[HN Gopher] My Caste
___________________________________________________________________
My Caste
Author : bsnnkv
Score : 383 points
Date : 2023-08-30 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cs.toronto.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cs.toronto.edu)
| mrg3_2013 wrote:
| I have never heard or felt anyone talk about caste in my 25 years
| in US. I work with both academia as well as industry.
| [deleted]
| soligern wrote:
| Honestly I think this is majorly overblown. Having lived in both
| India and the US and being in my late 30s, I've never seen caste
| come up in any conversation even once. That's tens of thousands
| of Indian people at the very least. Feels like this person is
| hyper aware of his caste and seems to take steps bordering on
| paranoia.
| aj7 wrote:
| When you're getting f'd over, it never "comes up in
| conversation."
| PixelForg wrote:
| I wasn't even aware of my caste (ST) until I joined
| intermediate(equivalent to 11-12 grade). I feel like I'm lucky
| that I didn't face any sort of caste discrimination. I guess it
| depends on which part of India you live in.
| username135 wrote:
| There we have it. It's a non issue so let's move on folks.
| turbohz wrote:
| Works on my computer!
| whalesalad wrote:
| The unfortunate side effect of being subjected to this sort of
| insanity from a young age. That conditioning is very hard to
| shake off.
| [deleted]
| banshiram123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Philpax wrote:
| Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't
| happen...
| darth_avocado wrote:
| There are two sides to the story. Yes caste does come up in
| India in daily life, the more rural you go, the more important
| it becomes. That being said, there is also an element of
| obsession with caste in people who are well removed from the
| discrimination because they're doing well socio economically.
| Sometimes people feel discriminated against because generally
| that's what you're told you should expect, but sometimes you
| over compensate for your insecurities and people just don't
| like you for who you are. I've had plenty of people from OBC
| come up to me in the US and ask my caste, and when I don't
| engage, they feel almost insulted. Context: I'm not OBC but I'm
| not up there in the caste ladder either. And I've basically
| completely blocked the whole caste system from my brain.
| daveguy wrote:
| Just curious, what caste were you born into?
| flownoon2 wrote:
| The author says that:
|
| 1. OBCs are estimated to comprise 40-45% of India's population
|
| and
|
| 2. Exactly one out of 180 CS faculty members across five IITs
| belongs to OBC category
|
| Those two facts alone make it sound like a pretty big deal to
| me, even if it hasn't been a part of your experience in India.
| Or do you think he is wrong about those numbers?
| soligern wrote:
| Historically and culturally the higher castes are more
| educationally oriented so it wouldn't be surprising. The
| caste system is rapidly breaking down but only for about the
| last generation. I presume it's going to take time for
| representation within college professors being one of the
| most erudite fields. On the other hand, there is tremendous
| representation within the government, judges, police,
| teachers, civil servants, engineers etc. Modi the PM is an
| OBC, the president is also OBC. A very large number of
| politicians are from lower castes.
| seatac76 wrote:
| I think the case is highlighted pretty well, clearly the
| representation is less because of continued/historical lack
| of access.
|
| Seems to be something that should addressed asap because this
| is clearly holding the Indian economy and social progress
| back, efficient use of labor and capital is key, seems to me
| this is an obvious hindrance.
|
| The bit about names is interesting, seems like something that
| has a hold on society and people go out of their way to
| conform to it. Like it is subliminal, not externally evident
| like race so it should be theoretically an easier problem to
| solve, I wonder if education and economic progress can
| resolve this, ironic as it is.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The numbers could be right, but you couldn't exactly argue
| discrimination tbh.
|
| 27% seats are reserved for OBC students in IITs
|
| There is a similar quota for people in OBC categories in govt
| jobs (which IIT professors are). Maybe there are plenty of
| OBC professors, but not in CS? Or that they don't openly
| identify as OBC? Or maybe, people just don't qualify/apply to
| the position?
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Lol and why don't they qualify?
|
| Because of centuries of discrimination that has kept them
| poorer and less educated.
|
| You might be able to argue that there is no discrimination
| today and that the hiring process itself is not
| discriminatory, but the outcomes are entirely the result of
| discrimination in society.
| hn_99 wrote:
| This discussion made me curious, how is the cause of
| their poverty and lack of opportunity relevant? There are
| hundreds of millions of underprivileged people in India,
| why should those from a lower caste be given precedence
| over others, even if there is a history of oppression
| behind their poverty?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| So there's basically three views on social welfare. The
| far right doesn't want it to exist at all, or if it must
| exist it should be funneled towards the already powerful,
| because nobody deserves it. The left says that we need to
| distribute social welfare in order to equalize society,
| because everyone deserves a good life. The liberals, in
| between the two, view welfare as a means to make up for
| societal failures or outright wrongs. It's not about the
| fact that these people are needy, it's about the fact
| that they're needy _and it 's our fault_.
|
| Race/caste/etc based welfare distribution comes from that
| last model.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| But that is exactly what exists. You could be born in a
| "lower caste" but a wealthy family, you'd have a
| preferential treatment over someone who is poor but is
| born in a "higher caste".
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > Because of centuries of discrimination that has kept
| them poorer and less educated
|
| No one is denying this. But there has been a reservation
| of seats for SC and ST categories for about 80 years and
| for OBC category for 40+ years in education. The
| reservation in govt job openings exists since the 80s.
| How can you reasonably argue that the outcomes are
| entirely the result of discrimination in society?
| usr8new wrote:
| [flagged]
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Caste is absolutely a huge problem in India as these numbers
| show. It's a different question whether it's a problem in
| Western companies, especially outside India, and I'm not sure
| about the data for that.
|
| That being said, even this statistic shows that we should be
| wary of mapping our understanding of other kinds of
| discrimination onto caste without being very careful.
|
| In an idealized version of the caste system (which you will
| see some bigots use to defend it but in the real world the
| idealized version is nowhere to be seen), it's literally
| impossible for those lower caste numbers to be anything other
| than 0%, because in the idealized version your caste is
| defined by your profession, so being a professor means you're
| not any of those castes.
| mrhether wrote:
| Have you considered expanding this research to other fields or
| perhaps collaborating with sociologists to further study this
| systemic issue?
| intrasight wrote:
| UToronto alum myself.
|
| >as recognized by the constitution of India
|
| So you have a racist constitution. That's too bad. I hope Indians
| are striving to fix that.
|
| If you move the the US or Canada, please don't bring your racism
| with you - we already have enough of our own.
| unoti wrote:
| I haven't read the constitution of India, but perhaps the
| reason it's codified there is for affirmative action?
| momirlan wrote:
| so you have to classify one as "backward" in order to help
| the person ? what kind if democracy is that ?
| momirlan wrote:
| India will not get anywhere meaningful as long as this
| institutionalized discrimination persists. "backward", really ?
| are we in the 21st century ?
| elil17 wrote:
| Indian English is not the same as American English. As I
| understand it, "backwards" means "disadvantaged" in this
| context. Perhaps you should _prepone_ learning about English
| dialects.
| momirlan wrote:
| sorry, not American here. "backwards" means the same thing in
| any other type of English. I will "prepone" it... lol
| howinteresting wrote:
| What exactly is your point then? It's just another word for
| "disadvantaged", "underprivileged" or "oppressed".
| lucb1e wrote:
| And it just happens to have a more commonly known
| negative meaning? They could have picked disadvantaged or
| oppressed, instead, for that acronym. I had little-to-no
| idea about this system until today and I'm not even a
| native english speaker, but all the same it seems curious
| to me that this word choice is just a coincidence...
| ae_throw wrote:
| [flagged]
| 911e wrote:
| This caste problems continue in the US, instead of leaving behind
| such ridiculous biases it becomes a part of an US company...
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/googles-caste-bias-pr...
| banshiram123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| timmytokyo wrote:
| California is about to pass a caste discrimination ban [1].
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-moves-closer-
| his...
| usr8new wrote:
| > Caste problems continue in the US
|
| The thread is filled with white progressives who know nothing
| about caste. There are what 2 cases of caste discrimination in
| US companies. In one of the cases (the famous Cisco) case was
| proven there was no discrimination.
|
| The professor who wrote this blog is literally a Jatt. A land
| owning caste & one of the most powerful castes in India. Any
| Indian reading this blog will know this is BS. I would
| understand if the author was at least Dalit or ST.
| dang wrote:
| It sounds like you know something about this topic, but the
| way you've been posting about it is too inflammatory and
| flamebaity. Putting other people down for being ignorant
| isn't helpful; neither is calling names.
|
| If you know more than others, that's great, but then the
| thing to do is to share some of what you know so the rest of
| us can learn.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Since this is about Google, where I worked:
|
| > The Google spokesperson said that caste discrimination has
| "no place in our workplace and it's prohibited in our
| policies."
|
| I can testify that Ads was very heavily Indian, much more than
| the general employee percentages would predict. I don't know if
| it still is. Sridhar Ramaswamy
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sridhar_Ramaswamy) probably had
| something to do with that. From informal observation, IIT was a
| very common alma mater for them.
|
| Yet, within the SmartASS team in Ads, a huge percentage of the
| engineers were Canadian. I worked in the office right next door
| to them for a while.
|
| What does this tell you? People tend to refer their friends and
| give good recommendations to people they know. A Canadian is
| more likely to know other Canadians. So is that
| "discrimination?"
| camgunz wrote:
| It's at least a lack of diversity processes, metrics, and
| benchmarks, which leads to discriminatory outcomes. Or in
| other words, someone should've said, "hey, this team is X%
| Indian, maybe branch out a little". It's the exact same
| dynamic that leads to heavily white/male teams, "hey I made
| all my friends at institutions that didn't at all strive for
| diversity... and that's where I hire from... hmm."
| lozenge wrote:
| How is your argument relevant when there were 20 complaints
| from actual Googlers about caste discrimination? Unless you
| are actually Indian and aware of the castes you wouldn't have
| any idea whether caste discrimination was happening to your
| colleagues.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Did I say there was?
| LordShredda wrote:
| It is discrimination depending on why they were recommended.
| That's the hard part of stopping discrimination, it's never
| found until it's obvious
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > depending on why they were recommended
|
| so if the "why" is "I worked with this person" that's bad?
| Or not?
| ae_throw wrote:
| [flagged]
| za3faran wrote:
| I wonder how that sits with the diversity and inclusion
| directives that are everywhere now. Maybe they turn a blind
| eye when it suits them, or use other teams to offset the
| difference.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| From what I've seen from the outside, it looks like US
| companies focus on what they view as "non-core" departments
| to reach their overall diversity goals. So, for example, in
| a software company, the coders might largely be of one or
| two ethnicities, and then the company's diversity goals are
| met by hiring diverse candidates in, say, HR, legal,
| payroll, etc.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| idk, but there's always a question of how big a unit you
| look at when computing ethnic percentages. Does a group of
| 10 have to have 5 women, 3 POC's, and one LGBT? Or can you
| measure DEI only for very large groups, like the whole
| company?
|
| Probably for the government, it's the entire company, or
| maybe each large strata of it.
| kelnos wrote:
| For a team of 10 I absolutely agree that you're probably
| not going to get that fine-grained, and you'll probably
| look at larger groups of 100 or more.
|
| But it still can be useful to spot-check smaller teams.
| If that team of 10 is, say, 100% male, or 100% Chinese,
| maybe that's something that deserves a second look. Not
| with guns-blazing, "you all are obviously sexist/racist",
| but... a second look, nonetheless.
| tekla wrote:
| What if it was 100% women, or 100% Black?
| cududa wrote:
| What if they were 100% Gelgameks? It's a nonsense
| question because at any large tech co, there aren't any
| engineering teams that are 100% women or Black. I don't
| believe that's a reflection the skills of race or gender
| lacking, just that there aren't any tech co execs that
| would feel comfortable with that due to their own bias
| and overall corporate culture..
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > What if they were 100% Gelgameks?
|
| that's the nonsense question. This isn't 100%, but there
| were Google managers who prided themselves on having very
| disproportionately large numbers of black or female
| employees. SRE groups, especially.
|
| In addition, there are plenty of teams that are almost
| all Chinese. Or Indian. Or, of course, white male.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _So is that "discrimination?"_
|
| Yes, absolutely. It may be passive and unconscious, but it's
| still discrimination. I bet a lot of more-than-qualified
| candidates -- many likely even more qualified than the people
| who ended up getting hired -- were rejected.
|
| Unless you're going to assert that Indian people are uniquely
| the most qualified and best at building advertising systems
| (which I hope we can agree would be an absurd assertion to
| make), it's a near certainty that better candidates were
| passed over.
|
| And looking at it from the potential candidate perspective, I
| personally wouldn't want to work on a team that is heavily
| over-represented by any one race (even my own), and I
| wouldn't be surprised if that "scared away" some great
| candidates (of other races) for positions as well. This is no
| different than the archetypal example of a woman engineer
| being uncomfortable joining a team full of men.
|
| > _People tend to refer their friends and give good
| recommendations to people they know._
|
| I've come to believe that referrals are great when you're a
| tiny startup trying to find people whose work you can trust
| (since dead weight can be fatal to a new company), but become
| less and less useful -- and sometimes even counterproductive
| -- as a company grows in size.
|
| At any rate, at any non-tiny company, any referral should be
| put through the same interview process as the other
| candidates, and should be judged based on the interview, not
| on the referrer's opinion. The referrer should not even be a
| part of the interview process, anyway. Not just when it comes
| to their referral, but (if possible), they shouldn't be a
| part of the other candidates' interview panels either, as
| they may be (at best) unconsciously biased _against_ the
| others.
|
| > _A Canadian is more likely to know other Canadians._
|
| Canadians aren't a racial group (and a Canadian may be white,
| black, native, Asian, Indian, whatever), so I don't think
| this particular example has anything to do with the rest of
| what you're talking about. If that team mostly or exclusively
| comprised _white_ Canadians (or Canadians of any other single
| race), then yeah, maybe there 's an issue there. And
| regardless, a team comprised of the same $X -- where $X is
| pretty much anything -- should be a red flag. To me, that's a
| sign that the team may be cliquish and discriminate (even
| unconsciously) against anyone who might join the team but be
| an "outsider" from the perspective of $X.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Canadians aren't a racial group (and a Canadian may be
| white, black, native, Asian, Indian, whatever), so I don't
| think this particular example has anything to do with the
| rest of what you're talking about.
|
| They're not, but it has absolutely _everything_ to do with
| it. As you agreed (I think): People tend to refer their
| friends. Canadians often went to the same schools
| (Waterloo, McGill, UBC) and if you asked one about another
| one, quite possibly they 'd know someone who knew him or
| her.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| If I ended up on a team that was mostly canadian I would
| assume that the team was originally built in an office in
| canada.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| AFAIK it was not.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| Cisco has also had problems with caste discrimination in the
| recent past.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| I interned there one summer about 10 yrs ago and i already
| noticed back then that some departments were composed either
| entirely of indians or chinese employees.
| [deleted]
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > An uninitiated might be forgiven for not realizing that caste-
| based discrimination is rampant in India
|
| Don't mind all the people from India, outside of India, that will
| swear up and down that such thing doesn't exist
|
| I feel like there is a group of people taking advantage of
| western sensitivities against "being insensitive", and
| reappropriating it when convenient to deflect
|
| I'm glad Seattle passed a law against caste discrimination, just
| this year, since there are so many people from India in the tech
| industry there it was eventually able to be noticed, but that
| ends right at Seattle's city limits and more awareness and
| uniform regulation is needed
|
| We get a skewed perspective of India's identity politics because
| of a lack of representation from different groups in India
| usr8new wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| raincom wrote:
| Even though RTI queries to major IITs reveal that almost all
| faculty comes from un-reserved category, one needs more evidence
| (than this RTI data) to show that caste discrimination occurred.
| If there is an opening for two faculty positions in the IITM CS
| department esp in machine learning and AI, if 20 people are
| applied, two are selected, and two happened to be from un-
| reserved category. Does it prove caste-discrimination? Well, look
| at the profiles of twenty candidates and see their research
| record and also academic pedigree, see whether one can pick up
| two candidates from reserved category (that is, SC, ST and OBC).
| If one can show that, yes, indeed caste-discrimination is
| occurred: both candidates A (reserved category) and B (un-
| reserved category) are excellent both academically and research-
| wise, only B is chosen, yes, one can say that the committee
| should have picked A.
|
| Btw, I am not a product of IITs or any elite institution in the
| West/East. So, I am of opinion that best candidates should be
| picked up irrespective of one's caste. Sometimes, what is 'best'
| can be under dispute: for instance, a UCLA Ph.D with many
| publications in STOC/FOCS is picked up over a CMU Ph.D with many
| publications in tier-2 conferences. Again, what is tier-1, what
| is tier-2, etc are driven by the CS community, not by the so-
| called upper-castes from India. Same goes for pedigree: why Ph.D
| students from top-tier CS departments have better shot at getting
| faculty jobs than those from tier-2 institutions? Why CS people
| from American universities have better shot than those who got
| Ph.D from IIT Ropar/Tirupati? Again, it is community-driven, not
| by upper castes.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| It may not prove caste discrimination during the hiring process
| (I'm not sure that's even claimed by the author).
|
| It does however strongly suggest and maybe even prove the
| existence of caste discrimination at a societal level.
|
| Why are the "best candidates" so disproportionately upper
| castes? That's not a trick question. We know that the upper
| castes have suppressed lower castes. You may want to argue it
| doesn't exist today, but the data very clearly show even if
| that's true, the historical impact of that discrimination on
| the lives of people living today is high.
| 542458 wrote:
| Even if the delta was the result of a lack of candidates from
| disadvantaged castes, to me that suggests that the
| discrimination already happened earlier, weeding out the
| disadvantaged castes before they could even become qualified
| candidates.
| raincom wrote:
| Equality of Opportunity vs. Equality of Outcome is a common
| dispute in these discussions. It also depends on the context:
| Equality of Opportunity at the n th step totally depends on
| Equality of Outcome at the n-1 th step. Who is responsible
| for every step in this process? Whoever responsible for this,
| it should not cause undue burden for other people, as it is
| not a zero-sum game.
| andai wrote:
| What if differences in outcome are due to genetics? Do we
| then genetically engineer each group (this tech will soon be
| widespread) until all group outcomes are equalized?
|
| Serious question btw, I have heard someone applauding this
| (and seeing it as likely to occur as an emergent phenomenon
| due to free market competition).
|
| (As a humorous side-note: I heard someone say in an
| interview, "I hope that differences in intelligence are
| genetic, because then it means we can do something about it
| with technology. If not, we'd be doomed! When has a social
| policy ever produced the desired outcome?")
| cududa wrote:
| I mean the vast majority of studies indicate environmental
| factors like access to healthy food, a strong family,
| educational opportunities, and the literal environment are
| what drives difference in outcomes, not "genetic
| inferiority".
|
| Maybe someone from a lower (poorer) caste was raised on a
| diet of food grown in polluted/ tainted fields, grew up
| with poor air quality, and their water comes through lead
| pipes or other means that permanently hinder their
| potential.
|
| You're arguing pure eugenics and apparently find it funny.
| amriksohata wrote:
| The word caste is portuguese and does not exist in ancient indian
| scriptures. The closest words is varna or jati, which is not
| hierarchical, but purely occupational
|
| e.g Smith surname used to be goldsmiths or goldsmiths in britain.
|
| It was Herbert Risley during the Empire that classified each
| caste what he thought was best fit. This was then used as a tool
| to divide. Further with the Criminal tribes act, they made
| certain tribes criminals of which were certain caste backgrounds.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hope_Risley
| testfoobar wrote:
| How do hookup/dating/wedding apps work in India? What sort of
| granularity about caste is disclosed? What is expected? What
| precision of caste classification can be inferred from
| name/occupation/hobbies/location/appearance?
|
| Has someone built a NN classifier for caste? Could such a thing
| be built?
| mavelikara wrote:
| The popular site matrimony.com has sub-sites for each caste.
| See the listing at: https://www.communitymatrimony.com/homepage
| s/community/morel.... Many of these are based on caste.
| cududa wrote:
| Someone could claim to build something like that, but it's
| going to be designed with the biases of the creator.
|
| What is your goal of building something like this?
| mikrl wrote:
| How do foreigners / non-Hindus fit into the caste system?
|
| Are there caste equivalent attitudes towards Arabs, Euros, East
| Asians and so on? Or from a different angle, Muslims, Christians,
| irreligious, etc.
|
| Or does the framework not apply to those outside of the Hindu
| community?
| amriksohata wrote:
| Caste exists in christian and muslims demoninations in India
| too, just google muslim caste system (ashrafs at the top). it
| exists in pakistan and most of south asia. nothing really to do
| with hindus as per say.
| soligern wrote:
| It mostly doesn't. Historically there have been lots of mass
| conversions to other religions the first one being Buddhism in
| 600BC. Buddhism came about primarily as a response to Hindu
| orthodoxy and the caste system.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Muslims so, despite being not covered by India's caste
| system, are heavily discriminated against so. A situation not
| helped by decades of war with neighboring Pakistan.
| lucb1e wrote:
| What does "doesn't" mean? Would I, random Dutch person of
| christianity or no religion as you will, be treated equal to
| the highest of castes or to an average one for example?
| fuzztester wrote:
| >Buddhism came about primarily as a response to Hindu
| orthodoxy and the caste system.
|
| AFAIK, it did not. It came about from the Buddha's teachings,
| which were not about caste, but about suffering and its
| cessation via attaining nirvana (but I am not an expert on
| Buddhism; we only learned some about it in school).
|
| My guess is that, instead, later, many people may have
| converted to it, maybe some due to orthodoxy.
|
| I am talking about olden times. In recent times, neo-
| Buddhists definitely may have converted due to the caste
| system. I have read something about that earlier. See Dr.
| Ambedkar.
| soligern wrote:
| I can go into great detail on the back and forth between
| Hinduism and Buddhism, mostly surviving as dueling
| literature for centuries. I would prefer you just look it
| up though.
| fuzztester wrote:
| I would prefer you to understand that, in the absence of
| any objective measure, my sources are as good as yours,
| or, equivalently, yours are as bad as mine. But, based on
| what you wrote above, I doubt you can (understand).
|
| Your above point itself proves what I said: "dueling
| literature"! Heh.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Phew, what a post.
|
| I am at University of Toronto right now. I have only been here
| for some months but I have seen enough things to get a sense of
| the "politics" of the place. Also, I've been in many of the
| world's top universities (Caltech, Cornell, KAUST, Oxford,
| Stanford, UNAM, and some others with less pompous names); either
| studying, visiting, working, w/e. I've been doing this for close
| to 20 years now. I know _a lot_ about what academia is and how it
| works behind the scenes.
|
| With that said ... University of Toronto is, by far, the most
| amicable, egalitarian and open academic environment I've ever had
| the chance to be in. I have several Indian friends I've made
| during my stay, and not a single time has the issue of caste come
| up to relevance. Caste doesn't have anything to do, _at all_ ,
| with how this particular University chooses their faculty
| members.
|
| I know OP is not directly (or is he?) accusing UofT of taking
| part on this, but someone reading this could easily get that
| impression since 1) he's using his academic page to publish this
| "opinion" and 2) he states:
|
| >I had begun to mention references to my caste in
| Facebook/Twitter threads in the past two years. I was, however,
| not ready to publicly declare it until <I received tenure (in
| bold letters)> as it seemed too risky.
|
| So, to all other readers, I can assure you that caste had
| absolutely nothing to do with OPs election/non-election as a
| faculty member and I really wanted to set the record straight on
| what actually is a really nice place that treats all of its
| members with dignity and respect.
| cududa wrote:
| Based on your comment of "Indian friends" never bringing it up,
| do you know what caste they were born into? I mean maybe they
| never bring it up because it wasn't a problem for their station
| by birth?
| moralestapia wrote:
| You didn't get the point of my comment.
|
| "Caste" is meaningless here.
|
| Edit: @cududa's comment was something like "care to share
| what caste you were born into?" to which I replied what you
| see here and then he altered his comment substantially.
| Sneaky.
| cududa wrote:
| Sorry, I reread the comment and realized the author wasn't
| from India, so I updated my comment. Should have deleted
| the original and posted a new comment
| bombcar wrote:
| The updated post makes sense - you say caste has nothing to
| do with anything but you may not be in a position to judge.
|
| Especially if all your Indian friends are of the same
| caste, even if that's accidentally so.
| [deleted]
| meesles wrote:
| Pardon for reaching for personal traits, but it seems relevant
| in this case. You have a name of Hispanic origin. That gives me
| the impression that you are not the target audience of this
| article, or someone that would be likely to notice these very
| subtle biases that exist in a different culture.
|
| Can you think of any very subtle racism/bias that exists in
| your culture, which foreigners may not be able to pick up on
| without extreme command of the culture + language? I sure can.
|
| Not saying anything about UoT one way or another, just to take
| what people say seriously unless you have reason to doubt them.
| This isn't outrage on behalf of someone else, this is someone
| living the experience and telling their story.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Pardon for reaching for personal traits, but it seems
| relevant in this case. You have a name of Hispanic origin.
|
| Don't worry about that, I do well wherever I go.
|
| That aside, I never wrote anything to discredit OPs personal
| story.
|
| I just don't want readers to get the wrong impression from
| UofT.
| Philpax wrote:
| > So, to readers here, I can assure you that caste had
| absolutely nothing to do with OPs election/non-election as a
| faculty member
|
| That's a strong claim to make for someone who was not at all
| involved in the process.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Quite a shallow argument.
|
| For starters, the guy did get his tenure, which implies that
| caste did not have a negative impact in the decision.
| primax wrote:
| You're right, yours is a very shallow argument.
|
| Unless you can reveal anything about the inner workings of
| the tenure board, you are taking your impression of a broad
| organisation and applying it to a specific department, a
| management structure and a board for which you are
| ignorant.
|
| Please don't make sweeping generalisations and minimise the
| position of the author unless you have actual knowledge
| that might let you walk in his shoes.
| moralestapia wrote:
| If we are being pedantic, the burden of proof does not
| lie on me.
|
| I didn't publish AND promote a blog post where I feared
| not getting my current job because of some social dynamic
| that happens to exist 12,500km from where I am right now.
|
| You should ask OP to provide evidence of caste
| discrimination _in Canada, at this particular
| University_.
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| I am faculty at University of Toronto. As part of the process
| of considering someone for tenure here, the university solicits
| six appraisals from relevant experts at other institutions. The
| candidate will not know who the referees are. Generally, the
| appraisals are positive; a negative appraisal may severely
| affect someone's tenure case.
|
| I don't see the concern in this post as one of widespread caste
| discrimination at University of Toronto, but more that he's
| worried that a single prejudiced person might upset this,
| either an external referee, or someone internal involved in the
| decision-making process. In fact, that is exactly what he says.
|
| https://www.aapm.utoronto.ca/academic-administrative-procedu...
| moralestapia wrote:
| Everyone carries some cultural/personal baggage, if that
| affects the outcome of some otherwise fair procedure it's a
| sad story but it's not the procedure's fault.
|
| >the university solicits six appraisals from relevant experts
| at other institutions
|
| If you think this could be improved, well, show us how.
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| It seems like you may be reading some things into my
| comment that I didn't write? I made no claims about the
| procedure being fair or unfair--I'm just describing what it
| is.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Everyone carries some cultural/personal baggage, if that
| affects the outcome of some otherwise fair procedure it's
| a sad story but it's not the procedure's fault.
|
| This is a neutral statement, though.
| edgarvaldes wrote:
| I have followed this topic for some time out of curiosity.
| Every time I read an article I am left with the following
| impression: in America, caste issues are not explicitly
| mentioned to non-Indians, no matter how close their co-workers
| or friends are.
| kristianp wrote:
| > I have several Indian friends I've made during my stay here,
| and not a single time has the issue of caste has come up to be
| discussed.
|
| I'm guessing it's not discussed at great length and not
| discussed with non-Indian people at all unless you brimg it up.
| moralestapia wrote:
| If you're trying to hint at some "it happens all the time,
| it's just hidden from public view", it doesn't.
|
| Non-Indians literally don't care, and very (very) few Indians
| actually do (at least in Canada).
| araes wrote:
| The issue is not with the non-Indians, at least not
| directly. And with the Indians, it's that a few do, have
| moved to positions of responsibility, and can influence
| opinion enough to make life difficult (at least that is my
| external view).
|
| Google and Cisco's issues last year [1] [2] made a lot of
| folks aware that something was inside a lot of big tech
| because of all the H1B's, foreign hiring, outsourcing,
| ect... The behavior was being brought over from India and
| then existing in the corporate ladder. (avoiding the word
| "hide")
|
| It's also subtle. It's not, "you're dalit, act like a
| dalit." It's leaving you out of meetings, getting
| assignments that don't matter, not listening when you talk.
| It's a bit like a dance. They don't sneer at you, they
| don't act openly racist, they just don't dance with you.
| "why are you touching me?"
|
| [1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/googles-caste-
| bias-pr...
|
| [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-
| big-pro...
| rajup wrote:
| Curious what issues you are referring to with those 2
| companies (be specific please)? I'm not sure if you know
| but the Cisco case was thrown out recently because there
| was zero evidence, in fact the alleged perpetrator of the
| discrimination had hired another Dalit (so called "lower"
| caste) into the same position. I'm not making this up,
| it's all public information.
|
| As for Google, all I see is that they (rightfully)
| withdrew an invitation to a speaker who has made a bunch
| of troubling bigoted statements bashing Hindus as a
| whole. Again all this is public information you can look
| it up.
|
| Can you please cite just one genuinely valid case of
| caste discrimination in the USA that has stood up to even
| cursory scrutiny?
| newyankee wrote:
| The regional differences (Gujaratis vs Punjabis vs Telegus)
| are more pronounced than any caste based differences that I
| have come across.
| cududa wrote:
| > If you're trying to hint at some "it happens all the
| time, it's just hidden from public view", it doesn't.
|
| > Non-Indians literally don't care
|
| These are contradicting statements. We know non-Indians
| don't care ... because most of us don't even know about it,
| at least in any capacity to have a strong opinion. Maybe
| non-Indians "literally" not caring is why "it's just hidden
| from public view"
| moralestapia wrote:
| By "don't care", I didn't mean "they know but don't
| care"; I meant "non-Indians are completely oblivious of
| this".
|
| You cannot accuse of someone behaving in a discriminatory
| way if those very concepts of discrimination don't even
| exist in their mind. Come on.
| cududa wrote:
| You are entirely missing my point. What I'm saying is the
| concept of caste discrimination doesn't exist in the
| minds of the vast majority of Westerners. Which would
| enable the exact scenario you pose:
|
| > If you're trying to hint at some "it happens all the
| time, it's just hidden from public view", it doesn't.
|
| How would anyone outside the caste system be aware of it
| occurring? And why would people benefiting from their
| caste talk about it?
| kredd wrote:
| If you live in Canada, you most likely have known some
| Indians and the caste system. It's just we don't care?
| It's not a taboo topic of discussion either.
|
| Obviously a much different topic if the caste system
| prevails itself within Indian communities itself.
| Unfortunately I can't comment much on it, but I've heard
| that's not extremely uncommon among recent immigrants.
| moralestapia wrote:
| [flagged]
| klyrs wrote:
| As a non-Indian in Canada, I think it's pretty hard not to
| notice when one department is full of people named Jain,
| just like the department head. While I wouldn't expect to
| notice in less obvious cases, I care, and it sure seems
| like that department head cares.
| kristianp wrote:
| No, I just don't think your statement supports your
| argument, because its a topic that might not be discussed
| in front of you.
|
| I think the article is implying that the discrimination is
| by other Indians, non Indians don't care, thats assumed.
| wtmt wrote:
| The caste system in India is layered like onions. The author says
| he was born as OBC (Other Backward Classes), but that's not the
| lowest in the overall scheme. SC (Scheduled Castes) are
| considered lower in the hierarchy. ST (Scheduled Tribes) are
| considered even lower (there are variations across states and
| regions, so please take this with a pinch of salt). While the
| atrocities and punishments by "upper" caste people on "lower"
| caste people continue, even OBCs oppress SCs and STs quite badly,
| sometimes along with other "upper" caste people and sometimes by
| themselves. [1] It's a sad fact that the oppressed themselves
| don't understand it well enough to avoid oppressing others. If
| they could get together and lift each other up, things could be
| very different (or at least not as bad as they have been and
| are).
|
| [1]: Searching for news on atrocities and punishments on "dalits"
| would yield many results from as recent as a few days to long ago
| in the past.
| rollcat wrote:
| > While the atrocities and punishments by "upper" caste people
| on "lower" caste people continue, even OBCs oppress SCs and STs
| quite badly [...].
|
| This is the step 1. in ensuring any oppressive system continues
| to be supported by a majority / critical mass of people, who
| are themselves subject to oppression: make sure there's someone
| even lower than you, on whom you can unleash your frustration.
| munificent wrote:
| Lyndon B. Johnson:
|
| "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than
| the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his
| pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll
| empty his pockets for you."
| alephnerd wrote:
| The issue is OBC (Other Backwards Castes) was invented as a
| populist measure in 1992.
|
| After Independence, Affirmative Action/Reservation was
| created so Dalits and Nomadic Tribes who were traditionally
| outcastes in South Asian society could be integrated into
| society.
|
| Yet, in the 1980s-90s, Agrarian and Feudal Caste politicians
| like Mulayam Singh Yadav (Yadav), Lalu Prasad Yadav (Yadav),
| Chaudhary Charan Singh (Jatt), Bal Thackarey (Maratha), YRS
| Reddy (Reddy), etc began pushing to expand Affirmative Action
| to include those castes that are traditionally Feudal
| Lords/Zamindars and oppressed Dalits and Nomads.
|
| When this expansion began in 1992, every single non-Dalit
| caste saw that if they could lobby hard enough, they could
| also be give guarunteed Affirmative Action for college
| admissions, government jobs, welfare, etc.
|
| This is why even some Brahmin majority castes like Paharis
| were given Affimative Action by being treated as an OBC or
| Scheduled Tribe.
| newyankee wrote:
| Bal Thackeray is no way a Maratha, although he fought for
| Marathi and Hindu identity. Just shows how complex things
| are. Also the PM is OBC for what I know off.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Bal Thackery's family are Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu.
| Isn't that Maratha caste as well?
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| So it's like playing a fake victim card?
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| And yet 1 out of 180 CS professors are OBCs despite the
| population being over 40%.
|
| It's probably closer to the welfare queen trope. Yeah,
| there are a few people who cheat the system, like any
| other system in the world.
|
| Thaw existence of cheaters does not negate the very real
| problems and challenges faced by the actual "victims".
| varunpant wrote:
| [flagged]
| lozenge wrote:
| There's nothing biologically different about these
| people. The only difference is how they're treated by
| society.
| michaelchisari wrote:
| I'm not one who believes that perfect representational
| parity is possible or even desirable within all social
| groupings. That said, I see no reason to ignore the
| implication of a 1% vs 40% disparity within a highly
| advantageous profession.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And where would that end, right? /s
|
| Thanks for saying the quiet part out loud so.
| Philpax wrote:
| Yes, and?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Dude really said the quiet part out loud. Caste
| discrimination is just another kind of bigotry, like
| sexism and racism.
| kelnos wrote:
| Right, they absolutely should fight for equal
| representation.
|
| The numbers aren't always going to be exactly equal to
| representation, sure. But when you have a group that
| comprises 40% of society only represented by a half
| percent in prestigious university faculty positions, you
| need to step back and figure out what's going on there.
| These people are not genetically different or of lower
| intelligence; they've literally been not allowed to hold
| these positions even if they wanted them and could be
| qualified for them.
|
| Frankly, your point of view is advocating for bigotry and
| oppression, and I suggest you re-evaluate why that is so.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| 1/180 is very very very different than 4/10. That's not
| just some statistical anomaly.
| naravara wrote:
| There was functionally no public education system
| available to most Indians until a decent bit after
| Independence, and even now most rural communities have
| atrocious schooling standards with chronically absentee
| teachers.
|
| India has been an extremely poor country for a long time.
| It's not a situation like the US where there were plenty
| of opportunities available and some segment of society is
| gated out of them. Almost all Indians save for a narrow
| clade of people who worked directly under the imperial
| administration of the British Empire had access to
| anything, and even those were the cream of the crop from
| the pre-British days who could translate their prior
| privileges to getting ahead of their peers in the rat
| race.
|
| It's basically tautological to say OBCs are
| underrepresented in the upper echelons of society. That's
| literally how the category is defined. The system was set
| up from colonialism on down to leave very few positions
| with contemporary standards of dignity for "natives" to
| occupy.
| [deleted]
| alephnerd wrote:
| Not exactly.
|
| There is a very real economic divide between rural India
| and urban India.
|
| Even if you were from a feudal landlord family, 30 years
| ago you might have not even had running water or
| electricity. But at least you had a solid house, instead
| of living in a mud hut (if you were lucky) like most
| Dalits and Nomads in rural India back then.
|
| If someone from an elite rural family came to the city,
| their privilige automatically becomes moot because in a
| purely capitalist society Money begets Privilige.
|
| In the 1990s-to-present, there was a massive migration
| from rural India to cities, and a number of formerly
| priviliged Men (it's men who become migrant workers) were
| at the bottom rung of the urban social ladder. And they
| were/are PISSED. So in retaliation, they began organizing
| their own Castes to fight for political power and quotas.
|
| Also, in India, Affirmative Action is a Quota System,
| unlike the US where Quotas are unconstitutional. This
| means you are playing a Zero Sum game where one family's
| Affirmative Action might doom your family to poverty.
|
| This makes the situation highly volatile.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Isn't it alawys the same grouo, young men with deep
| seated complexes and insecurities and unfulfilled
| entitlement that cause these sorts of problems?
| daseiner1 wrote:
| perhaps it wasn't intended but your comment reads as
| dismissive of the men in question.
| cududa wrote:
| What "sort of problems" do you mean, exactly?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Schhol shootings in the US, Neo-Nazis in East Germany,
| islamist terrorists. They all have in common of being,
| over simplifying, frustrated, in secure young men.
|
| They are easily manipulated by populists and ideologists,
| prone to use violence and prone to be sexist, racist etc.
| I guess that is becaise the way they see themselves, or
| what they think society expects them to be, is something
| they do not get. Hence the incredible amount of
| frustration. Frustration that breeds, especially when
| combined with a sense of entitlement and inhrained
| superiority, radicals like nothing else. Bonus points if
| thes can see themselves as the victims, conspiracy
| theories go a long way in building some groups conspiring
| against them.
| cududa wrote:
| So, I think I agree with part of what you're saying. But
| I can't exactly grasp your logic.
|
| I'd like to understand. Let's use white male young men
| school shooters in the US.
|
| OP > So in retaliation, they began organizing their own
| Castes to fight for political power and quotas.
|
| You > the way they see themselves, or what they think
| society expects them to be, is something they do not get.
| Hence the incredible amount of frustration
|
| What I'm interpreting your comments as, is that people
| should just "stay in their lane"/ caste/ station at birth
| and not cause trouble/ accept their rung of society
| yttribium wrote:
| Identical phenomenon exists in US where groups with well
| above average incomes are considered officially
| "disadvantaged groups" for purposes of eg SBA loans.
| alephnerd wrote:
| [flagged]
| yttribium wrote:
| The United States absolutely does have multiple quota
| systems in different domains.
| https://selectgcr.com/blog/minority-owned-businesses-how-
| to-...
| zekrioca wrote:
| "When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed
| is to become the oppressor."
| silentsea90 wrote:
| Just as India is large and complex, so is everyone's experience.
| 59.5% of IIT seats are reserved for backward castes - that is
| HUGE in a nation full of students competing for the 40% seats
| available for the general category. The entrance exam score gap
| between reserved and general is massive (numbers are public) and
| it shows in their relative academic performance. One could make
| an argument that the Indian Government should step in earlier
| (early - middle school up to high school) by funding better
| education to reduce the academic gap between students from
| backward castes and the rest. The author here if anything points
| to the effect of poverty/poor education in one's early years as
| opposed to there being a systematic campaign to exclude backward
| castes in academia esp in the west where hardly anybody
| understands the caste system. I can't speak much to academia in
| India though.
| raincom wrote:
| No one wants to talk about the giant elephant in the room:
| reservation system vs. competence. Go to any govt office: the
| chief of some division is incompetent, some low-level clerk
| does the heavy lifting. Of course, this low-level clerk happens
| to be from non-reserved category, as both recruitment and
| promotions in the government are driven by reservations.
|
| Why people (both reserved and non-reserved) send their kids to
| private schools, techno-schools, residential-schools, IIT-
| schools even in small towns, small villages these days? The
| whole education system from primary to all the way to
| universities is failing: incompetent teachers abound. There was
| a time Indian politicians used to send their kids to colleges
| in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Culcutta. Now, these politicians
| send their kids abroad right after 12th grade, as they are not
| impacted. The malaise in the Indian education system is so
| deep: getting a job in the govt is a way to 'correct historical
| wrongs'; if so, why these teachers (beneficiaries of this
| correction) don't send their kids to these govt schools? Ask,
| why these people look for the best doctors for their care?
|
| Maybe, it is time to destroy IITs as well by forcing the
| reservation system on the faculty recruitment (equality of
| outcomes). That way, we can achieve the common denominator from
| primary to IITs. People with means (importantly politicians and
| intellectuals who defend reservations) can send their kids
| abroad for undergrad B.A/B.S, whereas 99% people are stuck with
| systematic malaise in the whole education system.
| yedava wrote:
| > Go to any govt office: the chief of some division is
| incompetent, some low-level clerk does the heavy lifting.
|
| For the majority of the time since 1947, it was the non-
| reserved "competent" class of people who were in charge of
| government institutions. Even today, I can easily walk into a
| government office and find some "competent" class officer
| whose only interest is in milking as much money as he can out
| of the citizenry. So what gives?
| raincom wrote:
| Corruption is NOT confined to one class, one caste, one set
| (random vs. non-random), one alumni association, one group
| (competent vs. incompetent). This issue is orthogonal to
| competence: one can be corrupt irrespective of competence.
|
| People recruited in state services (just like UPSC) are
| promoted to IAS/IPS. When these promoted IAS/IPS officers
| want postings as district magistrates (collectors) or
| superintendents of police for districts, the chief
| secretary or the DGP want bribes; otherwise, they are
| posted in loop-line (like special project director for land
| acquisition or railways SP). Add this to sycophancy in
| India: this sycophancy is there since Islam Rule, then
| continued into British Raj, now post-Independence India.
| Every subordinate officer, while treating his/her
| subordinates as trash, salutes his/her superior. Sycophancy
| and corruption are deeply related, and collusion between
| bureaucracy and politicians adds flavor to this mix.
| yedava wrote:
| My point is why the enormous amount of energy directed at
| reservations when there are mountains of evidence that
| corruption is several orders of magnitude more
| destructive? It's an elephant vs an ant in the room
| thing. You ignore the elephant and think the ant is
| causing systemic malaise. Why is that?
|
| Is it because Hindu dharma dictates that certain classes
| are meant to do certain jobs? Like a person availing
| reservation is born stupid - because of bad karma from a
| past life - and so can never learn how to do
| administrative work competently?
| raincom wrote:
| Both incompetence _and_ corruption need to be fixed.
| Incompetence from the rationality perspective [1],
| corruption from the systems perspective. Just because
| some book says "people from X varna should do certain
| job", who is enforcing it? Now you can say that Brahmins
| haven't taught Vedas to non-brahmins. Come on, who wants
| to recite Vedas today? History showed us that many Sudra
| kings ruled; what does it show? That one's favorite text
| is not binding; or, no one is enforcing what the text
| says; or, human actions are instantiations of beliefs,
| which are textual; etc.
|
| [1] https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2015/sep/11
| /Indian...
| isanjay wrote:
| I agree with you. Thank you for raising the topic.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| IITs? I have been hearing talks of forcing it on ISRO and
| private companies.
| WesternWind wrote:
| It's always interesting when folks tell me that some form of
| discrimination based on categorical prejudice isn't that bad, or
| that they haven't seen it themselves.
|
| Personally I think the amount of discrimination should be zero,
| and that any level of categorical discrimination any person
| experiences is unacceptable. And that's not even getting into the
| systemic effects from past discrimination on family wealth.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > Personally I think the amount of discrimination should be
| zero
|
| > any level of categorical discrimination any person
| experiences is unacceptable.
|
| These two statements contradict.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| The Prime Minister of India is an OBC and he got there through
| lifelong membership in the RSS a supposedly brahminical org. His
| competence as a politician and leader is unquestioned.
|
| The President of India is a Tribal, which can roughly equate to
| the status of indigenous people the world over. Her speeches are
| legendary, especially the one where she presented the inequities
| of the Indian judicial system to the judges of the supreme court.
|
| Meanwhile the darling of the left world over is the heir apparent
| of the opposition party, Rahul Gandhi, who is half brahmin-half
| Italian Catholic, but has no chance at the premiership.
|
| What does one make of this?
| mavelikara wrote:
| > What does one make of this?
|
| From what you have written, honestly, your political biases.
| varunpant wrote:
| self inflicted wound that became a blog post. Stop playing Victim
| card.
|
| Modi PM of India is an OBC, so is the CM of UP.
| mrg3_2013 wrote:
| yeah, I felt the same
| alephnerd wrote:
| Ajay Bisht/Yogi Adityanath is Thakur/Pahari Rajput
| jktj wrote:
| My sister who is pursuing PhD is from OBC. She is doing from one
| of the best colleges on earth. Really proud of her!
| alephnerd wrote:
| Congrats to her!
| primitivesuave wrote:
| I was born in India and moved to the United States when I was
| very young. One of the other Indian-American kids asked me what
| my caste is after hearing my unfamiliar last name. At the time, I
| hadn't even heard of caste, and didn't realized what kind of
| parenting environment creates a 7 year old (who doesn't even live
| in India or speak the language) to question the caste of another
| Indian in the first place.
|
| After school, when I asked my mother about my caste, she refused
| to tell me anything about it. "We left that silly system behind
| in India, and we're not bringing it here."
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| For what it's worth, I think your mother's attitude is shared
| by the vast majority of Indian-Americans, and even first-
| generation Indian immigrants like me.
|
| In India, there are egregious things reminding you about it,
| i.e. _literally_ every government form ever -- but in the US it
| 's reasonably easy to ignore and forget about completely unless
| you go out initiating conversations about it, or are unlucky
| enough to run into someone like your friend.
|
| I have had a ton of both Indian-American and Indian immigrant
| friends in the US, and have had zero conversations with any of
| them that involved discussing caste.
| nojvek wrote:
| As an American Indian I found the whole asking of race in
| government forms to be a bit crazy.
|
| I usually end up putting "N/A" or equivalent.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| If it's a drop-down, then I refuse to self-identify.
|
| If it's a blank to fill in, then I write "Irish/Scottish".
|
| It's never a blank.
| flangola7 wrote:
| It's on government forms?
| cryptonector wrote:
| That's how it goes. It was thus -and probably still is?- in
| Europe. It's thus in the U.S. It's thus everywhere that
| governments care about the racial/ethnic/religious make-up
| of their populations. For me there's always a fear of
| another Holocaust like that of the Tutsis in Rwanda or the
| Jews in Europe.
| LordShredda wrote:
| Would it be possible for the government to 'phase out' last names
| and instead rely on other forms of identification? Instead of
| putting in your name in an application form, you just list an id
| number and your address. Then when you show up, you only mention
| your first and middle name.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I would guess there are a ton of ways to tell what caste
| someone is. Where they are from, accent, one article I remember
| reading mentioned a person was Buddhist not Hindu and keeping
| that secret to avoid caste discrimination
| https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...
| teachrdan wrote:
| I just posted this on a probably-dead thread about caste
| discrimination, but the short of it is the folks who wish to
| discriminate by caste have a variety of ways to determine what
| your caste is. From the Vice article below:
|
| Indians will not ask outright what caste you are, as it's seen
| as overly discriminatory, but they use more subtle methods to
| identify your place in the caste structure.
|
| "Sometimes they ask, 'Are you vegetarian?' If you say yes, they
| ask are you vegetarian by birth or by choice, before getting
| into which village you come from, because sometimes the village
| gives up your caste," Sam said.
|
| Another method described to VICE News is the pat on the back to
| see if the person is wearing a Juneau, a sacred white thread
| typically worn by the upper castes in India.
|
| Higher-caste Indians will also search social media accounts to
| ascertain a job candidate's religious views or diet.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azjp5/silicon-valley-has-a-...
| arxenix wrote:
| Are you indian / have you actually observed this? I'm Indian-
| American and in my experience this has been entirely non-
| existent so this article kinda baffles me. I've been asked
| whether I'm vegetarian before, but always in the context of
| grabbing food (respecting dietary preferences), and certainly
| haven't noticed any discrimination after saying that I'm not.
| I worked in SF for a year and currently in Seattle. Have
| several Indian friends/colleagues aswell and not once have I
| ever heard caste brought up
| shitlord wrote:
| I was born in the US, and my parents immigrated from India.
| I encountered this once at a tech company in Seattle. My
| team's previous manager left the org, so we were assigned a
| new one. On our very first 1:1 meeting, he wasn't
| interested in discussing projects, but he kept asking all
| of these bizarre personal questions. At first, I didn't
| understand, but it became clear later on.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| This sounds like someone who has no idea about India.
|
| Being vegetarian tells you nothing about somoene's caste at
| all, either by choice or birth. You might make a wild guess
| but it has very less chance of being correct. Vegetarianism
| permeates throughout society in both upper and lower classes.
|
| Asking someone's village name to know anything is laughable.
| There are about a million villages in India, and most
| villages have mixed caste populations, so this is just so
| laughably absurd. Even if you meet someone in a local city,
| you will not get to know their caste by their village name,
| let alone meeting someone in a big Indian city or the US.
| Asking someone's village gives you same amount of information
| as doing Math.random(1e6).
|
| > see if the person is wearing a Juneau
|
| This is something that has almost stopped and at this point
| almost nobody wears it since it involves a lot of extra
| effort. It would be very very long ago when the % of peopling
| wearing it was high enough.
|
| > Higher-caste Indians will also search social media accounts
| to ascertain a job candidate's religious views or diet.
|
| This again sounds like a handway statement that is somehow
| intended to show how one can easily find someone else's
| caste.
| alehlopeh wrote:
| What could vegetarian by birth possibly mean
| curtisblaine wrote:
| I guess born in a vegetarian family, educated as a
| vegetarian.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Can a born vegetarian be identified by measuring, I don't
| know, the diameter of nostrils or distance between nose
| tip and chin? And if so, do born vegans differ from those
| measurwmemts? And do they get bonus points?
|
| Sarcasm aside, this whole caste system is easily a
| contentender for the worst form discrimination and, yes,
| racism is existence today.
| isanjay wrote:
| Most Brahmins (a caste) are vegetarian.
| [deleted]
| isanjay wrote:
| > Indians will not ask outright what caste you are.
|
| My team lead asked me in a Teams call, lol. At that point, he
| doesn't even know what I look like (because of covid, and we
| don't do video calls).
|
| (I am not OBC though)
|
| > Higher-caste Indians will also search social media accounts
| to ascertain a job candidate's religious views or diet.
|
| I don't believe this at all. Feels like overexaggerating.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| This is absolutely a thing and I have witnessed it. And I'm
| not even Indian.
| Bjartr wrote:
| > I don't believe this at all. Feels like overexaggerating.
|
| Never underestimate how petty people can be. We've seen
| plenty of times in the past decade where people doing
| hiring will examine social media of candidates (on the
| extreme end even demand handing over of your phone phone
| during an interview). So it's hardly a stretch to think
| people with such views could overlap with people who harbor
| caste prejudice.
| lisper wrote:
| > (I am not OBC though)
|
| Life imitates art.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taSH_nZkRdw
| curtisblaine wrote:
| What happens if you are from a lower caste but wear the white
| thread to misdirect? Or you lie about being / not being
| vegetarian by choice / at birth?
| serialNumber wrote:
| If someone really wanted to find out, they would be able
| to.
|
| You could misdirect someone just passively asking, however
| as soon as the questions got more pointed, you'd have a
| hard time keeping up the charade.
|
| Something as simple as the clothes you wear or the food you
| ate or the mannerisms you had could "give you up".
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| What happens if you lie on your resume? what if you
| practice speaking with a more prestigious accent than you
| grew up with? What if you carefully study your friends who
| went to private schools and summered in the Hamptons to
| learn how to imitate their ineffable shibboleth mannerisms?
|
| The answer is yes, you can do these things, and it will
| confer exactly the benefits you imagine. And the
| consequences for getting "caught" aren't usually serious,
| either. But sometimes they are.
| lozenge wrote:
| > What if you practice speaking with a more prestigious
| accent than you grew up with? What if you carefully study
| your friends who went to private schools and summered in
| the Hamptons to learn how to imitate their ineffable
| shibboleth mannerisms?
|
| > The answer is yes, you can do these things
|
| I mean, I personally can't. (From a UK perspective.)
| First I would need access to these people and spend a lot
| of time with them. That could be difficult in itself if
| they are discriminatory. Then I would need another
| separate social group to practice my new personality
| with. Plus I'm just not a good actor. So it's not
| surprising that people's movement in social class is
| pretty limited. This isn't even getting into how people
| of your previous class will treat you if they think
| you've deserted them.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > What happens if you lie on your resume?
|
| Lying about credentials or experience is a bit different
| from wearing a piece of clothing you arguably find pretty
| or obviously inconsequential things like saying you eat
| meat or not
| isanjay wrote:
| I had a friend in college who was an OBC. But he pretended
| to be General caste. By the end of final year, most people
| knew about it, but no one confronted him.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I'd imagine you can get some amount of information from a first
| name as well.
| unmole wrote:
| Why would you imagine that?
| madcaptenor wrote:
| There's definitely some correlation between name and
| socioeconomic status in a lot of cultures. I'm surprised to
| hear that's not so in India.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| It definitely is. Brahmin names might be more Sanskritic,
| for example.
| isanjay wrote:
| No just religion.
| serialNumber wrote:
| Usually not - maybe if the name is super traditional, however
| first names are pretty much equal across castes.
| [deleted]
| b215826 wrote:
| .
| pessimizer wrote:
| You might be right (I have no idea), but saying that it is only
| true _80%+_ of the time doesn 't make the word "typically"
| become a "hilariously wrong" claim.
| hyperpape wrote:
| > looking at IITM's CS faculty listing [2], I see at least 20+
| faculty without caste-based surnames. How exactly did the
| author find their castes?
|
| If I count correctly, there are 47 faculty members there. So
| that leaves potentially 20+ faculty members with caste based
| surnames. How many can you identify? Are any of them lower
| castes?
|
| If caste isn't an issue, why is the only response "well, of
| course you can't tell caste, so there can't be discrimination",
| not "actually, they are plenty of lower caste people in faculty
| positions, and they're totally open about it, because it's not
| a big deal?"
| aildours wrote:
| Complete bs.
|
| >Caste-based surnames are extremely uncommon in South India
| (20% of India's population), and it's not even a recent thing.
|
| No, caste-based surnames are uncommon among _some_ upper caste
| communities. A significant chunk (Gowdas, Reddys, Nairs etc.)
| have surnames strongly linked to castes. And what you might
| refer to being a "recent thing" is having a western style
| surname at all.
|
| >FWIW, as someone who has spent considerable time in Indian
| academia, this article reeks of BS. No one cares about your
| caste in Indian academia. The languages you speak, the part of
| India you come from, etc., cause a bigger divide than caste.
|
| I've also spent time in Indian academia (and left it, for
| unrelated reasons) and can say that caste matters a lot, in a
| very insidious way. Respectfully, if you can't tell that
| Bulsara is a Gujarati surname (which means it could be a Hindu,
| Parsi or a Muslim surname, so may not even be linked to a caste
| as is the case with Freddie Mercury), then you may not know
| enough to comment on caste.
|
| >How exactly did the author find their castes?
|
| Perhaps try reading the article? He has even linked the RTI
| responses if you doubt him so much.
| b215826 wrote:
| .
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Did you read the RTI response? There's no reservation for
| upper castes, yet the vast majority of faculty in all of
| the RTI response are upper caste
| b215826 wrote:
| .
| aildours wrote:
| > I can assure you that the vast majority of upper-caste
| people here don't use a caste-based surname anymore.
|
| Oh, I don't need assuring for this, this was the point I
| was making! Basically, some south Indian upper castes use
| their father's first name as their surname. And this in
| itself is a strong signifier that the person is from the
| upper caste!
|
| And yes, some surnames like Bulsara are linked to a place,
| some are neutral like Kumar, or some are rare enough to not
| signify caste unless you really know. So what? Even now, a
| large chunk of the Indian population uses caste-linked
| surnames, and it is one way they get discriminated. This is
| the point he makes when he says "Typically, one's surname
| (last name) is a giveaway".
|
| > RTI responses will only tell you the number of candidates
| who were hired through caste-based reservation.
|
| No, the RTI responses that he has linked is for the
| "breakdown of faculty members in the respective category of
| reservation..." (see the linked pdf for IITD, for example),
| not if they were hired through caste-based reservation. The
| category of reservation being information that every Indian
| citizen is asked to provide in government forms.
| b215826 wrote:
| .
| aildours wrote:
| This will be my last comment in this chain since this is
| going nowhere. Patronymics and matronymics are used by
| some south Indians, who are at the most 20% of the
| population. The simple point made in the OP is
| essentially that caste-based surnames are typical in
| India, and which you have not refuted.
|
| No, you don't have to fill your caste but you are
| typically expected to tick one of the SC/ST/OBC/General
| boxes (these being the categories of reservation), and
| then provide a proof if required. The sentence you quote
| refers to this, and not on how they were hired, which is
| what you are saying. RTI queries can absolutely answer
| things of this kind, please just read the question the OP
| asks in the linked pdfs.
| [deleted]
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I mean, thanks. This is poster child for the fact that not only
| is caste discrimination real, but it is full of entrenched
| people engaging in denial and propaganda to the level of
| Confederate "black people _benefit_ from being slaves ". Like,
| if anyone needed evidence to support OPs claim, your post is
| it.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Depends on the region too. Part of my family is from a
| landowning/feudal caste (Chaudhary/Jatt and Pahari) that is
| traditionally Upper Caste but successfully lobbied to become
| counted as OBC/Lower Caste in order to avail affirmative action
| benefits.
|
| The Jatts side got reservation thanks to Congress [0] and the
| Pahari side got reservation thanks to the BJP [1]
|
| Edit: Lmfao this professor (Kuldeep Meel) is Jatt from
| Hisar/Jhunjunu side. Jatt is not lower caste. Ask my extremely
| casteist Jatt grandfather who uses Dalit caste names like Chamar,
| Gujjar, Kanjar, or Balmik as slurs. We became OBC because we
| burned shit down. The people who actually deserve some form of
| Affirmative Action didn't get any.
|
| [0] - https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/haryana-
| kh...
|
| [1] - https://theprint.in/opinion/security-code/reservations-
| for-k...
| crop_rotation wrote:
| If he is so well off, I wonder if he would have even qualified
| for OBC considering the creamy layer income limits. I wonder if
| he got a fake income certificate to get himself below the
| limits to avail OBC reservations.
| newyankee wrote:
| The same thing is happening with my caste Maratha in MH.
| Although in their defense they are a very large group.
| grad_ml wrote:
| I know him personally. His family is pretty affluent, his uncle
| is/was a MLA from the state of Rajasthan. So by no mean he is
| just another guy. This guy is so privileged that something
| happened to his exam admit card then he went to Collector's
| office and yelled at him (on his own account). Any Indian here
| would know, what it entails/means. Kuldeep is a peacock who
| always needs attention. Not doubt, he is intelligent. I wonder
| if got in IIT Bombay on the OBC quota. Is hesalty because he
| did not get position at IIT Bombay. I heard he is/was coming to
| UT Austin.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pexabit wrote:
| pretty sure he would have posted his jee score if he got in
| without quota
| alephnerd wrote:
| To be fair, getting in even with the Quota is extremely
| difficult. If difficulty without the quota is a 10,
| difficulty with the quota is more like a 9.7.
|
| If you were Forward Caste and rejected from CSE@IITB only
| because of a Caste Quota, you statistically would have
| ended up at CSE@IITK or EE@IITD, which has no meaningful
| difference.
|
| Belittling people who attended top programs on caste quotas
| is lame and mean.
| [deleted]
| grad_ml wrote:
| Category : Cutoff Score for IIT ( out of 100)
|
| Common Rank List :90.7788642 (Brahmins, upper castes
| which Ycombinator hates)
|
| Gen-EWS:75.6229025
|
| OBC-NCL:73.6114227 : Mr Kuldeep meel (based on his caste)
|
| SC:51.9776027
|
| ST:37.2348772
|
| PwD:0.0013527
|
| I would say 73 is minuscule in comparison of 90. Kuldeep
| is a typical Kota kid, he is not someone coming out from
| rural India. I wish him best. Sad to see he stopped so
| low for clicks.
|
| source: https://www.shiksha.com/engineering/jee-main-
| exam-cutoff
| usr8new wrote:
| Its amazing how this thread has so many comments when the
| professor belongs to Jatt OBC subcaste, a land owning
| caste & one of the most affluent subcastes.
|
| Any Indian would have stopped reading after that. How are
| Jatts discriminated against? If anything they are
| favoured. But the whole thread is filled with white
| progressives who know nothing about caste
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Discrimination goes against article one of my country's
| Constitution. I don't need to know anything about caste
| just as I don't need to know that in some countries you
| can marry an 11 year old.
| grad_ml wrote:
| The thread is just a headsup to those, who are not well
| informed on the issues and the word caste triggers them.
| The effort is to provide factual data along with the
| circumstances so that people can weight and relate all
| kind of arguments with their own life experiences. Also,
| help our white bois/gals understand what they talking
| about lol.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Eh Sri Ganganagar Meel biradari de siga? Those guys are an
| elite Feudal Family (they're related to the Jakkhars in
| neighboring Fazilka Punjab, who have been MPs and MLAs for
| that area since the 1970s).
| b215826 wrote:
| .
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's happened almost everywhere in India.
|
| The only states I know that have been immune to this shit are
| Kerala and Himachal Pradesh because the leadership in both
| states forced land reform very early in their existence,
| which meant all rural people were essentially equal
| economically.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| User23 wrote:
| What's the hypothesized reason why American universities are
| evidently discriminating against OBC persons? To my knowledge
| most Americans know little to nothing about caste, few of us can
| reliably tell caste from name, and even if we could we wouldn't
| care.
| pexabit wrote:
| there is absolutely no evidence universities are discriminating
| against OBCs and the guy who wrote this post does not present
| any.
| tptacek wrote:
| The subtext is that other people of Indian descent are doing
| the discrimination. So far as I know, nobody asserts that non-
| Indians are aware of caste, or could possibly identify caste
| from names.
| usr8new wrote:
| People here don't realise OBCs are land owning castes & highly
| affluential & rich. The professor is a Jatt, probably one of
| the most powerful subcastes in India. OBCs are responsible for
| 80% of caste based atrocities themselves.
|
| The professor has written a bunch of BS hoping that white
| progressives will eat it up. Any Indian would have stopped
| reading after finding out the professor is not even SC/ST but
| OBC.
| banshiram123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| PixelForg wrote:
| No, we don't need caste-based reservations in the private
| sector. (And I'm saying this as someone that's ST). That would
| further increase the divide between castes, and I've never
| heard of anyone being denied a job in private sector based on
| their caste. It's definitely not the norm.
|
| Reservation should be meant to uplift 1-2 generations, I don't
| see the point in giving reservation beyond that. I've seen so
| many rich people from lower castes getting into institutions
| easily and also availing scholarships by faking their parents
| yearly income. The whole system is rigged to be honest.
| h4ch1 wrote:
| Reservation is necessary for 2-3 generations to uplift,
| anything further than that is just the reverse of casteism.
|
| Tell that to my OBC friends who paid 5% of our school fees
| while they were dropped in Audis.
| neilk wrote:
| Yeah, and you can always tell someone's full financial
| position from little details like that. (eyeroll)
|
| So someone who got a benefit from the state that addresses a
| serious, well-proven injustice, and wasn't crawling on their
| knees and begging for it. Sounds like the system is working.
|
| Even if your anecdote is real, and their use of an Audi
| indicated they were well able to pay full school fees, so
| what? We give such benefits to the parents because we want to
| target the child. Sometimes the parents might make different
| financial choices, obtain a car that's more than they need.
| (And you don't know how they got it, whether it's used, or
| whether they feel they need it to "keep up appearances" with
| others so peers, like you, don't judge them by their car.)
|
| In any case that's why the benefit is delivered as reduced
| school fees. TLDR the children aren't the ones who bought the
| Audi.
| h4ch1 wrote:
| "little details": In a country where an Audi is a huge
| luxury, yeah you can tell enough.
|
| That also means they have the resources to compete fairly
| with their peers and choose not to by invoking their OBC
| class, which in all practicality has NO affect on their
| life.
|
| The point was a generation before had reaped the benefits
| of reservation and anything further was exploitation. That
| family was not treated, nor lived as an OBC. The system
| worked, its stoppage is overdue by at least 20 years.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Elite capture is a real phenomenon and I think one that
| affirmative action programs worldwide struggle to handle.
| It's worth acknowledging even if we ultimately decide the
| benefits outweigh the costs.
|
| https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1867-elite-capture
| raincom wrote:
| Read this: 'Indian View from Outside: Quotas, Rational &
| Moral?' :
| https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2015/sep/11/Indian...
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Caste based reservations in the private sector will be the end
| of any chance of India becoming a more prosperous nation. In
| public sector, the reservations are not limited to getting a
| job, but the promotions as well. In some public sectors, the
| promotion schedule gets accelerated basis caste. Sure, a lot
| needs to be done for a more equal society where everyone has
| the same opportunities, but private sector reservation is not
| it.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yes, because history showed us that equal societies, compared
| to centemporary pears, fare muchuch worse than those
| discriminating. Or rather not.
| kaycey2022 wrote:
| Equality is the prerogative of the government. Why do you
| want equal share in someone's private property? This is
| what reservations in the private sector mean. Someone takes
| all the risk, and works their ass off to establish a
| business and you come in with demands of equality in what
| someone else has made.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I want discrmination, of any shape, form and kond and for
| all reasons, to go away in the private sector as well.
| Your, and my, personal freedom stop where someone elses
| begins. And that explicitly includes caste based
| discrimination, among all other forms.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| Affirmative action does not eliminate discrimination, it
| _enforces_ discrimination up to an arbitrarily defined
| standard.
|
| Suppose you're applying to a company that's posted 10
| openings and has already filled 7 of them, and that you
| belong to category A, and there's three more candidates
| who belong to category B. Suppose further that it can be
| objectively determined that you're a better fit for any
| of the openings than any of the other candidates, but the
| company has already filled its category A quota. You will
| be rejected _because_ of your category, and the less
| capable candidates will be accepted also because of their
| category.
|
| Note that it doesn't matter how the categories are
| defined in my example. Maybe you belong to a privileged
| (in the social justice sense) class, but it's equally
| possible that you belong to a disadvantaged class and the
| inept candidates belong to a privileged class.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| _Equal_ societies indeed make better use of human capital
| than societies that discriminate and waste otherwise
| valuable skills. But equality is not the same thing as
| equity.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| I am not getting your point, if you were making any.
| Regardless of what history shows, almost everyone will
| agree that we must have equal opportunities for all people,
| for a humane society.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Including the civil sector? Enforced by law, if
| discrination isn't going away by itself? Yes, I am all
| for that!
| isanjay wrote:
| > I was, however, not ready to publicly declare it until I
| received tenure as it seemed too risky
|
| Risk of what ? Seems a bit exaggerating.
|
| > There are at most five tenure-track faculty who belong to OBC
| category among all the faculty members in North America's "top"
| 50 CS departments
|
| > What evidence do I have to support my claim?
|
| And then continues to show castes of faculty at IIT.
|
| Am I missing something here ?
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Am I missing something here ?
|
| Yes, I think so. The evidence he's showing demonstrates the
| claim he made (within a reasonable level of accuracy given the
| data). The point is that the number of OBC professors is much
| smaller than you'd expect, ceteris paribus, and one likely
| explanation is caste discrimination in top-rated North American
| CS departments.
| xmonkee wrote:
| >Risk of what ? Seems a bit exaggerating.
|
| There is a whole paragraph answering this question:
|
| ``` An uninitiated might be forgiven for not realizing that
| caste-based discrimination is rampant in India (yes, even among
| faculty members at IITs), and perhaps worse among Non-Resident
| Indians (NRIs). Therefore, there was always fear of what would
| a potential letter writer or someone on tenure evaluation
| committee think of me if they knew I belonged to OBC. It was
| the same fear that stopped me from mentioning anything about my
| caste in any of DEI statements that I prepared for the job
| search or tenure: I had to pretend not to know what it feels to
| be under-represented. ```
|
| >> There are at most five tenure-track faculty who belong to
| OBC category among all the faculty members in North America's
| "top" 50 CS departments
|
| The full quote is:
|
| >I think I can summarize the lack of representation with the
| help of a claim that I believe is true: There are at most five
| tenure-track faculty who belong to OBC category among all the
| faculty members in North America's "top" 50 CS departments. Any
| reasonable process to pick 50 CS departments should suffice. I
| will, of course, be overjoyed to be corrected.
|
| So, this is a claim they believe is true and would be happy to
| be corrected. Please go ahead and correct them if you disagree.
|
| >And then continues to show castes of faculty at IIT.
|
| This is literally preceded by
|
| >You might ask: What evidence do I have to support my claim?
|
| So, to lay it out for you:
|
| 1) Hypothesis: There is discrimination against OBC in academia
|
| 2) Evidence: The near absence of OBC professors in IITs
|
| 3) Prediction: This probably affects OBCs outside India as well
|
| I am Indian, from an IIT, and I have seen this kind of knee-
| jerk dismissal from higher-caste Indians against any claims of
| discrimination more times than I can count. I do not believe
| you are making a good-faith argument here.
| isanjay wrote:
| > So, this is a claim they believe is true and would be happy
| to be corrected
|
| You don't claim something on based on beliefs. He already has
| evidence on IIT. Why talk about North America if he doesn't
| have data to back up it up ?
| xmonkee wrote:
| >You don't claim something on based on beliefs.
|
| What's your evidence for this claim?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Are the Indians in NA somehow fundamentally different? It
| isn't like we've left the rest of our social/cultural
| practices and ills behind upon moving to the West. Thus it
| makes sense that if there's evidence of caste based
| discrimination at the highest levels of education in India,
| there is likely such discrimination in Indian communities
| in the West too.
| aatharuv wrote:
| I'd like real numbers, but I've come across, a
| disproportionate number of people in interreligious,
| inter-ethnicity marriages, and presumably inter-caste
| marriages, except that I can't really tell one's caste
| unless they have a caste based lastname, and I know that
| name is associated with a caste.
|
| I've heard of numerous cases where Indian-Americans
| didn't know their caste until they were asked about it by
| people not of Indian origin, who seemed to have the 4
| caste + outcastes model in their heads, which barely maps
| to how caste is understood in modern India.
|
| (Parents came here from India in the 1970's).
|
| This may also differ by generation.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| One important difference is that Indo-Canadians make up
| about 5% of the Canadian population. It would be
| surprising if the higher caste subset of that 5% was
| capable of suppressing access to tenure-track positions
| across the board. Moreso if it's extended to NA, as the
| number is ~1.5% in the US. Less if I'm supposed to assume
| that people from India prefer to work for other Indians,
| or if Indians are overrepresented in CS academia
| positions.
|
| I also tend to imagine that those in academia are
| considerably more likely than the general population to
| reject racism.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Knowing how those in positions of power can gate keep,
| yes, those higher caste Indians could easily block
| tenure. Especially since non-Indians propably cannot
| really spot the caste based component of those actions.
| isanjay wrote:
| > Are the Indians in NA somehow fundamentally different?
|
| I am not denying the presence of discrimination in North
| America. I believe it exists.
| grad_ml wrote:
| If you're from IIT, you must be aware there is clear
| difference in the performance of those who come on quota(like
| oBC, SC, ST etc) and those without quota. If you extrapolate
| the same academic performance throughout the students career,
| and assuming for the incoming class of 1000 have to select 10
| professor on the academic performance, who it's gonna be? The
| dude who came on quota or the dudes who were off the chart in
| the tests? Do you suggest we should also appoint professors
| and give grants based on the caste?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cleandreams wrote:
| I had a student in my class who wrote about being from a "low
| caste" background. So when a friend hosted a woman from India on
| her podcast who said there was so caste discrimination in India I
| spoke up about this. The podcast guest said that the fact that
| anyone in the west mentioned caste discrimination, even within
| western tech companies, was an act of racism against Indian
| culture and reflected colonial judgements. My friend, who is
| very, very woke, agreed. I was so annoyed. Thank you for bringing
| this up. Such discrimination has no place!
| someguydave wrote:
| To be woke is to be against colorblind treatment and to be for
| discrimination
| hef19898 wrote:
| Really? How so?
| dagaci wrote:
| I think originally woke was shorthand for anti-racist (I
| don't mind being corrected on this since I am not
| American). Unfortunately the term did not reach the UK in
| good enough time to be properly encoded in our Oxford
| English Dictionary and as a result the usage has gone
| rampant become diffuse! The meaning now seems to be
| converging on "I don't agree with _._ ".
|
| Generally western laws would view caste-based
| discrimination as illegal and wrong. So, it would correct
| for an individual to express the same opinion in the West,
| even if that opinion disturbs the ideas and beliefs of a
| subset of the population attached to someone else's
| culture.
| crooked-v wrote:
| You're right on target there. The term is basically
| meaningless now, after the reactionary right in the US
| started using "woke" as a scare word for "anything anyone
| vaguely liberal does that we can pretend is an extremist
| conspiracy", after attempts to use "cultural Marxism"
| fell flat.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I would've been in the same camp of denying it and treating it
| as just a thing westerners exaggerate and to an extent that is
| the case. But at the same time caste discrimination is still
| very much a thing.
|
| The way I've seen people in the west envision it is that
| everyone is keenly aware of their caste, where they are in
| society and what they're "allowed" to do. But it isn't that
| blatant to me, so I felt impressions of caste discrimination
| were overblown. I was raised to be caste-blind (literally
| wasn't taught the differences to be able to even subconsciously
| be biased) so I projected that upon everyone.
|
| However as I've interacted with other Indians, I have noticed
| that our conversations tend to be very different. I don't
| really care about where they're from, barely care about their
| name beyond how to refer to them etc, mostly interested in what
| they do professionally and what they're interested in while
| their questions tend to focus on where I'm from and what my
| family history is.
|
| My understanding is that my caste is fairly mundane so I
| haven't really noticed any discrimination towards myself, but I
| think I've atleast noticed that many people have a lot of
| interest in identifying the caste at least, which can obviously
| lead to discrimination pretty easily.
| caesil wrote:
| That person should be banned from ever invoking
| "intersectionality" again. They've failed one of its most basic
| tests.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| ha this matches my observation
|
| I think at this point we could just double down and say "I'm
| fighting colonialism, on the side of the colonizers"
|
| Just throw the meme back, and still stamp out caste
| discrimination
|
| "hey some cultural genocide is worth it" first, the reaction
| would be funny af, especially if all the "OBC's" get the joke
| anyonecancode wrote:
| That's silly. Obviously all cultures have their own issues, and
| I'd say it's actually rather patronizing to pretend that non-
| Western cultures don't have their own dynamics of bias and
| discrimination.
|
| Having said that, as a cultural Westerner, I'd be very loathe
| to speak much on the topic of the Indian caste system, as while
| it's clearly a real thing, and I believe those Indians in
| America who say it is, I'm certain I lack enough context and
| background to talk about it without it ending up being an
| exercise in projecting my own culture's dynamics onto theirs.
| It's the kind of conversation I think I probably need to do far
| more listening that talking in.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > > I had a student in my class who wrote about being from a
| "low caste" background.
|
| > as a cultural Westerner, I'd be very loathe to speak much
| on the topic of the Indian caste system, as [...] I'm certain
| I lack enough context and background to talk about it without
| it ending up being an exercise in projecting my own culture's
| dynamics onto theirs. It's the kind of conversation I think I
| probably need to do far more listening that talking in.
|
| Depending on the length and depth of that student's essay,
| the person you're responding to may have done enough
| listening to at least raise the topic and hear an honest
| opinion rather than being shut down as colonialist prejudist
| for merely asking the question
|
| At least, that's how it's written. Maybe they said a lot
| more, it's not like I was there, but I'm just going by the
| version that we can read here
| [deleted]
| slowhadoken wrote:
| [flagged]
| biogene wrote:
| This whole idea is completely wrong, in my opinion. You first
| need to demonstrate why your sampling model/methodology
| (collection of top50 NA CS departments) will lead to an error-
| free way to establish a discrimination type mechanism of
| selection. There is a near absence of people of South east asian
| origin in the NFL, but I don't think the NFL is doing so on
| discriminatory grounds. The end result is under-representation,
| but the underlying mechanism is not one of malicious
| discrimination by the talent scouts.
|
| The point is, lets discuss evidence of discrimination rather than
| a weird "this can only be possible with discrimination" argument.
| klyrs wrote:
| Elephants do not exist, so there could not possibly be one in
| this room. Instead, let's self-soothe with talk of flaws in
| common elephant-detection methodologies, because that will
| reassure us that the room is elephant-free. Nevermind the
| pervasive smell of elephant shit.
| biogene wrote:
| I don't feel bad in point out flawed arguments or articles.
| Its up to the author to take the feedback for what it is, or
| discard it.
| [deleted]
| sulam wrote:
| So you're saying the Indian caste system is well partitioned
| with respect to capability for tenure-producing work across a
| wide range of disciplines taught in IIT schools?
| biogene wrote:
| I'm pointing out elementary flaws in the methodology. As such
| the article wasn't convincing for me, and this is my
| feedback.
| adolph wrote:
| I see OBC mentioned here many times but never defined in
| comments:
|
| _The Other Backward Class (O.B.C.) is a collective term used by
| the Government of India to classify castes which are
| educationally or socially backward. It is one of several official
| classifications of the population of India, along with General
| castes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs)._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class
|
| _The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic
| instance of social classification based on castes. It has its
| origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling
| elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially
| the Mughal Empire and the British Raj._
|
| Key terms: * Varna, meaning type, order, colour,
| or class are a framework for grouping people into classes, first
| used in Vedic Indian society. . . . * Jati, meaning birth,
| is mentioned less often and clearly distinguished from varna.
| There are four varnas but thousands of jatis. . . . * . . .
| [C]aste is derived from the Portuguese word casta, meaning "race,
| lineage, breed" and, originally, "'pure or unmixed (stock or
| breed)". . . .
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India
| aildours wrote:
| Consider reading [1] (also linked in OP) for a detailed article
| about a very talented lower caste person who gets hired at IIT
| Kanpur, only to be met with overt caste-based discrimination and
| harassment. You'd find it hard to claim caste-based
| discrimination doesn't exist after reading it. On a perhaps
| unrelated note, the author is Manindra Agarwal, who you may know
| as the A in the AKS primality test.
|
| [1]: https://kafila.online/2019/04/10/the-saderla-story-
| courage-i...
| alephnerd wrote:
| Yep. Indian and Indian Diaspora academia can be toxic. I
| remember hearing stories about a professor at a T10 CS Program
| who'd only give RAShips to people from the exact same subcaste
| community as him. There are plenty of issues with overt and
| covert toxicity among the South Asian community.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| isanjay wrote:
| I worked in 3 different companies (Hyderabad, Bangalore) in South
| India and did not see any evidence of caste discrimination. Or
| even people talking about discrimination in office.
|
| While I did see discrimination in college, which was in a rural
| town in South India.
| awintr wrote:
| You wouldn't necessarily unless you were looking for it
| petesergeant wrote:
| > I worked in 3 different companies (Hyderabad, Bangalore) in
| South India and did not see any evidence of caste
| discrimination
|
| Are you of a member of a discriminated-against caste? If not,
| it may simply be it wasn't visible to you.
| isanjay wrote:
| See the other comment. I agree with him.
| soligern wrote:
| It doesn't work like that. This isn't like racism where
| differences are immediately superficially apparent. You need
| to have conversations bordering on light interrogations to
| determine who is what.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Just because people from outside the caste system cannot
| spot it, and it is much jarder to spot than say
| discrmination against people of color or women, doesn't
| mean caste based discrimination isn't every single bit as
| racist as all other forms of racism.
| balls187 wrote:
| It is form of discrimination. But it's not racism.
|
| Just like sexism is not racism.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Race is an ambiguous delineation of a tribe someone might
| belong to.
|
| Sex, age, etc are more defined delineations.
|
| Who is to say the 1.3B population of Indians does not
| have multiple races? They might all be the same tribe in
| the eyes of a person with ancestors from Europe, born and
| raised in the US. But for someone in India, they very
| well could view the other 1.29B Indians as being in
| tribes as different as "white" and "black" tribes in the
| US.
|
| Note that racism is not skin color-ism, since a very
| light skinned descendent of a darker skinner person is
| also, commonly, referred to as being "black", especially
| if they have obvious physical traits that display they
| have "black" ancestors.
|
| Race in the US (and other parts of the developed world)
| is about the socioeconomic tribe that the one belongs to,
| or that one's network (including ancestors) belong to.
| That seems very similar to castes in India.
| soligern wrote:
| I guess that depends on your definition of racism. Can
| people from the UK be racist to the Polish? If yes, fine.
| But technically it's different from racism and more
| nationally based bigotry.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The was a race in Europe that faut a genocidal war
| against East Europeans, based on perceived race.
|
| Playing semantics during discussions on discrmination
| always has some undertones of trying to justify said
| discrimination, because of course it is something
| different...
| soligern wrote:
| Semantics may not be the most helpful during a discussion
| of this but neither is application of modes/solutions
| learnt from other forms of bigotry. The best way to kill
| the caste system is to forget about it which is in the
| process of happening. It's not further entrenching
| yourself in that identity that may be necessary in more
| superficial forms of bigotry.
| balls187 wrote:
| Does your proposed solution also include forgetting the
| benefits members of higher castes have historically
| received?
|
| Because that sounds a lot like telling someone to pull
| themselves up from their bootstraps after stealing their
| boots.
| soligern wrote:
| There's already a 30-50% quota in most public
| institutions that is very successful at giving lower
| castes an advantage. No bootstraps required.
|
| Will those affirmative actions extend how long the caste
| system stays around? Probably but they're meant to be in
| place for a couple of generations (40-80 years) which
| should be an acceptable amount of time to level the
| field.
| [deleted]
| petesergeant wrote:
| That is in contrast to the article, which says:
|
| > Typically, one's surname (last name) is a giveaway and
| most Indians can reasonably identify someone's caste based
| on the last name
| isanjay wrote:
| That only applies to Northern part of the country. In
| south each state has it's own language and there is no
| way an outside state person can know your caste without
| asking
| soligern wrote:
| Even in the north, someone from Himachal Pradesh is not
| going to be able to identify someone's caste in Bihar or
| West Bengal
| isanjay wrote:
| Thank you. I didn't know that :)
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I worked at one, and it was pretty blatant.
| isanjay wrote:
| Which City ?
| dilawar wrote:
| Pizza delivery is also casteless!
| pierat wrote:
| I know this is India, but caste discrimination isn't limited to
| only there.
|
| Cisco has an ongoing case against California over caste
| discrimination. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/calif-
| scraps-cast...
|
| Weirdly enough, the EEOC doesn't forbid that type of
| discrimination, but the courts might include that.
| thriftwy wrote:
| So my wife is from a shipyard town in Russia which refitted that
| air carrier ship for Indian navy. So at times they had a lot of
| Indian citizens in town.
|
| I remember some of her acquaintances, working at child care,
| discovered that some of Indian kids shun other ones based on
| Caste, and promptly made them all do kids' dances holding hands
| with each other.
| skavi wrote:
| Just curious; why were there children at all? Surely they
| weren't on the carrier?
| thriftwy wrote:
| Accepting a huge warship, learning to use and service it is a
| multi-year affair involving a lot of people, who in turn have
| families. So they had to acclimatize to the near polar circle
| White sea experience.
| ppsreejith wrote:
| Reading the attachments, the data seems to be recent (except for
| IIT bombay?) and includes assistant, associate, and tenured
| professors. Surprising that almost 175 of the 180 faculty members
| are from the "forward castes" (~30% of population) vs 5 (1 obc, 4
| sc, scheduled caste) from the remaining 70%. Could also be due to
| academia skewing older? (i.e reflecting past biases)
| ghotli wrote:
| I hope this comes across as me being merely ignorant of the
| situation on the ground in India but I do have a question.
|
| I've seen caste based discrimination here in America first hand.
| It's gross and I have absolutely no patience with those
| participating in it.
|
| If I were to go to India with this attitude, would I be met with
| compatriots that also have zero interest in putting up with it?
| Is there a reason that such a backwards obviously oppressive
| system persists to this day in 2023? Why don't people just change
| their names to the caste they want to be
|
| Apologies, I'm a privileged American that can't begin to imagine
| putting up with even a moment of it personally. I know it's not
| so simple but it's a simple way to ask.
| dakial1 wrote:
| That's a good question. But as this is a way of maintaining
| social privilege and the people in power are the privileged
| ones, I imagine there is little effort in actually changing the
| system. They will say it's terrible etc, but no real actions
| will be taken. Can someone from India confirm/refute my
| hypothesis?
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| Two points - legally, caste based discrimination is illegal.
| From a cultural aspect - cultural changes are much slower in
| non-western countries. For example, compare how quickly the
| culture around marijuana & same sex marriage changed in US,
| and the laws kept up. But similar change probably takes 10x
| longer in "older" cultures. As an analogy, the left wing
| government of India which is supposed to be liberal, opposed
| legalizing same-sex marriage[1]. This attitude extends to all
| issues.
|
| [1] https://www.opindia.com/2021/09/377-decriminalisation-
| congre...
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| > Why don't people just change their names to the caste they
| want to be
|
| For an over-simplified explanation, substitute caste with
| race/nationality and rephrase the question in a setting you
| might be more familiar with. For example "if people face
| racism/discrimination due to their nationality, why don't they
| just do X", where X is to obfuscate their race/nationality. It
| might work sometime, it might not work most of the times and
| the real answer is complicated and depends on the details.
|
| > Is there a reason that such a backwards obviously oppressive
| system persists to this day in 2023?
|
| Similar mental analogy helps understand a tad bit better - why
| do oppressive practices like racism/discrimination based on
| nationality exist today? At that, exist in some of the more
| developed countries. FYI - caste based discrimination is
| illegal in India, kinda similar to how racism is illegal but
| that alone isn't sufficient to remove it from the culture.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| screye wrote:
| As a fellow OBC, I am not sure I like the idea of reclaiming
| caste.
|
| The author wrote his post from an inspiring standpoint, so my
| comment does not come from a place of criticism. His achievement
| is worth celebrating on its own grounds.
|
| ____
|
| It's been 6 years for me in the US, and no one has asked me my
| caste. Even in India, the only time someone could have inferred
| my caste, was when someone indirectly asked my university JEE
| (SAT) scores in my first few weeks of freshman year. My scores
| were as high as 'general' (upper class) candidates, so they'd
| quickly assess me as 'one who deserves his spot here'. Still, I
| was pretty transparent about my caste status. Afterall, I was one
| of the lucky few who'd never been discriminated on caste. Hell, I
| didn't know I belonged to the umbrella term 'OBC' until I started
| filling out application forms for universities.
|
| Their inquiry, it was less so malice, and more so a sense of
| unfairness about a system that was supposed to be strictly
| meritocratic. But a few weeks side-by-side in a dorm made
| everyone intimately aware of the poverty of the lowest class.
| Soon, no one would dare think that the barely-English-conversant
| SC/ST, who came from a town without running water, was on the
| same level playing field as them. There were admittedly a few
| grifters and abusers of this system. All castes were equally
| bewildered by that group.
|
| The Indian-American diaspora in the US remains untarnished by
| caste (Can't comment on Canada). I make this as both of statement
| of faith, anecdotal personal experience and a statically aligned
| truth seeker. OBC is an artificially created term from less than
| 100 years ago. The communities have nothing in common, except a
| tag of underdevelopment forced onto us.
|
| The vast vast majority of Indians in the US are upper caste and
| the vast majority of tall NBA players had access to protein
| growing up. SC/ST communities and many poor OBC communities are
| backwards because their problems begin at nutrition, K-12
| schooling and cultural emphasis on lower-income professions. By
| the time you make it to freshman year of college, you have mostly
| risen past the burden of your caste. This also means, that trying
| to increase visibility of the community at the highest levels,
| does diddly-squat for those grappling with crippling poverty and
| the worst of caste discrimination.
|
| Leaving outrage-driving topics like IQ, discrimination and
| generational trauma aside for a minute, vast statistical gaps
| within communities can still manifest due to emergent properties
| of systems converging to their nearest stable state.
|
| Caste discrimination is terrible in lower-class India. People
| actively try to move beyond Caste in middle class India. Caste is
| unheard of in upper class India. And the upper-most caste of
| operates at the family level, deeming everyone from their own
| caste and otherwise to be similarly 'pedestrian'. American
| immigration policy ensures that only middle and upper class
| Indian can move to the US. This means that every Indian who
| arrives in the US, is preconditioned to want to move past caste.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I recently read a scholarly treatment on the subject of _sati_
| and whether it was really as widespread and pernicious as the
| colonising Empire claimed that it was. The verdict was: no,
| absolutely not.
|
| Now I have to wonder about the caste system: this only came to
| the attention of outsiders and Westerners while the Empire was
| systematically destroying India, in terms of economy, morale, and
| unity.
|
| What would have happened if the colonisers had not invaded, left
| India intact, and the inhabitants left to their own self-
| determination? Would caste discrimination be noticed here in
| North America? Would the Indian government, untainted by Western
| influences, be trying vainly to stamp it out and overcompensate
| with affirmative action and quotas? It really makes you wonder.
| rdtsc wrote:
| How feasible is to change one's last name. Or are there other
| characteristics others can detect like accents, facial features,
| etc?
| umvi wrote:
| A lot of countries still have caste discrimination problems, not
| just India. Even in racially homogenous places like Japan, people
| still figure out how to discriminate each other
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin).
| raincom wrote:
| Maybe, it is time to think what discriminations are, what caste-
| discriminations are:
| https://www.hipkapi.com/2011/03/24/normative-assumptions-dis...
| crooked-v wrote:
| > I was invited by some Sadhus from Swami Narayan Temple (BAPS)
| to visit the temple and have a discussion with them. Because
| they practice very strict Brahmacharya (eight types of avoiding
| women, each correlated to an organ: it is called Ashtanga
| Brahmacharya), the Sadhus said that women could not be present
| during our discussions, while they were welcome to visit the
| temple.
|
| > A few years later, one of my teachers from Belgium visited
| another wing of the Swami Narayan people and found that 'women
| were discriminated against' because they were allowed only to
| come some distance from the temple when the Sadhus were
| present.
|
| > The question here is: why did these people (my students and
| my teacher) experience 'discrimination', where I saw none and
| also knew that none was intended?
|
| Dropped the article right there. Having a genuine religious
| belief doesn't automatically excuse discrimination, and I have
| zero interest in reading more from someone who thinks that it
| does.
| [deleted]
| lozenge wrote:
| The article boils down to "discrimination is bad, treating
| people differently by sex or caste is okay, therefore I don't
| want to call it discrimination, regardless of whether it is or
| not".
| helf wrote:
| [dead]
| FactsNotFeeling wrote:
| [dead]
| awintr wrote:
| Isabelle Wilkerson's book, Caste, really opened my eyes on this
| subject. Highly recommend for Americans looking to learn about
| our own caste system.
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