[HN Gopher] Sr Manager at Google Resigns After Dalit Activist Di... ___________________________________________________________________ Sr Manager at Google Resigns After Dalit Activist Disallowed from Giving Lecture Author : ddtaylor Score : 98 points Date : 2022-06-03 21:45 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.thequint.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.thequint.com) | drewcon wrote: | I cannot wait for this era of GENERAL political activism at work | to end. | | If there are specific policies at work that effect you | (meaningfully, not tangentially) by all means seek to change | them. | | If you just want to wear your woke flair and bring all general | outside politics inside...get a hobby, start a religion, join a | movement...leave the rest of us alone. | kgwxd wrote: | If a policy effects my colleagues, it effects me. If that | doesn't effect you, then by all means, do nothing. | [deleted] | sva_ wrote: | What I don't understand is, how do people know the caste of some | individual if they want to decide if they hire them or not, how | does it work? It doesn't seem like people are very public about | their caste, so how do they get an advantage? Do the people of a | caste somehow communicate with each other?! | genocidicbunny wrote: | Things like where you're from, what your parents or | grandparents did for work, even your last name, can give away | your caste. | thret wrote: | Name, skin colour, and yes they can speak to each other. | magneticnorth wrote: | My understanding is that it can often be identified by last | name, or last name + home city/region. | | And there are other indicators; I've been told upper casts are | usually lighter-skinned, and Brahmins are often vegetarian. | gfiorav wrote: | We're reliving the last days of Ancient Greece. Direct democracy | (strictly NOT representative democracy) led cities like Athens to | make harsh decisions based on just-in-time demagoguery. It led to | their fall. | | Representative democracy is not a fruit of technological | impediments, but a conscious decision by the founding fathers | after learning of the plights of direct democracy (which they | equated to anarchy). | | Companies like Apple firing people on employees just in time | judgements is the failure of justice and the decay of modern | society. | | Hot take, but you know... | [deleted] | davidw wrote: | The actual WP article: | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-... | dkarl 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 rancour," the | spokesperson further said. | | Google publicly defending this decision via an official | spokesperson, rather than apologizing and backtracking, makes me | think that someone close to the top is personally bothered by the | content of the talk. It seems like it would be easy for | leadership to brush off complaints about it from further down the | chain. | [deleted] | hackernewds wrote: | Were they disallowed BECAUSE they were a Dalit? Or because of the | nature of their talk? | | Both are not the same scenario, which the headline seems to | conflate. | hef19898 wrote: | According to the WP article it was a Dalit soeaker who was | invited to talk about Caste-based discrimination. The talk was | canceled after severe backlash against the topic, internal | backlash. | | So I'd say it was both. | oh_sigh wrote: | I really dislike when headlines use weasel words to imply | causation when there is none, but I'm not really seeing it | here. No one is saying they were denied because they were a | Dalit. Some view it as being cancelled from the nature of the | talk making those in power uncomfortable, others view it as | being cancelled because the activist said anti-hindu things. | ilrwbwrkhv wrote: | Google should focus on improving their search engine and making | better products or they will soon go the way of Lycos. | [deleted] | godshatter wrote: | > ...a Dalit rights activist was not allowed to give a | presentation on caste following emails by employees calling her | "anti-Hindu." | | I must be the last person still alive that keeps their opinions | to themselves while on the job. | thoms_a wrote: | This doesn't mean that the opinions of powerful people do not | affect you, however. | | The Civil Rights Act and its consequences have meant that | America will forever be politicized along every fault line of | human identity. Whether it can withstand this burden and remain | a functional civilization remains to be seen. | ushakov wrote: | maybe Basecamp's no politics at work policy wasn't that bad | after all... | frostburg wrote: | How does that work when apparently there are Indian managers | that discriminate against lower caste Indians under them? | criddell wrote: | Does the Indian-ness of the manager matter? Nobody actually | thinks discrimination is okay. | frostburg wrote: | This is basically invisible to "us" (assuming you're not | Indian); I'm a comparatively well read westerner | regarding this issue but I have no practical ability to | spot the subtle signifiers that let people familiar with | system glean who "belongs" to what caste if they care to. | | Also non-Indian managers are very unlikely to be | interested in discriminating against specific subgroups | of Indians even if they're huge bigots or something, so | this is a pretty specifically inter-Indian issue. | epistasis wrote: | That policy doesn't mean that there's no politics at work, | just that there's no open discussion of the politics that are | affecting employees and the company. See for example: | | https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys- | hidde... | ushakov wrote: | i seriously doubt that no politics at work policy was to | undermine discussions about employees struggles | | to me it seems that people got carried away by political | debacle so much they forgot why they should be actually | doing on the job | | moreover i doubt Basecamp had a caste problem to begin with | madeofpalk wrote: | "No politics at Google" is an impossible stance. | thriftwy wrote: | That's likely because you belong to a social group whose | opinions are considered worthless. | godshatter wrote: | I don't align well with most of the most outspoken social | groups, so, yeah, probably true. | hellohowareu wrote: | I'm so glad no one at my current technology workplace discusses | politics anywhere-- not in Slack, Email, nor Conference calls. | I literally haven't heard a single political opinion at work, | and I freakin love it! | | I previously worked at Unity Technologies (3d game engine | company) and as well as a CRM Consultancy, and I was amazed by | how much time people spent arguing their political agenda. It | was a major contributing factor of why I left both places. I | had this feeling of "Why are these people chatting about things | irrelevant to our work, while I am working? They should be | working too-- they're paid to work, not chat & check their | slack feed for 30-60 minutes a day about politics" | munk-a wrote: | Unfortunately just because people don't openly discuss their | politics it doesn't mean that there isn't hiring discrimination | going on. | [deleted] | scarmig wrote: | Could someone steel man the protest against the lecture? | (Anonymously if you prefer.) | | Particularly, the most I've been able to hunt down are vague | claims that her organization is Hinduphobic. If that's indeed the | issue, what are the concrete examples of this? | khazhoux wrote: | I don't think "steel man" has entered the common vernacular | yet. At first I thought it was a typo. | civilian wrote: | it's entered the tech vernacular :) do you grok it now? | astrange wrote: | That's because it's another term reinvented by people who | want to do philosophy without studying any of it. The | traditional term is "argument reconstruction". | Noumenon72 wrote: | This seems like a case where a field settled on | undescriptive jargon (like "Type I error") and needs to be | disrupted by a useful vernacular (like "false positive"). | If you hear "steel man" once, you'll never forget it. I've | forgotten "argument reconstruction" already. | hef19898 wrote: | That she dares to be critical of the Hindu caste system. Twice | bad because she is a woman _and_ a Dalit. Not that any of that | should matter, but we live in the world we live in. | Uhhrrr wrote: | "Steel man" means the opposite of a straw man argument. | https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning | loeg wrote: | Ah, you beat me to it by one minute. :) | [deleted] | loeg wrote: | "Steel man" refers to an argument that is the opposite of a | "straw man." | colinmhayes wrote: | Come on, this isn't a steelman. | naveen99 wrote: | See French approach on the topic. They refuse to acknowledge | identity politics (except between labor and capital) | astrange wrote: | And between the politician and his three underage mistresses. | Although Macron has reversed it by marrying his high school | teacher. | hahaxdxd123 wrote: | > France appeared to be one of the least racially tolerant | countries on the continent, with 22.7 percent saying they | didn't want a neighbor of another race. | | Interesting social contract. | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15. | .. | [deleted] | equalitystreet wrote: | Relatedly, this was a missed opportunity in the UK when the last | Labour government were formulating what became the Equality Act | 2010. | | It's illegal to discriminate against a person's characteristic of | age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, | marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, | religion or belief. But not caste. | | This was pointed out at the time, but was unfortunately ignored. | donsupreme wrote: | Serious question: For Indians who live in America or Europe now, | why do you even care about caste? | closetnerd wrote: | To be fair - I think James Baldwin explained it so it's not | just Indians. For a lot of folks, you feel some sense of | security about your place in the world when you know there's | someone "lower" than you. | Arnavion wrote: | I don't care about caste, and I haven't met anyone who does for | the decade I've lived in the US. It doesn't mean there aren't | any Indians in the US that care about it; there surely must be | given that such Indians existed back in India. I'm just making | it clear that it's not 100% of Indians in the US that care | about caste, as your question seems to imply. | s5300 wrote: | Sheesh. I only worked in Sorrento Valley (San Diego | tech/Qualcomm) & heard about it multiple times there. & I'm | pasty white. | | Not discounting your experience, but I couldn't imagine that | Sorrento Valley would have larger issues about it than | Silicon Valley. | cperciva wrote: | People from lower castes care because they face discrimination, | obviously. | | People from higher castes, even if they're open-minded on the | topic of caste, likely have relatives who aren't -- especially | if they're the only member of a large family who has left | India. Children have been disowned or even murdered by their | relatives for marrying a member of a lower caste; it's really | hard to escape that sort of prejudice. | vsskanth wrote: | I'm Indian, live in the US (Midwest, south, outside big cities) | and I'm happy to just meet another fellow Indian lol. Couldn't | care less about caste or language or whatever. | | We are already so far away from home, atleast we can look out | for each other. | | I'm not in tech so I've never lived anywhere with many Indians. | I'm guessing these types of issues start to crop up when you | have higher chances of meeting many people in your exact social | group back in India and end up forming cliques. | zaptheimpaler wrote: | I don't and no one I know does. I'm happy to leave all that | crap behind. Apparently some people would rather drag those | issues along with them into a new country that was previously | free of this particular scourge :/ | ALittleLight wrote: | I'm torn between thinking it's dumb to give talks on caste at | work and thinking Google is weak for giving in to people who were | complaining about this talk for whatever reason. I suppose I hold | both opinions. | hef19898 wrote: | Caste is apparently as much a reason for discrimination as sex, | sexual orientation, race or religion. Those topics need to be | addressed at workplaces. Refusing to so is actually part of the | problem. | s5300 wrote: | Caste discrimination is more relevant than most other forms of | discrimination we quabble about here in the US. | | For those it affects, that is. | munk-a wrote: | While caste systems might seem far off and irrelevant in the | modern world there is actually a rather extreme amount of caste | based discrimination in work places. It's an issue we need to | talk about and resolve. | | I can't talk to this particular activists positions, but Dalit | Activism is a very relevant and worthy cause - it causes pretty | significant discrimination even in the US. | ALittleLight wrote: | How do you come to know someone's caste? | colinmhayes wrote: | We get talks about discrimination based off race and gender at | work. Caste discrimination is even more deserving because it's | much less obvious to non-indians. | closetnerd wrote: | If you've had a job - I'd be surprised if workplace | discrimination talks sound new to you. | testfoobar wrote: | Never worked at Google. Are such talks about social issues a | regular occurrence at Google or other big tech firms? Who would | be the intended audience and what would be the goals for the | speaker, the hosting employee or the host company? | stadia42 wrote: | Yes, a regular occurrence for the social issues that are either | uncontroversial (e.g., reducing poverty, improving education, | dealing with pandemics) or only lightly controversial (e.g., | climate change, misinformation in the media, etc.). | | For the more controversial topics, the talks are vetted more | carefully, to make sure they align with the political position | of the company, and that they don't raise too much opposition | from any groups within the company. | | The goal of the speaker is to convert as many (preferably | influential) people as possible to their viewpoint. The goal of | the hosting employee is typically the same, at least for the | controversial issues (since those are usually highly | politicized). The goal of the host company is to promote | themselves as a bastion of certain (good, from their | perspective) ideas, and/or as a place for thoughtful | discussions. | civilian wrote: | Have you not worked the last five years? Tech companies are | chock full of "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" talks | smegsicle wrote: | curiously, i've seen many first hand accounts of DEI stuff- | but no kind of researched journalism about what's going on, | why, and how widespread it is | Waterluvian wrote: | I have never had one in 9 years of working at tech startups. | It's a fair question to ask. | rmbyrro wrote: | Startups are in survival or hyper growth mode. They don't | usually have a lot of time for these topics as much as big | tech. | AlotOfReading wrote: | Having talks on academic subjects is fine. Companies should | do more of that. The issue is that corporate diversity | discussions happen with all the education and nuance | appropriate to elementary schoolers. | | Because most of the people in these roles aren't actually | well-educated in 'best practices', you get stuff like | mandatory non-anonymized surveys that ask whether people are | trans and send the results to managers, or slideshows talking | about minority representation that omit Asians, Hispanics, | and other 'common' groups. | epistasis wrote: | These are serious social issues that affect the functioning of | tech companies in the Bay Area: | | https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde... | ushakov wrote: | funny how they cheered for diversity but _completely | overlooked_ the caste system | oaththrowaway wrote: | Because they only care about visible diversity | hef19898 wrote: | Because people have a hard time getting the difference | between Suunit and Shiit moslems. The caste system is | even harder to grasp, for us Westerners Indians are | Indians. So it seems caste based discrimination was | imported through the back door, without anyone realy | noticing. | epistasis wrote: | Who is the "they" in your comment? I don't quite | understand. | ushakov wrote: | > tech companies in the Bay Area | dkarl wrote: | The article says that the speaker "has delivered presentations | on caste at Microsoft, Airbnb, Netflix, Saleforce, and Adobe." | jleyank wrote: | Where was the lecture being attempted? If it's in n America, | others should think about how non-native social structures | intersect with traditional mores. | unchocked wrote: | Which traditional mores might you have in mind, and how would | you suggest others (North Americans?) should think about them? | throwaway_1928 wrote: | Workplaces are best for doing work, earning income and making | light conversation. It is risky to turn them into a battleground | for every political and religious issue under the sun. | | Good riddance. | [deleted] | turndown wrote: | Just because I know you won't have a good answer - explain how | a Dalit activist being called 'Anti-Hindu' when it is Hinduism | that calls for the caste based system is not evidence of the | exact kind of caste being present at these companies(a publicly | documented problem.) | s5300 wrote: | Great, you seem to have a semblance of understanding of the | issue. Now go talk to the c-suite execs & even lower level | managers that are actively discriminating against people, get | them to stop, & then all will be well. Things can revert to the | form you & most likely wish it would be. | jiggawatts wrote: | Unless the issue is specifically workplace discrimination. | | Just because it doesn't affect you personally doesn't meant | it's not important. | rossdavidh wrote: | I would be interested in hearing the perspective of any HN | readers who are of south Asian background and working in America. | Statements that tech companies in the US have caste | discrimination (or reverse discrimination) for South Asians who | work there, are hard for me (an Anglo-American) to judge, seeing | as if it were happening (either way) there's little chance I | would have noticed it. | rayiner wrote: | I'm Bangladeshi, rather than Indian, so I'm watching this from | the sidelines. That being said, I'm of the opinion that | activists suck up all the oxygen when it comes to discussions | of race in the U.S. A Pew poll a few years ago noted that 90% | of Indian Americans think discrimination against Indian | Americans in America is a "minor problem" or "no problem at | all": https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/16/miss- | americ.... But the 10% that think it's a big problem get the | biggest platforms. | | In reality, it's probably impossible to understand how big or | small a problem caste discrimination really is in context. The | folks who don't face any negative experiences mostly aren't | going to pipe up. | dubswithus wrote: | I don't know if you're aware of this, so I'm going to link it. | | https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/01/tech/cisco-lawsuit-caste-... | guerrilla wrote: | Check the comments on the last post about this talk | cancellation for a lot of that [1] and then check the search, | this topic has been discussed a few times before. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 | | [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=caste | yieldcrv wrote: | Am I understanding correctly that she got severe backlash on a | topic nobody in the US cares about _except_ the beneficiaries of | an obscure identity politics in India... that nobody thats not | from India, in America, cares about? | | Seems like exhibit A for something the rest of us should be aware | of, and balance opinions on. Since there are many people from | India in the US. | bragr wrote: | Not a unique issue either, see the California v Cisco lawsuit: | | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-... | [deleted] | booleandilemma wrote: | What are the best ways of identifying this kind of discrimination | for a non-Indian? How can I tell if it's happening in my | workplace? | pvg wrote: | Dupe of yesterday's 875 comment thread | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 | throwawaybxb wrote: | I've read (I think this was on a fairly marginal website, which | is why I'm not entirely convinced) that there are networks of | high-caste Indians/Hindus in SV who promote each other. | | Looking at social media, I know discussing caste is quite taboo. | People who celebrate their caste openly are mocked. | | Is caste dead, or has it been driven underground? Does it still | play a role in places like SV? | bragr wrote: | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-03 23:00 UTC)