single, straight male is an
| exercise in discrimination 101. Landlords will ask you if you
| drink alcohol, eat meat, have female friends, belong to a non-
| Hindu religion (especially if you're muslim), your caste, and
| heck, even what city/state you're from.
|
| My friends have been denied housing simply for being from a
| state with a somewhat poor reputation. Some were denied because
| they were lawyers AND from a specific caste (the landlords
| feared that my friends would somehow take over the property
| through legal shenanigans). And I won't even get into how hard
| it is for a muslim male to find housing in India, especially
| outside of big cities.
|
| So much of this simply never gets talked about in Indian
| society. But its just accepted as something that happens.
| Sometimes feel that we're developing backwards as a society.
| [deleted]
| selfhifive wrote:
| That problem and increasing intercaste marriages is why
| casteism is dying in many parts of India. The new generation
| doesn't know how to determine the caste and are generally not
| interested. Most of the system in large parts of the country
| will die out with the previous generation.
| [deleted]
| lolinder wrote:
| > "We also made the decision to not move forward with the
| proposed talk which -- rather than bringing our community
| together and raising awareness -- was creating division and
| rancor," Newberry wrote.
|
| This doesn't surprise me one bit. Even on HN, every thread on
| this topic turns into a flame war with a bunch of people crying
| racism/religionism. How dare we discuss something we don't fully
| understand? How dare we criticize another culture when we have
| our own problems? It's the same arguments every time, and then
| the article ends up flagged to death.
|
| The role of caste within the US is a super important conversation
| to have, and every resident of the US is entitled to participate,
| but there are a lot of people with a vested interest in shutting
| it down and the tools to do so.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| throwaway049 wrote:
| A weak argument is a weak argument. Or are you saying
| brahmins and confederates have a lot in common and ought to
| spend more time together?
| djbusby wrote:
| acheron wrote:
| Good thing they've all been dead for close to a hundred
| years then.
| monetus wrote:
| Having stayed in Columbia TN for a decent while, I can
| tell you that the legacy is alive and well. Really, visit
| if you ever drive by - the confederate headquaters is in
| an anti-bellum house where they give tours, and they
| never say anything bad about the social dynamics of the
| past. It really leaves an elephant in the room, when they
| are selling battle flags in the gift shop embroidered
| with things like history not hate.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the legacy is alive and well_
|
| I think OP's point is those revering confederates today
| aren't confederates, they're something else. Sort of like
| how we term neo-Nazis separately from the historic Nazis.
| monetus wrote:
| You're right, or at least I think so yeah- and that point
| is definitely precise. From the years I spent in the area
| and outside of Nashville though, I'm not so sure that the
| sons and daughters of the confederacy as it is referred
| to all think of themselves as a part of the union. I'm
| pretty sure of the opposite for a few people in my mind
| rn. Don't take absolutes away from what I'm saying, this
| is just my experience.
|
| Aside: The largest minority in Columbia besides black
| Americans were Indian Americans and immigrants. I didn't
| have any insight into how they saw the caste system, but
| living in that city probably gives them a unique
| viewpoint that might be worth asking about should you
| have the chance. I wish I had.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| What do you have against confederacies?
| djbusby wrote:
| I assumed they meant the Confederate States of America.
| Which was founded on principles that some humans are less
| than others. Burn that shit down (again).
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I'm saying folks who make excuses for historical and
| present day discrimination clearly have a lot of things in
| common.
| [deleted]
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| That quote from the article gave me pause. It sounds like an
| admission that they wanted the good PR from having a caste bias
| speaker, but when having a conversation on a difficult topic
| actually became difficult, they backed down.
|
| Maybe, Google, instead of just giving up you should be asking
| why a speaker on Dalit rights and inclusion is causing
| "division and rancor" in your community? Or is that also a
| difficult conversation you'd rather not have?
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Whenever differences - actual or imagined - between different
| groups are discussed, two major things happen.
|
| First, some members of group found at a disadvantage are
| upset. This is regardless of how many other members of that
| group express that they themselves are not. You can dispute
| facts, but you can't deny people's feelings.
|
| Second, the disadvantage is then used by some people to
| justify something that fits their agenda, prejudices of
| beliefs, whether it makes sense or not.
|
| So I can hardly blame anyone responsible for managing a huge
| number of people of avoiding sensitive topics. Besides, a
| corporation is not exactly the place to discuss these things:
| they need to be dealt with as a society in general. If you
| try to introduce these topics into your workplace, you might
| even achieve the opposite of what you want, because people
| will do whatever you expect them just to keep their jobs, but
| won't change their opinion because their manager told them
| to, or because they attended a workshop where it was
| explained to them that their culture is inferior, for
| example.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >they wanted the good PR
|
| 99% of corporate DEI initiatives are performative in nature.
| I realized it when the majority of companies were pushing
| employees to read a book on systemic racism written by a
| white woman who was obviously using it as an advertisement
| for her corporate consulting and training business.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| This quote from the article best summarizes similar efforts,
| even outside of Google,
|
| >> _Longtime observers of Google's struggles to promote
| diversity, equity and inclusion say the fallout fits a
| familiar pattern. Women of color are asked to advocate for
| change. Then they're punished for disrupting the status quo._
|
| I'm not a big culture warrior, but I believe that if as a
| company you choose to do a thing, you do it fully, from top
| to bottom.
|
| Yet the outcome described is exactly what you get when you
| have {status quo} + {new initiative from leadership} +
| _{failure to dedicate time and resources to following up and
| implementing}_.
|
| People are always going to be resistant to change. Middle
| management is _especially_ resistant to change, not
| unreasonably.
|
| Consequently, effective change takes follow-through,
| verification, reminders, and eventually termination to
| actually implement. Otherwise, everyone shrugs their
| shoulders and returns to what they've always done... and
| punishes whoever is still dancing off the beaten path.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There's an archive link to the article below; apparently
| that's exactly what happened:
|
| > "According to Gupta's letter and Soundararajan, the
| decision to cancel the talk came from Gupta's boss, Cathy
| Edwards, a vice president of engineering, who had no
| experience or expertise in caste."
|
| And, another excerpt:
|
| > "To Soundararajan, Google was long overdue for a
| conversation on caste equity. Pichai, the CEO, "is Indian
| and he is Brahmin and he grew up in Tamil Nadu. There is no
| way you grow up in Tamil Nadu and not know about caste
| because of how caste politics shaped the conversation,"
| Soundararajan told The Post. "If he can make passionate
| statements about Google's [diversity equity and inclusion]
| commitments in the wake of George Floyd, he absolutely
| should be making those same commitments to the context he
| comes from where he is someone of privilege." Soundararajan
| said Pichai has not responded to letter she sent him in
| April. Google declined to comment."
|
| Clean your own house before pointing at your neighbor's
| dirty yard...
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Let's be real here. The talk was likely scheduled by a moral
| individual which thought the topic important. Then
| controversy began and middle management was made aware to
| this. Guess what happened next?
|
| It's not that _Google_ gave up. They were never going to
| allow it to begin with and the organizer likely just hoped it
| would fly under the radar.
| dhzhzjsbevs wrote:
| Google has a track record of pandering to the mob. Has
| nothing to do with middle management.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly. Anyone who thinks that if tomorrow most everyone
| woke up with a position against anything Google currently
| "stands" for that they wouldn't immediately flip to be in
| line with it is kidding themselves.
| naravara wrote:
| > Maybe, Google, instead of just giving up you should be
| asking why a speaker on Dalit rights and inclusion is causing
| "division and rancor" in your community? Or is that also a
| difficult conversation you'd rather not have?
|
| The same reason speakers on Palestinian rights often can.
| While they may be on the right side of the issue, it's also
| very easy for closed discussion spaces to rapidly devolve
| into pretty viciously anti-semitic tropes.
|
| These discussions need to be done with some strict moderation
| and sensitivity, usually with actual historians who can
| properly contextualize the issue. If all you're doing is
| bringing in "activists" from a specific point of view to talk
| about it while delegitimizing all other perspectives as
| inherently beneath consideration it's not gonna go well.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Do you demand this strict moderation and sensitivity also
| when it's white people that are being accused of
| discrimination?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Not the OP, but I think the same principle applies.
| Whenever you accuse an entire race of something (as
| opposed to isolating your criticism to individuals or
| even systems), you're engaging in racism, and this is
| unfortunately common in DEI trainings and among "race
| activists". I don't think strict moderation is necessary
| in the general case (especially since a lot of the most
| credentialed people who would moderate are themselves the
| sort of race activists who agitate)--rather, I think
| we'll work through it in time.
|
| It is a shame though that we were on this path toward a
| post-race world and then some of us abruptly reversed
| course and dragged the whole nation with them, setting us
| back decades.
| istjohn wrote:
| After Trump's nativist rhetoric, a steady stream of
| police brutality against black men like George Floyd
| making national news, and a resurgence of white
| nationalist terrorism like the recent shooting in
| Buffalo, I agree we've been set back decades. But the
| blame doesn't lie with overzealous woke activists. Woke
| activists might make some white people more uncomfortable
| than tiki torch-wielding Caucasians chanting "Jews will
| not replace us" or Dylann Roof shooting up a black
| church, but that doesn't make them comparable in any way.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > After Trump's nativist rhetoric, a steady stream of
| police brutality against black men like George Floyd
| making national news
|
| The media coverage of police brutality against black men
| predated Trump's candidacy and it was entirely falsely
| predicated: the media cherry-picked instances in which
| black people were killed by police (or rather, those
| instances were plastered on the front page of national
| outlets for weeks while egregious killings of white
| people would rarely break into national news at all where
| they would be footnotes), which gave the impression that
| only black people were being killed by police or that
| police killings of black people were more egregious--
| neither of which are true.
|
| > a resurgence of white nationalist terrorism like the
| recent shooting in Buffalo
|
| Yeah, this is precisely why we shouldn't legitimize
| extreme, racial politics or political violence. Every
| thinking person saw this coming and warned about it
| (e.g., "we shouldn't engage in racial politics because
| it's going to embolden and swell the ranks of white-
| supremacist types").
|
| > But the blame doesn't lie with overzealous woke
| activists
|
| Of course, but woke activism is the only kind of racism
| that is still regarded as legitimate (i.e., we even allow
| our most influential institutions to preach it), and by
| tolerating it we (1) legitimize racism generally (2)
| allow it to drive a right-wing reaction. The most
| effective way to treat right-wing racism is by
| dismantling left-wing racism and re-establishing a
| liberalist orthodoxy.
|
| Racists on both sides like to frame this as a dichotomy
| between left-wing racism and right-wing racism, but the
| only dichotomy is racism vs egalitarianism. Left- and
| right-wing racism are just two sides of the same coin.
| naravara wrote:
| I didn't used to, but after seeing how noxious
| communities get when you normalize the kinds of reflexive
| confrontationalism and assumptions of bad faith you find
| online I changed my tune. I haven't seen a single place
| improve once people start treating and talking about
| structural discrimination as some sort of original sin
| that individuals need to repent and seek absolution for.
| It's generally much more useful to focus on individual
| behaviors people are engaging in and pointing out the
| ways in which they are helpful or unhelpful at creating
| an inclusive community.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Useful to whom? Presumably not the people who want
| structural changes
| naravara wrote:
| Why would you presume that?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > The same reason speakers on Palestinian rights often can.
| While they may be on the right side of the issue, it's also
| very easy for closed discussion spaces to rapidly devolve
| into pretty viciously anti-semitic tropes.
|
| I agree. Maybe a more precise way to think about this is
| that they're only on the "right side" of the issue to the
| extent that "the other side" is "Israeli settlement policy"
| rather than "Jews" or "the existence of Israel as a state".
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| Would you dismiss Martin Luther King as an "activist"?
|
| But your point is in some ways valid, as it's important to
| be able to see Israel through the lens of colonialism and
| to show that the state's brutality applied to brown people
| of all faiths, including Jews.
|
| I also find it really strange that any criticism of Israel
| is labelled as anti-Semitic. I actually think equating the
| brutal behaviour of the Israeli government with Judaism is
| the real anti-semitism. The Tora has exactly zero passages
| about it being OK to murder children or sterilise black
| Jewish women.
| farmerstan wrote:
| maskil wrote:
| Just want to point out that Purim celebrates the rescue
| of the Jewish people from mass extermination, not the
| extermination of others.
|
| In fact in Jewish tradition Amalek remains a force to
| this day.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Would you dismiss Martin Luther King as an "activist"?
|
| The word means basically nothing on HN, outside it's use
| in political slurring.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The central issue with discussions about Israel is a
| failure to differentiate Israel (the state and
| government) with Judaism (the religion) with Jew/Hebrew
| (the ethnicity).
|
| (And yes, I realize Israel is a multi-ethnic, multi-
| religious state, but to a first order approximation and
| given current political dynamics... it's not)
|
| Given that there are relatively few states with as
| intertwined religions and historical atrocities
| perpetrated against their people, it makes sense the
| ability to talk about this is underdeveloped.
| notacoward wrote:
| > failure to differentiate Israel (the state and
| government) with Judaism (the religion) with Jew/Hebrew
| (the ethnicity)
|
| That has not been my experience. AFAICT even people who
| are _extremely_ careful and specific about criticizing
| the state of Israel - even more specifically the IDF or a
| political party within Israel responsible for a
| particular act - still get tarred with the "anti-
| Semitic" brush. Jewish people have been severely
| oppressed for centuries, and the state of Israel has been
| attacked repeatedly. The response has been a strong
| emphasis on solidarity and mutual support, which is
| generally laudable, but in some this manifests as
| militant intolerance of even the tiniest deviation from
| the (insiders') conventional position. Unfortunately,
| those few - and I know most Israeli and Jewish people are
| much more open minded because _that has been their
| tradition for millennia_ - often end up controlling the
| debate.
| seoaeu wrote:
| It isn't enough to focus criticism against a specific
| individual or narrow group. You also have to consider
| whether the criticism is justified or echos specific
| stereotypes
|
| For instance, there's many who feel that some of the
| criticism against Barack Obama was racist. Not because it
| isn't ok to criticize a US president but because prior
| presidents hadn't been treated similarly/held to the same
| standard
| notacoward wrote:
| What if someone _has_ consistently criticized other
| people or governments for comparable behavior? In my
| experience, it makes absolutely no difference. Even
| international organizations with rock-solid records of
| speaking out all over the world get the same treatment.
| What 's the excuse then? It's just guilt by association,
| only it's not even real association, from people who
| absolutely should know better.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Not sure whether you meant to respond to a different
| comment (mine didn't say anything about "excuses"), but
| assuming this was meant as a reply...
|
| You clearly have one/several specific organizations in
| mind, but I'll point out that my comment was about the
| _content_ of criticism rather than the track record of
| the group making it. Track record gives a hint of whether
| someone might be acting in bad faith, but it is perfectly
| possible for someone to usually offer fair assessments
| but let their prejudices slip though with regards to
| members of one minority group or another. In fact, some
| would argue that everyone has such blind spots and that
| they can only be mitigated, but never eliminated.
|
| Not sure I understand your point about guilt by
| association, but if you are arguing that using the same
| talking points as a known racist shouldn't make others
| suspect you of being a racist... then I think we're
| probably going to disagree.
| throwntoday wrote:
| >AFAICT even people who are extremely careful and
| specific about criticizing the state of Israel - even
| more specifically the IDF or a political party within
| Israel responsible for a particular act - still get
| tarred with the "anti-Semitic" brush
|
| This is clearly a defense tactic used to avoid criticism
| and I see it employed heavily by apologist. Criticism in
| general should be embraced, as nothing is perfect and we
| can always improve. But in this case, they are well aware
| of their wrongdoing, which is why they employ such
| tactics.
| naravara wrote:
| > Criticism in general should be embraced, as nothing is
| perfect and we can always improve.
|
| Honestly it depends on how that criticism is framed and
| who it's being directed towards. It reads differently if
| the criticism framed as "I care about you and want you to
| do better" versus "I dislike you and have developed a
| narrative that justifies mistreating you." It also
| matters whether the criticism is directed as feedback
| (e.g. "When you do X it makes me feel Y and I think doing
| Z would be better") vs. directed towards a third party to
| intervene in a prosecutorial way.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > AFAICT even people who are extremely careful and
| specific about criticizing the state of Israel - even
| more specifically the IDF or a political party within
| Israel responsible for a particular act - still get
| tarred with the "anti-Semitic" brush.
|
| Ironically, that often results in Jewish people being
| disproportionately tarred as anti-Semites, because they
| have specific and knowledgeable criticisms that they're
| not willing to just let go of.
|
| https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-labour-
| antisemitism-ac...
|
| > Jewish Voice for Labour tells EHRC that Jews almost
| five times more likely to face antisemitism charges than
| non-Jewish members
| aaron_m04 wrote:
| Somebody should introduce Israeli government hardliners
| to the concept of "blowback".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Blowback validates the wordlviee hardliners are selling;
| in a different context, that was pretty central to al-
| Qaeda's strategy, where provoking blowback was a way of
| selling their clash of civilizations narrative.
|
| Hardliners of all stripes tend to recognize and actively
| exploit blowback.
| car_analogy wrote:
| > The Tora has exactly zero passages about it being OK to
| murder children
|
| _Now, go and crush Amalek; put him under the curse of
| destruction with all that he possesses. Do not spare him,
| but kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep,
| camel and donkey._ - 1 Samuel 15
|
| That's one example. The old testament claims God
| commanded the total extermination of multiple nations
| competing with the Israelites [1]. This extermination is
| celebrated to this day during the Purim festival [2].
| When someone mentions Judeo-Christian morality, know that
| the first part of that duo is not remotely "turn the
| other cheek" - it is literally old testament.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_warfare#War
| s_of_ex...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalek#Jewish_traditions
| [deleted]
| mcv wrote:
| This might be overly pedantic of me, but Samuel is not
| part of the Torah. It's part of the Nevi'im.
| psyc wrote:
| Here's some classic leadership from Moses. Numbers 31:17
|
| _" Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones,
| and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him.
| But all the young girls who have not known man by lying
| with him keep alive for yourselves"_
|
| And from the Big Guy Himself, Deuteronomy 20:
|
| _" As for the women, the children, the livestock and
| everything else in the city, you may take these as
| plunder for yourselves [...] However, in the cities of
| the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an
| inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
| Completely destroy them--the Hittites, Amorites,
| Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites"_
|
| Does that count as one isolated instance, or six?
|
| (Just btw: I offer the above merely as a counterexample
| to a rather glaring claim, not as a criticism of Judaism.
| Just because I was taught as a small child, by
| christians, that everyone who disobeys god deserves to
| die, and if they don't it's solely due to his mercy,
| doesn't mean everybody contextualizes these passages that
| way. Also, the term "murder" is slippery because it isn't
| a synonym of "kill". If you argue an instance of
| slaughtering people is justified or legal, you can make
| it "not murder" by mere definition.)
| belter wrote:
| This reminds of something I found quite interesting at
| the time.
|
| "The Holy Quran Experiment": https://youtu.be/zEnWw_lH4tQ
| Adverblessly wrote:
| I think you've inadvertently made the case for cancelling
| the "activit talk".
|
| If for example you had a talk in Google Israel that
| presented the discrimination against Israeli arabs in
| modern Israel, I suspect you'd get a decent turnout and
| positive response (especially as Tech is unusually left
| leaning).
|
| If you had a talk that mentioned colonialism (like you do
| in your post) you'll just get people fruitlessly arguing
| with each other ("This is our land from 2,000 years ago,
| the arabs are the colonists", "This is our/your land
| thanks to a UN decision, settlements that go beyond the
| 1948/1967 borders are colonialism", "All you jews are
| colonists").
|
| You'd just end up further dividing your employees into
| hostile groups, even if they were previously able to work
| together (by just being silently tolerant of each other's
| opinions).
|
| > I also find it really strange that any criticism of
| Israel is labelled as anti-Semitic.
|
| I think this one is a problem "on both sides".
|
| There are some on the Israeli side that will try to
| silence criticism by equating it to antisemitism.
|
| There are some antisemites that will express themselves
| in the form of "reasonable criticism".
|
| There are some that will innocently make some criticism
| that seems reasonable to them, but due to ignorance of
| the situation or facts, lack of nuance or just the
| difficulty of communicating cross culturaly via a limited
| medium end up with sometimes that seems antisemitic when
| examined at depth by "the other side".
|
| And no matter which way you go, it is very hard to tell
| where you are.
| causi wrote:
| _a specific point of view to talk about it while
| delegitimizing all other perspectives as inherently beneath
| consideration it 's not gonna go well_
|
| Why do we owe this degree of sensitivity to some types of
| bigot but not others? Why don't we need to be careful about
| "delegitimizing" the beliefs of people who think black
| people are inherently inferior or gay people are inherently
| immoral? The realpolitik answer is that Google isn't
| dependent on the work of klansmen and gaybashers but they
| _are_ dependent on the work of casteists, and throwing them
| out the door would hurt their bottom line.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| In the same way that in the 90s you could not have
| immediately started having every major company start
| celebrating gay pride.
|
| Cultural change takes time.
|
| When you still have a practice occurring among over a
| billion people you can't simply throw it out and declare
| everyone doing it a bigot. You have to transition in
| steps and get buy in.
|
| Put another way, you wouldn't march single handedly into
| Saudi Arabia and tell them Islamic law is dumb and they
| are dumb for following it.
| naravara wrote:
| > Why don't we need to be careful about "delegitimizing"
| the beliefs of people who think black people are
| inherently inferior or gay people are inherently immoral?
|
| This is imposing the cultural dynamics of American racial
| politics onto an issue with a completely different
| historical and cultural context. I wasn't talking about
| people who are expressing a belief of castes being
| inferior, I was talking about activists who depict a
| religious group and other castes in a specific light
| based on a factually inaccurate and outdated reading of
| history. Hence why I used the world "perspectives" and
| not "beliefs."
|
| I've been to about 3 of these Equality Labs workshops and
| just gave up on them because in each one they were
| throwing around "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" level
| disinformation about Hinduism, and specific Brahmin
| groups particularly, while basically shouting down anyone
| saying things that disagree with their framings of
| historical events or philosophical references.
| causi wrote:
| _I 've been to about 3 of these Equality Labs workshops
| and just gave up on them because in each one they were
| throwing around "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" level
| disinformation_
|
| Ah, I see how it could cause problems with that type of
| "equality lab". The equality, discrimination, etc
| training I've had was very different, and boiled down to
| "here is a list of behaviors; if you do any of them or
| anything _like_ any of them your ass is fired. "
| naravara wrote:
| > I've had was very different, and boiled down to "here
| is a list of behaviors; if you do any of them or anything
| like any of them your ass is fired."
|
| Yeah this is good in general but needs tempering through
| a bit of conflict resolution/appeal process built in.
| Discrimination issues can often just be the result of
| misinterpretations and blind spots people have,
| especially when bridging cultural divides. There's some
| stuff that crosses a clear red line, but most behaviors
| are subtle and often unintentional and the approach to
| dealing with them productively should more closely
| resemble relationship/marriage counseling or the sorts of
| reconciliation processes they do in post-conflict zones.
|
| The ones I went to involved being told I needed to make
| "anti-casteism" part of my identity and pick arguments
| with my aunts and uncles when they make 'problematic'
| statements. And it then came with a side of misquotes of
| The Bhagavad Gita and selective quotations out of the
| Manusmriti to argue that simply identifying yourself as a
| Hindu is inherently discriminatory and violent towards
| lower castes. As a history major and religious studies
| minor in college I took issue with just about every
| historical and theological "fact" they brought up but
| didn't think it was worth arguing. But there was nothing
| particular to the organization we were in and no specific
| instances of issues reported internally by anyone so I
| had a hard time understanding why this was happening.
|
| There's a particular historical narrative among certain
| political movements in India that depict Brahmins as
| basically collaborating to institute a conspiracy to to
| impose a caste hierarchy across all of Indian society for
| millennia. It's a very simplistic and one-sided reading
| of Indian history and Hindu philosophy, but it has gained
| a lot of traction within social justice/DEI spaces and
| particularly with groups that are more focused on pushing
| an ideological project.
|
| It would be analogous to having a Louis Farrakhan
| disciple on to talk about being Muslim in the workplace.
| There are many better people to raise those issues who
| will bring them without the side of eliminationist
| rhetoric. It's one thing to meme about people with
| privilege or be dismissive in a casual context, but at
| the workplace (or really any public venue) that sort of
| talk is just mean. It's especially frustrating because
| this discrimination actually is a blight on Indian
| society (though most of the issues in the US are in the
| realm of microaggressions rather than structural or overt
| discrimination). But that doesn't excuse just peddling
| nonsense in response.
| causi wrote:
| _The ones I went to involved being told I needed to make
| "anti-casteism" part of my identity and pick arguments
| with my aunts and uncles when they make 'problematic'
| statements_
|
| I admire that you kept your composure in the face of such
| ludicrous demands. An employer has to be insane to think
| they can even suggest how I should interact with my own
| family.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| This is a very sober and real world answer. And that's
| not a good thing.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Why don 't we need to be careful about
| "delegitimizing" the beliefs of people who think black
| people are inherently inferior or gay people are
| inherently immoral?_
|
| Who says there's no need to be careful? Almost every
| discussion about "big tech censorship" has been people
| crying that they are no longer allowed to be bigots on
| the timeline.
| causi wrote:
| _Who says there's no need to be careful? Almost every
| discussion about "big tech censorship" has been people
| crying that they are no longer allowed to be bigots on
| the timeline_
|
| Sure, but that's coming from the bigots, not the company
| executives.
| leoc wrote:
| That's definitely a genuine factor. But much the same
| blasts of hot indignation were released when, for example,
| people in the US tried to address domestic racism in the
| era between the end of WWII and the Civil Rights Act. And
| by and large there wasn't any threat of a serious backlash
| against most of the US' white majority. Instead the anger
| was driven by the desire to go on being racist without
| facing criticism for it, or sometimes more by just "but ...
| but ... _I 'm_ the sympathetic Main Character!" attitudes.
| Clearly both causes are at work to _some_ extent in the
| backlash against discussions of caste in the USA. It would
| be wrong to suggest that South Asians or people of South
| Asian descent in the US are in as secure a position as most
| of the white population is and was. But I have to say that,
| without being really familiar with the situation, to me it
| looks as if it 's mostly the latter at this time.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It would be wrong to suggest that South Asians or
| people of South Asian descent in the US are in as secure
| a position as most of the white population is and was.
|
| People in upper castes may be that secure in their
| communities, which might be what matters.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| _The same reason speakers on Palestinian rights often can.
| While they may be on the right side of the issue, it 's
| also very easy for closed discussion spaces to rapidly
| devolve into pretty viciously anti-semitic tropes._
|
| The roots of this behavior as well as the fear of this
| behavior lie in a logical fallacy called composition, which
| is spelled out at the Nizkor Project (a site on the history
| of the Holocaust):
|
| > The first type of fallacy of Composition arises when a
| person reasons from the characteristics of individual
| members of a class or group to a conclusion regarding the
| characteristics of the entire class or group (taken as a
| whole). More formally, the "reasoning" would look something
| like this.
|
| > Individual F things have characteristics A, B, C, etc.
|
| > Therefore, the (whole) class of F things has
| characteristics A, B, C, etc.
|
| http://www.nizkor.com/features/fallacies/composition.html
|
| Just because the Israeli government is highly repressive
| towards the Palestinian population in the West Bank and
| Gaza, and treats non-Jews as second-class citizens within
| Israel proper, does not mean that all Jews around the world
| share this behavior. Similarly, just because some Arabs
| have carried out acts of terrorism does not mean most Arabs
| approve of terrorist attacks on civilian populations. These
| notions can certainly be extended to caste conflicts among
| Indian peoples.
|
| For example, Jews and Muslims live side-by-side in New York
| City in relative peace and harmony, as do European and Arab
| descendants.
|
| The reason for this is that the American tradition of
| strict separation of church and state prevents any one
| religious group (or ethnic class) from seizing political
| power and using that power to repress other groups. This is
| one American tradition that the rest of the world would be
| wise to embrace, if they wish to minimize such conflicts.
| throwntoday wrote:
| > Just because the Israeli government is highly
| repressive towards the Palestinian population in the West
| Bank and Gaza, and treats non-Jews as second-class
| citizens within Israel proper, does not mean that all
| Jews around the world share this behavior.
|
| This is a rather hilarious statement as almost no one
| believes that. You are committing the same fallacy that
| you repudiated.
|
| Anyway inference is kind of predicated on guessing with
| some facts isn't it? If Israel is "the only democracy in
| the middle east", and they elected a government that is
| openly apartheid, and commits atrocities the jewish
| people themselves have been victim to, doesn't that make
| the whole of Israel's voters complicit?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If Israel (and Saudi Arabia) were to adopt American
| democratic norms than all members of their population (by
| which I mean, populations under their military control)
| would have a right to vote in national elections, yes? So
| everyone in the West Bank and Gaza would get one vote,
| same as everyone in Israel proper, for electing members
| to the national legislative body. Perhaps some degree of
| federation (as with American states vs American federal)
| would be appropriate.
|
| Now there was a period in American history when only
| white male landowners really had opportunity to vote, but
| that notion has been soundly repudiated, hasn't it? Even
| then there was a significant group who advocated for the
| expansion of voting rights to all. See composition
| fallacy again.
|
| Similarly, the right to emigrate or own land would not be
| restricted to members of certain religious groups
| (imagine if that was the case in the United States!).
| Hence Israel doesn't actually meet the basic requirements
| of 'democratic norms and values', does it - and nor does
| Saudi Arabia. Curiously however, these two states are
| often referred to as "America's closest allies".
|
| As far as repression, well the targeted assassination of
| an American-Palestinian journalist in Jenin is just one
| more example of this. See also the targeted assassination
| of a Washington Post op-ed columnist Jamal Khashoggi,
| ordered by Mohammmed bin 'Bone Saw' Salman in the Saudi
| embassy in Turkey, for comparison.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/middleeast/shireen-abu-
| akleh-...
|
| _' They were shooting directly at the journalists': New
| evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in
| targeted attack by Israeli forces_
| seoaeu wrote:
| > American democratic norms [meaning] all members of
| their population (by which I mean, populations under
| their military control) would have a right to vote in
| national elections
|
| Since when can non-citizens vote in US national
| elections? Let alone people living in Iraq, Afghanistan,
| or wherever else is/was under US military control.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I think you'd want to look at the definition of who is
| and who isn't a citizen, and what constitutes a nation-
| state. Clearly everyone in the West Bank is under the
| control of the Israeli state, and the same is more-or-
| less true of Gaza. Palestinians in these regions are not
| immigrants, they're citizens under any rational view of
| what a citizen is, and hence deserve the right to vote in
| Israeli national elections.
|
| A valid comparison would be claiming that Native
| Americans were not citizens of the US government and
| hence had no right to vote for members of Congress,
| wouldn't it?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| For many years they were not (see the Constitution on
| "Indians not taxed")
| seoaeu wrote:
| Notice that you completely dodged my question. There are
| lots of non-citizens living in the US who cannot vote.
| And during the US military occupation of Iraq and
| Afghanistan none of the people living there were granted
| voting rights. Hell, look at how many senators Puerto
| Rico and Guam get
| seoaeu wrote:
| "Only the Jews in country <x> behave like <y>" isn't the
| racially tolerant statement you think it is...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Clearly not all Jews in Israel believe that Arabs,
| Muslims, Palestinians etc. should be treated as second-
| class citizens. I'm also not sure that religious identity
| is to be viewed as 'racial identity' unless you want to
| revive the definition found in the German Race Laws of
| the 1930s.
| zionic wrote:
| >The role of caste within the US is a super important
| conversation to have, and every resident of the US is entitled
| to participate, but there are a lot of people with a vested
| interest in shutting it down and the tools to do so.
|
| I don't believe HN's current moderation policies/leadership
| make this the place to have that conversation though.
| Participate in good faith all you want, you'll still earn a
| ban/warning for "arguing" if you piss off the right people.
| buttercraft wrote:
| Show us an example of a good faith argument that earned a
| ban.
| swayvil wrote:
| Yeah, giving the power of censorship to the masses leads to
| the opposite of free conversation. And these particular
| masses do indeed like to flag anything they disagree with.
|
| And that message, "You're replying too fast, slow down". Lol.
| What duplicity.
| zionic wrote:
| I've slowly come to the conclusion that it's a form of
| opinion-shaping. A huge number of people aren't
| particularly interested in what's true, they're interested
| in what's _popular_.
|
| For argument's sake let's assume it's 80/20, with 10% on
| each side of a topic very passionate for their side. By
| banning and/or rate-limiting the 10% you dislike in any
| issue you can sway the 80% to follow the other side thus
| "manufacturing" the consensus.
| zen_1 wrote:
| I don't think there's any distinction to be made between
| what's "true" vs what's "popular" when it comes to online
| discourse unfortunately. Confirmation bias is one hell of
| a drug, especially when combined with votes, flagging and
| reports.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Last time I saw a big thread related to the topic there were
| super deeper threads of people just straight up calling each
| other slurs. They probably would have been flagged, but the
| threads were just so deep you wouldn't see that unless you're
| intently following the thread.
| zionic wrote:
| >Last time I saw a big thread related to the topic there
| were super deeper threads of people just straight up
| calling each other slurs.
|
| I hope you didn't take my comment is advocating for that. I
| can't really comment on a thread I didn't see.
|
| >They probably would have been flagged, but the threads
| were just so deep you wouldn't see that unless you're
| intently following the thread.
|
| Sounds like pointless name calling. That said, my original
| point that HN is not a good place to have these discussions
| stands. Unfortunately this community is for sterilized
| technical discussion, anything with spice or flavor isn't
| permitted.
| otterley wrote:
| I disagree. It is permitted, but it's important to tread
| carefully and have a nuanced discussion that is
| respectful of other points of view.
| zionic wrote:
| >It is permitted, but it's important to tread carefully
|
| How so? You can't say what you mean here, you're forced
| by moderation to be dishonest and sterilize everything.
| Nuance is only rewarded if you're nuanced about the right
| side.
|
| >is respectful of other points of view.
|
| Again, this is not in any way consistently applied. If
| you disagree with the majority here no amount of nuance
| will save you from ban/rate limit.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > That said, my original point that HN is not a good
| place to have these discussions stands.
|
| Sorry, I must have missed the not, I thought you were
| saying this _is_ a good place.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| > How dare we criticize another culture when we have our own
| problems?
|
| Because there are now 4.6 million Indian Americans and they are
| one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the US.
|
| So it's our own problem now too.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| I was going to comment the same thing but then realized the
| parent comment is listing the tactics people use to shut down
| the conversation, not their own personal opinions.
|
| The point being made is that people who don't want this
| conversation in public (i.e. people in favor of and/or who
| benefit from the caste system) will flood the comments with
| this type of rhetoric which instantly turns the conversation
| into to a flame war rather than a helpful discourse on how to
| improve things.
|
| The fact that you and I both instinctively fell for this
| reaction is evidence that parent is quite correct in the
| effectiveness of this tactic.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _will flood the comments with this type of rhetoric which
| instantly turns the conversation into to a flame war rather
| than a helpful discourse on how to improve things_
|
| Which is how they got Google to cancel the talk.
| H8crilA wrote:
| It was a rhetorical question.
| leoc wrote:
| It seems the grandparent agrees with you on that, and not
| with the opinion which it summarised in that sentence.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I think he's being rhetorically sarcastic there.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a
| bunch of people crying racism/religionism
|
| Isn't that the first step in the flame war, attacking,
| dismissing, and blaming one side (and before they even say
| something)? How will someone with a good faith interest in
| discussing concerns about racism or religionism act, seeing
| this comment - they will feel shut down, and like they won't be
| heard and will be attacked. There's already no room for those
| discussions.
|
| There is a lack of trust - a situation that is the goal of
| people trying to disrupt open societies and the trolls that
| help them. Whatever we say or do, the primary goal needs to be
| to build trust. People who are alarmed act badly - that's why
| trolls try to alarm people (even if they aren't quite conscious
| of how it works). Even when people are acting badly, if you can
| build their trust then very often the situation will improve.
|
| It would be extremely valuable to society to find a way to
| conduct constructive conversations; I think we are improving,
| but not nearly quickly enough.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a
| bunch of people crying racism /religionism_
|
| Is there a term for shutting down a discussion by turning the
| belligerence to eleven? Such that people outside the discussion
| tune out not the views of those being belligerent, but the
| discussion itself?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| "Heckler's Veto" is kind of close, though I'm not sure it
| perfectly fits the phenomenon you're talking about:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler%27s_veto
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Is there a term for shutting down a discussion by turning
| the belligerence to eleven?"
|
| We really need one, because it's a known phenomenon without a
| known label. If we can't assign a word or phrase to it, we'll
| struggle to communicate the concept to others when we see it
| happening. That, in turn, makes calling this behavior out
| monumentally more difficult and far less likely to succeed in
| pressuring people to stop. Imagine if we didn't have the term
| "ad hominem" and how much more difficult it would be to
| confront someone making such underhanded attacks in
| arguments. It would be a lot more difficult to discredit the
| person, despite recognizing what they are doing.
| UmYeahNo wrote:
| >Is there a term for shutting down a discussion by turning
| the belligerence to eleven?
|
| "Trolled into oblivion", perhaps?
| isolli wrote:
| Culture war?
| the_only_law wrote:
| It's definitely an aspect of the culture war, but only a
| specific side effect.
| fundad wrote:
| Dominance
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Topic dilution is the closest thing I can think of that's
| already been coined. Rather than participate in good faith,
| the actors bring up some hot topic like racism, and off it
| goes until it's a full-on flamewar, or people drop out, or
| mods shut it down.
| pessimizer wrote:
| https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
|
| The most appropriate ones here are probably:
|
| > 2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key
| issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used
| show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct
| group or theme. This is also known as the 'How dare you!'
| gambit.
|
| > 5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This
| is also known as the primary 'attack the messenger' ploy,
| though other methods qualify as variants of that approach.
| Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as 'kooks',
| 'right-wing', 'liberal', 'left-wing', 'terrorists',
| 'conspiracy buffs', 'radicals', 'militia', 'racists',
| 'religious fanatics', 'sexual deviates', and so forth. This
| makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the
| same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.
|
| > 18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you
| can't do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and
| draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make
| them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render
| their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you
| avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even
| if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can
| further avoid the issues by then focusing on how 'sensitive
| they are to criticism.'
|
| I'm still astounded by how consistently contemporary defenses
| of Apartheid blamed the objections to it on "anti-Boer
| bigotry" in order to derail the conversation.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Trolling, or a specific case of it? I think of trolling as
| disruption, and it is commonly used to shut down discussions
| and attack good faith community (i.e., where people disagree,
| listen, tolerate, and support each other's right to hold and
| express differing opinions). This is one application of it.
| [deleted]
| screye wrote:
| Every couple of months an article about caste is posted on HN.
| The article and the reactions are always the same.
|
| * Shallow allusions to how caste dynamics = white-black dynamics
| in the US
|
| * Any one in opposition = caste supremacist = hindu nationalism
|
| * Belief that caste dynamics in the US = caste dynamics in rural
| India
|
| I am going to buck my own trend of writing explanations about how
| western interpretations of issues faced by foreign civilizations
| are wrong. I will instead link to older comments [1] I have
| written before:
|
| Choice quotes:
|
| > Euphemisms dilute
|
| > Shoe-horning the caste issue into hyper-polarized and shallow
| american power struggles is worsening the issue
|
| I have some strong suspicions on why caste has suddenly become a
| major issue in California politics over the last decade. I know
| better than to talk about on a pseudo-anonymous account.
|
| [1]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Is there a Wikipedia list of obscure 'race'-isms? I find reading
| about other cultures or other time period's biases to be
| informative and wonder what the common elements might be.
|
| Off the top of my head, issues I can think of where an outsider
| may be oblivious between the "sides" are:
|
| Indian caste
|
| Japanese Barukumin caste
|
| Protestant/Catholic in Europe
|
| Jewish people in Europe/US/USSR
|
| English Class System, or Southern/Northern
|
| Jim Crow, or North/South or Midwest Vs coastal, WASPs, or
| Nativism.
|
| Ainu in Hokkaido.
|
| Ukraine vs Russian is topical at the moment.
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| Lumping in hindu castes, Christian denominations, and Jewish
| people in what I assume is the beginning-mid 20th century,
| makes no sense. Yes, it all falls under xenophobia, but the
| impact are wildly different.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I'd be intetested to hear how the ones you are familiar with
| differ, and in what ways you see parallels.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| ZeroGravitas is asking people to come up with a list of
| situations that fall under xenophobia. I do not see them
| implying that those issues are related or comparable.
| H8crilA wrote:
| These are not obscure at all! Especially the last one. See the
| intercepted phone calls from the security service of Ukraine,
| the level of Russian racism is beyond what I could imagine
| prior to Feb 24. It is worse than whatever the Red Army did in
| WW2, and almost reaching the level that the Nazis showed.
|
| Russian Nazism is very real, leads to rape, murder, forced
| deportation and torture.
| pradn wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot
|
| A persecuted minority in France.
| [deleted]
| fmajid wrote:
| I'm French and had never heard of this. Very interesting,
| thanks!
| api wrote:
| Regional elitism in the USA is definitely a form of soft caste
| system. If you are from the upper East coast or the West coast
| you are a member of a higher caste than if you are from the
| interior, and inside the US there are definitely smaller caste
| differences.
|
| The South gets it the worst. When I was in college (University
| of Cincinnati) engineering students from the South were
| sometimes encouraged to lose their Southern accents because it
| made them sound "stupid." I heard a few stories about this.
| seneca wrote:
| This is maybe the strongest out-group bias in elite circles
| in the US currently. I believe that is largely because it is
| acceptable, or even required, in the current elite ideologies
| that dominate corporate and academic entities currently. And
| they hate to have it pointed out.
| api wrote:
| I've thought for a long time that woke could get actual
| traction by being more woke and extending the concept of
| "-isms are not okay" to include American caste and regional
| elitisms and classism that isn't about race.
|
| A course on recognizing bias against lowland Southerners
| would be funny but not wrong or inappropriate and you'd see
| plenty of rich coastal fragility on display.
|
| Classism and regionalism are absolutely huge in this
| country, especially when those on the receiving end are not
| in a racial minority.
|
| But what would people do if there were _no_ easily
| identifiable out groups to stereotype and mock?
| capitalsigma wrote:
| Show me someone in tech with a strong Brooklyn or Boston
| accent.
| floraandfauna wrote:
| As someone who grew up in the Deep South but studied and
| worked on the east coast for many years, I can confirm this
| to be 100% true.
|
| At a past job, I worked for a company headquartered on the
| upper east coast, but which had opened a "tech hub" in the
| mid-sized Southern city where I lived at the time. Some of my
| co-workers had fairly pronounced Southern accents and people
| in the home office would regularly laugh and make fun of them
| during meetings. And after I put in my notice, the tech lead
| on the project I was on declared, completely unprompted,
| during a completely unrelated call that "we haven't had any
| issues with code quality or anything, but Southerners are
| just slow. That's just how they are. It's the culture." I
| think that I will regret for the rest of my life not telling
| him to go eff himself right then and there.
|
| And I wish I could say that that was an exception to my
| experience elsewhere, but while living on the east coast I
| heard more offhand comments about "stupid Southerners" than I
| can count, often followed by an awkward "I mean, not you of
| course, you're different". Interestingly, many (but not all)
| of the same people who think it's funny to beat up on the
| South are also the most likely to make impassioned
| performative declarations of support for every DEI initiative
| they come across. The level of cognitive dissonance required
| to maintain that kind of mindset must be intense.
| carapace wrote:
| For what it's worth, the stereotype of the "stupid
| Southerner" in America got started due to an absolutely
| massive hookworm infestation, "an average of 40% of school-
| aged children were infected with hookworm". The crazy thing
| is that it has handled a century ago yet the stereotype and
| prejudice still linger.
|
| > On October 26, 1909, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission
| for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease was organized as a
| result of a gift of US$1 million from John D. Rockefeller,
| Sr. The five-year program was a remarkable success and a
| great contribution to the United States' public health,
| instilling public education, medication, field work and
| modern government health departments in eleven southern
| states.[45] The hookworm exhibit was a prominent part of
| the 1910 Mississippi state fair.
|
| > The commission found that an average of 40% of school-
| aged children were infected with hookworm.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookworm_infestation#Eradicat
| i...
| api wrote:
| > The level of cognitive dissonance required to maintain
| that kind of mindset must be intense.
|
| Holding and advancing multiple deeply contradictory ideas
| is something humans are very good at.
|
| I've come to believe that most people spend very little
| time asking if their ideas are reasonable. They just
| believe what they need to believe to fit into a group. It's
| more about group membership signaling than anything else.
|
| Primates will choose social connection over food, so it's
| not surprising that we'll also choose social connection
| over rationality.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNBEhzjg8I
| mattcwilson wrote:
| Reminds me of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed
| cebert wrote:
| I live in the Midwest in Michigan, and I can't say that I
| feel like I've been treated as a lower caste in the Midwest.
| We have some wonderful learning institutions, such as the
| University of Michigan, and a lot of talented and
| individuals.
| rob74 wrote:
| The common element is always in-group vs. out-group
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_and_out-group). It
| doesn't have to be based on race or ethnicity, it can also be
| e.g. Democrats vs. Republicans in the US, supporters of
| different football clubs etc. etc.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I nearly listed football/sport team support but thought it
| might be too out there a reference for most people. Now I'm
| wondering how global such sporting based rivalries are, and
| if they always originally grew from one of the others.
| boredumb wrote:
| Loxism
|
| Dominicans and Haitians
|
| Colombians and.... the rest of Latin america
|
| People are hardwired to perceive outsiders as a threat and
| usually this originates from good reasoning.
| izacus wrote:
| In Europe, you can always reliably find a massive amount of
| racism against the Romani people
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people).
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Not to be confused with the Romanian people - i.e, people
| from Romania. (Though some of the Roma people can obviously
| also be Romanians!).
|
| EDIT: I absolutely condone discrimination, but I think for
| the people that live in areas with very visible Roma people,
| it's kind of obvious why.
|
| At best, you'll just see them begging on the streets. At
| worst, you'll experience getting hounded down by them,
| getting robbed, or your property looted. Mostly just an issue
| in larger cities, and it used to be _much_ worse 10 years
| ago.
|
| We had this one older Roma guy that would have his usual
| spot, and he'd sit there and beg all day long. Rain, snow, or
| wind - he'd _always_ sit there. In the end, he became a
| fixture in the city scenery.
|
| But one particular winter got really bad, and some senior
| citizen offered him their apartment (rent-free) for a couple
| of months, as they were away for the winter. He passed away a
| couple of years later.
| tzs wrote:
| > I absolutely condone discrimination
|
| Did you mean condemn?
|
| condemn: express complete disapproval of
|
| condone: approve or sanction (something), especially with
| reluctance
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I stand corrected - meant condemn.
| the_only_law wrote:
| It's very blunt and to the point as well, no beating around
| the bush or wriggling around to try to make yourself look
| less bad for it like in America.
| izacus wrote:
| I'm fascinated how such comments actually showed up here
| down the thread. ^^
| farmerstan wrote:
| I've been robbed twice by Gypsies/Romani in Europe. I don't
| have much sympathy for a culture that openly celebrates
| thievery the way their culture does.
|
| All of the beggars in downtown SF holding babies and asking
| for money are all Romani. They will shuttle the babies and
| children around to different people who beg so that they can
| get more money. It's pretty astounding.
| baisq wrote:
| tokai wrote:
| That's literally how racism against Afro Americans is
| often excused towards Euros.
| baisq wrote:
| Yes, I was going to add to that comment that Europeans
| can't understand the treatment of blacks in America
| either.
| monetus wrote:
| (From the us) I went to school with a Hungarian who
| couldn't understand why we were confused about his jokes
| - they were based around body building so that his arms
| could become "gypsy killers". He was such a nice guy, it
| seemed really discordant. This is an anecdote of the kind
| of cultural exchange we have.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I knew a similar guy, but he was Spanish and his
| catchphrase was "Moor killer" which was just really odd
| to me, given the Reconquista ended a very long time ago,
| but he says a lot of terms/cultural aspects still exist
| from then.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep...
|
| I live in a country with two large-ish gypsy areas, and we
| have a lot of people who are very loud about their rights
| and discrimination against them...
|
| ...somehow none of those people actually live anywhere near
| them.
|
| There really is discrimination against them, but on the
| other hand, the system (police, courts, politics) allows
| them to do all the shitty stuff they're stereotyped by.
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| the roma i know just want to live in a different way, they
| dont really want to participate in the system we have built.
|
| they live by another set of rules and values
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_society_and_culture
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris_(Romani_court)
| jeromegv wrote:
| Of course your message was followed with people accusing the
| whole culture of robbing people. It's quite interesting how
| if you switched any other culture this would be downvoted to
| hell, but the moment we talk of Romani people, the most
| strong worded racist comments are just accepted. I guess we
| still have work to do.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I don't know if the Indian caste thing should be considered
| obscure. There are 1.3 billion Indians. By number of people
| affected it might be one of the more important conversations in
| the world today.
| np_tedious wrote:
| It's "obscure" bc it is underappreciated in the US and
| probably most places outside of India
| [deleted]
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I intended 'obscure' in the 'not easily understood' (to
| outsiders) sense, but probably an unfortunate word choice as
| it also means 'unknown'.
| zen_1 wrote:
| I think discussions of "obscurity" are always relative to the
| audience in question, so while I highly doubt caste
| discussions would reasonably be considered obscure in India
| (or within the Indian diaspora), I (a non-Indian) had
| certainly never heard of casteism abroad until I saw
| submissions on HN discussing it at Cisco.
| PhillyG wrote:
| Agreed. "Region specific" might be a better term for what
| the commenter intended
| smegsicle wrote:
| balkans / other balkans
| likis wrote:
| Sami people is another example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi#Discrimination_again...
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Not sure how the Sami people are treated in Sweden, Finland,
| or Russia - but here in Norway there has indeed been a long
| history of discrimination against the Sami.
|
| But tbh, it's just half a century ago that pretty much _all_
| people from Northern Norway were discriminated against, in
| the southern parts. Which is why most people moving south
| were recommended to change accent - fast. More so if you
| wanted to work in any client /customer-facing job...
|
| Back to the Sami - unfortunately there are still shitty
| people out there that feel the need to voice their opinion if
| they see Sami people wearing traditional clothing. But it
| should also be said that there's conflict within the Sami
| community, which also comes down to what _type_ Sami you are
| (sea /coast Sami vs hill/raindeer). Most of the real
| conflicts in any case revolve around land/areal usage.
| nyolfen wrote:
| > (sea/coast Sami vs hill/raindeer)
|
| can you speak more to this? i'm totally unfamiliar with the
| folk taxonomy
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Sure - traditionally the Sami people have been divided
| into two groups: Those that have lived around / near
| coastlines ( _" sea Sami"_), and those more inland
| (typically just _" Sami"_, or _" reindeer Sami"_, _"
| hill/mountain Sami"_.
|
| In short, the coastal Sami people have made their living
| off fishing, farming, and similar activities.
|
| On the other hand, those living inland have mostly made
| their money off reindeer husbandry. Reindeers will forage
| over a large area, and in Northern Norway / Sweden /
| Finland / Russia that includes large tundra and hilly
| places - so many of Sami involved in that trade would
| trek over and live in these areas.
|
| With that said, these days I think only 5%-10% of Sami
| have reindeer husbandry as their main profession.
|
| But the vast majority of conflicts between Sami people
| and the rest usually comes down to the reindeer. Since
| the reindeer need a huge area to graze on, it tends to
| become a problem for companies wanting to develop the
| area for industry.
|
| Just recently our supreme court decided that a wind farm
| had been bult in conflict with cultural landscape of
| local Sami people. Reindeer husbandry is a cultural
| heritage activity, and thus protected. The area reindeer
| graze on, is thus a cultural landscape, and also
| protected.
|
| The intra-Sami conflicts, from what I've seen and heard,
| boils down to either things related to the reindeer
| industry - or I guess elitism from the "true" Sami people
| toward the coastal Sami people.
| kergonath wrote:
| > list of obscure 'race'-isms
|
| The word you need is "xenophobia" (hate of the others, of those
| who are different). Race is a limited, artificial concept and
| by focusing on it we miss the forest for the trees. Xenophobia
| is as old as humanity and can be based on anything: physical
| features; ideas, religions, languages, family ties, etc.
| HKH2 wrote:
| Since when does '-phobia' mean 'hatred'? If I suffer from
| arachnophobia, do I hate spiders?
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Since always. It's an extreme dislike ( the opposite of
| "philia"). "Revulsion" might be a better translation than
| fear or hatred.
| HKH2 wrote:
| > Since always.
|
| Is was used like that in Greek? Even the clinical meaning
| today does not include hatred.
|
| > "Revulsion" might be a better translation than fear or
| hatred.
|
| Fear does not require disgust. I am scared of snakes but
| I think they are beautiful animals.
| PhillyG wrote:
| "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger.
| Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
|
| Edit: It might be a quote from fiction but there's some
| truth in there somewhere
| HKH2 wrote:
| Fear can lead to aggression, but it doesn't have to; you
| can be avoidant.
| kergonath wrote:
| Yeah, it's mostly fear. I blame my lack of coffee at the
| time and my non-English mother tongue :)
|
| Though the line between fear and hate is quite thin and
| blurry in human psychology. The arachnophobes I know do, in
| fact, hate spiders with a passion.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| All the three ethnic groups that comprise Belgium?
|
| English vs French speaking Canadians?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Not as much of a day-to-day issue for the newest generations
| but French Canada vs. English Canada (historically "Lower
| Canada" vs "Upper Canada", which shouldn't be relevant but some
| people still use the old labels an excuse for casual
| 'race'-isms as you call it).
|
| The youngest French Canadians generally speak English. However
| the oldest generations (50+ or 60+ depending on the region)
| couldn't and mostly still can't due to the way the system was
| set up. And since a lot of companies came from either the US or
| the rest of Canada, they had no hopes in climbing ranks or
| being competitive as businesspeople. There are some records of
| French Canadians being sent to unusually harsh missions during
| the great wars too.
|
| There are casual insults such as calling French Canadian
| "frogs" and English Canadians "square heads" still in use
| today.
|
| It is still present even in tech companies where English
| speakers are sent to client meetings as it is sometimes
| perceived "rude" to sent someone with a French accent to the
| front.
|
| These days, it's mostly about not extending the classic "warm
| Canadian welcome" to the other category. But in some
| situations, it can get more serious.
|
| (That being said, in 2022 it does not really compare to some of
| the other examples listed above.)
| [deleted]
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| In Latin America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Add "Muslim/Kafir" to the list. And Sunni/Shi'a.
| ralmidani wrote:
| Bad analogy. A person's deeply-held belief that a given
| religion is true, and calling others to that belief, is not
| the same as saying "you were born of a lower caste and should
| never be able to escape that."
|
| Of course, it goes without saying, perceiving you belong to
| the true faith does not justify violence or discrimination.
| But faith-based identification is not analogous to a caste
| system.
| alex_smart wrote:
| Are we going to lightly dismiss the prosecution of
| polytheists in many Islamic countries?
|
| >Of course, it goes without saying, perceiving you belong
| to the true faith does not justify violence or
| discrimination. But faith-based identification is not
| analogous to a caste system.
|
| They were clearly talking about faith-based discrimination.
| Why would you assume that they were talking about faith-
| based identification, especially given the context?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| india_usa wrote:
| This whole discussion of bringing caste is like British coming
| and dividing India. For tech companies like Google who hire
| purely by merit, if someone has made inside Google that's it.
| Otherwise if there is discrimination they would not have hired
| it. Thenmozhi is a radical leftist out to create division rather
| than love. her father is a doctor, so if they are suppressed how
| come he is a doctor.
|
| In state of Tamil Nadu where she and Pichai there is 70%
| reservation or affirmitive actions. if you are forward class you
| are out, This is for past 70 years. For several generations
| Dalits enjoy a superior position and forward castes are kicked
| out. I am not sure what else they want. They are out to create
| pure division and i have worked in many tech companies in bay
| area like Google. There is no caste discrimination. PERIOD. I
| have witnessed up close.
|
| Thenmozhi just craves publicity and is a publicty stunt maker. It
| will be better if she does something useful for fellow Dalits
| instead of just talking from inside a palace.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What caste are you?
|
| > For tech companies like Google who hire purely by merit, if
| someone has made inside Google that's it. Otherwise if there is
| discrimination they would not have hired it.
|
| I don't think anyone is claiming that companies like Google are
| organizationally enforcing caste discrimination, more like some
| employees within the company are doing it on their own.
|
| > Thenmozhi is a radical leftist out to create division rather
| than love.
|
| Pointing out wrongs may indeed create division, but that
| doesn't mean it is wrong to do so.
|
| > her father is a doctor, so if they are suppressed how come he
| is a doctor.
|
| Maybe he would be surgeon general(or equivalent) right now if
| he wasn't? This logic is just plain wrong - it would be like
| saying that racism didn't exist in the US in 1967 - otherwise
| how would Thurgood Marshall be on the Supreme Court?
| whoevercares wrote:
| I observed it multiple times during CS graduate school. An Indian
| high caste classmate refused to let his roommate sleep in the
| same bedroom. The higher caste guy told us that his roommate is
| of lower caste. The other poor guy ended up very obedient and
| sleep in the couch for 2 years. They have a group of high caste
| guys and talk sht about a few fellow low caste guys in the class
|
| Eye opening.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| This is unthinkable in any IIT/NIT in India. I think casteism
| is somewhat worse in the US
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I forget what the concept is called, but I will call it
| something like emigrant conservatism, where emigrants bring
| essentially a snapshot of their culture from when they
| emigrate, and that snapshot remains fixed - they don't feel
| American, so they don't integrate into American cultural
| norms, and they don't have much active interaction with their
| previous home's culture which is constantly progressing.
| lotophage wrote:
| That's horrible
| eternalban wrote:
| ! This was in US? What school was this?
| puranjay wrote:
| High caste people in India will often find ways to casually
| mention their caste in conversation, sometimes within minutes
| of meeting someone new. Its reflexive - like subtly turning
| your wrist to show off a new watch.
|
| And I have no data to corroborate this, but I've felt caste
| chauvinism increase in the last few years.
| [deleted]
| dandare wrote:
| After a quick google search I can see some very controversial
| comments by Thenmozhi Soundararajan.
|
| Hopefully the world is changing and demonising ones race, even if
| that race is white or Hindu, will soon be neither celebrated nor
| even acceptable.
| alex_smart wrote:
| How is Dr Subramanian relevant to this article again?
| dandare wrote:
| Typo (old clipboard). Thanks for pointing it out.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| What exactly did she comment?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| I do want to point out that Google allows all sorts of talks
| onsite. You can see some of them here:
| https://youtube.com/c/talksatgoogle
|
| I've definitely been to a few of those in person that were more
| controversial than talking about caste (and also did not have
| the benefit of actually being useful, like addressing workplace
| discrimination is).
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I've got this impression that all these diversity and equality
| programs employed by large American corporations are annoying to
| some and lame generally because they are astoundingly myopic.
|
| Like, they do a vastly simplified, explain-like-I'm-five take on
| these issues (blah blah white male middle- and upper-class are
| evil type of thing) and tackle it with full ineptitude of five-
| year-olds.
|
| I think a lot of people benefit from such approach.
|
| First, hordes of people are generating busywork and you don't
| really need mad skills or even basic competence to be doing it.
|
| A lot of busywork paints a picture of the company press and
| shareholders will love.
|
| Meanwhile, all the bullies keep on bullying.
|
| There's this culture where you will be treated better or worse
| based on the color of your badge. Race/religion/gender are off-
| limits, but discriminatory employee-contractor dynamics are
| blessed!
|
| There's this other bit of corporate culture that flew under the
| radar of any and all equality/diversity effort where managers of
| Indian origin would treat their also-Indian reports like shit
| because the poor schmucks happen to be of a lower caste. They
| would also make an effort to halt their career progress.
|
| Those same managers would treat their overseas office teammates
| (in Poland) as if they were below the lowest caste possible.
|
| Speaking about companies that have offices in both USA and, say,
| Eastern Europe, the Eastern Wuropean teammates are often treated
| as second-class people. They don't get to participate in any
| project discussions of importance, presumably because those
| discussions happen informally, at the watercooler, in the US
| office, and should be content with all decisions handed down,
| like it or not.
|
| I'm seeing the same kind of attitude starts happening now with
| onsite/WFH workers: since you don't see the latter ones face to
| face, they are not quite real people.
|
| Oh, and if you want to see a full-fledged rampant racism and
| supremacism, you should try working for a Korean company as a
| worker of their European branch office.
|
| But apparently such issues are way too complex to be actually
| worked on by your off-the-shelf diversity and equality teams, for
| whom the white/nonwhite and male/female divide is the upper limit
| of comprehension.
| knorker wrote:
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