[HN Gopher] Google cancelled a talk on caste bias ___________________________________________________________________ Google cancelled a talk on caste bias Author : devnonymous Score : 447 points Date : 2022-06-02 12:02 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com) | sandGorgon wrote: | This is a followup to that news article - | https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equality-labs-deman... | rob74 wrote: | > _Soundararajan appealed directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, | who comes from an upper-caste family in India, to allow her | presentation to go forward. But the talk was canceled, leading | some employees to conclude that Google was willfully ignoring | caste bias._ | | > _Pichai, the CEO, "is Indian and he is Brahmin and he grew up | in Tamil Nadu. There is no way you grow up in Tamil Nadu and not | know about caste because of how caste politics shaped the | conversation," Soundararajan told The Post. "If he can make | passionate statements about Google's [diversity equity and | inclusion] commitments in the wake of George Floyd, he absolutely | should be making those same commitments to the context he comes | from where he is someone of privilege."_ | | Sounds like Mr. Pichai has some explaining to do... | devnull3 wrote: | I doubt it. In fact attrocities on brahmins is rarely discussed | [1]. Infact his state TamilNadu there is a strong anti- | brahminism sentiment in political sphere. This is one of the | reason why lot of upper-caste men/women go outside India. | | [1] https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/the-brahmin-files-why- | atro... | ethanbond wrote: | Doesn't excuse any discriminatory behavior here in the | States. Or, frankly, even in India. | hirako2000 wrote: | It's rather you to work on the explaining there. Pichai isn't | claiming to be unaware of how caste politics may work. I think | it's not only OK but desirable for companies to stop ruining | the workplace with societal politics. There is a law and public | debates for castes and how to address the (no doubt existing | even outside India) problem. | | Prompting an employee of a tech company, even its CEO, | reminding the audience of its ethnical background is what i | find suspect. | thebean11 wrote: | > stop ruining the workplace with societal politics | | Isn't the failure to do so the subject of the talk? | bgdam wrote: | > There is a law and public debates for castes and how to | address the (no doubt existing even outside India) problem. | | That's kinda part of the problem. In India there are laws | dealing with caste based oppression and discrimination (how | well they are enforced is another story). But in most other | countries such laws do not exist. And caste-based | discrimination is exceptionally easily and silently | accomplished because for a vast majority of Indians, your | last name gives away your caste. | heretogetout wrote: | I don't think workplaces should operate outside of and | without influence from society. They're just a group of | people in a building (metaphorical or otherwise). | jcranberry wrote: | >According to Gupta's letter and Soundararajan, the decision to | cancel the talk came from Gupta's boss, Cathy Edwards, a vice | president of engineering, who had no experience or expertise in | caste. | | Truly puzzling decision. | dekhn wrote: | Nothing abot this is puzzling. beneath the surface of | Google's attempts to "look happy", there is a huge amount of | resentment between individuals, and between individuals and | leadership. Even when I joined in 2007 it was noticeable, but | by the time I left (the second time) in 2019, it was | painfully obvious. | | Sundar's goal has been to smooth over this resentment and | prevent events that would exacerbate it. That often occurs by | cancelling a venue for discussion/healing. GOogle sort of | evolved itself into a state of weaponized progressivism, and | is now realizing just how unrealistic its naive view of using | technology to transform the world for good was, and how it | needs to turn into everything that it said it wasn't to | continue to succeed in the face of more determined | competitors. | newsclues wrote: | He doesn't have explaining to do because he holds the power and | is choosing not to. | [deleted] | nradov wrote: | California sued Cisco over caste discrimination in 2020 and it | was discussed here. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 | thwjerjl23432 wrote: | obnauticus wrote: | https://archive.ph/ZF8xg | dang wrote: | Related threads - others? | | _Trapped in Silicon Valley's hidden caste system_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543 | comments) | | _India's tech sector reinforces old caste divides_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5 | comments) | | _The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5 | comments) | | _How Big Tech Is Importing India's Caste Legacy to Silicon | Valley_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March | 2021 (195 comments) | | _Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley 's richest tech | companies_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct | 2020 (322 comments) | | _India's engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its | caste system_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 - | Oct 2020 (6 comments) | | _How India 's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon | Valley_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept | 2020 (47 comments) | | _Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 | comments) | | _Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 | comments) | | _California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India's | caste system_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - | July 2020 (56 comments) | | _California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian | employee 's caste_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 | comments) | | _Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley?_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6 | comments) | jamesfisher wrote: | https://archive.ph/16knM | boredumb wrote: | "rather than bringing our community together and raising | awareness -- was creating division and rancor" | | Insert every social movement in the last 10 years. Absolutely | hilarious that a company that goes out of it's way to participate | in the US culture war identifies an actual systemic issue in the | country where the CEO just happens to originate from, it is | suddenly a divisive action to make half baked hyperbolic social | statements. | [deleted] | jmyeet wrote: | There's a lot of bias in the tech industry, not just caste. if | your company is sufficiently large it will have various HR | policies on this and in my experience they will enumerate the | kinds of discrimination they don't tolerate. | | Here's an exercise for you: go through the list of US protected | classes [1] and see which ones are explicitly stated and which | ones aren't. It's actually enlightening. For example, I don't | think I've ever seen ageism specifically called out. | | As for the impact of the Indian caste system in US tech, I can't | really comment on that. It's not my lived experience. I've worked | with many Indians. No idea what their castes were. Saying that, | just like racism I find it incredibly plausible that if you grew | up in such a system, the effects are pervasive and linger. | | So should Google allow such a talk? That's a difficult question. | It's clearly a divisive issue. It reminds me of Meta telling | employees to stop talking about abortion [2]. Now that issue | _probably_ doesn 't lead to workplace discrimination (alleged or | actual) although you might be able to argue that your political | views could hurt you. There's something to be said to keeping | your political views to yourself, particularly at work. | | I imagine (but, again, don't know from experience) that this | might be on the level of racial discrimination in the US | workplace. So it seems worth examining. I imagine to mahy | outsiders it might not look "real" because at the end of the day | they're all Indians (which, to be clear, is also a form of | racism). | | Is a talk the best way to handle this? I honestly don't know. I | can sympathize with avoiding divisive issues and also with the | desire of a company to cover their ass and not create an HR | nightmare. I really wonder if this ends in a lawsuit. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States | | [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/19/23131714/meta-ban- | abortio... | nemothekid wrote: | This feels like whataboutism. | | First off, activism is uncomfortable - it's about changing the | status quo and anyone who benefits will take issue with it | _even if they don't actively perpetuate the system_. MLK wasn't | met with open arms; he was harassed, arrested and ultimately | assassinated. | | Personally I've worked with many Indians too and I have never | heard anyone one of them bring up caste; but I'm not Indian, so | why would they? | | A better benchmark is how many people of lower caste have you | talked to and how do they feel about it? It may be the case | that the structures of American Indians have already expunged | all the lower caste Indians from your workplace. | lthornberry wrote: | Age discrimination is illegal by statute - the Age | Discrimination in Employment Act. If you haven't seen that, it | might give you pause about whether you have enough information | about this subject to form an informed opinion. | tristor wrote: | > For example, I don't think I've ever seen ageism specifically | called out. | | Ageism is illegal in the US, however the way the law is written | it specifically only protects people over 40. I've always | personally theorized that this is why tech ageism tends to | start affecting people in their 30s, so that it doesn't wait | until it's illegal and gets the job done of oppressing more | senior employees earlier on. | [deleted] | NoGravitas wrote: | As a leftist, one of the things that gives me pause about | identity politics and the language of identity divorced from | class struggle is how easily it is repurposed by reactionaries: | | > But Google employees began spreading disinformation, calling | her "Hindu-phobic" and "anti-Hindu" in emails to the company's | leaders, documents posted on Google's intranet and mailing lists | with thousands of employees. | | I don't have a solution, just a depressing observation. | 7952 wrote: | You see weird reaction in debates about feminism. People go | along with the belief that men and women are the same. And then | use that to justify male anger about unfairness by just | parotting the same talking points. When actually feminist could | always accept that there were differences and that was the | point. But the argument changes at different levels of | abstraction. It's confusing. Individuals should be treated the | same, but are different statistically and in aggregate. | blueflow wrote: | People see that "men and women are different" is used as | justification for prejudice (like a person not getting a | chance because people of the same sex did rarely have success | previously). Which sucks and people feel its unfair. And when | trying to conceptualize that unfairness into words, their | contra opinion sometimes ends up being "so man and women must | be equal" instead of "a persons sex does not justify | prejudice". | | Peoples feelings about fairness and justice are always valid, | but hell, many people suck so hard at putting it into words. | whatshisface wrote: | People can be equal before the law without being equal | before a pole vault. | jp57 wrote: | What wasn't clear to me was whether they were claiming that her | ideas about caste equality were specificall anti-hindu, or if | it's just an ad hominem attack to try to shut her down. | allenu wrote: | It's definitely frustrating. Culture, religion, sexual | orientation, skin color, and politics often get combined into | one, so it becomes impossible to criticize particular cultural | or religious practices and beliefs without getting jumped on as | racist or ignorant. This strategy of calling someone anti-X is | a great way to end actual discussion about specific issues. | [deleted] | oofbey wrote: | Google's culture is dominated by arrogance. Management repeatedly | tells employees they work on the world's hardest problems using | the world's biggest computers and the world's smartest people. | Doing anything less is "ungoogley". | | It doesn't necessarily follow that this would encourage racism. | But it sure isn't surprising. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Why would you assume "best" = "racist"? | | Also - which companies are saying they hire the worst people? | | I've worked at several companies - every single one of them | claimed to hire the best. It's just corporate psychobabble at | this point. | rurp wrote: | I once saw a job posting that claimed to only want world | class developers. The pay? 40k. | crawfordcomeaux wrote: | Corporate psychobabble and/or normalized supremacist. | | The idea of "best" is ultimately a lie and it's the same lie | that supremacy tells. | me_me_mu_mu wrote: | I'll bite with anecdotal pov. I think most of the people who | are the "best" are advantaged from the beginning. Whether it | is attending prep schools (40k a year or more private school | for 12 years), having a home (not moving multiple times, | sometimes in a year over many years), or honestly having the | familial backing to "take risks". | | The last point is so wild when I hear it from some VCs or | successful CEO. It's easy to take a risk when your parents | and family are loaded, even if you have nothing to your name | at the time. It's easy to say such things when your parents | are doctors or entrepreneurs who put you through private | school and then you got into Stanford. I'm sure they're | smart, but they bought their way in when you reduce it. Sure | they took it from 20-100, but many people can barely get from | 1-10 due to socioeconomic circumstances. I respect the people | who manage to go from 1-100 way more than someone who was | bound to be reasonably successful at worst from birth. | zach_garwood wrote: | Racists tend to be ethno-supremecists, ie they think they | belong to the "best" race. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | So racists are inclined to think they're "the best". | | Why are people who think they're "the best" inclined to | think it's in part / mostly / solely due to race? | afiori wrote: | Elitism comes with a lot of rationalizations to justify | the beliefs about who is worthy or not. | | Typically one of them is "sharing these key | characteristics with me make you better than those who | don't", these characteristics often involve some kind of | racial-like features. | cafard wrote: | adgjlsfhk1 wrote: | Yeah, high school history tends to skip from the civil war to | WW1, so most students miss out on reconstruction, and pretty | much no curricula will talk about the explicit race | discrimination in the GI bill/redlining. | lthornberry wrote: | This varies massively by school or district. I teach history | to undergrads, and some of them come in having had entire | high school classes on the history of civil rights--these | students are usually either from majority-black districts, or | from elite private schools. Others had history classes that | don't even acknowledge that slavery was the cause of the | Civil War. | salawat wrote: | What high school students curricula are you following? | | All of those topics were covered where I went. | | Though interestingly, the ones I do also tend to get across | the point that caste discrimination was made illegal in | India, and never tend to go into much explicit detail on how | just because something is illegal, it doesn't mean it isn't | done/is regularly enforced. | jcranmer wrote: | > high school history tends to skip from the civil war to WW1 | | I very, very highly doubt that. In terms of US history, this | period covers several important topics: | | * Reconstruction | | * Settling of the American West | | * Rise of the Granger and later Progressive movements | | * Burgeoning immigration to the US, and all the tensions that | result from that | | * Second Industrial Revolution, which also fuels the Gilded | Age and labor movements | | * Beginnings of American imperialism (and somewhat | ironically, the end of it... the US becomes pretty | uninterested in territorial expansion almost immediately | after experiencing its first major bout of imperial expansion | in the Spanish-American War). | | It's possible that you just don't _remember_ what you learned | in US history classes in this time period, but completely | excising a quarter of the country 's history would be rather | surprising, especially when it's the part of the history that | covers both the biggest shift in self-image (from an agrarian | country distancing itself from world politics to an | industrialized powerhouse increasingly engaged in world | politics) _and_ the development of mass political | consciousness worldwide in the late Long 19th Century. | ntoskrnl wrote: | I would love to live in a world where no racial violence has | happened since the 1950s. | [deleted] | MontyCarloHall wrote: | True, but not germane to the article, which is discussing | India's racial difficulties. | | Indeed, suggesting that deep-seated structural racism is far | from a uniquely American problem also makes some people upset. | lexapro wrote: | The truth is in fact very upsetting, yes. | [deleted] | car_analogy wrote: | Left unstated is the assumption that Brahmins limit their | discrimination to Dalits. | albert_e wrote: | Oh while we are on this topic there are branches within | Brahmins and each group gets to feel superior to other Brahmins | because reasons. | | In some regions, there were also some devout worshippers of one | God that take adverserial position about worshippers of another | God (Shiva versus Vishnu) | | Luckily most of these (I think) are on their way out and don't | manifest in professional workplaces of today. | | These tendencies must have definitely shaped careers and | unfairly disadvantaged people as recently as a couple of | decades ago. | criddell wrote: | I'm not understanding the implication. Does it matter how | limited the discrimination is? | car_analogy wrote: | The implication is that it's not limited. If they | discriminate against Dalits, they probably discriminate | against others too. | criddell wrote: | > The implication is that it's not limited. | | Right, but what are the implications of it being limited or | not? Is there a tolerable level of discrimination? | psyc wrote: | That has nothing to do with it. There's no tolerable | level, but more is still worse than less, and GP's point | means more people with a direct vested interest in | calling for change. | yunohn wrote: | Which is true of all bigoted groups tbh. Quite harmful in | how it manifests and grows, esp in corporate companies. | usrn wrote: | amriksohata wrote: | Sadly most caste accusations come from a place of extreme hatred | for Hindus. I have seen this when questioned by people who talk | of Caste and the Hindu religion and when I dig deep, they often | have a extreme dislike of Hindus more than anything. | | Caste comes from the Portuguese word "Castus". There is no | literal translation found for this word in ancient Hindu Sanskrit | texts. The quoted article comes written from a time under British | Raj where peoples backgrounds were used to further divide society | so that they would not rise up against the British. Caste in the | same sense of occupational background exists in all cultures but | was never used in such a divisive way like the British Raj did. | For example people of the "Smith" surname used to be Goldsmiths | or Blacksmiths. But the British put a sense of elitism into some | communities in India, telling them they are higher than others. | There is no Hindu scripture which says who is high or low, but | merely responsibilities. | | Skilfully sidestepping any explanation of the metric being used | to measure "high", the educated spiritual priests in British Raj | times and intellectuals were all banded together into one and | labelled "highest caste" because they represented the "highest | threat" to Anglican domination and those who represented the | "lowest threat" to the Anglican were pushed into the lowest | caste. | | During the British Raj of the 540 principalities existent at that | time, over 400 were ruled by Shudra Kings (Professor | Vaidyanathan, IIM Bangalore) which the British denoted as low | caste. When the British left, the second largest landowner in | India after the Indian Government, was the Church and thus it's | reasonable to note that the largest transfer of assets and land | from was in fact from the Shudra groups (Lord Harries' so called | low-castes) to the Church. Further, there is readily available | overwhelming historical evidence that the Dalits "the | Untouchables" were themselves a creation of the crushing | sanctions created and imposed by the Anglican Colonialists of the | Church of England as is clarified below. The castes and tribes | "notified" under the 1871 Act were labelled as Criminal Tribes | for their so-called "criminal tendencies". As a result, anyone | born in these communities across the country was presumed a "born | criminal", irrespective of their criminal precedents. | | Mixing castes was normal as it was based on deed back few | thousand years ago, only recently caste mixing wasn't allowed. | Some further reading: | | https://pragyata.com/caste-system-pointers-for-the-social-me... | | https://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-gene-data-reveal... | iJohnDoe wrote: | Google outsources more than people realize. A lot of things | happen out of India. The minimum amount of customer support that | Google provides happens out of India. The mystery account bans, | that sometimes get a lot of attention, happens out of India. | lupire wrote: | Corpos naturally have split personalities, but it wasn't | "Google's plan". Mid-level people proposed it and high-level | people blocked it. | | What's not often said clearly is that corpos don't want social | justice which might come at the cost of rancor, they want "DEI | PR" that they can charge to the marketing budget. | | In other words, they want the low-hanging fruit they can get by | having recruiters source employees from more places, and artists | and photographers draw multicolored graphics, and asking people | to be less cruel _when all other tradeoffs are neutral_ ,and if | that makes the world more fair, that's great. | | But they management won't allow anything that risks disrupting | the moneymaking operations, regardless of long term potential | benefits (which almost certainly don't exist -- racism exists | because it works, locally, for economic and social benefits, not | because people are moustache-twirling comic-book supervillains). | | This is why free markets alone can't solve injustice, and broader | social movements are the tool that works. | iepathos wrote: | Ugh, bigotry is an ugly look Google. | MontyCarloHall wrote: | A good read for some additional context on caste discrimination | in the American tech industry: | https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde... | hef19898 wrote: | It seems that, in some cases, immigrants import their biases | with them, and stick to them instead of adopting cultural | aspects of their host countries. This can, in a sense, make | them less open minded and tolerant than non-immigrants. You can | see examples of this all the way back to Gean immigrants to | Russia and South America. | | I have no problem with this, after all immigrants are by no | means obliged to be assimilated. It becomes a problem when | politics come to play. E.g. Turkish nationalism, Erdogan has | pretty solid approval ratings among German based Turks. This | doesn't affect German culture much, so. In case of Indian | nationalism, heavily leaning on India's caste system, it is | different. Indian immigrants tend to end up in managemebr | positions more often than, e.g., Turks do. So they affect | company policies and culture more. And in the case of caste | discrimination, something most non-Indians have a hard time | understanding, it can co-opt whole organisations. And in the | case of social media it can have a massive impact on culture in | general. | | That's why those talks, like the cancelled one at Google, are | so important. | thelit wrote: | As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience. | | https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101 | swayvil wrote: | What if you just lie and tell everybody that you're brahmin | (or whatever the alpha caste is)? | | Do you need identifying papers? | | Is there a big market for forgeries? | vijaybritto wrote: | I wish it were that easy. First of all lying like that is | near impossible unless you know every single thing done in | a Brahmin household, you'll be caught eventually. In a | workplace setting, you might be boycotted but if this were | in India, you have a high chance of getting murdered | brutally. | | Dalits get killed for just riding a horse, walking through | upper caste residential streets and many normal things. In | this scale a Brahmin name would be deadly | swayvil wrote: | I'm a white american middle class guy. Worked for a | couple brahmins. They treated us as disposable tools. | | Next time I meet those guys I'm gonna tell them I'm | brahmin. Just to fuck with their head. | | Maybe double brahmin. | dotopotoro wrote: | Murdered by which caste? Allegedly of course. Brahmin or | somebody else? | bluesroo wrote: | The parent comment died while I typed my response, so I'm | just throwing it here to elaborate on your comment: | | I'm not Indian, but I read a lot about this when the | Cisco stuff came out. The gist that I picked up from | interviews with Indians dealing with this was that there | is A LOT of cultural background that you'd be very | unlikely to know if you hadn't grown up in a certain | caste. | | A (likely shitty) analogy: You can learn about WWII all | you want, but unless you were deployed it would be hard | to fake that you were at a specific battle or did a | specific training. There's probably minute details that | were not written down, but people who were there would | casually know. There may be habits or turns of phrase | that would have been picked up. Maybe a certain landmark | or destroyed thing that had a funny nickname. Maybe it's | knowing a certain soldier or commander by a nickname that | hasn't made it into the history books. "Oh you trained at | X? Man I loved tuna Tuesdays even though noone would | touch the stuff. Do you remember when private Y did..." | | Through casual conversation, it's very difficult to keep | the ruse up. Now if the interlocutor is actively trying | to root you out its basically impossible. In the | interviews I was listening to, the best case scenario was | that the higher caste member came away not knowing what | caste your from, but definitely knew you were not a | Brahmin... Because if you were, you'd casually bring up | X, Y, and Z and use these phrases and these gestures and | and and... | moron4hire wrote: | Shiboleths | moab wrote: | The claims made in this post are in dire need of | citations, and don't strike me as believable. And just | FWIW, most first-generation Indians in America couldn't | give two shits about the caste system. | rusticpenn wrote: | It's pretty easy to find out. There are identifiers from | the name to the dialect one speaks, what you eat etc | okdood64 wrote: | Hey there! Thanks for writing this. | | One question I've always had is, how do you know you're Dalit | if you were born outside of India? How do others? | | Especially, say, when meeting other Indians in some tech | company in the US? | thelit wrote: | If you're a Dalit, you'd know. As I mention in the post, | membership to a caste is granted by birth. If both your | parents are Dalit, you're a Dalit too. | | How do others know: it's not obvious. Dalits either change | their last name to something common enough to not have any | caste indicator. They'd avoid any discussion on caste. So | effectively, they hide but there are some who don't and | keep their last name. Still, not every other Indian could | tell, but a more caste conscious Indian who belongs to the | same region can tell. On top of it, it's common among | Indians to just plainly ask other what their caste is. | devnonymous wrote: | Note that there are other 'cues' as well that casteists | use to identify your caste, such as the food you eat | (veg/non-veg), the social rituals/ceremonies or religious | practices you engage in. In fact, you'd see enough | Brahmins (in the US!) wear the scared thread[1] and | embrace the entire identity of being at the 'top' of the | caste system that knowing that you are a non-brahmin is | sufficient for them to treat you as a Dalit. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanayana | gabereiser wrote: | We have that same view in software engineering as well. | s/Brahmins/FAANGs and s/Dalit/Non-FAANG. Not saying it's | everywhere but it exists, even on these very forums. How | is one from a coding school or bootcamp ever to be seen | as an equal to those that took a traditional route? | | For the most part, people treat people equally but I've | seen this kind of behavior on here and in person on a few | occasions. | adiM wrote: | The difference with caste is that caste is inherited. If | you wear rose-coloured glasses, you can assume that | hiring at FAANG is merit based and a non-FAANG can move | to FAANG if they want. That's not possible with caste. | devnonymous wrote: | If you were born outside of India, it would be pretty much | like any other national /racial identity -- inferred from | family (based on family names for instance). Like mentioned | in the GPs write-up: | | > Unlike race, it's easier to hide your caste, especially | in a new country. Many dalits change their official last | name to something common enough that it's hard to identify | them. | retrac wrote: | There's touches of that elsewhere too (hiding race or | ethnicity with a name change.) I have an extremely | unusual surname in Canada, and most North Americans don't | recognize it as European in origin, which has led to | assumptions in the past. My grandfather said he | considered changing it to something English in the 50s, | but ultimately he kept it. I know that, at least | historically, some Christian Arabs, Jewish people, | probably others, have adopted "white" names upon | immigrating, too. | thebeardisred wrote: | Thanks for writing that! | richardfey wrote: | Well written! Thanks | sitkack wrote: | Not just caste discrimination, but also sexism. I have worked | at least three companies where if there were Indian women, the | vast majority were in QA. | mountainriver wrote: | Yeah I worked at vmw and they have a huge caste/sexism | problem. Funny how liberal Americans stand by and let it | happen | hef19898 wrote: | Because for us Westerners this form of discrimination is, | well, invisible. It is based on subtle things we don't see. | It stays within a group, that to us, seems completely | homogenous. Plus, how many Westerners actually are aware | the Indian caste system exists at all? | | men discriminating and harrassing women? Sexism, check. | | White discriminating people of color? Racism, check. | | One Indian being a dick to another Indian? A personal thing | between those two people. Only that ot is not, it is so | much more, we Westerners just don't see it. And since we | don't see it we have a pretty solid chance of intervening | on the wrong side, if we intervene at all. | mountainriver wrote: | Agree there is a ton of nuance, at vmw I didn't notice it | till I heard about it, then I did, but like you said its | really hard to know how to intervene | geodel wrote: | Correct. Until I read feminist theory, QA is relatively easy | job, good pay and anyway I hate coding. After I read, its | deep rooted institutional bias against women to not be | allowed to work in high paying, _high prestige_ software | development jobs. | dekhn wrote: | not feminist- progressive. The feminists are fine with QA | jobs because they allow for a lot of life flexibility. | 30944836 wrote: | I noticed the text of your comment ins grey, which means | someone downvoted you. I disagree on first take of your | comment, because QA to me doesn't represent a lower-tier of | anything. It's a tech job. Women being in tech is good. | Indian people being in tech is good. Will you share a bit | more about your thinking? Why do you see this as being | discrimination? | | Sidenote: I once glanced around a team I was working on a few | years ago and found most of the product/program managers were | gay or lesbian. Didn't strike me as discrimination, since | there are, of course, gay and lesbian hardware engineers, gay | and lesbian software engineers... it just happened that we | all found each other on a particular team. | | So that's why I think that's what's going on here, but I'm | eager to hear your thoughts, as they differ from mine. | sitkack wrote: | The comment is only at zero, it means nothing. I made no | qualitative statement about QA being beneath anything. | | Most developers equate QA is beneath them. I also think QA | is just as valid and not beneath dev, but I have also held | nearly every roll in modern software companies. How we view | QA doesn't mean that is how the tech job market sees it. | Pay is lower, qual is lower and at companies that have a | sizeable Indian workforce, I have witnessed that QA heavily | skews female. | | I didn't even notice until I have been on interview loops | with Indian men that I thought were nice and that I had | professional and personal respect for and this weird tiger | came out when it came to interviewing women (for dev roles) | that didn't come out when interviewing men. This is just | anecdotal, not all not all. | | This comment itself is going to get flagged or downvoted, | but I can't put a caveat on every sentence. | | https://feminisminindia.com/2020/03/02/sexism-in- | engineering... | | > A couple of women who I knew had studied STEM subjects | but had changed their career trajectory after graduating, | explained the systemic sexism that women face in | universities in India which deterred them from pursuing it | any further. | | And then I see those pressures in the hiring loop (for | devs), we didn't interview QA, it would make sense that | they get pushed into QA or get pushed out entirely. | | Sexism in tech is much stronger than men realize, women are | fully aware. | adolph wrote: | > equate QA is beneath them | | I think the status quality of jobs is an interesting | aspect of discrimination. Why do certain jobs have higher | or lower status? If the perceived status of various jobs | was flatter, would various discriminatory schemes | (intentional or not) continue to operate? Would | differences in income persist? | | My hypothesis is that demographic clusters of people | within certain occupations are in part affinity and in | part discriminatory which operate as a yin-yang. | | Another hypothesis is that the existence of under- | represented demographic segments in certain fields of | study/occupation such as STEM means that the over- | represented demographic segments are under-represented in | other fields. Changing representation has classically | focused on importing under-represented folks into high | status fields. This effectively overstuffs some fields | which decreases effectiveness. A better approach would be | to make the other fields more attractive/high status so | that the over-represented demographic segments in fields | like STEM grow interest in other fields. | s1artibartfast wrote: | My hypothesis has always been that job status is largely | driven by compensation and difficulty obtaining the | position. If these are the drivers, I don't know how you | would equalize status without overturning the job market | at Large | LargeWu wrote: | One aspect I've noticed throughout my career is that the | engineering problems QE engineers face are generally more | straightforward, with well-defined parameters, and common | patterns. The skills required to be a successful QE | engineer require, generally, less breadth and depth of | expertise than some other disciplines of engineering. I | think it's a natural landing place for people who know | how to write some code, but struggle to view problems at | multiple levels of abstraction. | avensec wrote: | I am a Director-Level in Engineering/QA/Quality Engineering. | I currently lead a team where our ratio of Female Indian | women is higher than any other engineering group at the | company. Every Quality Engineering team I have been apart of | has had a higher ratio of females, but not necessarily of any | specific background. | | My N=1 experience is that this can be related, but not always | directly about discrimination or sexism. I would need to | include cultural oppression, personal confidence, and others | to accurately reflect a summation. I do not doubt that bias | or discrimination exist, just that I culturally do my best to | have a positive influence. | | A few years ago I wanted to understand better, so I asked for | feedback from a previous amazing Indian female SDET (whose | husband is the CTO of one of the big retail chains). She | explained a lot to me about how a woman's position being | higher than a mans was culturally challenging. She also had | self-doubts about her ability to thrive in a mostly-male | driven engineering organization. I worked with her on a | transition into a Development team, and the resistance came | mostly from _her_ fears of cultural bias and discrimination. | The Dev team took less than five minutes to round-table agree | that she was fit for the position. | | The bias and discrimination exist, but localized, the teams | I've worked with are always very supportive and welcoming. | thwjerjl23432 wrote: | Layke1123 wrote: | Is this a veiled criticism of Hinduism? | charia wrote: | I think it's more mocking the oversimplification of | complex problems. | | That though caste discrimination causes significant harm | and problems in the Indian and Indian diaspora | communities, not every, "bad thing", stem from caste | discrimination in specific. | | The idea that sexism and other terrible things can be | prevelant issues that need to be addressed better but | they are not necessarily related to caste. | walkhour wrote: | > Every Quality Engineering team I have been apart of had | had a higher ratio of females | | Positive discrimination is also discrimination, why not | look for the same ratio as the job market has? Over hiring | from an underepresented group necessarily means lowering | the competence, unless you purposely interview a | disproportionate number of individuals from the | underepresented group, is this what you have done? | | Edit: needing to interview a disproportionate number of | individuals to be able to overhire from an underepresented | group without affecting performance is just a | straightforward statistical fact assuming the same | competence across all groups. | marcosdumay wrote: | There's nothing on the GP about positive discrimination. | | If you hire based only on competence, you will probably | get more people that suffer discrimination than the | average. The stronger the discrimination, the higher the | odds. | s1artibartfast wrote: | This ignores the possibility of an unbalanced applicant | pool. | walkhour wrote: | True, although this is similar to what I described, I | guess the distinction is purposely imbalanced and | accidentally imbalanced. However I think the latter is | less likely, the post I replied to originally mentioned | doing this consistently across teams. Maybe the pool in | QA is imbalanced? In that case we should compare to other | QA teams to see if avensec is indeed an outlier. avensec | made it seem like they was an outlier, and everybody in | these comments is acting like this is the case. So I lean | on the side of the pool being balanced. | | I'm trying to understand how this is achieved in | practice, however I haven't got a good answer yet. | bena wrote: | Ever noticed how among professional bowlers, there are | fewer conventionally fit guys? | | Why is that? You'd think they'd have the same ratio of | fit guys as the rest of professional sports by your | logic. | | Or. | | Is it because the current highest earning professional | bowler has a lifetime career winnings of $5 million by | 2019? Since he turned pro in 1980. So if you can, you | play something else. | | Similar thing is going on here. There aren't people | gunning for QA jobs specifically, there are people | gunning for software related jobs in certain companies. | People will get various offers from various companies for | various positions. And the position you get is a | reflection, in part, of the best offer for the best | position the best company gave you. | | So while the entire pool may have applied for the QA job, | some of the people who were given offers got better | offers from better companies and/or for better positions. | | And let's not forget there could also be a variation of | the Dead Sea effect going on. Where those who aren't | Indian women get promoted or transferred out of QA at a | higher rate, leaving more Indian women in QA. So you have | twin effects going on. Where Indian women are getting | accepted into QA positions more than other positions and | Indian women being passed over for promotions and | transfers keeping them in QA positions. | peripitea wrote: | A much more likely explanation on the bowling thing is | that physical fitness is not required to be a good | bowler. Consider: | | -There are lower-paying sports where fitness does matter, | and they all have fit athletes at the top. | | -There are way more conventionally fit folks than there | are pro athlete slots; It's not like the select few fit | people in the world are being exhausted before they can | fill the ranks of all professional athletics. | wolverine876 wrote: | I know nothing about the parent or their experience [edit: | and thanks to the parent for posting this]. I do know that | commonly, people in positions of power (managers or people | in the majority) believe the following but it's often not | true; that is, the signal is always same, but not the | reality. That is, the signal is meaningless as an indicator | of the underlying situation, but when I find myself | thinking it, it is potentially a signal that I'm missing | something. | | > _" I ... have a positive influence."_ [note: not what the | parent actually said; it's abridged for my example] | | > _" The Dev team took less than five minutes to round- | table agree that she was fit for the position."_ | | > _" I asked for feedback from ..."_ | | A cause is that the people in a vulnerable position, the | people who actually have the experience and know if you are | having a positive influence or if they are accepted, don't | have a voice, a safe way to speak about their experiences. | Just saying 'you are safe', 'I support you', etc., doesn't | make it so. Just having a conversation doesn't mean you | know. | | _A useful rule for me is that if everything I hear feels | relatively comfortable, then I am not hearing nearly | everything._ | | We've all been in situations where someone invites us to be | open and frank (especially your boss!): How do you respond? | You know that many say it without meaning it - because it's | polite, or it's in the HR training, or because they don't | seriously considering what they are asking for. You know | that some even say it to trap you, and some say it because | _they_ want to openly and frankly tell _you_ something - | and they do, ignoring what you said and then going on a | rant. Some mean it but then can 't handle it; they hear | something disruptive to their worldview or needs (such as a | stable, stress-free team or family), and react poorly, | ignore it, or they bury their alarm and carry it around, | associating it with you, degrading the relationship. | Really, how often do you hear that invitation and then | actually speak openly and frankly? | | Now imagine that it's about a highly inflammatory topic | which has yielded bad results throughout your life, about | which you carry a lot of trauma. It might be a relatively | new experience to the person in power, but to the | vulnerable person it's something they've dealt with daily, | they have ways to cope without dealing with it afresh all | the time, and they've tried that conversation many times | with little success. Just imagine your boss invites you to | speak openly and frankly about politics or Donald Trump, | and you might have an idea. | | It's not hopeless, but there is an art and there are | techniques for making it work, and plenty of expertise is | available now that can guide people who are truly serious | about hearing uncomfortable things. | avensec wrote: | As the parent, just wanted to give a quick reply with | thanks. | | My reply here is meta given the topic, but I almost | didn't submit my original comment because I've seen how | these threads go. Any additional information in my | comment would lead to even more complexity/areas to pick | apart. Less information becomes easy targets for flame. I | can understand why the talk was pulled, because they | often seem to result in negative PR, more than any | potential positive influence. I felt the same with | submitting my comment. | | Thank you for offering positive suggestions and | discussion to the topic. | wolverine876 wrote: | Yes, and I hope it was taken as discussion. I am not even | making suggestions to you, not knowing anything about | you, your employee, or the situation. I do not for a | moment think that I do know based on a couple paragraphs | on the Internet. | | Thanks for submitting your comment. It's so valuable to | have someone openly discuss these things. | unixhero wrote: | I was test manager (never again) on a large enterprise | system (never again) and half of our QA team offshore in | India were all females; I didn't reflect on that at the | time. | harperlee wrote: | If you mean 50% of the india-based team was female, | rather than all of the 50% of the team that were based in | india, that shouldn't be surprising? | unixhero wrote: | I realize my sentence was unclear. My onshore team were | all males, all offshore (all India, Bang8, Bang7) QA team | members were female. | guru4consulting wrote: | cultural oppression - that might have been a valid reason | many decades ago but not these days. | | Most of the men on H1B visa get married and their spouses | arrive on dependent H4 visa. They cannot work with H4 visa | (they can work with EAD these days though). Usually, there | are a few years gap by the time they get back to | workforce.. and what is the easiest field to enter without | any programming skill? QA testing !! There are literally | hundreds of QA training institutions who train home makers | on QA testing and place them in a QA testing role | (sometimes inflating the resumes with fake experience).. | And there are other subtle reasons like low confidence | level, assuming developer roles are more stressful with | long hours of coding, cultural bias to focus more on family | than career, etc. Outside the fancy startups and tech | companies, QA testing is very slowly moving from manual to | automated testing. So, it is still one of the easy entry | points to the IT industry. | vijaybritto wrote: | Good team mates. This is non existent in India. A woman in | a management position has much harder steps to reach there | and will be impossible if she is from a lower caste. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | I worked at two companies where the engineering base is about | 90% male yet over half our managers were female. | | I also think it's counterintuitive to fixate on this stuff. | It doesn't have to be sexism- it could be a fluke. | lexapro wrote: | There seem to be more women in QA in general. Genuinely | asking: Is this also sexism? | lyaa wrote: | At least partly. When I was starting out, I would apply to | dev positions only to get offers to interview for lower- | paid QA positions. After changing to a gender-neutral | nickname and removing all female-identifying terms from my | resume, I got the interviews for dev positions. | walkhour wrote: | You claim "at least partly" and then proceed to prove it | with anecdotal evidence. You'd need to prove it with a | study similar to the ones that send identical CVs to | companies, just changing one thing, which is what they | want to discover if there's bias against. | vijaybritto wrote: | The onus is on the victims. Hmm, this sounds very | familiar.. | walkhour wrote: | Hmmm yes, we can't just make universal rules out of | personal experiences, this sounds very familiar. | caente wrote: | I think anecdotal evidence is almost literally what | "partly" means. | walkhour wrote: | Obviously not, see my other comment. Anecdotal evidence | is part of the evidence, it doesn't allow you to claim | part of the explanation is your anecdotal evidence. | lyaa wrote: | I am not obliged to defend every statement I make with a | study for my thoughts and experiences to be worth | sharing. Also, anecdotal evidence is evidence. Not as | generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless | as you seem to think. | | In any case, I have done the five minutes of googling you | seem to want. Biases in evaluating resumes based on | gender and other such factors are not new nor unknown: | here is an early study from 1986[1], 1988[2], 1999[3], | 2001[4], 2007[5]. Feel free to visit google scholar and | look more studies by yourself. | | [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002 | 2103186... [2] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10. | 1037%2F0022-3514.5... [3] | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018839203698 | [4] https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111 | /0022-4... [5] | https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-23339-007 | walkhour wrote: | You can sure share your thoughts, and I can share my | thoughts on whether you're correct, I'm just pointing out | it's not proven your personal experience proves | discrimination is part of the explanation. | | None of those studies support your original claim. They | support the more broader claim that women are | discriminated in the job market. | | > Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as | worthless as you seem to think. | | Sorry, a single data point, by itself, when you share it | attempting to generalize, is worse than worthless, since | it can be terribly misleading. | lyaa wrote: | Do you not see the logical link by which these more | general studies contextualize and support my earlier | statements? | walkhour wrote: | I see why you may think that way, but I don't think | you're right. | | I guess for you it's a given QA jobs are "inferior" to | SWE jobs. I guess you believe the articles you linked | proof women tend to get "inferior" jobs just because | they're women? (I haven't read the articles, although I | believe this to be true). | | I just can't make the jump that this applies to QA jobs | (granting they are "inferior"). That would imply | "inferior" jobs are always overrepresented by women, and | there are counterexamples to this, by almost any | definition of "inferior". | cycomanic wrote: | So talking about generalities, there are plenty of | statistics that show that women have lower paying jobs | and get paid less even for the same jobs. We can argue | about the reasons but the fact that they are paid less | has been shown many times, so if you are disputing it you | should be provide some compelling evidence. | | So the the question is are QA jobs lower paid or not. | That's easy to check and is a pretty good (though not | perfect) indicator of status. A quick Google would have | shown you that this is generally the case. Funnily enough | you will also find lots of dismissive posts which shows | that at least some people think QA jobs are inferior, | because "they don't code, but just use the software". | walkhour wrote: | > We can argue about the reasons but the fact that they | are paid less has been shown many times, so if you are | disputing it you should be provide some compelling | evidence | | I state I believe this is true in one of my previous | comments. | | > So the the question is are QA jobs lower paid or not. | That's easy to check and is a pretty good (though not | perfect) indicator of status. A quick Google would have | shown you that this is generally the case. Funnily enough | you will also find lots of dismissive posts which shows | that at least some people think QA jobs are inferior, | because "they don't code, but just use the software". | | This could be, but you need something else to prove it, | otherwise lower paying jobs with different distributions | than the job market distribution are always root caused | in discrimination, is this your argument? There are many | high paying jobs that result in a huge selection bias | with respect to employees, just because many people | simply don't want to put the hours. And thus | discrimination is not the whole story in these cases. It | may be the case in QA teams though (or part of the | story), I'm simply saying it needs more research. | | Nevertheless this hasn't been my point, my point is | simply a single data point by itself can't be used to | account for part of the explanation. | PeterisP wrote: | The average salaries in QA are noticeably lower than | those in SWE, so those are indeed "inferior jobs" - i.e. | less attractive, and pushing some group from one to the | other would be discriminatory because it would underpay | that group. | walkhour wrote: | Good, did I deny this? I'm simply asking for proof and | saying what has been provided in this thread is | insufficient. | | By the way, lower salary doesn't mean "inferior", there | are very high paying jobs, very stressful, that I | wouldn't want, and work life balance is a huge component | of a job. | drewcoo wrote: | No. | | A single anecdote is sufficient to merit "at least | partly." | | You can say it's not generally proved. But it also wasn't | a universal claim. | walkhour wrote: | At least partly means part of the explanation is what | follows. Not that there's at least single case of what | follows in the world. | | Do you realize how absurd language would be if what you | claim is true? For example: | | - Is is true latino men are discriminated against when | applying for florist positions? | | - Yes, it happened once. | | Literally any group would be "party discriminated" in | every possible scenario according to how you define "at | least partly". | dahart wrote: | > Genuinely asking: Is this also sexism? | | One way to look at it is that the disparity may be a | symptom of complicated cultural biases, and we may not know | the specific reasons. Since there's nothing gender or sex | related to doing the job of QA, then if the disparity | actually is measurable and widespread, it does reveal | cultural bias. This is currently true for nurses and for | elementary school teachers in the US, for example. | | It's important to note that this can happen without | individuals who have any overtly "sexist" behavior at all. | It can be the result of cultural attitudes and not | prejudiced hiring practices. This is why using the word | "sexism" on it's own might not be the best word for it, | even if it's technically true. Perhaps better terms are | "cultural sexism", or "cultural bias". I'm sure there are | better terms. The problem with using the bare word "sexism" | is it tends to be accusatory and out people on the | defensive, where the issue may literally be with all of us. | burrows wrote: | > Since there's nothing gender or sex related to doing | the job of QA, | | How do you know this to be true? | | > cultural bias | | What definition are you using for this term? | dahart wrote: | The question you need to be asking is the opposite: how | can you demonstrate that bias has been eliminated? Sex | bias was absolute and baked into law 100 years ago, and | it has been slowly getting eliminated, but there has not | been any point in time where we can demonstrate it's | gone, precisely because we have evidence it's not gone | yet. (Pay gap still exists, gender disparities between | schooling and employment still exist, etc.) | | We know for a fact that bias hasn't been completely | eliminated, because the ratios and disparities of many | jobs including QA are changing quickly, they have not | settled, and they are not the same from country to | country. That is proof that cultural bias exists and is | affecting today's distributions. You can't even | reasonably ask the question of how to know how much a job | depends on sex or gender until after you've eliminated | cultural bias, because cultural bias masquerades as | gender based preferences. | | This page for cultural bias is as good any any other | definition for my purposes here, which was purely to say | that "cultural bias" is _less_ inflammatory than | "sexism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_bias | burrows wrote: | > The question you need to be asking is the opposite: how | can you demonstrate that bias has been eliminated? Sex | bias was absolute and baked into law 100 years ago, and | it has been slowly getting eliminated, but there has not | been any point in time where we can demonstrate it's | gone, precisely because we have evidence it's not gone | yet. (Pay gap still exists, gender disparities between | schooling and employment still exist, etc.) | | I don't understand the meaning of the term "sex bias". So | it's completely unclear to me that it existed previously | and that I want it to stop existing. | | > We know for a fact that bias hasn't been completely | eliminated, because the ratios and disparities of many | jobs including QA are changing quickly, they have not | settled, and they are not the same from country to | country. That is proof that cultural bias exists and is | affecting today's distributions. You can't even | reasonably ask the question of how to know how much a job | depends on sex or gender until after you've eliminated | cultural bias, because cultural bias masquerades as | gender based preferences. | | Cultural bias is about people from different cultural | having different standards? What is the hypothetical | 'fix', imposing uniform standards for judgement on | everyone at all places in all times? | dahart wrote: | > I don't understand the meaning of the term "sex bias". | | This and "cultural bias" and "sexism" are all pretty well | established terms you can Google, and are taught in | social studies and history courses. | | Sex bias means a cultural bias or prejudice based on | someone's sex. I'm using sex here more or less | interchangeably with gender right now, but there are | times where that distinction matters. | | > it's completely unclear to me that it existed | previously and that I want it to stop existing. | | There's no question about whether sex bias has existed, | nor whether society wants it to stop existing. Those are | facts not being debated. The primary example I had in | mind when I said 100 years is women's suffrage: the right | to vote. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage) | When women were legally barred from voting, or owning | land, or initiating divorce, those things were sex based | biases. Women gained the right to vote in the US a while | ago, but it took longer before women started to appear in | C-level corporate roles, that is still changing today. | | > Cultural bias is about people from different cultural | having different standards? | | Please read the link I posted. Cultural bias is about | having ingrained prejudices in large social groups. It | can be, but is not primarily about people from different | cultures in the sense of, say, Indians vs Americans. | Indians have certain cultural biases, Americans have | their own separate cultural biases. The idea that nurses | should be women is an example of a cultural bias. | | > What is the hypothetical 'fix', imposing uniform | standards | | The goal is to remove bias and prejudice that is hurting | certain categories of people, preventing them from having | equal access to opportunity to improve their lives, and | to make decisions about people based on their interests | and abilities, and to establish and respect some basic | human rights across the board. I don't know what you mean | by "imposing uniform standards for judgement on everyone | at all places in all times", but this sounds like a straw | man and that you're skeptical. It might be described as | imposing _minimum_ uniform standards, perhaps. | | I will turn your question back on you: what is the | alternative you're suggesting, do you support having | different standards for men and women in QA? Why or why | not? Do you support the idea that a woman developer who | writes the same quality of code and works as hard and has | the same level of experience as her male coworker should | be paid the same amount? | burrows wrote: | > Ah, it sounds like you may need to study a little | history if you're curious about these terms. | | I am a mind in thrall to delusion. | | > Sex bias means a cultural bias or prejudice based on | someone's sex. | | Using the word "prejudice" to define "bias" doesn't help | me to understand the term. | | > Cultural bias is about having ingrained prejudices in | large social groups. | | Okay, so different people having different assumptions | which they use to judge phenomena. | | > The goal is to remove bias and prejudice that is | hurting certain categories of people, preventing them | from having equal access to opportunity to improve their | lives, and to make decisions about people based on their | interests and abilities, and to establish and respect | some basic human rights across the board. | | There are lots of things that lots of people will tell me | are hurting them. Personally, I don't care about any of | them. But how do you prioritize one claimed hurt over | another? | | > but this sounds like a straw man and that you're | skeptical | | Probably, I was just guessing. | | > I will turn your question back on you: what is the | alternative you're suggesting, do you support having | different standards for men and women in QA? | | I don't really care. The hiring/promoting practices of | 2022 American QA departments doesn't interest me. Let the | Harvest Gods have their day. | | > Do you support the idea that a woman developer who | writes the same quality of code and works as hard and has | the same level of experience as her male coworker should | be paid the same amount? | | Depends on the context. Does disqualifying the woman help | me to get what I want, then I'm all for it. Otherwise, I | don't care. | vijaybritto wrote: | >> How do you know this to be true? | | Goto LinkedIn and search for QA engineers in Indian | cities. I think that should be a very good proof for you | burrows wrote: | Searching LinkedIn will show me that "there's nothing | gender or sex related to doing the job of QA"? | thwjerjl23432 wrote: | golemiprague wrote: | How do you know it is "cultural bias" and even if it is | why do you think it is a problem? It could be that men | and women have natural different disposition to work in | certain fields, it might be that even in fields where it | is balanced it is the "cultural bias" that make it | balanced rather than the natural disposition. I don't | understand how something like that can even be proved, | how do you control for all the parameters? I also don't | understand why we should strive for balance? what is | wrong with each group, whether grouped by sex or race or | age or whatever else being specialised in different | fields on average? | drewcoo wrote: | Yes. Institutional sexism. | | Often perpetuated by women as well as men, so this isn't | man-blaming. | | And having a few token women in dev doesn't change the | situation so much as it cements the status quo in place. | walkhour wrote: | The truth is that there are no studies (that I'm aware of) | that research into whether there's sexism in QA. So the | answers to your question are going to be filled with | speculation. | pessimizer wrote: | There's no sexism until I see a study, and I'm not doing | a study if there's no sexism. Doing a study at all when | there are no previous studies would be a clear case of | anti-male bias. | walkhour wrote: | > I'm not doing a study if there's no sexism. | | Presumably you wouldn't know without a study, thus you do | the study. | chowells wrote: | Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA than | other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's 100% of | the information required to determine that this is the | result of sexism. | | However, a lot of people seem to think that describing | reality is an insult to them, so I have to explain further | - this is a result of systemic sexism starting at early | childhood. It starts with what toys children are given to | play with. It continues via socialization in schools. It's | propagated via every surprised face when a woman shows up | to learn about technology. No individual person involved in | the process might have any malice at all. It's the result | of entire systems of behavior, no individual part of which | can be described as "the problem". You might call it | systemic sexism. | | You don't have to be able to explain the entire method of | operation to see the result. Is there a statistical | difference in outcomes between groups that isn't explained | by a difference between the groups? Then there's a systemic | bias at work. | tbihl wrote: | >Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA | than other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's | 100% of the information required to determine that this | is the result of sexism. | | Car mechanics aren't all women, even though women's hands | fit much better into all those tiny spaces in the | dashboard and engine bay? Sexism | | Nurses aren't overwhelmingly male, despite the fact that | a significant part of the job is wrangling patients, who | overwhelmingly skew obese? Sexism | pessimizer wrote: | Your point here is unintelligible for me. | tbihl wrote: | I was trying to show by example that grandparent's | definition of sexism is ridiculously expansive to the | point of choking out all other dimensions of life. | | I chose them as two things that don't often get cited as | evidence of sexism (though mechanic isn't so dirty a job, | and isn't dangerous at all. I have more personal | awareness if mechanics, so that's what I chose.) | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | Male nurses not being as prevalent is definitely cited | often as an example of sexism in my circles. | havblue wrote: | I think QA is inherently unpopular. "Oh God are you really | going to make me document this before you sign off???" | [deleted] | notsureaboutpg wrote: | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: | I can explain exactly how this happens, but won't, because | that wouldn't be politically correct. | vijaybritto wrote: | Interesting fact: Talk to Indian upper caste women who claim | to be feminists about caste; you'll be shut down quickly. I | have had countless arguments only to be named "mansplainer". | The activism from powerful groups will flow in the same | social structure which does not affect their power. | bell-cot wrote: | This sounds _extremely_ similar the ~century-ago situation | in American feminism. Lesser right for women of "lesser" | racial, religious, social, etc. backgrounds were, ah, not | much of a concern. | pasabagi wrote: | It's also the same the other way around: a lot of male | anti-racism activists / communists / etc were very | sexist. Some still are. I still think it's nice that | feminists are, today and historically, generally ahead of | the curve when it comes to these things. | jonnycomputer wrote: | Is QA lower tier work in most places? Isn't that bass- | ackwards? | chrismorgan wrote: | As commonly _implemented_ , it's certainly a less-skilled | job with a lot of banal repetition, tedious procedure, and | not much scope for or need of original thought. | | As one familiar with the Indian education system (which is | heavily rote-based and does not generally encourage | understanding-based learning, especially before the | tertiary level) and the mentality it produces in comparison | with the western mind, I would say (and please don't | misunderstand me; I'm making a dispassionate assessment of | why it might be so, not whether it should or should not be | so) that this is actually a pretty good match, and it would | not surprise me--nay, I would _expect_ --to find Indians | and especially Indian women fitting in better into that | style of QA department than into other fields such as | development; and when you _have_ a large fraction of people | who think in such-and-such a way, it will tend to be self- | reinforcing and -perpetuating. (This is also a significant | factor in why these sorts of effects in how you think as a | whole have a habit of lingering for a generation or two | after transplantation into another country.) | delecti wrote: | It is definitely viewed as lower tier, which is unfortunate | because it's incredibly valuable. | bena wrote: | Something can be both. Incredibly low-skilled and easy | yet valuable. | delecti wrote: | I said QA is viewed as lower _tier_ , not less _skilled_. | QA, especially SDET style QA, is plenty difficult, but | gets very little respect. | bena wrote: | Yes, there are levels of QA. But QA, at its most | difficult is also software development, but for the most | part, is not. | | I would say, that on average, QA is a lower skilled | profession than software development. If I were to make | an analogy, QA is the nurse to the developer's doctor. | | And, yes, it is a lower tier. You hire developers before | QA and fire QA before developers. But, like you said, it | deserves respect. Just like all professions. And I'd say | that a competent QA staff is the sign of a successful | organization. Because while you can have your developers | test, it's better to move those responsibilities off | their plate so they can focus on their core work. Just | like you could have your employees take out the trash and | sweep up, but once you're beyond the "5 people in a | garage" setup, you're going to hire a cleaning service. | | To the point of the higher up comments. | | It is an issue. Even if QA were more difficult, | challenging, etc than development, we can't get around | the fact that it is perceived as supplemental to | development. It is a place where organizations put people | who want to be developers but the organization doesn't | want to be developers. Or a dumping ground for 1x | developers. And it seems, a way to tweak diversity | numbers without actually doing anything. | havblue wrote: | While it pays less I don't think I'd ever state that it's | "lower tier". If QA is an integral part of your process, | that the customer pays for, then you don't disparage | people doing the necessary work. | washadjeffmad wrote: | There are people in QA who are Patel. We have women from | India who work at all levels, from ED to L1. All pillars are | necessary. | | The biggest problem I've encountered is that they are | sometimes socially isolated because Western colleagues don't | know how to approach them, when they're really easy to talk | to and have a lot to say! | rgrieselhuber wrote: | >There are people in QA who are Patel | | What does this mean? I thought Patel was a surname. | Karawebnetwork wrote: | https://archive.ph/K9lux / https://theprint.in/india/who- | are-patels-and-how-they-have-b... | rgrieselhuber wrote: | Fascinating, thanks. What's the closest parallel in the | Western world? | vijaybritto wrote: | I'm afraid there is none. Also its better if people from | the west do not try to draw parallels with their | experiences and culture. It simply doesn't match. This | would help you understand the caste system and once you | do, you would literally see it in any place where Indians | live/work. The revelations would be mind boggling for | sure. | | For ex, if there are a bunch of Indians in a work place | and a few of them are from lower caste, they will not be | invited for lunches, dinners or any socialising event by | their upper caste counter parts. Implicit untouchability. | | I have read that in the US tech companies this is far too | common and since their white (only white specifically. | Because they don't care about what their | black/asian/latino colleagues think.) colleagues don't | understand caste, there are no repercussions for any | discrimination. | oh_sigh wrote: | I don't buy this...even if white people don't understand | caste, they would still understand random team members | not being invited to group events and perhaps try to find | out why it happened that way. | hef19898 wrote: | Any suggestions on how an European can tackle this? I now | have quite a bunch of Indian collegues, and while I know | what the caste system is and how it sucks, it is all just | theory for me. If women are cut short in meetings I see | it and can do something. If all Indians are excluded, or | all Blacks, Asians,..., I see it and can do sometjing. | Well, in theory. But of it is only affecting a sub-set of | a group that is completely indistinguishable from the | rest, it gets close to impossible. Plus, it feels like a | really sensitive topic. Just wondering, not that I | encountered a situation like that so far, or rather not | that I saw one for what it was. | JPLeRouzic wrote: | From Wikipedia: | | " _Etymology The term patel derives from the word | Patidar, literally "one who holds (owned) pieces of land | called patis", implying a higher economic status than | that of the landless,[6] ultimately from Sanskrit | pattakila,[7] with the ending -dar (from Sanskrit "dhaar" | - supporting, containing, holding) denoting | ownership.[8]_" | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patel | [deleted] | bobobob420 wrote: | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _There is no caste discrimination in US , he literally | lives in a 2 million dollar home_ | | Would you similarly reject the hardships of a successful | black American? If he's facing such animus, why do you think | it stops elsewhere? | | FYI, there are studies [1] and a lawsuit [2] documenting | caste discrimination in America. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_discrimination_in_the | _Un... | | [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit- | idUSKBN2423... | bobobob420 wrote: | JumpCrisscross wrote: | civilized wrote: | > There is no caste discrimination in US | | What makes you think you're qualified to make such a blanket | statement? Especially since caste discrimination is pervasive | in India and immigrants tend to bring their culture with | them. | | I just don't think you could know this, and I wonder what | else might be motivating you to make vast generalizations | about things you don't know. | bobobob420 wrote: | civilized wrote: | You're just one person. It's obvious that you don't | personally know about caste discrimination in all of the | United States. If you had data it would be another | matter, but you presented none and I'm pretty sure it's | because you have none. | | It's not a subjective matter, it's just transparently | absurd. | bobobob420 wrote: | dang wrote: | Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? Your | posts in this thread have been way over the line, and you've | unfortunately done posted this way to other threads too. We | ban accounts that do that. | | I'm not going to ban your account right now but we need you | to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and | stick to the rules if you want to keep posting here. | | On a topic like the current one, if you want to share some of | your own experience and cut out the swipes and putdowns of | others, that would be fine. Otherwise it's best not to post. | bobobob420 wrote: | Okay dang i will go ahead and read the guidelines. Sorry | for being passionate and being myself, i will try to be | someone else. Thank you for not banning my account even | though I get ruthlessly downvoted for speaking my opinion | and will never hit my karmic goal of being able to downvote | posts. | tristor wrote: | Related, Washington Post previously published an anonymous open | letter from Dalit women in 2020 in the wake of Cisco being sued | for caste discrimination: | https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/a-statement-on-caste-... | | One of the most interesting things that stood out to me from this | letter and that lawsuit was the assertion by those affected that | discrimination on the basis of caste was more impactful and more | severe than discrimination suffered due to immigration status, | race, and gender in US society, and the letter goes so far as to | state "We know that we thrive when we work under a non-Indian | boss. Our work is seen and evaluated on merit, and we are | integrated rather than being excluded." | | It makes these discussions of castes even more important, | especially as Indian immigration continues to rise and Indian | culture begins to take precedence in the tech industry. Being a | white American from the Midwest, I had no awareness of caste or | caste discrimination when I began my career, but as I got more | experienced began to learn about it and unfortunately I have | personally witnessed some incidents in the workplace during my | career. I wish that Google had allowed this talk to move forward, | because I think ending workplace discrimination is a critical | path to ensuring a merit-based free market open to all. | [deleted] | anonymousab wrote: | > After Gupta posted a link in the email group to a petition to | reinstate the talk, respondents argued that caste discrimination | does not exist, that caste is not a thing in the United States, | and that efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United | States would sow further division. | | > Some called caste equity a form of reverse discrimination | against the highest-ranked castes because of India's affirmative | action system for access to education and government jobs. | | > Others said people from marginalized castes lack the education | to properly interpret Hindu scriptures around castes. | | Wow. I did not expect saints; every person and organization will | be fallible and all that. Yet this is still so... absolutely | stunning. | devwastaken wrote: | Companies only talk about equality because 1. Requires by title | IX and 2. Advertising. It is immediately clear to anyone whom | has done even the slightest research that no org with | millions/billions sitting around can ever claim to support | equality in any respect. | 1270018080 wrote: | To me, all of these statements 100% confirm caste | discrimination exists in America. Whenever I hear confronting | history and privilege as "sowing further division" I cringe | hard. The parallels in American history are, well... very | parallel. | skyde wrote: | The problem is "affirmative action" is just reverse | discrimination and this is why it bring further division. | Because people from both sides now, no longer feel reward is | based on merit alone anymore. | | If there is another solution than "affirmative action" this | might not be divisive. | wumpus wrote: | > The problem is "affirmative action" is just reverse | discrimination | | Have you ever noticed that this opinion isn't the only one | out there? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#Origins | skyde wrote: | is there other form of affirmative action that are not : | - just a type of quota to give preferential treatment to | a group of people not because of merit but simply as a | way to increase diversity for some arbitrary measurement | (gender, race ...) | wumpus wrote: | Yes, it's right there in the link I posted. | michaelmrose wrote: | There is no such thing as reverse discrimination it's a | purely content free term. Discrimination is merely | discrimination with the insertion of the word reverse | having no additional meaning. | | It's normal for any system which creates an incentive to | hire minorities to still be so biased in favor of white | dudes that you are still much better off being a white | dude. | | Basically for every minority that wouldn't have made it on | merit it's likely you could find two white dudes with the | same level of actual merit. | | This degrades substantially the virtue of complaints about | such discrimination. | skyde wrote: | You are basically saying its ok for a white dude from a | family of homeless to be doubly discriminated (1- because | he does have money to go to college 2- because college | reserve seat for non-white people) | | And you justify it because statistically if you take a | random white people and a random black people the black | person would deserve it more. | | While this is true this logic is morally wrong because | you punish or reward an individual not because of this | individual merit but because he happens to have the same | skin color as other individual. | | It's as absurd as saying there are not enough | professional basketball player that are redhead so we | should have quota of redhead regardless of skill level. | devnonymous wrote: | > It's as absurd as saying there are not enough | professional basketball player that are redhead so we | should have quota of redhead regardless of skill level. | | If the end goal is that after a number of generations we | finally have the proportionate number of redhead | basketball players that would have existed if we didn't | discriminate against recruiting redhead players in the | past, then no, the idea isn't absurd at all. | | Note the keyword here is the end goal - of creating a | equal and just basketball team... or society, if you reel | in the ad absurdum. | akavi wrote: | I think the argument that "efforts to raise awareness of these | issues in the United States would sow further division" isn't | totally without merit. | | As an America-born Indian-American, I honestly don't know what | my caste is beyond knowing I'm not Brahmin (I didn't do the | string ceremony some of my childhood family friends did), and | have basically zero idea of how I'd identify someone else's | caste. I imagine that that's not terribly uncommon among ABCDs. | | Educating people like me about that would suddenly create the | ability for them to identify a difference that they wouldn't | have noticed before. This makes it unlike gender, racial, or | age discrimination, where the categories are usually surface | level obvious. That in turn could have a star-bellied sneetches | effect, where people identify with the new categories that they | wouldn't have considered before. | devnonymous wrote: | I've heard similar arguments being made about teaching CRT in | school. Are you really saying ABCDs are so confused about | their own identity that they'll cling on to n antiquated | notion of a social hierarchy based on knowledge of the Vedas? | akavi wrote: | I think it's pretty normal as a human to attach oneself to | various identity groups (An anodyne example being local | sports teams), and the more you salience an identity, the | more likely and more strongly individuals are to attach | themselves to that identity. | | It seems like that could in fact an issue with race-centric | DEI training, at least per the one study I found at short | notice[0]. But that needs to be weighed against the | potential benefits and the fact that race relations are a | significant issue across America society regardless of | whether we address it explicitly or not. | | With caste discrimination, the issue currently exists | within a very small slice of American society (immigrants | born in India). So even a small negative effect across the | rest of American society would wipe out even the most | significant improvements in that slice. | | [0]: | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550618780728 | chimeracoder wrote: | > As an America-born Indian-American, I honestly don't know | what my caste is beyond knowing I'm not Brahmin (I didn't do | the string ceremony some of my childhood family friends did) | | That's not actually sufficient information to infer anything, | since people from any of the four savarna castes can | participate in the ceremony. It varies a lot by region and | community. | | It's not actually unheard-of for Dalits to have it, although | that's rare. | akavi wrote: | Oh huh, TIL! | | Well, then I have no idea at all what my caste is. | ajross wrote: | As an America-born white hippie, though... I have a hard time | seeing an argument like that and not equating it with | attempts to suppress discussion of racial equality issues | here at home[1]. The fact that you don't experience | discrimination doesn't mean that no one does. And you should | know if people do, and why. | | Nothing gets better if the skeletons stay in the closet, | basically. It's no different for caste awareness than it is | for teaching slavery and segregation. | | [1] _Edit: and look what I did! "Here at home" clearly comes | out making this seem like a "foreign" problem, but as you | point out this is your home too! That's why we should all be | hearing people speak out about it._ | CWuestefeld wrote: | But I think the same argument _can_ be applied here in the | USA, too. | | Your point about "security through obscurity" makes sense; | I wouldn't attempt to conceal the history and the current | problems. | | But the strategy here today seems to be trying to force | people to own a given racial identity: at least some people | are demanding that white people should stand up to publicly | renounce their privilege, etc. And I'm afraid that this | strategy of forcing people to self-identify as "white" | rather than just "person" plants a seed in some minds that | germinates into them sprouting into white nationalists and | so forth. | ajross wrote: | FWIW: I think you're conflating things. Teaching kids | about slavery and segregation, and teaching older kids | the enduring effects thereof (which are quantifiable!) | isn't the same thing as forcing them to pick a racial | identity or renounce their privilege or whatever, even if | some of the same people want to do both. | | You can oppose the latter without denying the former. | From my perspective on the other side of this divide, I | see a lot of people making arguments like yours as a way | of shutting down discussion about inequality entirely. | That's exactly what you claim not to support, right? | [deleted] | empressplay wrote: | Um, no. The only division it would sow would be when you | notice your Indian-born manager is discriminating against | your Indian-born co-worker. | | The only people who really want to stop awareness of this are | people like that manager. | chasil wrote: | A full video of a talk by Soundararajan in reaction to | Google's cancelation was published to YouTube, link below. | | A few things that I found poignant in this talk: | | One in four people in the world live within a caste system. | | Soundararajan's father only admitted his dalit status to | her in his late 70s. | | The reservation system in India is the earliest civil | rights initiative, predating the movement in the U.S. | | The reservation system has expanded from its original role | in university admissions to encompass reserved seats in | parliament and corporate hiring. | | The final question in the talk was from a "closeted" dalit | worker at Google who was terrified that she would be outed. | | As much as we hope that the caste system has no bearing in | U.S. hiring, we must acknowledge that its effects are | present. | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2xykx777qZM | uhuruity wrote: | I am also a foreign born person of Indian descent and agree | with the person you're replying to. I have never been aware | of my cast, the cast of other Indians / Indian origin | people I interact with, and think that's a good thing. | Could you elaborate on why you think the negative effect - | that making previously oblivious people aware of castes | could increase discrimination - doesn't exist? | s1artibartfast wrote: | Funny that you are literally discounting an Indian | American, telling them how they will think and feel about | the topic. | gomoboo wrote: | Isn't this just relying on security through obscurity? The | knowledge is already out there for anyone wishing to seek it. | Why pretend it doesn't exist? | | For what it's worth, I am not of Indian descent. | guenthert wrote: | "Ignorance is bliss" is the phrase you're looking for. | whack wrote: | Take a look at the brown-eye-blue-eye experiment that a | teacher did with her students. Everyone already knew the | color of their eye, but no one gave it much significance. | But as soon as the teacher started talking about the | socioeconomic-status associated with eye color, students | immediately divided themselves and started fighting over | eye color. | | Never underestimate people's ability to segregate | themselves using whatever demographic markers society tells | them is important to their identity. | | > _The children with brown eyes were suddenly more | confident -- and condescending. They hurled nasty insults | at the blue-eyed kids. The children with blue eyes made | silly mistakes and became timid and despondent. The two | groups stopped playing together. Fights broke out._ | | https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/karinabland/2017 | /... | jjcon wrote: | > efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United | States would sow further division. | | I think is a real point and is true of many issues - the | problem is how do you fix a problem silently in the background? | Can it be done with better results than hyperfocusing on it? I | would guess and hope there might be a way but don't know how. | crooked-v wrote: | Talking about social problems only "sows further division" in | the sense that people who currently benefit from those | problems get angry that you want to change things. | skyde wrote: | Well to be fair If in United States, I met/interview someone | from India. I would have no idea which caste they are, so I | don't see how I can discriminate one caste over another :) | rhacker wrote: | Ever get an offhanded comment from another co-worker (indian) | that says something like, yeah I don't know about this guy. | What if THAT was him thinking about the entire CASTES | thing!?!?!?! I mean that's often enough to pass up entire | people | skyde wrote: | So would that co-worker be able to guess the caste of the | candidate during a 30minute phone interview ? | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | Casted are guessable simply by seeing someone's name. | qorrect wrote: | What are some obvious examples? Thx | Johnny555 wrote: | Anyone that really thinks the USA has no caste is in an upper | level caste. It's less formalized here than in other countries, | but it absolutely exists. | pydry wrote: | American caste is just money though. | zeusk wrote: | and skin color, gender, race or sexuality based on the | local politics/religion. | wumpus wrote: | Money, education, Mayflower ancestor, eligible to join the | Daughters of the American Revolution, distant relative of | some famous or wealthy family, member of some social clubs | (even inexpensive ones), and so on. | cuteboy19 wrote: | That's not what caste is. Caste is a value assigned to you | at birth that you cannot change no matter what you do. It's | similar to race but stupider | qorrect wrote: | People are having a really hard time grasping this and Im | not sure why. | Johnny555 wrote: | It's money and everything that comes along with it - social | status, health (both because of access to healthcare, but | being able to afford a healthy lifestyle), education, safer | interactions with law enforcement, job prospects and | advancement, etc. If you're born poor, it's very hard to | break out of that. It's not literally impossible like | changing caste is, but it's very difficult. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Money _and education_. | beebmam wrote: | I'm not Indian, I don't think there's a caste system for me. | If people discriminate against me for not being Indian and | thereby not having a caste, then I hope they get brutally | fired and ridiculed, and their wealth is dispossessed. | | We should be treating people as individuals, not collectives. | Anything less is profoundly immoral. | s1artibartfast wrote: | Anyone who thinks the USA has a caste system doesn't | understand what a caste system is. People are not defined or | restricted based on the occupations of their parents. | | Class mobility is celebrated, so much so that the successful | often play-up any humble origins in their families. | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | The US caste system absolutely exists; it's called old | money. And old money communities absolutely limit | occupations and opportunities based on this. | beebmam wrote: | That's not a caste system. Please read: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste | dsr_ wrote: | It's a class system, but nearly all Americans insist that | they are middle-class: upper middle class, lower middle | class, but definitely middle-class. | | https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/middle-class.asp | s1artibartfast wrote: | I have never been asked to put my parents occupations or | net worth on a resume, or been asked it in an interview. | killerdhmo wrote: | You don't have to. It comes up with your universities, | your hobbies, your zip code, even your name. That leads | into what jobs you get, how much money you earn, and now | what position your kids are in. | josephg wrote: | Social mobility has been declining in the rich world since | the 40s. The USA doesn't have a formal class system, but | it's increasingly rare for people from poor families to | become wealthy in modern day America. | | We're right to celebrate people from humble origins | climbing the social ladder. But it doesn't happen anywhere | near as often as it should. | s1artibartfast wrote: | That is not a caste system. | | If you want to talk about social Mobility, we can talk | about that as a separate topic. | | What does ideal social Mobility look like to you? Here is | a baseline for discussion: | | https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/imag | es/... | AussieWog93 wrote: | >Some called caste equity a form of reverse discrimination | against the highest-ranked castes because of India's | affirmative action system for access to education and | government jobs. | | I've heard some pretty horrible stories about this in | particular; like Brahmin kids being legally adopted into Sudra | families in order to get into a reserved position at a State | University, and rich kids with private tutors getting given | further advantage over poor kids doing all the work themselves | because they happen to be of a lower caste. | | Just like in every other country, affirmative action does | nothing but help members of a specific group who are already | advantaged. | india_usa wrote: | There is 70% affirmitive action. If you are a Dalit with 50% | mark you will get admission to a medical seat and you will be | a cardiac surgeon, but if a brahmin girl gets 99% she will | not get admission and will be a clerk. Go figure the Indian | system. This is why you see thousands of Brahmins in Silicon | valley as they are kicked out or disgusted with Indian | political system of favoring lower castes. USA benefited | immensely from it. | manifestdissent wrote: | AnimalMuppet wrote: | > Others said people from marginalized castes lack the | education to properly interpret Hindu scriptures around castes. | | "If you're one of _them_ , you're too ignorant to understand | why we're right". Absolutely repulsive. | vt85 wrote: | anonymousiam wrote: | [deleted] | salawat wrote: | Which would give grounds on the hiring manager front for | investigating one's employer for de-facto blacklisting. | | Which is illegal. | | Just because someone points out the elrphant in the room at a | workplace does not make them "radioactive". Quite the opposite. | Sunlight is the best disinfectant. | anonymousiam wrote: | Organizing a labor protest because of unfair working | conditions, or as an attempt to unionize, is "protected" by | US regulations (not necessarily laws). Organizing a labor | protest because of a (real or perceived) culture of sexual | harassment is not. If she had a valid and provable claim of | wrongdoing, she should have approached an attorney and sued | Google to elicit change (and maybe some compensation). I | believe I read that her protest was staged to "bring | awareness" to the issue. If you were an employer (regardless | of your views on the topic), would this be okay with you? | | The same thing goes for trying to organize a meeting with a | speaker who will talk about the caste system in Silicon | Valley. Yeah, caste == bad, but is the employer obligated to | host such a meeting (at their expense)? Obviously she could | rent a venue and invite others to the presentation on their | own time, but why must Google submit to her demands for them | to pay for it? | salawat wrote: | >Organizing a labor protest because of unfair working | conditions, or as an attempt to unionize, is "protected" by | US regulations | | >Organizing a labor protest because of a (real or | perceived) culture of sexual harassment is not. | | ...Pardon me, but do you not consider a workplace wherein | sexual harassment is implicitly encouraged or tolerated to | the point that someone feels the need to clarify or remind | others this a workplace to not be a subset of unfair | working conditions? I do. Generally it is something that | hardly needs explaining in the majority of places I've | been, but in the places that needed it, it was needed. It | _can_ be overdone. Given recent history on Google however, | I 'm willing to entertain the benefit of a doubt. | | >The same thing goes for trying to organize a meeting with | a speaker who will talk about the caste system in Silicon | Valley. Yeah, caste == bad, but is the employer obligated | to host such a meeting (at their expense)? | | Does the employer outsource a sizable chunk of business to | somewhere where these concerns are valid? Is management | composed of people to whom these concerns should apply? If | yes, then absolutely. | | Look, the bigger a collective unit of humanity you are, the | higher my standards go. Everyone individually is prone to | their own vices/biases/fallibilities/etc... but the entire | point behind collectives is that not all component members | are _hopefully_ having an evil day at the same time. So on | average, behavior should tend away from blatant unethical | or immoral behavior. This is doubly important, because | group behavior is indicative of culture of the constituent | parts. | | I understand there are some people who look at businesses | as nothing but profit engines. I don't. If your business | ends up perpetuating discriminatory practices because there | is some executive at the top who is a caste-ist bastard, | and you've got boots on the ground attestating that yes, | that tendency shines through to them numerous enough, then | it is absolutely a valid expenditure of our collective | society's time. | | Should it eclipse everything else? No not necessarily. Is | there a point where one needs to rein it in? Who should be | entrusted with that decision? | | Certainly not those in power/up top. There are fewer of | them, and the power they wield taints their impartiality. | It is most safely ensconced amongst your workers. | | If one person asks for it, say no. Two or three do, start | paying attention, possibly escalate. If it is worth your | people's time to hear this person out, it is worth your | time. | | Beside's which, as a leader, you are best thought of as a | cache. If you haven't formed a stance or policy in it, do | the expensive operation, then cache the result. | | Boom. Done. Everybody's happy. Ignoring the potential | problem won't make it go away. | | Bottom up, not top down. Telling the bottom to chill out | because Fearless Leader would never let anything _improper_ | happen is about the most unamerican thing I can possibly | imagine... Nevermind the biggest bloody lie out there. | | In short; I tend to disagree with your standpoint. My job | isn't to optimize your accountant's profit figures, it's to | make sure that signals get handled so the people doing the | real work can concentrate on that. The profit will | generally take care of itself. | | People are complicated. Those that think they've simplified | them enough are inevitably due for a refresher in human | nature. | kleinsch wrote: | Only if someone is dumb enough to document in an email | they're firing her for speaking out. In the real world if you | spend your whole workday investigating and criticizing your | employer, you'll eventually no longer work there. They'll | find cases where you missed deadlines, bad performance | reviews, etc. | 0des wrote: | A criminal attorney once said: If you can say it, don't | write it. If you can communicate it without saying it, then | don't speak it at all. | zo1 wrote: | Not sure I understand the usage of the term radioactive here? | Did you mean toxic? | anonymousiam wrote: | I guess toxic is an adjective with a similar meaning, but a | worse connotation in my view. Both words imply that she is to | be avoided, and she will probably have some difficulty | finding a new job after her very-public departure from | Google. | 0daystock wrote: | Google has cancelled many discussions about various bias; their | "Talks" have not been thought-provoking or even relevant for some | years now, probably since middle management from other mediocre | companies percolated the organization. | [deleted] | jimmaswell wrote: | Democracy dies in darkness, please enter your credit card to | continue. | [deleted] | Pigalowda wrote: | There are 200+ million Dalits in India. These are the people | which were previously called "untouchables". | | I work in medicine, many Indians work with me and most are | Brahmins with a few Christian Malayali from Kerala. | | I think the Malayali have shown it is possible to escape the | caste system and to have success. | | However I am worried Dalits have been at the bottom and treated | as such for thousands of years that it has effected more than | just their psychology. In a high population density area with | food insecurity there will be high baseline stress, malnutrition, | and starvation. Those will cause epigenetic modifications to DNA | which are (surprisingly) heritable. Over thousands I imagine | these effects will produce behaviors which are going to be hard | to overcome. | dundarious wrote: | What are or should be the consequences of these worries of | yours? | Pigalowda wrote: | The worry is that it will take many generations of | significant investment back into the Dalit communities to | bring them into parity with the rest of the Indian | population. That even after the investment the longterm | epigenetic effects from thousands of years of high | intergenerational stress will show a significant increase in | diseases of all types with higher all cause mortality/lower | life expectancy. | dundarious wrote: | Lifestyle factors drastically dominate when it comes to | mortality/life expectancy. Also, the whole idea is highly | speculative and would/should have no implications for | workplace/hiring practices regardless. | Pigalowda wrote: | Yes it is true that with improvement in maternal/fetal | survivability modifiable lifestyle factors drastically | dominate life expectancy. However that's a throw away | line to disregard significant differences. It's basically | zooming out far enough to say it doesn't matter. | | And yes, its a speculative idea that I proposed, I | certainly didn't suggest it was dogma. However this kind | of observation is what would lead to a study. | | Lastly, while this discussion is tangential to Google | hiring practices, it is a related topic. I'm sorry if you | feel like I robbed you of your time. | dundarious wrote: | It's not "a throw away line to disregard significant | differences" when I say that almost all the genetic | factors you're concerned about are subordinate to | lifestyle factors -- they are. Genetic factors can be | governed (genes switched on/off) via lifestyle factors | such as diet, activity, etc. Never mind that whole | populations have endured famines, passing on harmful | traits epigenetically, and yet, those populations have | recovered well. | | I don't think you're wasting my or anyone else's time, | but I think your post was missing crucial info, | especially given the context. If there was a post about | career achievement or discrimination of Finnish people, I | wouldn't post about their unfavorable epigenetic profile | since the famines of WW2, lest it be construed as partial | justification. | istjohn wrote: | That sounds like a barely plausible, extremely convenient | justification for bigotry that could be employed by any number | of racial or ethnic groups. | Pigalowda wrote: | Not barely plausible at all. For my epigenetic comment - Here | is a relevant paper: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579375/ | | And secondly, low SES populations have much higher rates of | psychiatric disorders and pretty much all diseases. If one | were to combine thousands of years of epigenetic effects and | persistent unescapable low SES status, then it does not take | a leap of faith to hypothesize there will be long term | effects. Much less "barely plausible", a comment that only | arises because this is not your domain, but it is mine. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | This is likely an example why it may not always be a great idea | to discuss politics at work. I know a lot of us have strong | personal opinions on a lot of subjects, but making sure everyone | on my team aligns with my beliefs is likely not conducive to | teamwork. Quite the opposite. | | If I was not an IC now, I would definitely be trying to cut | discussions like that in a bud. | gman83 wrote: | I think that discussing caste-based discrimination is great for | a western company to do. Especially one with a lot of Indian | workers. Most western workers/managers have little | understanding of this topic, and will probably miss it if a | coworker is being discriminated against because of their caste. | Seems like a no-brainer to me. | HelloMcFly wrote: | > This is likely an example why it may not always be a great | idea to discuss politics at work. | | If you're seeing discrimination in the workplace then it's no | longer about politics, it's about the workplace and | professionalism among staff. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | No. Everything is politics. You just happen to be too close | and emotionally invested to see it as such. It is fine to | hold strong opinions and consider some items 'obvious' or | even 'inalienable', but pretending those are all not just a | temporary set of values we agreed on as a society is silly. | | edit: Even saying 'I am apolitical' is a political statement. | rob74 wrote: | Except racism (and "caste-based discrimination" is also racism) | shouldn't be considered "politics", everybody should be able to | agree that it doesn't have a place in a modern company. | Consultant32452 wrote: | Having public messaging about negative social behavior often | results in more of the negative behavior. Studies suggest | lots of media about school shootings results in more school | shootings. Similarly, messaging about getting help to reduce | self-harm results in more self-harm. DARE resulted in no | reductions in drug use. | | If the people creating these programs/talks don't understand | this, they don't deserve the platform. And if they do | understand it, they are evil and intentionally trying to make | race/bigotry tensions worse. In cases such as this where the | relevant psychology of the issue is essential to the career, | I tend to assume the worst of anyone doing it. | x86_64Ubuntu wrote: | So the problem shouldn't be discussed? So for security | vulnerabilities, disclosing them allows them to be | exploited. So 0-days and their corresponding patches | shouldn't be discussed or released? | Consultant32452 wrote: | A thoughtful person might change their behavior once they | learn that their behavior is getting the opposite of the | result they intended. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Why is it an exception and why is it not politics? Can you | define politics and tell me why "cast-based discrimination" | does not overlap with that definition? | seneca wrote: | "Except my special bugbear is special and should be exempt | from basic social norms. Everyone should have to agree with | me". | | The issue is that any and everything can be claimed to be | racist, and therefore transferred to your special pre- | political exemption. | NoGravitas wrote: | Apart from the morality of the situation, the fact is that | racial discrimination in the workplace is illegal in the US | (and rightly so, in my opinion). Whether caste | discrimination is a form of racial discrimination is the | subject of current litigation in California. Given that | there are legal requirements the company needs to stay in | compliance with, this is squarely outside of "politics at | work". | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | This is likely the only reasonable counter to my opinion | so far. That said, is caste of a racial nature? To my | understanding it really more of a social construct more | tied to ethnicity. | NoGravitas wrote: | To be clear, race is also socially constructed; they're | different cultures' ways of stratifying social | categories. That said, all that matters for the law in | this case is what the courts say. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Eh, I hate this conversation. Maybe? If we follow that | thread, everything is a social construct. It gets silly | fast. | | Now, if were to look for a biological definition from | Webster(1), race would be defined as: | | a group within a species that is distinguishable (as | morphologically, genetically, or behaviorally) from | others of the same species | | How is skin color not a distinguishable trait? | | Now.. it might not be politically polite thing to say, | but it does not change the outcome here. | | 1:https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/race | NoGravitas wrote: | It's okay to just admit you don't know something. Here's | the American Anthropological Association's public | outreach site on the subject, so you can catch up on the | relevant science. | | https://understandingrace.org/ | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | This may be where the disconnect is. The definition I | provided was from a biology domain and not from | humanities domain ( not that there no attempts to do the | same in biology ). This is not discredit anthropology as | it is a fascinating study. I just do not think it is | relevant here. | | I do happen to think that, where there are clear physical | differences ( gasp ) between white and black people, it | may be a good idea not to try to cover it with yet | another social construct. Unless, naturally there is a | disagreement that there are real physical differences ( | for example, if we wanted to move from skin pigment, | there are documented issues that affect black people more | than whites ). Are those issues racist? | | That said, it is somewhat interesting that the main quote | on the website provided does not come from a renowned | representative of the group, but relatively unknown | historian ("[Racism] is not about how you look, it is | about how people assign meaning to how you look"). Quite | frankly, that is not racism. That is otherism and it goes | back to the previous comment about how the waters and | definitions are muddied further to pigeonhole something | for one reason or another. | | To be blunt, there is a good reason for a society ( and | its members ) to not be focused on race, but pretending | race does not exist is a disservice to that society as it | is hiding the reality from its members. | | Maybe I am approaching it the wrong way. Maybe I should | try Socratic method here. | | Are there black people? | yakshaving_jgt wrote: | According to people like Robin DiAngelo, white people are | inherently racist, as she wrote in her book _White | Fragility_. | | It's difficult to say that we can all agree to not be racist | when some ideologues from whom's political ideas companies | base DEI initiatives on claim that racism is an immutable | characteristic that many of us are born with. | booleandilemma wrote: | It sounds like Robin DiAngelo is inherently racist. | usrn wrote: | These people often use Trotsky's definition of racism | which means they can't be racist towards White people. We | should all stop using the word because it means something | different to extremists. "Racial bigotry" makes much more | sense. | rob74 wrote: | I would say anyone who makes such broad statements about | groups of people is at least guilty of bigotry, yes... | zo1 wrote: | I'd posit that 99.999% of people agree racism is bad. It's | mostly when the definition gets muddied and expanded that | people start disagreeing and it becomes political and touchy. | Crabber wrote: | knorker wrote: | I don't think it's a matter of definition. Unless you mean | "it's not racism when I say it. When I say it it's just a | fact". | | Whether they use the N word, or saying "being on time" is | "whiteness", racism is always defined as "not what I'm | doing". | | Actually the only real definition of racism I would say is | "mentioning race in any way, except the way I do it". | | For your 99.999%, I would say that WAY more than one in a | hundred thousand would overtly say that their group (race, | religion, skin color, gender) is "better" than another. | Especially as you leave western countries. | | Though in some countries their racism doesn't even place | themselves at the top. | | 27% of Americans say that homeopathy is an effective | treatement. I've never met anyone who would admit to this. | I know someone who believes in crystals and fortune tellers | though. | | I don't know how many people are pro-racism, but it's not | three orders of magnitude less than people who believe in | the power of nothing. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | I think the problem is - and that is likely what OP was | referring to - that if everything is racism then nothing | is racism. And if being on time is racist, I guess | everything already is racist. | | It is an odd frame of mind. | | >>> For your 99.999%, I would say that WAY more than one | in a hundred thousand would overtly say that their group | (race, religion, skin color, gender) is "better" than | another. Especially as you leave western countries. | | Is it possible you are conflating racism with xenophobia | ( which has slightly expanded to include foreigners )? | aabceh wrote: | mountainriver wrote: | Google is so morally bankrupt at this point they have no idea | what is right. The far left has given everyone the impression | that standing up to this nonsense is racist | kart23 wrote: | It'll be interesting to see how this issue evolves with more | american-born Indians entering the workforce. Hopefully it'll | fade like a lot of other old-fashioned discrimination has. | gedy wrote: | Okay, what DEI talks have they not cancelled in that case? Might | show their biases. | bko wrote: | Do we need every mega-corporation to weigh in on every social | issue globally? The thing I like most about work is that its a | relatively diverse group of people working together on shared | goal. People have known for a long time that work should be | professional and you should avoid politics and religion. But I | guess people have to relearn these lessons every few decades. | bobobob420 wrote: | ubermonkey wrote: | That's a DEEPLY blinkered take. | | It's not about Google weighing in. It's about Google being | aware of these problems, and doing the work to keep those | problems out of its workplace. | draw_down wrote: | otterley wrote: | > Do we need every mega-corporation to weigh in on every social | issue globally? | | It's called "leadership." | m12k wrote: | We don't need them to weigh in on social issues, but we do need | them to not be part of the problem. E.g. if a company of | Google's size had an issue where Indian employees tended to | prevent qualified candidates from being hired because they were | lower-caste, then that would both be a problem for Google | (because they would be missing out on labor) and those being | discriminated against. | jspaetzel wrote: | It wouldn't even be a "relatively diverse" group if we didn't | work at it continuously. This is just the latest difficult | step. | rangersanger wrote: | I'm wondering what you mean by weighing in globally. Do you | mean publicly, or internally within the global google | employment base? Google is big enough that I'm not sure | public/internal can really be teased apart, but I guess | intention might matter. | | Regardless, I've come to realize that not talking about | politics and religion doesn't make political or religious | action and impact go away, it just stays insidious. | bediger4000 wrote: | Yes, we do need that, at least in the USA. The last 42 years of | politics have neutered the federal and state governments when | it comes to any kind of social issue. The only institutions | that get respect are The Military, churches, very rich (and | therefore very intelligent) men, and some big companies. The US | government has so many checks and balances that virtually | nothing has gotten done in years. | rsstack wrote: | They don't have to weigh in. But, if few Indian managers | discriminate against Dalits, how are their non-Indian peers and | managers supposed to correct that discrimination if they don't | even understand what are castes? This isn't political, it's | professional: US laws and Google policies forbid | discrimination, and so people need to be trained in | understanding what discrimination looks like. You don't | categorize "security awareness training" as political either. | bko wrote: | > But, if few Indian managers discriminate against Dalits, | how are their non-Indian peers and managers supposed to | correct that discrimination if they don't even understand | what are castes? | | Shouldn't the managers and decision makers be aware of the | local customs, cultural issues and employment laws in the | region they manage? You really think it's appropriate for | some white American manager to lecture his Indian | subordinates after spending a few hours in training? | TimTheTinker wrote: | > You really think it's appropriate for some white American | manager to lecture his Indian subordinates after spending a | few hours in training? | | If he/she sees a clear violation of discrimination | laws/policies, then yes! Although "lecture" wouldn't be the | best start. Asking questions to the alleged discriminator | would be a better way forward. Find out what happened and | why, and ask multiple people for their input. Start by | assuming innocence and let evidence prove otherwise, not | the other way around. | | The truth about a given situation is not completely | inaccessible to people without "lived experience". That's | why _words_ are so powerful - when used truthfully and in | good faith, they enable to bridge gaps where we lack that | personal experience, and make accurate judgments. | TimTheTinker wrote: | > when used truthfully and in good faith, [words] enable | us to bridge gaps where we lack that personal experience, | and make accurate judgments. | | That's why learning to express ourselves well, and listen | well (including empathetically) is so important to a | functioning society. | | As a society, we need a restored faith in the power of | words to communicate _any_ truth (including truths people | erroneously say are "inaccessible apart from lived | experience") and be understood by those who will listen | well. | | The problem isn't that truth is unknowable or | incommunicable, the problem is that not enough people are | speaking it, and of those who are, many don't speak | intelligently and/or intelligibly. And not enough of | those who listen do so carefully, thoughtfully, and | empathetically. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _the local customs, cultural issues and employment laws | in the region they manage_ | | This article concerns caste discrimination in the United | States. | MomoXenosaga wrote: | Amusingly caste discrimination is illegal in India too | but laws alone rarely change culture it needs a healthy | doses of death and destruction. | rsstack wrote: | That's their job. If they don't like it, they aren't fit to | do it. If managers could only come from the exact same | background as their subordinates, globalization would be | screwed. | HWR_14 wrote: | > Shouldn't the managers and decision makers be aware of | the local customs, cultural issues and employment laws in | the region they manage? | | Google is a US company. In the US, the "local custom and | employment law" is that companies don't accept caste based | discrimination. (It's also technically illegal in India). I | think not only is it appropriate for a white American | manager to lecture Indian subordinates about stopping caste | based discrimination, it's an obligation to do so and fire | the subordinates if they continue. | MontyCarloHall wrote: | >You really think it's appropriate for some white American | manager to lecture his Indian subordinates after spending a | few hours in training? | | Yes. Ethnic discrimination is absolutely unacceptable in | any American workplace, full stop. There is no room for | cultural relativism here. To imply otherwise (e.g. "it | would be inappropriate for a non-Indian manager to tell off | their subordinate for being caste-ist") is itself extremely | racist. | alex_smart wrote: | How exactly would you determine that a manager is acting | against an employee under them due to an internal caste | bias and not due to lack of performance or | insubordination (or whatever other valid grounds there | are for acting against an employee)? | hef19898 wrote: | If a manager is acting against an emoloyee, someone | should ask very pointed questions why. If caste might be | at play, yes, saidanager ahould get a very stern talk | from his superiors and HR explaining how this behaviour | is unacceptable. | alex_smart wrote: | >If caste might be at play | | Again, _how_ is that determined? Do you assume that a | caste angle might be at play every time the manager is | upper caste and the employee 's of lower caste? Do you | wait for the manager to be stupid enough to outright | utter a casteist slur at the workplace? | hef19898 wrote: | As a manager, if you see one of your directs singeling | out one of his emoloyees, it is your job to find out why. | That includes talking to the employee. And _because_ | caste is so hard to grasp for non-Indians talks like the | one cancelled by Google are so important. | | Maybe I have a different view on that, we German's are | quite sensitive when it comes to anti-semitism. And as | woth caste, if religion is never openly discussed, I have | no idea how to spot a jewish co-worker. If that jewish | co-worker would complain about about being discriminated, | it's more than reasonable to follow up. Same goes for | caste. It is up to the employer to create an environment | where employees can raise those kinds of concerns openly, | most fail. Honestly trying so actually goes along way. | alex_smart wrote: | >As a manager, if you see one of your directs singeling | out one of his emoloyees, it is your job to find out why | | You are just saying that it is the job of the super- | manager to find out why without answering how the job is | supposed to be carried out. The manager says he is acting | against the employee because of their lack of performance | or insubordination. The employee says the manager is | discriminating against them based on caste. You're the | super-manager, what do you do? | hef19898 wrote: | Oh, you have talks with everyone involved. You consult | HR. You get to the bottom of it. When you did, and it | turns out that it was in fact discrimination, terminating | the discriminating manager might be an option. | | Not sure what a "super-manager" is supposed to be. | Everyone reports to someone, even the CEO reports to the | board. And the board reports to the shareholders. If a | company cannot figure out cases of discrimination it is | already screwed. | | In real life, so, the disriminated party either gets a | transfer or a _generous_ severance package. Even if the | discriminating manager gets fired. Nobody likes people | that make waves. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | There's no silver bullet. It's equally hard to determine | when a manager is acting against subordinates because of | petty grudges, or when a manager is acting against | subordinates because they're bad at effectively telling | subordinates what they want. I think that's kinda the job | you sign up for when you choose to join higher-level | management. | alex_smart wrote: | Caste-based discrimination would be a pretty serious | charge against a manager, surely sufficient grounds for | termination. We need to have a talk of how we are going | to determine when it's happening if we are seriously | considering policies to act against it. | otterley wrote: | Why does it matter what the race of the speaker is? | smugma wrote: | Discrimination against protected classes is illegal. For | example, until somewhat recently it was legal to discriminate | based on someone's sexual orientation (don't ask, don't | tell). | | Case law matters, and caste seems to not have clear answers | as to whether it qualifies. If caste is considered equivalent | to race, it would. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _US laws and Google policies forbid discrimination_ | | Does U.S. law have precedent for discussing caste? | | There is a case for typing the lowest-caste Indians, the | Dalits this cancelled talk was meant to discuss, as a race | and thus protected class under U.S. and Californian law. But | I don't know if this is legally precedented. | thinkcontext wrote: | CA brought a civil rights case against Cisco for caste | discrimination. I believe its still in progress. | | https://thewire.in/caste/cisco-case-caste-discrimination- | sil... | rayiner wrote: | Arguably it's not protected right? Caste is more or less | like the old European class distinction between royals and | commoners. Nobody contends that lower caste people are a | different race than higher caste people. (And I would argue | it would be problematic to try and reframe caste | distinctions in racial terms.) As far as I know, class | discrimination isn't illegal in the US. | labcomputer wrote: | Not under "race", but CA law lists "ancestry" as a | protected characteristic. I'm having some trouble | understanding how caste discrimination is anything other | than ancestry discrimination. | rayiner wrote: | That's a good point--I was thinking of federal law. | toper-centage wrote: | Isn't racism fundamentally a type of caste/class | discrimination? Not as well defined castes like seen in | India, but "black people" are discriminated as a result of | slavery, "asians" as a result of mass immigration. To the | point where in many countries you were not allowed or able | to marry outside your "caste", had different rights than | locals/whites etc. People today don't feel racism as caste | discrimination, but to say that there's no precedent in the | West is being pedantic IMO. | thereddaikon wrote: | The word you are looking for is bigotry. That's the | generalized equivalent of racism. Thing is, bigotry in | general isn't illegal. Specific kinds of bigotry are in | regards to hiring though. Racism is one of them. But | caste isn't. | | A lawyer might be able to make the claim that it would | fall under "national origin or ancestry" since, to my | knowledge, caste is hereditary and hard to change. | | But if so then that makes these kinds of talks all the | more important. Because it helps Americans recognize a | form of illegal discrimination they would otherwise not | recognize. | kbelder wrote: | Caste is inherited and runs in bloodlines. Why wouldn't | it be considered racism? | imbnwa wrote: | 'Racism' is absolutely a caste system, since the | fundamental point of a caste system is to proportion | resource and opportunity between breeding pools, however | devised those are. The differentiator is simply the terms | used to draw these boundaries. Which matters because | different terms, say religious terms vs medico-scientific | terms, resource different graphs for further | narrativization. Jewish folk from Europe know full well | the difference between being narrativized according to | religious lines and according to medico-scientific lines, | neither even approaching something like true or right. | Black folk in America have been hounded about their | medico-scientific distinction from the get-go, right down | to the resurgence of heritable IQ and multi-regional | emergence theory today. | labcomputer wrote: | It might not be considered "racism", as such, in the same | way that discrimination against women is not necessarily | racism. | | But it certainly seems like caste would be a protected | characteristic under California law--"Race, Color, | National Origin, or Ancestry" are protected | characteristics. Caste seems to obviously fall under | ancestry. | rayiner wrote: | Being hereditary is necessary but not sufficient for a | grouping to constitute a race. Blond hair and blue eyes | are hereditary, but blue eyed people aren't a different | race. | | "Race" is a fuzzy concept but generally distinguishes | people of different ethnic origins. Indian castes aren't | different races--low caste and high caste Indians can | come from the same ethnic group. It's more like the | European distinction between nobility and commoners. | That's also hereditary, but it doesn't define different | races. | selimthegrim wrote: | Proportion of steppe/Aryan origin varies among caste | groups (some places as you go farther from cow belt that | were subject to Brahminization or like Kashmir are | exceptions to this, however this doesn't mean all Hindus | in Kashmir were Brahmins regardless of what certain | recent films might claim on the subject) Physiognomy as | some of the British attempted is not a golf way to go | about studying it (see Native American skulls as to why, | brachycephaly etc can be influenced by environment over | generations) Markers like sickle cell trait (which I | possess incidentally) are almost always found among | aboriginal/tribal lower castes . It seems that story of | "dasas" and Nishadas largely matches up with being forced | into lower caste hood or untouchability as a result of | losing wars. | thereddaikon wrote: | Because your caste isn't a race. Caste is just taking the | class system further. That's why its bigotry but not | racism. I've no idea why people seem to want to extend | racism to mean all of these things when there already | exists a word for it. | [deleted] | auganov wrote: | Extremely dishonest article. Tries very hard to trick people in | believing "Hindu nationalists" didn't like her talk because | they're great fans of the caste system. Yet it's common knowledge | they're against the very idea of caste. | | > sites and organizations that have targeted academics in the | United States and Canada who are critical of Hindu nationalism or | caste hierarchy. | | Whatever the real grievance is, the article definitely doesn't | talk about it. Presumably people felt her activism actually | strengthens the caste system/division rather than combats it. | samstave wrote: | samstave wrote: | [deleted] | HidyBush wrote: | This is what happens when a for profit company LARPs as an | ethical one. On one hand they talk about diversity and on the | other they desperately hire people they can pay less from areas | of the world where "diversity is our strength" isn't really the | norm. So in the end the company makes more money thanks to the | cheap labor and it becomes even less inclusive and diverse. | [deleted] | [deleted] | Zigurd wrote: | That's pretty harsh. Google would have no trouble hosting a | police reform discussion because they have no local PD | fearmongering through highly dependent local media. They do | have a number of employees who could be made uncomfortable by a | discussion of caste. That's hypocrisy. That's doing the easy | things. But it isn't an indictment of for profit enterprise. | yalogin wrote: | The talk should have allowed to go through. The post I think said | it right, people wanted to shut it down and the only way to do it | is to discredit the speaker because they know there is truth to | the arguments. | | However we should step back and think about how important it in | the American context. What purpose is that talk going to serve? I | don't know if it does anything other than satisfying esoteric | learning needs of a few. It may be an issue in he US but the | problem may be among single digit or double digit individuals at | best. Is it worth spending cycles on it? | ffggvv wrote: | idk woke people are obsessed with protecting very small | minority groups. in fact often the smaller the better in terms | of virtue signaling points. | | so it just goes to show how hypocritical Google is being when | they are mega woke on every other facet. probably because their | ceo harbors a like for the caste system | [deleted] | [deleted] | FactolSarin wrote: | Isn't the fact that it got shut down by higher caste Indians | proof that the talk is important in some way? | yalogin wrote: | This is just assuming malice without any information. | Dangerous to do in any situation | [deleted] | danso wrote: | Google is the largest purveyor of information across the world. | Having policies that deal with caste would seem to require | making its American employees and managers aware and mindful of | it, no? | heretogetout wrote: | Racism and bigotry are worth addressing at all levels, IMO. But | I question your assumed figures: surely there are a lot more | than 99 Indians of lower castes that are affected by caste- | based bigotry in the US? | PeterisP wrote: | Even directly in USA Google (and other companies) employ very | many Indians. The stats that I can find about Google say that | in their USA offices 42% of them are Asian, and out of those | the general tech industry stats tell me that roughly 40% would | be from India, so caste might be relevant to something like 15% | percent of the workforce; and I have no stats on caste | distribution but if I guess that disadvantaged castes might be | 1/3 of that i.e. 5% then that is a larger group than African | Americans which are 4.4% in Google USA. | throw93 wrote: | >> _discredit the speaker because they know there is truth to | the arguments._ | | Source please. | | >> _the problem may be among single digit or double digit | individuals at best._ | | Why do you think it's in single or double digit "at best"? This | is a huge problem in India and moving to US doesn't make a | racist person inclusive automatically. | bradlys wrote: | ~70% of eng is Asian within SV. About half are Indian. Other | half is Chinese. | | It's a very prevalent problem. A lot of people come from India | and _keep_ their cultural values - including caste | discrimination. | | It's a small issue in the general US but a huge issue within | SV. Same as any Asian topic tbh. Most Asians don't exist | outside the coasts - yet we talk about their issues cause | they're in important cities in significant numbers. | jonnycomputer wrote: | I think you may be underestimating the number of people | affected in the US. | steve76 wrote: | [deleted] | istjohn wrote: | https://archive.ph/16knM | sashu123 wrote: | I think in modern India people mistake disparate outcomes with | discrimination. It is well known that Jews are extremely | successful in US, they make a large number of profitable tech | companies, win a large number of Nobel prizes (Almost a quarter I | think) and most of them started out dirt poor (many escaped nazi | Germany to come to US). Is US secretly discriminating against non | jews? This is what I feel when people complain about caste | discrimination in India. I think they imagined that by reserving | 50% of the seats for colleges for lower castes, 50% of the | government jobs, confiscating land from all rich upper caste | members and redistributing it, ensuring political power is | generally held by lower caste members (much more common at the | state level, at the centre it's rarely upper caste but more | commonly the business caste) somehow magically disparate outcomes | would end. It didn't, if anything over times the gap widened and | now people blame it on Brahmin/ upper caste discrimination. My | family story would serve a useful anecdote (I'm a brahmin, one of | the highest castes in India). My great grand father was a freedom | fighter and gave away all his land after independence (Before | Nehru mandated it with the Land reform laws). My grand father | unfortunately suffered from a freak accident and became deaf | since childhood. India was too poor to support disabled people, | so my grandfather lived a poor life as a maths school teacher. He | sent my father to military boarding school (read : free | schooling) since he was 10. My father topped his school, did well | in engineering, got into the most prestigious MBA in India (IIM) | and subsequently became a reasonably rich. Then I lived a | reasonably comfortable life and made it into IIT (a top | engineering college), from which I'm now doing my PhD in computer | science from a top US Grad school. I would guess that 90% of the | Brahmins you ask have a similar story of having really poor grand | parents/ great grand parents and being well off now mostly | because one of their family members made it. It is rarely ever | that they are holding on to generational wealth. Officially the | government has provided a large number of subsidies/ benefits to | lower caste members and none to upper caste members. I can assure | you there is no hidden community of brahmins that look out for | each other and help each other succeed and I doubt there is for | most castes in India. The only community my father is a part of | is his college friends group. By my father's generation no one | cared about caste when making friends. I couldn't recognise | Brahmin surnames until I grew up and learnt Sanskrit. They tend | to have a variation of "learned one", "teacher", "sage", "priest" | (In Sanskrit of course). (P.S One of the commenters mentioned | brahmins have fair skin, generally not true. I'm a Tamil Brahmin | and we have one of the darkest skin colours in India, I think | skin colour correlates with location far more than caste) TLDR: | No doubt lower caste members have disparate outcomes compared to | Upper Caste but this is not due to "Caste Discrimination". It | could hopefully be due to cultural issues which is fixable or | more unfortunately be due to genetics (like I'm pretty sure is | the reason for Jewish success, who are far too successful from | far more diverse backgrounds for any other explanation in my | opinion though I'm open to theories) which is less fixable. | nyolfen wrote: | > I can assure you there is no hidden community of brahmins | that look out for each other and help each other succeed and I | doubt there is for most castes in India. | | 2 seconds on google https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco- | lawsuit/california-... | nyolfen wrote: | 2 more seconds | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/nyregion/nj-hindu- | temple-... | ridiculous_leke wrote: | What was the result of the lawsuit? Is Cisco guilty? | devnonymous wrote: | > No doubt lower caste members have disparate outcomes compared | to Upper Caste but this is not due to "Caste Discrimination". | | This sort of opinion forming based purely on personal anecdotes | is why talks such as the one under discussion are needed. | You've convinced yourself that caste discrimination doesn't | exist just because you didn't happen to encounter it in your | personal limited experience! Please listen, read and learn from | first hand experiences of those that live it every day. Even | today. | | Click on this on any random day and then come here saying caste | discrimination doesn't exist | https://twitter.com/search?q=dalit%20beaten%20&src=typed_que... | trevorm4 wrote: | Maybe someone that is a member of the caste that is accused of | discriminating against lower castes shouldn't be deciding if | that group is being discriminated against. It would be like if | white people were the deciders of whether black people are | oppressed in modern America. Numerous law suits have been filed | about this very thing, so it is obviously still an issue in the | workplace. | DoItToMe81 wrote: | I can believe caste discrimination is a serious problem. Though | not in anything tech related yet, I've had Indian bosses and | colleagues, and among them were some of the most spiteful and | vitriolic people I've ever known in my life, especially to people | from the 'wrong' parts of the Indian subcontinent. I dread to | think how they'd abuse others if they got into higher management. | mariodiana wrote: | > In April, Thenmozhi Soundararajan [...] was scheduled to give a | talk to Google News employees for Dalit History Month. But Google | employees began spreading disinformation [...] | | That is not journalism. That's editorializing -- and in the very | first paragraph, no less. This is how media like the _Washington | Post_ encourages a kind of _caste_ of its own, by signaling | "right-think" to its readers. | jasonlotito wrote: | It's not. You left out the rest. | | "...according to copies of the documents as well as interviews | with Soundararajan and current Google employees who spoke on | the condition of anonymity because of concerns about | retaliation." | MrBuddyCasino wrote: | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _importing ethnicities means importing their ethnic conflicts | too, always_ | | Is there evidence for this? Couldn't null be valid: those | choosing to emigrate are most likely to be willing or wanting | to leave that nonsense behind? | | Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our | founding values. Plenty of Indians emigrate while leaving their | caste identity, and any will to act on it, behind. There may | remain implicit biases. But these can be aspired to be | corrected versus assumed to be the default. | inglor_cz wrote: | "those choosing to emigrate are most likely to be willing or | wanting to leave that nonsense behind" | | In the modern, technologically connected world, it is much | harder to leave nonsense behind. Even if you move to the | other side of the world, you will still be exposed to your | home country's politics through easily obtainable TV channels | and through your Internet acquaintances on worldwide social | networks. In a way that was impossible in 1920 or 1820. | zen_1 wrote: | wizwit999 wrote: | Don't both sides, there's no groups, the only military | group there Americans are joining is the IDF. | zen_1 wrote: | Eh I'm sure you'll find a few American citizens fighting | for various groups in Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan, but | that's besides my point. | Dracophoenix wrote: | That's might have been true of the more "enlightened" Indian | engineers who immigrated to Silicon Valley in the 80s and | 90s. There were also ambitious Indians who liked the old ways | but lacked the opportunity to engage in such discrimination | until they adapted or the opportunity eventually arose. | | Either way, as more and more of a certain ethnicity/race | enter a country for the purposes of bettering their financial | prospects, many of these immigrants reinvent the social | dynamics of their origin country. This is how enclaves are | created. And while many of the "enlightened" Indians have | left behind explicit caste discrimination, they didn't leave | other practices behind either ( e.g. parental | authoritarianism, arranged marriages, etc.). | | A different geography doesn't necessarily produce a different | worldview. Every immigrant arrives with his own family | values, religious dogmas (or lack thereof), and modes of | thought that lead to these aforementioned conflicts. | | > Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our | founding values | | If we're excluding slavery as a de facto caste system, then | sure. However certain behaviors being antithetical to our | founding values doesn't make them easily solvable problems. | hbosch wrote: | >Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our | founding values. | | "Caste" as being your ring in the social hierarchy is present | in almost any culture or civilization, and prejudiced | treatment of people in either higher or lower social rings is | definitely (in my opinion) a part of American culture. This | country definitely offers special treatment and privilege to | those in higher "castes"... Hell, even just having a Southern | accent in America will grant you a prejudiced treatment in | many settings. | bogomipz wrote: | Indeed and in 19th century New England there was actually a | term "Boston Brahmin." It was also based on surname and | social standing. The term is still used, often in articles | discussing people from white well-to-do, old money New | England families. | | See: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Brahmin | | and | | https://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/15/the-new-brahmins/ | | and | | https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/03/what-s-a- | boston-... | michael1999 wrote: | The IRA visited Boston every year to pass the hat during the | troubles. Sinn Fein is still raising money in the USA. | | https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-fein- | raised-12... | sumedh wrote: | > Plenty of Indians emigrate while leaving their caste | identity | | Caste is something most Indians grow up with, you dont really | lose it just because you go to another country. Most kids of | these Indians fortunately dont really care about caste. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _you dont really lose it just because you go to another | country_ | | One may not lose it. But one _can_ reject it. That 's the | gist of my implicit biases line. | aahortwwy wrote: | Happens pretty frequently. | | One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Irish_A | mericans_in_... | Crabber wrote: | So which way do you want it then? Multiculturalism, with all | the "nonsense" that comes from those cultures, or do you just | want every brown person to come to america and start acting | white? | | I thought one of the big benefits of multiculturalism (that | all big businesses love to tout) is how it brings diversity | of cultural values to the workplace. Well I guess mission | accomplished because now you've got the indian caste system | in the workplace. | yunohn wrote: | > due to current policies | | To be clear, are you talking about open immigration? Not that | it's truly open or easy to immigrate, but you seem to be hand | waving in that direction. | | What do you think should be done about this? It's not clear to | me that closing borders somehow fixes anything. | lupire wrote: | Hiring local means hiring their ethnic conflicts also. | Vaslo wrote: | Question from a layman. How does one know that someone is from | another caste? If I was someone from India, how would I know what | caste my fellow Indian is from? Is there some kind of code? Or | where you are from? | yedava wrote: | Aside from last names, diet is a big giveaway. If someone is | vegetarian, it is highly likely that they come from the so | called "upper" castes. In certain interpretations of Hinduism, | which are now becoming the dominant ones in India, meat is | considered polluting. If you eat meat, you are dirty, and this | "dirtiness" is at the root of why some castes are still | considered untouchable. | thwjerjl23432 wrote: | We go around wearing a label saying I'm so and so; born in so- | and-so caste; respect my authority. | alex_smart wrote: | Usually you know someone's caste from their last name. | | I am someone who was not given a caste-based last name because | my parents were influenced by a regional movement against | caste. (I didn't even have a last name to begin with but | eventually added a non caste-based one to avoid visa issues.) | Whenever I traveled by train and chatted up with a co- | passenger, almost surely they would ask my name and would never | be satisfied with just knowing my first name. They would get | visibly confused when I would tell them I didn't have a last | name. | | Edit: Curiously, based on the last name of the person | (Soundarajan) whose talk got cancelled, I would actually have | guessed that they were upper caste (Brahmin - the highest). | zajio1am wrote: | So why people (specifically immigrants in other countries) | just do not change their last name to ones associated with | higher caste? | deelly wrote: | As far as I know (from some coworkers) they do. But last | name is only the first step/flag in identifying to which | caste person belongs. Sorry, I don't remember exact | details, but there some additional steps like special | clothes I think? | ChoGGi wrote: | Yeah, I think the Brahmins have a vest you can feel on | the shoulder, so they do a shoulder grab to act close. | cuteboy19 wrote: | The main benefit of caste comes from 2nd and 3rd degree | connections from your family. Simply changing your name | won't help you with that. | chrismorgan wrote: | I'm curious: would you say the absence of a surname implied | anything about caste? I've dealt with the children of people | with leprosy (mostly SC, with a little ST and OBC) in the | vicinity of Hyderabad, and it wasn't dreadfully uncommon for | their parents or grandparents to have no surname on their | Aadhaar card, at least, and perhaps even a few of the | children. | | (In Telangana, surnames are almost exclusively _used_ as just | an initial preceding the given name, and sometimes that's | even all that ends up on official documentation.) | alex_smart wrote: | I don't know, in my personal case, this was definitely a | _regional_ movement - with plenty of upper caste families | also giving their children no surname or a generic non- | caste based ones. That is why you will see a lot more | "Kumars" and "Anands" and "Ranjans" and "Jyotis" from Bihar | than from other parts of the country. | sumedh wrote: | Your parents tell you your caste. You can also get a caste | certificate from you local municipal office which helps you | take advantage of some perks if you belong to a "lower" class. | | Generally you wont be able to figure the caste of someone but | there are clues like skin color, fairer skin generally is | "upper" caste, sometimes your surname also gives away your | caste. | | Unfortunately some Indians specially from the "upper"caste take | this very seriously and think they are superior compared to | other Indians. | sashu123 wrote: | fair skin thing is nonsense. I'm a Tamil Brahmin (Brahmin | being the highest caste) and I'm one of the darkest skinned | people in India. Most of my friends are far darker than most | Indians from North India. It's much easier to identify | through surname (Pichai I'm pretty sure is a brahmin | surname), but certain states like Tamil Nadu banned surnames | for this reason. If people ask me my surname, it is T. Every | government document has T as my surname, I just go with that | foolinaround wrote: | > fair skin thing is nonsense | | Well it is a stereotype, and they are often true, but not | always. eg, in TN, the average brahmin or upper class | individual will be fair-skinned while the lower class one | would be dark skinned. | | I guess up in the North, this does not hold. | | > but certain states like Tamil Nadu banned surnames for | this reason. | | The govt did not ban it. It was more a social movement | where one was looked down upon (and even discriminated | against for showing they belonged to the higher castes). | That's why there are still folks who continue to keep | 'Iyer' in their name. | alex_smart wrote: | >I'm a Tamil Brahmin (Brahmin being the highest caste) and | I'm one of the darkest skinned people in India. | | Do you have ancestral home in Mylapore? If not you're not | real Tam-Brahm. (JK obviously) | thwjerjl23432 wrote: | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Caste is a great illustration of how arbitrary racial | identities are. | jjaaammmmy wrote: | this NPR podcast was pretty insightful about this issue | https://www.npr.org/transcripts/915299467 | medler wrote: | That NPR story was great, thanks. The transcript is | definitely worth reading for anyone curious about this. | | In a nutshell, people can sometimes tell by your last name, | and if they can't, they will ask you questions about your | background, such as what town and/or neighborhood your family | is from, until they figure it out. | | In one example in the story, a guy is outed as a Dalit by a | coworker who knew him from college. | hef19898 wrote: | Outing a co-worker is pretty mean. And asking all kinda of | private background questions in order to judge someone's | social standing and treat them accordingly is intrusive and | bigotted. As usual, racists are more often than not mean | bigots. | | It is somewhat different if you grew up in the caste | system, and the discriminatory behaviour was just | ingrained. If you start falling back to that based on, | e.g., surname it's hard to avoid. Actively seeking | information you can use to treat people like shit is a | different level all together! | ryandrake wrote: | > And asking all kinda of private background questions in | order to judge someone's social standing and treat them | accordingly is intrusive and bigotted. | | This also happens in the west and it's not caste-related. | Go to a suburban barbecue or something, and observe: | people will ask what you do for a living, which | neighborhood you live in, how long have you been living | here, where did you originally come from, and so on. | Often they are doing this kind of small talk just so they | can figure out where you are on the social totem pole. | mmcnl wrote: | I often ask these questions as well, and mostly it's just | to find something common, doesn't have anything to do | with the social totem pole. | hef19898 wrote: | Sure, small talk is fine. Only that under the Indian | caste system the consequences, and intentions, are much | more sinister and severe. | [deleted] | [deleted] | puranjay wrote: | Here in New Delhi, people will straight up ask you, especially | if they're older. | | Trying to get a house in Delhi as a single, straight male is an | exercise in discrimination 101. Landlords will ask you if you | drink alcohol, eat meat, have female friends, belong to a non- | Hindu religion (especially if you're muslim), your caste, and | heck, even what city/state you're from. | | My friends have been denied housing simply for being from a | state with a somewhat poor reputation. Some were denied because | they were lawyers AND from a specific caste (the landlords | feared that my friends would somehow take over the property | through legal shenanigans). And I won't even get into how hard | it is for a muslim male to find housing in India, especially | outside of big cities. | | So much of this simply never gets talked about in Indian | society. But its just accepted as something that happens. | Sometimes feel that we're developing backwards as a society. | [deleted] | selfhifive wrote: | That problem and increasing intercaste marriages is why | casteism is dying in many parts of India. The new generation | doesn't know how to determine the caste and are generally not | interested. Most of the system in large parts of the country | will die out with the previous generation. | [deleted] | lolinder wrote: | > "We also made the decision to not move forward with the | proposed talk which -- rather than bringing our community | together and raising awareness -- was creating division and | rancor," Newberry wrote. | | This doesn't surprise me one bit. Even on HN, every thread on | this topic turns into a flame war with a bunch of people crying | racism/religionism. How dare we discuss something we don't fully | understand? How dare we criticize another culture when we have | our own problems? It's the same arguments every time, and then | the article ends up flagged to death. | | The role of caste within the US is a super important conversation | to have, and every resident of the US is entitled to participate, | but there are a lot of people with a vested interest in shutting | it down and the tools to do so. | BaseballPhysics wrote: | throwaway049 wrote: | A weak argument is a weak argument. Or are you saying | brahmins and confederates have a lot in common and ought to | spend more time together? | djbusby wrote: | acheron wrote: | Good thing they've all been dead for close to a hundred | years then. | monetus wrote: | Having stayed in Columbia TN for a decent while, I can | tell you that the legacy is alive and well. Really, visit | if you ever drive by - the confederate headquaters is in | an anti-bellum house where they give tours, and they | never say anything bad about the social dynamics of the | past. It really leaves an elephant in the room, when they | are selling battle flags in the gift shop embroidered | with things like history not hate. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _the legacy is alive and well_ | | I think OP's point is those revering confederates today | aren't confederates, they're something else. Sort of like | how we term neo-Nazis separately from the historic Nazis. | monetus wrote: | You're right, or at least I think so yeah- and that point | is definitely precise. From the years I spent in the area | and outside of Nashville though, I'm not so sure that the | sons and daughters of the confederacy as it is referred | to all think of themselves as a part of the union. I'm | pretty sure of the opposite for a few people in my mind | rn. Don't take absolutes away from what I'm saying, this | is just my experience. | | Aside: The largest minority in Columbia besides black | Americans were Indian Americans and immigrants. I didn't | have any insight into how they saw the caste system, but | living in that city probably gives them a unique | viewpoint that might be worth asking about should you | have the chance. I wish I had. | ethbr0 wrote: | What do you have against confederacies? | djbusby wrote: | I assumed they meant the Confederate States of America. | Which was founded on principles that some humans are less | than others. Burn that shit down (again). | BaseballPhysics wrote: | I'm saying folks who make excuses for historical and | present day discrimination clearly have a lot of things in | common. | [deleted] | MomoXenosaga wrote: | brendoelfrendo wrote: | That quote from the article gave me pause. It sounds like an | admission that they wanted the good PR from having a caste bias | speaker, but when having a conversation on a difficult topic | actually became difficult, they backed down. | | Maybe, Google, instead of just giving up you should be asking | why a speaker on Dalit rights and inclusion is causing | "division and rancor" in your community? Or is that also a | difficult conversation you'd rather not have? | hdjjhhvvhga wrote: | Whenever differences - actual or imagined - between different | groups are discussed, two major things happen. | | First, some members of group found at a disadvantage are | upset. This is regardless of how many other members of that | group express that they themselves are not. You can dispute | facts, but you can't deny people's feelings. | | Second, the disadvantage is then used by some people to | justify something that fits their agenda, prejudices of | beliefs, whether it makes sense or not. | | So I can hardly blame anyone responsible for managing a huge | number of people of avoiding sensitive topics. Besides, a | corporation is not exactly the place to discuss these things: | they need to be dealt with as a society in general. If you | try to introduce these topics into your workplace, you might | even achieve the opposite of what you want, because people | will do whatever you expect them just to keep their jobs, but | won't change their opinion because their manager told them | to, or because they attended a workshop where it was | explained to them that their culture is inferior, for | example. | DebtDeflation wrote: | >they wanted the good PR | | 99% of corporate DEI initiatives are performative in nature. | I realized it when the majority of companies were pushing | employees to read a book on systemic racism written by a | white woman who was obviously using it as an advertisement | for her corporate consulting and training business. | ethbr0 wrote: | This quote from the article best summarizes similar efforts, | even outside of Google, | | >> _Longtime observers of Google's struggles to promote | diversity, equity and inclusion say the fallout fits a | familiar pattern. Women of color are asked to advocate for | change. Then they're punished for disrupting the status quo._ | | I'm not a big culture warrior, but I believe that if as a | company you choose to do a thing, you do it fully, from top | to bottom. | | Yet the outcome described is exactly what you get when you | have {status quo} + {new initiative from leadership} + | _{failure to dedicate time and resources to following up and | implementing}_. | | People are always going to be resistant to change. Middle | management is _especially_ resistant to change, not | unreasonably. | | Consequently, effective change takes follow-through, | verification, reminders, and eventually termination to | actually implement. Otherwise, everyone shrugs their | shoulders and returns to what they've always done... and | punishes whoever is still dancing off the beaten path. | photochemsyn wrote: | There's an archive link to the article below; apparently | that's exactly what happened: | | > "According to Gupta's letter and Soundararajan, the | decision to cancel the talk came from Gupta's boss, Cathy | Edwards, a vice president of engineering, who had no | experience or expertise in caste." | | And, another excerpt: | | > "To Soundararajan, Google was long overdue for a | conversation on caste equity. Pichai, the CEO, "is Indian | and he is Brahmin and he grew up in Tamil Nadu. There is no | way you grow up in Tamil Nadu and not know about caste | because of how caste politics shaped the conversation," | Soundararajan told The Post. "If he can make passionate | statements about Google's [diversity equity and inclusion] | commitments in the wake of George Floyd, he absolutely | should be making those same commitments to the context he | comes from where he is someone of privilege." Soundararajan | said Pichai has not responded to letter she sent him in | April. Google declined to comment." | | Clean your own house before pointing at your neighbor's | dirty yard... | 411111111111111 wrote: | Let's be real here. The talk was likely scheduled by a moral | individual which thought the topic important. Then | controversy began and middle management was made aware to | this. Guess what happened next? | | It's not that _Google_ gave up. They were never going to | allow it to begin with and the organizer likely just hoped it | would fly under the radar. | dhzhzjsbevs wrote: | Google has a track record of pandering to the mob. Has | nothing to do with middle management. | bombcar wrote: | Exactly. Anyone who thinks that if tomorrow most everyone | woke up with a position against anything Google currently | "stands" for that they wouldn't immediately flip to be in | line with it is kidding themselves. | naravara wrote: | > Maybe, Google, instead of just giving up you should be | asking why a speaker on Dalit rights and inclusion is causing | "division and rancor" in your community? Or is that also a | difficult conversation you'd rather not have? | | The same reason speakers on Palestinian rights often can. | While they may be on the right side of the issue, it's also | very easy for closed discussion spaces to rapidly devolve | into pretty viciously anti-semitic tropes. | | These discussions need to be done with some strict moderation | and sensitivity, usually with actual historians who can | properly contextualize the issue. If all you're doing is | bringing in "activists" from a specific point of view to talk | about it while delegitimizing all other perspectives as | inherently beneath consideration it's not gonna go well. | car_analogy wrote: | Do you demand this strict moderation and sensitivity also | when it's white people that are being accused of | discrimination? | throwaway894345 wrote: | Not the OP, but I think the same principle applies. | Whenever you accuse an entire race of something (as | opposed to isolating your criticism to individuals or | even systems), you're engaging in racism, and this is | unfortunately common in DEI trainings and among "race | activists". I don't think strict moderation is necessary | in the general case (especially since a lot of the most | credentialed people who would moderate are themselves the | sort of race activists who agitate)--rather, I think | we'll work through it in time. | | It is a shame though that we were on this path toward a | post-race world and then some of us abruptly reversed | course and dragged the whole nation with them, setting us | back decades. | istjohn wrote: | After Trump's nativist rhetoric, a steady stream of | police brutality against black men like George Floyd | making national news, and a resurgence of white | nationalist terrorism like the recent shooting in | Buffalo, I agree we've been set back decades. But the | blame doesn't lie with overzealous woke activists. Woke | activists might make some white people more uncomfortable | than tiki torch-wielding Caucasians chanting "Jews will | not replace us" or Dylann Roof shooting up a black | church, but that doesn't make them comparable in any way. | throwaway894345 wrote: | > After Trump's nativist rhetoric, a steady stream of | police brutality against black men like George Floyd | making national news | | The media coverage of police brutality against black men | predated Trump's candidacy and it was entirely falsely | predicated: the media cherry-picked instances in which | black people were killed by police (or rather, those | instances were plastered on the front page of national | outlets for weeks while egregious killings of white | people would rarely break into national news at all where | they would be footnotes), which gave the impression that | only black people were being killed by police or that | police killings of black people were more egregious-- | neither of which are true. | | > a resurgence of white nationalist terrorism like the | recent shooting in Buffalo | | Yeah, this is precisely why we shouldn't legitimize | extreme, racial politics or political violence. Every | thinking person saw this coming and warned about it | (e.g., "we shouldn't engage in racial politics because | it's going to embolden and swell the ranks of white- | supremacist types"). | | > But the blame doesn't lie with overzealous woke | activists | | Of course, but woke activism is the only kind of racism | that is still regarded as legitimate (i.e., we even allow | our most influential institutions to preach it), and by | tolerating it we (1) legitimize racism generally (2) | allow it to drive a right-wing reaction. The most | effective way to treat right-wing racism is by | dismantling left-wing racism and re-establishing a | liberalist orthodoxy. | | Racists on both sides like to frame this as a dichotomy | between left-wing racism and right-wing racism, but the | only dichotomy is racism vs egalitarianism. Left- and | right-wing racism are just two sides of the same coin. | naravara wrote: | I didn't used to, but after seeing how noxious | communities get when you normalize the kinds of reflexive | confrontationalism and assumptions of bad faith you find | online I changed my tune. I haven't seen a single place | improve once people start treating and talking about | structural discrimination as some sort of original sin | that individuals need to repent and seek absolution for. | It's generally much more useful to focus on individual | behaviors people are engaging in and pointing out the | ways in which they are helpful or unhelpful at creating | an inclusive community. | seoaeu wrote: | Useful to whom? Presumably not the people who want | structural changes | naravara wrote: | Why would you presume that? | throwaway894345 wrote: | > The same reason speakers on Palestinian rights often can. | While they may be on the right side of the issue, it's also | very easy for closed discussion spaces to rapidly devolve | into pretty viciously anti-semitic tropes. | | I agree. Maybe a more precise way to think about this is | that they're only on the "right side" of the issue to the | extent that "the other side" is "Israeli settlement policy" | rather than "Jews" or "the existence of Israel as a state". | mrcartmeneses wrote: | Would you dismiss Martin Luther King as an "activist"? | | But your point is in some ways valid, as it's important to | be able to see Israel through the lens of colonialism and | to show that the state's brutality applied to brown people | of all faiths, including Jews. | | I also find it really strange that any criticism of Israel | is labelled as anti-Semitic. I actually think equating the | brutal behaviour of the Israeli government with Judaism is | the real anti-semitism. The Tora has exactly zero passages | about it being OK to murder children or sterilise black | Jewish women. | farmerstan wrote: | maskil wrote: | Just want to point out that Purim celebrates the rescue | of the Jewish people from mass extermination, not the | extermination of others. | | In fact in Jewish tradition Amalek remains a force to | this day. | the_only_law wrote: | > Would you dismiss Martin Luther King as an "activist"? | | The word means basically nothing on HN, outside it's use | in political slurring. | ethbr0 wrote: | The central issue with discussions about Israel is a | failure to differentiate Israel (the state and | government) with Judaism (the religion) with Jew/Hebrew | (the ethnicity). | | (And yes, I realize Israel is a multi-ethnic, multi- | religious state, but to a first order approximation and | given current political dynamics... it's not) | | Given that there are relatively few states with as | intertwined religions and historical atrocities | perpetrated against their people, it makes sense the | ability to talk about this is underdeveloped. | notacoward wrote: | > failure to differentiate Israel (the state and | government) with Judaism (the religion) with Jew/Hebrew | (the ethnicity) | | That has not been my experience. AFAICT even people who | are _extremely_ careful and specific about criticizing | the state of Israel - even more specifically the IDF or a | political party within Israel responsible for a | particular act - still get tarred with the "anti- | Semitic" brush. Jewish people have been severely | oppressed for centuries, and the state of Israel has been | attacked repeatedly. The response has been a strong | emphasis on solidarity and mutual support, which is | generally laudable, but in some this manifests as | militant intolerance of even the tiniest deviation from | the (insiders') conventional position. Unfortunately, | those few - and I know most Israeli and Jewish people are | much more open minded because _that has been their | tradition for millennia_ - often end up controlling the | debate. | seoaeu wrote: | It isn't enough to focus criticism against a specific | individual or narrow group. You also have to consider | whether the criticism is justified or echos specific | stereotypes | | For instance, there's many who feel that some of the | criticism against Barack Obama was racist. Not because it | isn't ok to criticize a US president but because prior | presidents hadn't been treated similarly/held to the same | standard | notacoward wrote: | What if someone _has_ consistently criticized other | people or governments for comparable behavior? In my | experience, it makes absolutely no difference. Even | international organizations with rock-solid records of | speaking out all over the world get the same treatment. | What 's the excuse then? It's just guilt by association, | only it's not even real association, from people who | absolutely should know better. | seoaeu wrote: | Not sure whether you meant to respond to a different | comment (mine didn't say anything about "excuses"), but | assuming this was meant as a reply... | | You clearly have one/several specific organizations in | mind, but I'll point out that my comment was about the | _content_ of criticism rather than the track record of | the group making it. Track record gives a hint of whether | someone might be acting in bad faith, but it is perfectly | possible for someone to usually offer fair assessments | but let their prejudices slip though with regards to | members of one minority group or another. In fact, some | would argue that everyone has such blind spots and that | they can only be mitigated, but never eliminated. | | Not sure I understand your point about guilt by | association, but if you are arguing that using the same | talking points as a known racist shouldn't make others | suspect you of being a racist... then I think we're | probably going to disagree. | throwntoday wrote: | >AFAICT even people who are extremely careful and | specific about criticizing the state of Israel - even | more specifically the IDF or a political party within | Israel responsible for a particular act - still get | tarred with the "anti-Semitic" brush | | This is clearly a defense tactic used to avoid criticism | and I see it employed heavily by apologist. Criticism in | general should be embraced, as nothing is perfect and we | can always improve. But in this case, they are well aware | of their wrongdoing, which is why they employ such | tactics. | naravara wrote: | > Criticism in general should be embraced, as nothing is | perfect and we can always improve. | | Honestly it depends on how that criticism is framed and | who it's being directed towards. It reads differently if | the criticism framed as "I care about you and want you to | do better" versus "I dislike you and have developed a | narrative that justifies mistreating you." It also | matters whether the criticism is directed as feedback | (e.g. "When you do X it makes me feel Y and I think doing | Z would be better") vs. directed towards a third party to | intervene in a prosecutorial way. | pessimizer wrote: | > AFAICT even people who are extremely careful and | specific about criticizing the state of Israel - even | more specifically the IDF or a political party within | Israel responsible for a particular act - still get | tarred with the "anti-Semitic" brush. | | Ironically, that often results in Jewish people being | disproportionately tarred as anti-Semites, because they | have specific and knowledgeable criticisms that they're | not willing to just let go of. | | https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-labour- | antisemitism-ac... | | > Jewish Voice for Labour tells EHRC that Jews almost | five times more likely to face antisemitism charges than | non-Jewish members | aaron_m04 wrote: | Somebody should introduce Israeli government hardliners | to the concept of "blowback". | dragonwriter wrote: | Blowback validates the wordlviee hardliners are selling; | in a different context, that was pretty central to al- | Qaeda's strategy, where provoking blowback was a way of | selling their clash of civilizations narrative. | | Hardliners of all stripes tend to recognize and actively | exploit blowback. | car_analogy wrote: | > The Tora has exactly zero passages about it being OK to | murder children | | _Now, go and crush Amalek; put him under the curse of | destruction with all that he possesses. Do not spare him, | but kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, | camel and donkey._ - 1 Samuel 15 | | That's one example. The old testament claims God | commanded the total extermination of multiple nations | competing with the Israelites [1]. This extermination is | celebrated to this day during the Purim festival [2]. | When someone mentions Judeo-Christian morality, know that | the first part of that duo is not remotely "turn the | other cheek" - it is literally old testament. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_warfare#War | s_of_ex... | | [2] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalek#Jewish_traditions | [deleted] | mcv wrote: | This might be overly pedantic of me, but Samuel is not | part of the Torah. It's part of the Nevi'im. | psyc wrote: | Here's some classic leadership from Moses. Numbers 31:17 | | _" Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, | and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. | But all the young girls who have not known man by lying | with him keep alive for yourselves"_ | | And from the Big Guy Himself, Deuteronomy 20: | | _" As for the women, the children, the livestock and | everything else in the city, you may take these as | plunder for yourselves [...] However, in the cities of | the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an | inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. | Completely destroy them--the Hittites, Amorites, | Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites"_ | | Does that count as one isolated instance, or six? | | (Just btw: I offer the above merely as a counterexample | to a rather glaring claim, not as a criticism of Judaism. | Just because I was taught as a small child, by | christians, that everyone who disobeys god deserves to | die, and if they don't it's solely due to his mercy, | doesn't mean everybody contextualizes these passages that | way. Also, the term "murder" is slippery because it isn't | a synonym of "kill". If you argue an instance of | slaughtering people is justified or legal, you can make | it "not murder" by mere definition.) | belter wrote: | This reminds of something I found quite interesting at | the time. | | "The Holy Quran Experiment": https://youtu.be/zEnWw_lH4tQ | Adverblessly wrote: | I think you've inadvertently made the case for cancelling | the "activit talk". | | If for example you had a talk in Google Israel that | presented the discrimination against Israeli arabs in | modern Israel, I suspect you'd get a decent turnout and | positive response (especially as Tech is unusually left | leaning). | | If you had a talk that mentioned colonialism (like you do | in your post) you'll just get people fruitlessly arguing | with each other ("This is our land from 2,000 years ago, | the arabs are the colonists", "This is our/your land | thanks to a UN decision, settlements that go beyond the | 1948/1967 borders are colonialism", "All you jews are | colonists"). | | You'd just end up further dividing your employees into | hostile groups, even if they were previously able to work | together (by just being silently tolerant of each other's | opinions). | | > I also find it really strange that any criticism of | Israel is labelled as anti-Semitic. | | I think this one is a problem "on both sides". | | There are some on the Israeli side that will try to | silence criticism by equating it to antisemitism. | | There are some antisemites that will express themselves | in the form of "reasonable criticism". | | There are some that will innocently make some criticism | that seems reasonable to them, but due to ignorance of | the situation or facts, lack of nuance or just the | difficulty of communicating cross culturaly via a limited | medium end up with sometimes that seems antisemitic when | examined at depth by "the other side". | | And no matter which way you go, it is very hard to tell | where you are. | causi wrote: | _a specific point of view to talk about it while | delegitimizing all other perspectives as inherently beneath | consideration it 's not gonna go well_ | | Why do we owe this degree of sensitivity to some types of | bigot but not others? Why don't we need to be careful about | "delegitimizing" the beliefs of people who think black | people are inherently inferior or gay people are inherently | immoral? The realpolitik answer is that Google isn't | dependent on the work of klansmen and gaybashers but they | _are_ dependent on the work of casteists, and throwing them | out the door would hurt their bottom line. | vorpalhex wrote: | In the same way that in the 90s you could not have | immediately started having every major company start | celebrating gay pride. | | Cultural change takes time. | | When you still have a practice occurring among over a | billion people you can't simply throw it out and declare | everyone doing it a bigot. You have to transition in | steps and get buy in. | | Put another way, you wouldn't march single handedly into | Saudi Arabia and tell them Islamic law is dumb and they | are dumb for following it. | naravara wrote: | > Why don't we need to be careful about "delegitimizing" | the beliefs of people who think black people are | inherently inferior or gay people are inherently immoral? | | This is imposing the cultural dynamics of American racial | politics onto an issue with a completely different | historical and cultural context. I wasn't talking about | people who are expressing a belief of castes being | inferior, I was talking about activists who depict a | religious group and other castes in a specific light | based on a factually inaccurate and outdated reading of | history. Hence why I used the world "perspectives" and | not "beliefs." | | I've been to about 3 of these Equality Labs workshops and | just gave up on them because in each one they were | throwing around "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" level | disinformation about Hinduism, and specific Brahmin | groups particularly, while basically shouting down anyone | saying things that disagree with their framings of | historical events or philosophical references. | causi wrote: | _I 've been to about 3 of these Equality Labs workshops | and just gave up on them because in each one they were | throwing around "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" level | disinformation_ | | Ah, I see how it could cause problems with that type of | "equality lab". The equality, discrimination, etc | training I've had was very different, and boiled down to | "here is a list of behaviors; if you do any of them or | anything _like_ any of them your ass is fired. " | naravara wrote: | > I've had was very different, and boiled down to "here | is a list of behaviors; if you do any of them or anything | like any of them your ass is fired." | | Yeah this is good in general but needs tempering through | a bit of conflict resolution/appeal process built in. | Discrimination issues can often just be the result of | misinterpretations and blind spots people have, | especially when bridging cultural divides. There's some | stuff that crosses a clear red line, but most behaviors | are subtle and often unintentional and the approach to | dealing with them productively should more closely | resemble relationship/marriage counseling or the sorts of | reconciliation processes they do in post-conflict zones. | | The ones I went to involved being told I needed to make | "anti-casteism" part of my identity and pick arguments | with my aunts and uncles when they make 'problematic' | statements. And it then came with a side of misquotes of | The Bhagavad Gita and selective quotations out of the | Manusmriti to argue that simply identifying yourself as a | Hindu is inherently discriminatory and violent towards | lower castes. As a history major and religious studies | minor in college I took issue with just about every | historical and theological "fact" they brought up but | didn't think it was worth arguing. But there was nothing | particular to the organization we were in and no specific | instances of issues reported internally by anyone so I | had a hard time understanding why this was happening. | | There's a particular historical narrative among certain | political movements in India that depict Brahmins as | basically collaborating to institute a conspiracy to to | impose a caste hierarchy across all of Indian society for | millennia. It's a very simplistic and one-sided reading | of Indian history and Hindu philosophy, but it has gained | a lot of traction within social justice/DEI spaces and | particularly with groups that are more focused on pushing | an ideological project. | | It would be analogous to having a Louis Farrakhan | disciple on to talk about being Muslim in the workplace. | There are many better people to raise those issues who | will bring them without the side of eliminationist | rhetoric. It's one thing to meme about people with | privilege or be dismissive in a casual context, but at | the workplace (or really any public venue) that sort of | talk is just mean. It's especially frustrating because | this discrimination actually is a blight on Indian | society (though most of the issues in the US are in the | realm of microaggressions rather than structural or overt | discrimination). But that doesn't excuse just peddling | nonsense in response. | causi wrote: | _The ones I went to involved being told I needed to make | "anti-casteism" part of my identity and pick arguments | with my aunts and uncles when they make 'problematic' | statements_ | | I admire that you kept your composure in the face of such | ludicrous demands. An employer has to be insane to think | they can even suggest how I should interact with my own | family. | x86_64Ubuntu wrote: | This is a very sober and real world answer. And that's | not a good thing. | nemothekid wrote: | > _Why don 't we need to be careful about | "delegitimizing" the beliefs of people who think black | people are inherently inferior or gay people are | inherently immoral?_ | | Who says there's no need to be careful? Almost every | discussion about "big tech censorship" has been people | crying that they are no longer allowed to be bigots on | the timeline. | causi wrote: | _Who says there's no need to be careful? Almost every | discussion about "big tech censorship" has been people | crying that they are no longer allowed to be bigots on | the timeline_ | | Sure, but that's coming from the bigots, not the company | executives. | leoc wrote: | That's definitely a genuine factor. But much the same | blasts of hot indignation were released when, for example, | people in the US tried to address domestic racism in the | era between the end of WWII and the Civil Rights Act. And | by and large there wasn't any threat of a serious backlash | against most of the US' white majority. Instead the anger | was driven by the desire to go on being racist without | facing criticism for it, or sometimes more by just "but ... | but ... _I 'm_ the sympathetic Main Character!" attitudes. | Clearly both causes are at work to _some_ extent in the | backlash against discussions of caste in the USA. It would | be wrong to suggest that South Asians or people of South | Asian descent in the US are in as secure a position as most | of the white population is and was. But I have to say that, | without being really familiar with the situation, to me it | looks as if it 's mostly the latter at this time. | wolverine876 wrote: | > It would be wrong to suggest that South Asians or | people of South Asian descent in the US are in as secure | a position as most of the white population is and was. | | People in upper castes may be that secure in their | communities, which might be what matters. | photochemsyn wrote: | _The same reason speakers on Palestinian rights often can. | While they may be on the right side of the issue, it 's | also very easy for closed discussion spaces to rapidly | devolve into pretty viciously anti-semitic tropes._ | | The roots of this behavior as well as the fear of this | behavior lie in a logical fallacy called composition, which | is spelled out at the Nizkor Project (a site on the history | of the Holocaust): | | > The first type of fallacy of Composition arises when a | person reasons from the characteristics of individual | members of a class or group to a conclusion regarding the | characteristics of the entire class or group (taken as a | whole). More formally, the "reasoning" would look something | like this. | | > Individual F things have characteristics A, B, C, etc. | | > Therefore, the (whole) class of F things has | characteristics A, B, C, etc. | | http://www.nizkor.com/features/fallacies/composition.html | | Just because the Israeli government is highly repressive | towards the Palestinian population in the West Bank and | Gaza, and treats non-Jews as second-class citizens within | Israel proper, does not mean that all Jews around the world | share this behavior. Similarly, just because some Arabs | have carried out acts of terrorism does not mean most Arabs | approve of terrorist attacks on civilian populations. These | notions can certainly be extended to caste conflicts among | Indian peoples. | | For example, Jews and Muslims live side-by-side in New York | City in relative peace and harmony, as do European and Arab | descendants. | | The reason for this is that the American tradition of | strict separation of church and state prevents any one | religious group (or ethnic class) from seizing political | power and using that power to repress other groups. This is | one American tradition that the rest of the world would be | wise to embrace, if they wish to minimize such conflicts. | throwntoday wrote: | > Just because the Israeli government is highly | repressive towards the Palestinian population in the West | Bank and Gaza, and treats non-Jews as second-class | citizens within Israel proper, does not mean that all | Jews around the world share this behavior. | | This is a rather hilarious statement as almost no one | believes that. You are committing the same fallacy that | you repudiated. | | Anyway inference is kind of predicated on guessing with | some facts isn't it? If Israel is "the only democracy in | the middle east", and they elected a government that is | openly apartheid, and commits atrocities the jewish | people themselves have been victim to, doesn't that make | the whole of Israel's voters complicit? | photochemsyn wrote: | If Israel (and Saudi Arabia) were to adopt American | democratic norms than all members of their population (by | which I mean, populations under their military control) | would have a right to vote in national elections, yes? So | everyone in the West Bank and Gaza would get one vote, | same as everyone in Israel proper, for electing members | to the national legislative body. Perhaps some degree of | federation (as with American states vs American federal) | would be appropriate. | | Now there was a period in American history when only | white male landowners really had opportunity to vote, but | that notion has been soundly repudiated, hasn't it? Even | then there was a significant group who advocated for the | expansion of voting rights to all. See composition | fallacy again. | | Similarly, the right to emigrate or own land would not be | restricted to members of certain religious groups | (imagine if that was the case in the United States!). | Hence Israel doesn't actually meet the basic requirements | of 'democratic norms and values', does it - and nor does | Saudi Arabia. Curiously however, these two states are | often referred to as "America's closest allies". | | As far as repression, well the targeted assassination of | an American-Palestinian journalist in Jenin is just one | more example of this. See also the targeted assassination | of a Washington Post op-ed columnist Jamal Khashoggi, | ordered by Mohammmed bin 'Bone Saw' Salman in the Saudi | embassy in Turkey, for comparison. | | https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/middleeast/shireen-abu- | akleh-... | | _' They were shooting directly at the journalists': New | evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in | targeted attack by Israeli forces_ | seoaeu wrote: | > American democratic norms [meaning] all members of | their population (by which I mean, populations under | their military control) would have a right to vote in | national elections | | Since when can non-citizens vote in US national | elections? Let alone people living in Iraq, Afghanistan, | or wherever else is/was under US military control. | photochemsyn wrote: | I think you'd want to look at the definition of who is | and who isn't a citizen, and what constitutes a nation- | state. Clearly everyone in the West Bank is under the | control of the Israeli state, and the same is more-or- | less true of Gaza. Palestinians in these regions are not | immigrants, they're citizens under any rational view of | what a citizen is, and hence deserve the right to vote in | Israeli national elections. | | A valid comparison would be claiming that Native | Americans were not citizens of the US government and | hence had no right to vote for members of Congress, | wouldn't it? | selimthegrim wrote: | For many years they were not (see the Constitution on | "Indians not taxed") | seoaeu wrote: | Notice that you completely dodged my question. There are | lots of non-citizens living in the US who cannot vote. | And during the US military occupation of Iraq and | Afghanistan none of the people living there were granted | voting rights. Hell, look at how many senators Puerto | Rico and Guam get | seoaeu wrote: | "Only the Jews in country <x> behave like <y>" isn't the | racially tolerant statement you think it is... | photochemsyn wrote: | Clearly not all Jews in Israel believe that Arabs, | Muslims, Palestinians etc. should be treated as second- | class citizens. I'm also not sure that religious identity | is to be viewed as 'racial identity' unless you want to | revive the definition found in the German Race Laws of | the 1930s. | zionic wrote: | >The role of caste within the US is a super important | conversation to have, and every resident of the US is entitled | to participate, but there are a lot of people with a vested | interest in shutting it down and the tools to do so. | | I don't believe HN's current moderation policies/leadership | make this the place to have that conversation though. | Participate in good faith all you want, you'll still earn a | ban/warning for "arguing" if you piss off the right people. | buttercraft wrote: | Show us an example of a good faith argument that earned a | ban. | swayvil wrote: | Yeah, giving the power of censorship to the masses leads to | the opposite of free conversation. And these particular | masses do indeed like to flag anything they disagree with. | | And that message, "You're replying too fast, slow down". Lol. | What duplicity. | zionic wrote: | I've slowly come to the conclusion that it's a form of | opinion-shaping. A huge number of people aren't | particularly interested in what's true, they're interested | in what's _popular_. | | For argument's sake let's assume it's 80/20, with 10% on | each side of a topic very passionate for their side. By | banning and/or rate-limiting the 10% you dislike in any | issue you can sway the 80% to follow the other side thus | "manufacturing" the consensus. | zen_1 wrote: | I don't think there's any distinction to be made between | what's "true" vs what's "popular" when it comes to online | discourse unfortunately. Confirmation bias is one hell of | a drug, especially when combined with votes, flagging and | reports. | the_only_law wrote: | Last time I saw a big thread related to the topic there were | super deeper threads of people just straight up calling each | other slurs. They probably would have been flagged, but the | threads were just so deep you wouldn't see that unless you're | intently following the thread. | zionic wrote: | >Last time I saw a big thread related to the topic there | were super deeper threads of people just straight up | calling each other slurs. | | I hope you didn't take my comment is advocating for that. I | can't really comment on a thread I didn't see. | | >They probably would have been flagged, but the threads | were just so deep you wouldn't see that unless you're | intently following the thread. | | Sounds like pointless name calling. That said, my original | point that HN is not a good place to have these discussions | stands. Unfortunately this community is for sterilized | technical discussion, anything with spice or flavor isn't | permitted. | otterley wrote: | I disagree. It is permitted, but it's important to tread | carefully and have a nuanced discussion that is | respectful of other points of view. | zionic wrote: | >It is permitted, but it's important to tread carefully | | How so? You can't say what you mean here, you're forced | by moderation to be dishonest and sterilize everything. | Nuance is only rewarded if you're nuanced about the right | side. | | >is respectful of other points of view. | | Again, this is not in any way consistently applied. If | you disagree with the majority here no amount of nuance | will save you from ban/rate limit. | the_only_law wrote: | > That said, my original point that HN is not a good | place to have these discussions stands. | | Sorry, I must have missed the not, I thought you were | saying this _is_ a good place. | [deleted] | [deleted] | [deleted] | truthwhisperer wrote: | 29athrowaway wrote: | > How dare we criticize another culture when we have our own | problems? | | Because there are now 4.6 million Indian Americans and they are | one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the US. | | So it's our own problem now too. | PheonixPharts wrote: | I was going to comment the same thing but then realized the | parent comment is listing the tactics people use to shut down | the conversation, not their own personal opinions. | | The point being made is that people who don't want this | conversation in public (i.e. people in favor of and/or who | benefit from the caste system) will flood the comments with | this type of rhetoric which instantly turns the conversation | into to a flame war rather than a helpful discourse on how to | improve things. | | The fact that you and I both instinctively fell for this | reaction is evidence that parent is quite correct in the | effectiveness of this tactic. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _will flood the comments with this type of rhetoric which | instantly turns the conversation into to a flame war rather | than a helpful discourse on how to improve things_ | | Which is how they got Google to cancel the talk. | H8crilA wrote: | It was a rhetorical question. | leoc wrote: | It seems the grandparent agrees with you on that, and not | with the opinion which it summarised in that sentence. | lr4444lr wrote: | I think he's being rhetorically sarcastic there. | wolverine876 wrote: | > every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a | bunch of people crying racism/religionism | | Isn't that the first step in the flame war, attacking, | dismissing, and blaming one side (and before they even say | something)? How will someone with a good faith interest in | discussing concerns about racism or religionism act, seeing | this comment - they will feel shut down, and like they won't be | heard and will be attacked. There's already no room for those | discussions. | | There is a lack of trust - a situation that is the goal of | people trying to disrupt open societies and the trolls that | help them. Whatever we say or do, the primary goal needs to be | to build trust. People who are alarmed act badly - that's why | trolls try to alarm people (even if they aren't quite conscious | of how it works). Even when people are acting badly, if you can | build their trust then very often the situation will improve. | | It would be extremely valuable to society to find a way to | conduct constructive conversations; I think we are improving, | but not nearly quickly enough. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a | bunch of people crying racism /religionism_ | | Is there a term for shutting down a discussion by turning the | belligerence to eleven? Such that people outside the discussion | tune out not the views of those being belligerent, but the | discussion itself? | HideousKojima wrote: | "Heckler's Veto" is kind of close, though I'm not sure it | perfectly fits the phenomenon you're talking about: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler%27s_veto | BitwiseFool wrote: | >"Is there a term for shutting down a discussion by turning | the belligerence to eleven?" | | We really need one, because it's a known phenomenon without a | known label. If we can't assign a word or phrase to it, we'll | struggle to communicate the concept to others when we see it | happening. That, in turn, makes calling this behavior out | monumentally more difficult and far less likely to succeed in | pressuring people to stop. Imagine if we didn't have the term | "ad hominem" and how much more difficult it would be to | confront someone making such underhanded attacks in | arguments. It would be a lot more difficult to discredit the | person, despite recognizing what they are doing. | UmYeahNo wrote: | >Is there a term for shutting down a discussion by turning | the belligerence to eleven? | | "Trolled into oblivion", perhaps? | isolli wrote: | Culture war? | the_only_law wrote: | It's definitely an aspect of the culture war, but only a | specific side effect. | fundad wrote: | Dominance | ibejoeb wrote: | Topic dilution is the closest thing I can think of that's | already been coined. Rather than participate in good faith, | the actors bring up some hot topic like racism, and off it | goes until it's a full-on flamewar, or people drop out, or | mods shut it down. | pessimizer wrote: | https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm | | The most appropriate ones here are probably: | | > 2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key | issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used | show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct | group or theme. This is also known as the 'How dare you!' | gambit. | | > 5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This | is also known as the primary 'attack the messenger' ploy, | though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. | Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as 'kooks', | 'right-wing', 'liberal', 'left-wing', 'terrorists', | 'conspiracy buffs', 'radicals', 'militia', 'racists', | 'religious fanatics', 'sexual deviates', and so forth. This | makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the | same label, and you avoid dealing with issues. | | > 18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you | can't do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and | draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make | them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render | their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you | avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even | if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can | further avoid the issues by then focusing on how 'sensitive | they are to criticism.' | | I'm still astounded by how consistently contemporary defenses | of Apartheid blamed the objections to it on "anti-Boer | bigotry" in order to derail the conversation. | wolverine876 wrote: | Trolling, or a specific case of it? I think of trolling as | disruption, and it is commonly used to shut down discussions | and attack good faith community (i.e., where people disagree, | listen, tolerate, and support each other's right to hold and | express differing opinions). This is one application of it. | [deleted] | screye wrote: | Every couple of months an article about caste is posted on HN. | The article and the reactions are always the same. | | * Shallow allusions to how caste dynamics = white-black dynamics | in the US | | * Any one in opposition = caste supremacist = hindu nationalism | | * Belief that caste dynamics in the US = caste dynamics in rural | India | | I am going to buck my own trend of writing explanations about how | western interpretations of issues faced by foreign civilizations | are wrong. I will instead link to older comments [1] I have | written before: | | Choice quotes: | | > Euphemisms dilute | | > Shoe-horning the caste issue into hyper-polarized and shallow | american power struggles is worsening the issue | | I have some strong suspicions on why caste has suddenly become a | major issue in California politics over the last decade. I know | better than to talk about on a pseudo-anonymous account. | | [1] | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... | ZeroGravitas wrote: | Is there a Wikipedia list of obscure 'race'-isms? I find reading | about other cultures or other time period's biases to be | informative and wonder what the common elements might be. | | Off the top of my head, issues I can think of where an outsider | may be oblivious between the "sides" are: | | Indian caste | | Japanese Barukumin caste | | Protestant/Catholic in Europe | | Jewish people in Europe/US/USSR | | English Class System, or Southern/Northern | | Jim Crow, or North/South or Midwest Vs coastal, WASPs, or | Nativism. | | Ainu in Hokkaido. | | Ukraine vs Russian is topical at the moment. | bzxcvbn wrote: | Lumping in hindu castes, Christian denominations, and Jewish | people in what I assume is the beginning-mid 20th century, | makes no sense. Yes, it all falls under xenophobia, but the | impact are wildly different. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | I'd be intetested to hear how the ones you are familiar with | differ, and in what ways you see parallels. | Karawebnetwork wrote: | ZeroGravitas is asking people to come up with a list of | situations that fall under xenophobia. I do not see them | implying that those issues are related or comparable. | H8crilA wrote: | These are not obscure at all! Especially the last one. See the | intercepted phone calls from the security service of Ukraine, | the level of Russian racism is beyond what I could imagine | prior to Feb 24. It is worse than whatever the Red Army did in | WW2, and almost reaching the level that the Nazis showed. | | Russian Nazism is very real, leads to rape, murder, forced | deportation and torture. | pradn wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot | | A persecuted minority in France. | [deleted] | fmajid wrote: | I'm French and had never heard of this. Very interesting, | thanks! | api wrote: | Regional elitism in the USA is definitely a form of soft caste | system. If you are from the upper East coast or the West coast | you are a member of a higher caste than if you are from the | interior, and inside the US there are definitely smaller caste | differences. | | The South gets it the worst. When I was in college (University | of Cincinnati) engineering students from the South were | sometimes encouraged to lose their Southern accents because it | made them sound "stupid." I heard a few stories about this. | seneca wrote: | This is maybe the strongest out-group bias in elite circles | in the US currently. I believe that is largely because it is | acceptable, or even required, in the current elite ideologies | that dominate corporate and academic entities currently. And | they hate to have it pointed out. | api wrote: | I've thought for a long time that woke could get actual | traction by being more woke and extending the concept of | "-isms are not okay" to include American caste and regional | elitisms and classism that isn't about race. | | A course on recognizing bias against lowland Southerners | would be funny but not wrong or inappropriate and you'd see | plenty of rich coastal fragility on display. | | Classism and regionalism are absolutely huge in this | country, especially when those on the receiving end are not | in a racial minority. | | But what would people do if there were _no_ easily | identifiable out groups to stereotype and mock? | capitalsigma wrote: | Show me someone in tech with a strong Brooklyn or Boston | accent. | floraandfauna wrote: | As someone who grew up in the Deep South but studied and | worked on the east coast for many years, I can confirm this | to be 100% true. | | At a past job, I worked for a company headquartered on the | upper east coast, but which had opened a "tech hub" in the | mid-sized Southern city where I lived at the time. Some of my | co-workers had fairly pronounced Southern accents and people | in the home office would regularly laugh and make fun of them | during meetings. And after I put in my notice, the tech lead | on the project I was on declared, completely unprompted, | during a completely unrelated call that "we haven't had any | issues with code quality or anything, but Southerners are | just slow. That's just how they are. It's the culture." I | think that I will regret for the rest of my life not telling | him to go eff himself right then and there. | | And I wish I could say that that was an exception to my | experience elsewhere, but while living on the east coast I | heard more offhand comments about "stupid Southerners" than I | can count, often followed by an awkward "I mean, not you of | course, you're different". Interestingly, many (but not all) | of the same people who think it's funny to beat up on the | South are also the most likely to make impassioned | performative declarations of support for every DEI initiative | they come across. The level of cognitive dissonance required | to maintain that kind of mindset must be intense. | carapace wrote: | For what it's worth, the stereotype of the "stupid | Southerner" in America got started due to an absolutely | massive hookworm infestation, "an average of 40% of school- | aged children were infected with hookworm". The crazy thing | is that it has handled a century ago yet the stereotype and | prejudice still linger. | | > On October 26, 1909, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission | for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease was organized as a | result of a gift of US$1 million from John D. Rockefeller, | Sr. The five-year program was a remarkable success and a | great contribution to the United States' public health, | instilling public education, medication, field work and | modern government health departments in eleven southern | states.[45] The hookworm exhibit was a prominent part of | the 1910 Mississippi state fair. | | > The commission found that an average of 40% of school- | aged children were infected with hookworm. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookworm_infestation#Eradicat | i... | api wrote: | > The level of cognitive dissonance required to maintain | that kind of mindset must be intense. | | Holding and advancing multiple deeply contradictory ideas | is something humans are very good at. | | I've come to believe that most people spend very little | time asking if their ideas are reasonable. They just | believe what they need to believe to fit into a group. It's | more about group membership signaling than anything else. | | Primates will choose social connection over food, so it's | not surprising that we'll also choose social connection | over rationality. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNBEhzjg8I | mattcwilson wrote: | Reminds me of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed | cebert wrote: | I live in the Midwest in Michigan, and I can't say that I | feel like I've been treated as a lower caste in the Midwest. | We have some wonderful learning institutions, such as the | University of Michigan, and a lot of talented and | individuals. | rob74 wrote: | The common element is always in-group vs. out-group | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_and_out-group). It | doesn't have to be based on race or ethnicity, it can also be | e.g. Democrats vs. Republicans in the US, supporters of | different football clubs etc. etc. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | I nearly listed football/sport team support but thought it | might be too out there a reference for most people. Now I'm | wondering how global such sporting based rivalries are, and | if they always originally grew from one of the others. | boredumb wrote: | Loxism | | Dominicans and Haitians | | Colombians and.... the rest of Latin america | | People are hardwired to perceive outsiders as a threat and | usually this originates from good reasoning. | izacus wrote: | In Europe, you can always reliably find a massive amount of | racism against the Romani people | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people). | TrackerFF wrote: | Not to be confused with the Romanian people - i.e, people | from Romania. (Though some of the Roma people can obviously | also be Romanians!). | | EDIT: I absolutely condone discrimination, but I think for | the people that live in areas with very visible Roma people, | it's kind of obvious why. | | At best, you'll just see them begging on the streets. At | worst, you'll experience getting hounded down by them, | getting robbed, or your property looted. Mostly just an issue | in larger cities, and it used to be _much_ worse 10 years | ago. | | We had this one older Roma guy that would have his usual | spot, and he'd sit there and beg all day long. Rain, snow, or | wind - he'd _always_ sit there. In the end, he became a | fixture in the city scenery. | | But one particular winter got really bad, and some senior | citizen offered him their apartment (rent-free) for a couple | of months, as they were away for the winter. He passed away a | couple of years later. | tzs wrote: | > I absolutely condone discrimination | | Did you mean condemn? | | condemn: express complete disapproval of | | condone: approve or sanction (something), especially with | reluctance | TrackerFF wrote: | I stand corrected - meant condemn. | the_only_law wrote: | It's very blunt and to the point as well, no beating around | the bush or wriggling around to try to make yourself look | less bad for it like in America. | izacus wrote: | I'm fascinated how such comments actually showed up here | down the thread. ^^ | farmerstan wrote: | I've been robbed twice by Gypsies/Romani in Europe. I don't | have much sympathy for a culture that openly celebrates | thievery the way their culture does. | | All of the beggars in downtown SF holding babies and asking | for money are all Romani. They will shuttle the babies and | children around to different people who beg so that they can | get more money. It's pretty astounding. | baisq wrote: | tokai wrote: | That's literally how racism against Afro Americans is | often excused towards Euros. | baisq wrote: | Yes, I was going to add to that comment that Europeans | can't understand the treatment of blacks in America | either. | monetus wrote: | (From the us) I went to school with a Hungarian who | couldn't understand why we were confused about his jokes | - they were based around body building so that his arms | could become "gypsy killers". He was such a nice guy, it | seemed really discordant. This is an anecdote of the kind | of cultural exchange we have. | the_only_law wrote: | I knew a similar guy, but he was Spanish and his | catchphrase was "Moor killer" which was just really odd | to me, given the Reconquista ended a very long time ago, | but he says a lot of terms/cultural aspects still exist | from then. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Yep... | | I live in a country with two large-ish gypsy areas, and we | have a lot of people who are very loud about their rights | and discrimination against them... | | ...somehow none of those people actually live anywhere near | them. | | There really is discrimination against them, but on the | other hand, the system (police, courts, politics) allows | them to do all the shitty stuff they're stereotyped by. | throwaway71271 wrote: | the roma i know just want to live in a different way, they | dont really want to participate in the system we have built. | | they live by another set of rules and values | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_society_and_culture | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris_(Romani_court) | jeromegv wrote: | Of course your message was followed with people accusing the | whole culture of robbing people. It's quite interesting how | if you switched any other culture this would be downvoted to | hell, but the moment we talk of Romani people, the most | strong worded racist comments are just accepted. I guess we | still have work to do. | fartcannon wrote: | I don't know if the Indian caste thing should be considered | obscure. There are 1.3 billion Indians. By number of people | affected it might be one of the more important conversations in | the world today. | np_tedious wrote: | It's "obscure" bc it is underappreciated in the US and | probably most places outside of India | [deleted] | ZeroGravitas wrote: | I intended 'obscure' in the 'not easily understood' (to | outsiders) sense, but probably an unfortunate word choice as | it also means 'unknown'. | zen_1 wrote: | I think discussions of "obscurity" are always relative to the | audience in question, so while I highly doubt caste | discussions would reasonably be considered obscure in India | (or within the Indian diaspora), I (a non-Indian) had | certainly never heard of casteism abroad until I saw | submissions on HN discussing it at Cisco. | PhillyG wrote: | Agreed. "Region specific" might be a better term for what | the commenter intended | smegsicle wrote: | balkans / other balkans | likis wrote: | Sami people is another example: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi#Discrimination_again... | TrackerFF wrote: | Not sure how the Sami people are treated in Sweden, Finland, | or Russia - but here in Norway there has indeed been a long | history of discrimination against the Sami. | | But tbh, it's just half a century ago that pretty much _all_ | people from Northern Norway were discriminated against, in | the southern parts. Which is why most people moving south | were recommended to change accent - fast. More so if you | wanted to work in any client /customer-facing job... | | Back to the Sami - unfortunately there are still shitty | people out there that feel the need to voice their opinion if | they see Sami people wearing traditional clothing. But it | should also be said that there's conflict within the Sami | community, which also comes down to what _type_ Sami you are | (sea /coast Sami vs hill/raindeer). Most of the real | conflicts in any case revolve around land/areal usage. | nyolfen wrote: | > (sea/coast Sami vs hill/raindeer) | | can you speak more to this? i'm totally unfamiliar with the | folk taxonomy | TrackerFF wrote: | Sure - traditionally the Sami people have been divided | into two groups: Those that have lived around / near | coastlines ( _" sea Sami"_), and those more inland | (typically just _" Sami"_, or _" reindeer Sami"_, _" | hill/mountain Sami"_. | | In short, the coastal Sami people have made their living | off fishing, farming, and similar activities. | | On the other hand, those living inland have mostly made | their money off reindeer husbandry. Reindeers will forage | over a large area, and in Northern Norway / Sweden / | Finland / Russia that includes large tundra and hilly | places - so many of Sami involved in that trade would | trek over and live in these areas. | | With that said, these days I think only 5%-10% of Sami | have reindeer husbandry as their main profession. | | But the vast majority of conflicts between Sami people | and the rest usually comes down to the reindeer. Since | the reindeer need a huge area to graze on, it tends to | become a problem for companies wanting to develop the | area for industry. | | Just recently our supreme court decided that a wind farm | had been bult in conflict with cultural landscape of | local Sami people. Reindeer husbandry is a cultural | heritage activity, and thus protected. The area reindeer | graze on, is thus a cultural landscape, and also | protected. | | The intra-Sami conflicts, from what I've seen and heard, | boils down to either things related to the reindeer | industry - or I guess elitism from the "true" Sami people | toward the coastal Sami people. | kergonath wrote: | > list of obscure 'race'-isms | | The word you need is "xenophobia" (hate of the others, of those | who are different). Race is a limited, artificial concept and | by focusing on it we miss the forest for the trees. Xenophobia | is as old as humanity and can be based on anything: physical | features; ideas, religions, languages, family ties, etc. | HKH2 wrote: | Since when does '-phobia' mean 'hatred'? If I suffer from | arachnophobia, do I hate spiders? | olddustytrail wrote: | Since always. It's an extreme dislike ( the opposite of | "philia"). "Revulsion" might be a better translation than | fear or hatred. | HKH2 wrote: | > Since always. | | Is was used like that in Greek? Even the clinical meaning | today does not include hatred. | | > "Revulsion" might be a better translation than fear or | hatred. | | Fear does not require disgust. I am scared of snakes but | I think they are beautiful animals. | PhillyG wrote: | "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. | Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." | | Edit: It might be a quote from fiction but there's some | truth in there somewhere | HKH2 wrote: | Fear can lead to aggression, but it doesn't have to; you | can be avoidant. | kergonath wrote: | Yeah, it's mostly fear. I blame my lack of coffee at the | time and my non-English mother tongue :) | | Though the line between fear and hate is quite thin and | blurry in human psychology. The arachnophobes I know do, in | fact, hate spiders with a passion. | RicoElectrico wrote: | All the three ethnic groups that comprise Belgium? | | English vs French speaking Canadians? | Karawebnetwork wrote: | Not as much of a day-to-day issue for the newest generations | but French Canada vs. English Canada (historically "Lower | Canada" vs "Upper Canada", which shouldn't be relevant but some | people still use the old labels an excuse for casual | 'race'-isms as you call it). | | The youngest French Canadians generally speak English. However | the oldest generations (50+ or 60+ depending on the region) | couldn't and mostly still can't due to the way the system was | set up. And since a lot of companies came from either the US or | the rest of Canada, they had no hopes in climbing ranks or | being competitive as businesspeople. There are some records of | French Canadians being sent to unusually harsh missions during | the great wars too. | | There are casual insults such as calling French Canadian | "frogs" and English Canadians "square heads" still in use | today. | | It is still present even in tech companies where English | speakers are sent to client meetings as it is sometimes | perceived "rude" to sent someone with a French accent to the | front. | | These days, it's mostly about not extending the classic "warm | Canadian welcome" to the other category. But in some | situations, it can get more serious. | | (That being said, in 2022 it does not really compare to some of | the other examples listed above.) | [deleted] | 29athrowaway wrote: | In Latin America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta | [deleted] | inglor_cz wrote: | Add "Muslim/Kafir" to the list. And Sunni/Shi'a. | ralmidani wrote: | Bad analogy. A person's deeply-held belief that a given | religion is true, and calling others to that belief, is not | the same as saying "you were born of a lower caste and should | never be able to escape that." | | Of course, it goes without saying, perceiving you belong to | the true faith does not justify violence or discrimination. | But faith-based identification is not analogous to a caste | system. | alex_smart wrote: | Are we going to lightly dismiss the prosecution of | polytheists in many Islamic countries? | | >Of course, it goes without saying, perceiving you belong | to the true faith does not justify violence or | discrimination. But faith-based identification is not | analogous to a caste system. | | They were clearly talking about faith-based discrimination. | Why would you assume that they were talking about faith- | based identification, especially given the context? | [deleted] | [deleted] | india_usa wrote: | This whole discussion of bringing caste is like British coming | and dividing India. For tech companies like Google who hire | purely by merit, if someone has made inside Google that's it. | Otherwise if there is discrimination they would not have hired | it. Thenmozhi is a radical leftist out to create division rather | than love. her father is a doctor, so if they are suppressed how | come he is a doctor. | | In state of Tamil Nadu where she and Pichai there is 70% | reservation or affirmitive actions. if you are forward class you | are out, This is for past 70 years. For several generations | Dalits enjoy a superior position and forward castes are kicked | out. I am not sure what else they want. They are out to create | pure division and i have worked in many tech companies in bay | area like Google. There is no caste discrimination. PERIOD. I | have witnessed up close. | | Thenmozhi just craves publicity and is a publicty stunt maker. It | will be better if she does something useful for fellow Dalits | instead of just talking from inside a palace. | oh_sigh wrote: | What caste are you? | | > For tech companies like Google who hire purely by merit, if | someone has made inside Google that's it. Otherwise if there is | discrimination they would not have hired it. | | I don't think anyone is claiming that companies like Google are | organizationally enforcing caste discrimination, more like some | employees within the company are doing it on their own. | | > Thenmozhi is a radical leftist out to create division rather | than love. | | Pointing out wrongs may indeed create division, but that | doesn't mean it is wrong to do so. | | > her father is a doctor, so if they are suppressed how come he | is a doctor. | | Maybe he would be surgeon general(or equivalent) right now if | he wasn't? This logic is just plain wrong - it would be like | saying that racism didn't exist in the US in 1967 - otherwise | how would Thurgood Marshall be on the Supreme Court? | whoevercares wrote: | I observed it multiple times during CS graduate school. An Indian | high caste classmate refused to let his roommate sleep in the | same bedroom. The higher caste guy told us that his roommate is | of lower caste. The other poor guy ended up very obedient and | sleep in the couch for 2 years. They have a group of high caste | guys and talk sht about a few fellow low caste guys in the class | | Eye opening. | cuteboy19 wrote: | This is unthinkable in any IIT/NIT in India. I think casteism | is somewhat worse in the US | oh_sigh wrote: | I forget what the concept is called, but I will call it | something like emigrant conservatism, where emigrants bring | essentially a snapshot of their culture from when they | emigrate, and that snapshot remains fixed - they don't feel | American, so they don't integrate into American cultural | norms, and they don't have much active interaction with their | previous home's culture which is constantly progressing. | lotophage wrote: | That's horrible | eternalban wrote: | ! This was in US? What school was this? | puranjay wrote: | High caste people in India will often find ways to casually | mention their caste in conversation, sometimes within minutes | of meeting someone new. Its reflexive - like subtly turning | your wrist to show off a new watch. | | And I have no data to corroborate this, but I've felt caste | chauvinism increase in the last few years. | [deleted] | dandare wrote: | After a quick google search I can see some very controversial | comments by Thenmozhi Soundararajan. | | Hopefully the world is changing and demonising ones race, even if | that race is white or Hindu, will soon be neither celebrated nor | even acceptable. | alex_smart wrote: | How is Dr Subramanian relevant to this article again? | dandare wrote: | Typo (old clipboard). Thanks for pointing it out. | ridiculous_leke wrote: | What exactly did she comment? | CydeWeys wrote: | I do want to point out that Google allows all sorts of talks | onsite. You can see some of them here: | https://youtube.com/c/talksatgoogle | | I've definitely been to a few of those in person that were more | controversial than talking about caste (and also did not have | the benefit of actually being useful, like addressing workplace | discrimination is). | WesolyKubeczek wrote: | I've got this impression that all these diversity and equality | programs employed by large American corporations are annoying to | some and lame generally because they are astoundingly myopic. | | Like, they do a vastly simplified, explain-like-I'm-five take on | these issues (blah blah white male middle- and upper-class are | evil type of thing) and tackle it with full ineptitude of five- | year-olds. | | I think a lot of people benefit from such approach. | | First, hordes of people are generating busywork and you don't | really need mad skills or even basic competence to be doing it. | | A lot of busywork paints a picture of the company press and | shareholders will love. | | Meanwhile, all the bullies keep on bullying. | | There's this culture where you will be treated better or worse | based on the color of your badge. Race/religion/gender are off- | limits, but discriminatory employee-contractor dynamics are | blessed! | | There's this other bit of corporate culture that flew under the | radar of any and all equality/diversity effort where managers of | Indian origin would treat their also-Indian reports like shit | because the poor schmucks happen to be of a lower caste. They | would also make an effort to halt their career progress. | | Those same managers would treat their overseas office teammates | (in Poland) as if they were below the lowest caste possible. | | Speaking about companies that have offices in both USA and, say, | Eastern Europe, the Eastern Wuropean teammates are often treated | as second-class people. They don't get to participate in any | project discussions of importance, presumably because those | discussions happen informally, at the watercooler, in the US | office, and should be content with all decisions handed down, | like it or not. | | I'm seeing the same kind of attitude starts happening now with | onsite/WFH workers: since you don't see the latter ones face to | face, they are not quite real people. | | Oh, and if you want to see a full-fledged rampant racism and | supremacism, you should try working for a Korean company as a | worker of their European branch office. | | But apparently such issues are way too complex to be actually | worked on by your off-the-shelf diversity and equality teams, for | whom the white/nonwhite and male/female divide is the upper limit | of comprehension. | knorker wrote: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-02 23:01 UTC)