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For people who discuss this with Indian co-workers - don't be surprised if they find this bizarre or far fetched. For most upper caste folks, it appears as if t
by _jgdh 6y ago
For people who discuss this with Indian co-workers - don't be surprised if they find this bizarre or far fetched. For most upper caste folks, it appears as if the caste system doesn't exist because they've never been at the receiving end of it. Most people (me included) would be tempted to say - I've never discriminated, I've never seen it happen in front of me, I'm confident none of my friends would do it so therefore it doesn't exist.
But it does. It's heartbreaking that my fellow Indians have to deal with this in 2020. Just like BLM educated some white people about the existence of racism, how it manifests, how it affects people etc., we need a similar movement to educate upper caste Indians.
I've also seen the same people say "if we completely ignore caste, it'll go away". It won't. I personally can't tell you what someone's caste is based on their name because I don't care enough to find out the mapping between name <=> caste. If everyone was like this, there wouldn't be a problem. But I know for a fact that there exist people who can map name to caste and these people also discriminate on the basis of caste. These people might only be a minority but they can have a disproportionate effect. As long as they exist, the rest of us can't adopt an ostrich approach to the caste system.
- mcv 6y agoIt's important that companies are aware of this, take complaints seriously, inform their Indian employees that this is not acceptable, explain where and how to report this, and offer training to overcome these prejudices. And have clear sanctions: if someone does discriminate against lower-caste colleagues, and especially when they abuse their power against them (by denying promotion, keeping them away from prestigious projects, etc), then the abuser should be demoted or fired. If you want to work in an environment where caste matters and the caste hierarchy is observed, do not work for a western company. Also, maybe there should be some education projects and affirmative action for those Dalit communities.
- cvhashim 6y agoThis is why I scoff and roll my eyes at individuals who argue that tech is a meritocracy when discrimination between countrymen is happening even in companies like Google.
- Loughla 6y agoFrom what I can tell, tech IS a meritocracy. As long as you have the money and/or connections to get into the tech scene.
- MisterBastahrd 6y agoI saw an article about one of Dan Gilbert's spawn who claimed he started his company from nothing. Dan Gilbert is the 69th wealthiest person on the planet. It would be a waste of time and money for him to walk across a street to get a free car.
- throw1234651234 6y agoIt almost has to be - there is no other field where you can make your skills or inability apparent within the first 2 days on the job.
- Loughla 6y agoI think you missed my point.
- secondcoming 6y agoBut don't candidates for Google jobs have to jump through several tedious rounds of interview? How likely is it that there's going to be a snobby Indian in each of those rounds who gets to veto a candidate?
- geofft 6y ago1. Companies like Google tend to want hiring approval to be unanimous or close to unanimous - the more rounds of approval you have, the more likely one person can derail it. (Not to mention team matching, SVP approval, etc.) 2. With enough interviews of enough candidates, this still leaves you with a statistical bias in aggregate, even if it's possible for one candidate to avoid biased interviewers. (The converse of course, is that the experience for a single candidate is quite often worse than the median experience.)
- signal11 6y ago> If you want to work in an environment where caste matters and the caste hierarchy is observed, do not work for a western company. And if you want to practice caste discrimination at an Indian company — beware, caste based discrimination is India has been illegal since 1948, you will go to jail, and they’re definitely not the nice Scandinavian kind of jails. PS. About education and affirmative action for Dalits... there are lots of such programmes. But clearly not enough to wipe this blot away.
- pm90 6y agoHow many companies are prosecuted under those laws? The existence of laws is nice but enforcement makes the difference. Most companies would probably not advertise that they favor certain castes, but inexplicably only people of certain castes get the promotions, good projects etc.
- luckylion 6y ago> And have clear sanctions: if someone does discriminate against lower-caste colleagues, and especially when they abuse their power against them (by denying promotion, keeping them away from prestigious projects, etc), then the abuser should be demoted or fired. I agree, but as usual, I'm confused: should they not be demoted or fired when they abuse their power to discriminate against someone who is not Indian? Or is Indian, but of an equal or higher caste? I totally agree with what you're saying, but the way you say it implies that everything else is okay. > If you want to work in an environment where caste matters and the caste hierarchy is observed, do not work for a western company. We have castes in the West as well, we just call them classes and you can, theoretically, transition from one to another, but generally you won't and everybody is quite aware of each others class and the nuances within. It's in everything, the way you speak, dress, what you eat and drink, heck, even your name is usually a statement of class.
- raxxorrax 6y agoI don't think it prudent to replicate it in nations with no connection to Hinduism. Your strategy would reinforce the awareness of caste status. I don't think non-Indians would even be able to discriminate by caste. Discrimination against Indians is perfectly possible of course.
- fmajid 6y agoThere is a strong racial component to the caste system, and thus it would fall within a protected category. A company would open itself up to liability if it willfully ignored the problem.
- sremani 6y agoEven though Caste is associated with Hinduism. There is a huge section of Muslims and Christians who practice a derived version of Caste system in Indian subcontinent.
- notacoward 6y agoEverything you say rings very true to me. Most Indians are very reluctant to talk about this. Of several that became friends when I worked with a team in BLR, only one became close enough that we could discuss it. He himself was from one of the very highest sub-castes (which he taught me was trivially knowable from his surname) but very enlightened. I was shocked to discover that all but two or three out of about fifty colleagues were Brahmin[1]. It explained a lot of the dynamics I had already observed, like why one of the best engineers in the place had never been promoted or why some of them literally wouldn't even talk to another. Caste, especially Dalit vs. everyone else, still seems to be very much a thing. But, as you say, nobody wants to discuss it. [1] That's the word he used. It might well have been shorthand for a more complex concept that he knew I wouldn't understand.
- _jgdh 6y agoI've never had any trouble discussing this with European and American colleagues or owning up to my own privilege. But I can see how many Indians would find it awkward to talk about, especially if they think that the caste system is on it's way out because things are better than they used to be. Some might feel that discussing it with non-Indians puts India in a bad light. To which I say, it's not me who's painting India in a bad light, it's the people who are discriminating on the basis of caste in 2020. People who say "oh, I'm only against reservation and those who benefit from it" and treat such people terribly. And we can only get rid of this disease by shining a light on it.
- frenchy 6y agoI think it's very natural to find this topic awkward if you come from a privilaged background. Basically, you've grown up being treated in a certain way, and you internalize that and think you're a valuable person because people treat you well. Then you realize that at least part of that is because society is broken/diseased and not simply because you're inheritly awesome. That's a really awkward pill to swallow. I'm not in any way trying to justify this behavior. Something being natural doesn't mean it's good.
- secondcoming 6y ago
- mrweasel 6y agoOut of curiosity: Could an Indian of a lower caste change their name, or be named differently at birth, as to "fake" their way into a different caste?
- eqtn 6y agoDuring the previous discussions some has mentioned that they converted to a different religion
- cvhashim 6y agoI think I recall the commenter mentioned he was of the lowest caste, and he decided to convert to Christianity to get away from the discrimination.
- bluGill 6y agoWhich as this thread shows only helps a little. You have a chance - but only a chance - that your group is now Christians. As a minority religion you can stick together with your new group who also feels the issues of being in a minority religion. But that only sometimes look - some people convert more wholly than others, and thus are more or less able to ignore previous norms.
- nandhinianand 6y agoI have a friend whose parents converted to christianity, and so my friend grew up christian. But guess what, the first time I met my friends' mom(at his wedding), the first question she asked after verifying native state(TamilNadu) was which caste I belonged to. (And yeah just to be clear, she asked which caste I'm from, and she/they're from xxx caste). So no caste is not something people escape from converting religion.
- mrweasel 6y agoI’m sorry but I’m completely facinated. What do you suppose would happen if your answer was something like: “Oh, we don’t believe in castes” or “I’m not in any caste”. I assume they’d just assume the “worst”.
- signal11 6y agoIt’s not bizarre or far-fetched at all. Just a couple weeks ago (!) a woman named Rashmi Agochiya posted some astonishingly vile rants about Dalits on Facebook. Here’s a tweet with some of the comments she posted: https://twitter.com/ahariharan/status/1304042539238846464?s=21 https://twitter.com/ahariharan/status/1304042539238846464?s=... This lady has now deleted or hidden her social media accounts, but she seems to lives and work in the Midwest.
- breitling 6y ago...and what came of the report to her employer? Can't imagine any moral company tolerating this
- 1024core 6y ago> It’s not bizarre or far-fetched at all. You do realize that one example (out of 1.2 Billion) is the definition of "far fetched". If you want to claim that it is not "far fetched", you will have to provide 1000s of cases. Edit: oh great, the downvote brigade is here. How about this anecdote: in grad school, I (an Indian, from the North of the country) was friends with a group of South Indians who all shared a house. We'd have brunches together, hang out on the weekends, etc. They all came from different schools; including one from IIT Madras. After nearly a year of friendship, in one late night conversation, one of the guys joked that the guy from IIT Madras was a "topper" (i.e., ranked highest in the entrance exam). I was surprised, because he seemed so down to earth. Turns out he had scored the highest among the reserved category students (but still ranked pretty highly); IOW, he was of a so-called "lower caste". It didn't bother me at all, and neither did it bother any of his housemates. We are still friends today, albeit over long distance. So, does my anecdote cancel yours?
- magicalhippo 6y agoI'm Norwegian, living there. A very good friend is Indian, her parents moved here while she was just a few years old. I never heard her talk about her caste, or the system in general really. That is, until one day, out of the blue, she said she was getting married. Her parents had found a boy who also grew up here in Norway that she was to marry the following year. After a bit of talking it was clear she was not very fond of the idea of her parents finding her a mate. However from what I gathered she was just about as worried about his caste. He was of a lower caste than her, and this was not ideal at all from what I understood. However, his family was rather well off, so perhaps it would be acceptable after all... This came as a complete shock to me, as I had perceived her as rather liberal and as mentioned had never heard her speak of her caste or similar. But there it was, weighing her down.
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- shuckles 6y agoIf caste only came up in a mutual interest decision like a wedding where there aren't power imbalances, isn't that fine? Who someone chooses to marry seems like an unreasonable place to intervene to resolve disparities.
- jrochkind1 6y agoWho's talking about intervening? If someone was interested in marrying me until they found out I was Jewish (the closest analogy to my own experience), I would not think that was "fine". Even if I don't know any way to "intervene" in it, certainly not if you mean legally, governments should not be in the business of telling people who to marry. But if you told me that there aren't power imbalances in marriage decisions so it's "fine" and what am I getting upset about, why is it even worth talking about or commenting upon, I'd think you were an asshole.
- shuckles 6y ago“Caste is a huge problem. To substantiate this, let me tell you about the story of a person who didn’t seem to care about caste at all, but later decided to not marry someone over it.” That is not a story which substantiates the claim that caste is a huge problem. I agree that someone who made a marriage decision based on caste isn’t someone I’d want to marry in the first place. My comment about power imbalances can be read in two ways: there are no power imbalances in marriage or conditioned on there not being power imbalances in that particular decision. I meant the latter, but you seem to be attacking the former.
- tonywastaken 6y agoI've experienced some of my Indian coworkers criticize BLM, which was a bit surprising. I don't know what caste they belong to, though.
- neilk 6y agoIt's surprising to you because North Americans have gotten used to saying "people of color" as if they were all united. Upper-caste Indians basically see themselves as people on top of the racial hierarchy. In many ways they identify far more strongly with British or American elites than with Dalits.
- sudosysgen 6y agoAn amazingly astute trick by the British.
- tt433 6y agoReplicated across the Empire, divide and conquer, or co-opt and exploit
- tonywastaken 6y agoI was more surprised because I assume they’ve faced their own fair share of discrimination from Americans
- saagarjha 6y agoIt's often hard for many people to empathize with people they view as being entirely separate from themselves, even when undergoing similar hardships.
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- heavyset_go 6y agoMarginalized people speaking up or protesting bothers people with authoritarian personality traits because those acts are interpreted as attacks upon rigid social hierarchy. It doesn't really have anything to do with the content of BLM's message, but everything to do with who is saying it, how they're saying it, and to whom.
- zarkov99 6y agoDo you think its pure caste discrimination though? Is it not possible, even likely, that generations of segregated reproduction have selected for higher IQ in the higher castes? I understand how awful this is to contemplate, but isn't it ignoring that effect also burying your head in the sand?
- khrbrt 6y agoEvolutionarily, it'd be the other way around. If members of a high caste are guaranteed wealth and many children, then there is no selective pressure for intelligence. Likewise, if lower caste members struggle to survive, then there is a strong selective pressure for intelligence and problem solving.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago> If members of a high caste are guaranteed wealth and many children, then there is no selective pressure for intelligence. There absolutely no evidence of some "selective pressure for intelligence" in human societies. Please keep eugenics and similar out of HN.
- timwaagh 6y agobut there is... the most obvious being that massive energy-inefficient climate-changing head that serves you are using to write that sentence with. It serves no other purpose. There are studies too but the point is infinitely easier to accept if you consider whats right in front of you.
- covfefeblack 6y agoYou sir, are a creep. Thanks a bunch for bringing eugenics into this. To answer your question no and no. I suspect part of this is how the caste system plays into the politics of reservation in specifically IITs and 'top' Indian schools.
- teachrdan 6y ago> generations of segregated reproduction have selected for higher IQ in the higher castes There is no natural selection going on here. People are born into a caste and, for all intents and purposes, their caste identity is fixed for the rest of their lives. The idea that these people have somehow developed a "higher IQ" over "generations" simply by being born to a particular caste makes no sense. Furthermore, the arguments made in the article have nothing to do with poor performance, (possibly) correlating with a lower IQ. The article details specific examples of antisocial behavior by upper caste Indian workers against their lower caste peers.
- covfefeblack 6y agoSunder-whats-his-name is decidedly a shithead.. But why there happen to be higher numbers of 'upper-caste' Indians in the US is decidedly complicated: India has a really complicated system of reservations (aka affirmative action) - so that if you happen to not be economically/caste/class disadvantaged (or don't have the papers to prove it) you literally are competing with the majority of indian students for <10% of seats (see https://collegedunia.com/exams/jee-advanced/reservation https://collegedunia.com/exams/jee-advanced/reservation) to the point where these admissions spots India's (and the world's) most competitive schools go empty for want of appropriate candidates. The politics of reservation aside - a lot of folks from 'higher' castes - unable to make it into that 10% end up trying education in the US or elsewhere to get away from this paucity of opportunity (while they do have to be economically privileged to do so - I don't know anyone who did it without taking loans)
- thatfrenchguy 6y ago> For people who discuss this with Indian co-workers - don't be surprised if they find this bizarre or far fetched. For most upper caste folks, it appears as if the caste system doesn't exist because they've never been at the receiving end of it. A little bit like the class system in the United States (or France) eh :-)
- Loughla 6y agoI'm not sure why you're being downvoted - maybe it's the flippant response? The message is correct, though. The caste system in India sounds exactly like the class system in the US, only more formalized. In my area, there absolutely are surnames that you can associate with 'those' people, and who are, in my experience, passed over for jobs. Maybe it's my ignorance, but doesn't a caste system whereby you are exposed to more privileges simply due to your birth sound exactly like a class system based on income whereby you are exposed to privilege simply because of your birth (because of your parents' income)?
- dudul 6y agoI wouldn't say it sounds "exactly" like they are the same. At least in theory, your income reflects your work and is not set for life, while a "caste system" is usually unescapable. And yes, of course being born in a wealthy family gives you privileges but I don't see anything wrong with people working hard to provide for their descendants. I understand that it breaks down in practice where wealth attracts wealth, but while I would say they are comparable, I wouldn't call them exactly the same.
- Loughla 6y agoI absolutely would call them the same. What is different in a caste system you are born into that provides privilege for some, but lack of resources to another and a class system that provides wealth and privilege for some, but lack of resources beginning at birth for others? When education from an early age is funded via property taxes (as much of the US is), we are baking in the inequality. If you come from a wealthy neighborhood, your kids have access to resources. If you come from a poor area, your kids have no access to those resources. If your parents are wealthy professionals, they can provide for you while you work unpaid internships or provide you with connections to college friends to start your career. If your parents are laborers or lower classes, they can't even take time off to come to your graduation. (I know that second one is a bit dramatic, but you get the idea). In the US, much 'in-group' signaling is based around sports and hobbies that require both time and money. If you didn't play sports as a kid, you're questioned. If you don't have the 'cool clothes' or 'cool car' you're questioned. All of these are class related. How is this different? Other than being 'formal', honestly, what is the difference between caste system and the very overt class system in the US? That's not a snide question, that's a real question. Where are the differences?
- Florin_Andrei 6y agoAs someone who grew up in a different culture (so I look at the system as an outsider - I grew up in the EU, I live in the US, and a lot of my coworkers are Indian), the influence of something like a caste system is quite visible in many people who grew up in India. It's vague and sometimes barely-there, but definitely there quite a lot. It's a set of assumptions: that someone's pigeonhole in the social structure somehow strongly defines the limits of their abilities; that in the org chart, wisdom always flows top to bottom, never the other way around; that the org chart itself is (and indeed MUST BE) set in stone; etc. The system feels very rigid, especially for someone who grew up in an individualistic culture. This is not about conscious, deliberate actions, it's about unconscious attitudes and assumptions. I do not see any of this in people of Indian descent who grew up here. It's also much less typical of young people with a progressive mindset who grew up in India. But older folks and/or more conservative - yeah, it's clearly there. I could be wrong, but I feel - the moment India is able to jettison this pattern, the whole country will experience some sort of major renaissance.
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- neeleshs 6y agoIf any Indian (regardless of their caste) finds caste discrimination as bizarre, I don't know what world they live in. It is a fact. I am upper caste by birth, but means zilch to me.(Doesn't mean anything in the larger context, but saying it anyway). I cannot speak for most upper caste folks,I have no statistics to tell one way or the other. It's all personal experience or anecdotal. But, I have seen shit happen in front my eyes, in my own home , in many many conversations. Anyone who is "upper caste" and says this is not real, have buried their sand in the head. Discrimination in India is rampant, and on different dimensions. religion, caste, language, nationality (Don't get me started on how locals treated a few African students in my college back in India), skin color, financial status - the list goes on. But religion & caste take the crown.