4 ms·

It's crazy to me to see people saying "this doesn't exist because I've never seen it". Here's a good rule to live by: privilege is invisible to those who have i

by jmyeet 5y ago

It's crazy to me to see people saying "this doesn't exist because I've never seen it". Here's a good rule to live by: privilege is invisible to those who have it. Just think about that. I'm not Indian so can't speak to that experience but discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism. If you don't think MIT/Stanford grads in their mid 20s at Big Tech companies have more doors open to them you're crazy. There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. Like all Africans are somehow viewed the same in many ways despite their being significant cultural, religious and language differences that go back centuries. The same is true in Asia (eg a lot of Chinese in Malaysia face significant discrimination such that they end up going to university overseas because they can't locally). So a deeply ingrained caste system like India's I can totally believe doesn't magically disappear because those raised in that system now happen to live and work in the United States.

tomc1985 5y ago
> There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. Is there? While my experience comes from living in a cosmopolitan border town, it is hard to imagine anyone seriously lumping Asians in with Africans, short of the outright rascists raging against "immigrants"
- YeezyMode 5y ago
  The following sentence clearly mentions what kind of lumping takes place; "All Africans" / "All Asians" etc.
  - jeffy90 5y ago
    I think it's common of all groups to lump individuals of other groups. Someone might say "<republicans | democrats | asians | whites | blacks | chinese | americans | rich | poor> all think that <insert thing here here>". it's worth noting that those with more power have greater potential to cause damage with their haphazard lumping
- bobbles 5y ago
  But what you will absolutely find is people for example lumping Asian people together, whether theyre from Japan, China, Korea, etc.
  - geodel 5y ago
    Huh, most people do not have time and patience to learn all the differences unless they absolutely have to. Back in northern India anyone from southern state is just South indian , no knowledge about Telugu, Kannadiga, Tamil, Malayali and so on. Similarly in south India I wouldn't be surprised if a typical local think all North Indians are same butter chicken/paneer eating assholes.
bin_bash 5y ago
> This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism. If you don't think MIT/Stanford grads in their mid 20s at Big Tech companies have more doors open to them you're crazy. Of course they have more doors open to them. They went to a good school and worked at a well known company.
- j_walter 5y ago
  Yep...and this is just how society works. Like saying that if you think Harvard/Yale grads have more doors open to them in politics then you're crazy. Like of course they do...Since 1992 all of the president except Trump have had law degrees (Yale, Harvard, Syracuse) or an MBA (Harvard). Even Trump still had an Ivy league education...
- _jal 5y ago
  Different 'good schools' are received differently, though. If you work in Bay Area tech, a Stanford degree is more equal than others. --Someone who went to a good non-Stanford school and works for a well-known company
  - bin_bash 5y ago
    Are you saying (for example) Stanford is ranked higher than Yale for tech companies in the Bay? I feel there is an implication this is somehow unfair which I find ridiculous. I mean, it is unfair I guess but it isn’t wrong. And this is coming from someone that went to a mid-sized state school.
    - vmception 5y ago
      > Are you saying (for example) Stanford is ranked higher than Yale for tech companies in the Bay? I feel there is an implication this is somehow unfair which I find ridiculous Yes. And yes it is ridiculous because the jobs don't require anything unique from Stanford from employees, and neither should it matter for potential members of the C-Suite or Board, or clients.
      - 5y ago
rajin444 5y ago
> privilege is invisible to those who have it. Just think about that This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false) and I’d question the intent of who taught you this - it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate.
- MegaButts 5y ago
  > This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false) Please prove it's false.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  I think it is true. How can you easily disprove it. Myself, from a more privileged background, was not even aware of the issues “on the ground” until I saw and lived it for myself. It’s very easy to see where personal bias can cause one to overlook or fail to notice the experience of others. Is your objection to privileged background failing to notice privilege, or objection to the notion of privilege itself?
- lolinder 5y ago
  > it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate This kind of language ("cult" and "indoctrinate") is a conversation-stopper and does nothing to help anyone. If it's so easy to prove the idea is false, could you do that instead of using baseless invectives?
  - beerandt 5y ago
    >This kind of language Same can be said for current usage of "privilege" and "equity".
    - lolinder 5y ago
      In some contexts, yes, but there was nothing in the OP's use of "privilege" that attempted to silence any further discussion.
      - 5y ago
zarkov99 5y ago
> There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. Is unique to the West? Do people in Asia distinguish one European from another? How about in Africa?
- fluster 5y ago
  I’m not sure if this is a legitimate question or an attempt to make some sort of “but also not-the-West is bad!” point; if the latter, this is a comment on an article about caste discrimination in California, which is probably why the its observation focuses on the West, instead of talking about parallels in other cultures.
- lofatdairy 5y ago
  I imagine OP says its a tendency in the West as to avoid generalizations outside their personal experience, not because it's necessarily not the case outside the West. Anecdotally, I think there's at least some distinction between white people in Asia. For instance, there seems to be a distinction from white Americans from white Europeans. That said, I don't think the claim quite holds that westerners view all minorities as the same. East Asians, while maybe initially assumed to be Chinese or Japanese, have generally unique stereotypes in the US. I also recall a story reported in This American Life[1] that describes a black American woman in Paris, and how her treatment depends on whether she's seen as an African or an American. I think it's perhaps a bit more accurate to say that the broad appearance of a minority group invokes certain stereotypes, but these stereotypes will become more specific with more information about the individual. There's obviously a limit to this, since a Chinese person from Shanghai and a Chinese person from some small city in Henan is a distinction that probably won't mean much to most non-Chinese, but I think people would realize there _is_ a difference, just not know where that difference manifests itself, and obviously cannot change their mental models without that knowledge. [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris/act-three-11 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris/act-...
Clubber 5y ago
>There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. I think it's because the news and the politicians view them in categories of demographic, then report on that demographic. I've lived in the South and always think it's funny when people say they should "punish the South," by withholding funds for whatever reason, apparently not realizing the South has the largest Black population in the US by far. Of course if funds are ever withheld, that large black population would also be punished, because they are also southerners. This is pertinent because southerners and blacks are pretty large minority demographics in the US that politicians try to garner favor with. Societies are complex. It seems like a lot of people want to blurt out the first simple answer that comes out of their noggin.
drawkbox 5y ago
> discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism This is why remote work is so important, the politics of the office and "culture" is more about delivery with remote over internal politics. Remote work emphasizes the external view over the internal view which is always skewed in office environments. Remote work opens up a broader market of workers and can flow with life changes of employees easier like a move, families or travel. We all do lots of remote already to everyone outside the office. Most communication is virtual now even within the same company, across offices in different areas and most importantly, to the customer of the product. The external view is most important, always. Remote can help automatically focus on external perception over internal perception. Remote work can minimize the weight of office politics and "culture". Another legacy area we need to change is removing health insurance from the job. We don't get our home/auto/life insurance through work and it would be a pain if we did, imagine changing all that on jobs. Contracting or entrepreneurship helps to get your own benefits for healthcare and it is truly a better way. Health insurance removed from the job will help businesses compete with countries that do have public options or private markets not connected to the employer, allow workers more freedom to change jobs, allow people to start jobs easier and isn't constantly a hassle. Getting healthcare on your own or not requiring it to be business level is both pro-business and pro-worker. It also can fix pricing as the customer is now individuals/families not employers, all we need to do is group similar to Medicare groups. Right now grouping is based on the company and this puts sole/small/medium companies at a disadvantage in pricing.
- pm90 5y ago
  I don’t think remote work is gonna eliminate class/caste.
- jmyeet 5y ago
  I actually think remote work will make it worse. Why? Because physical proximity tends to break down social barriers. Not always of course. Remote work doesn't get any of that benefit. There are obvious upsides of remote work, sure, but my hypothesis is that generalizations are going to be stickier.
derbOac 5y ago
Swap out whatever "class" you want and many of the same processes arise in various places. Not disagreeing with you, but it's sometimes frustrating to me that even when there's obvious discrimination, people still question it, and when they don't question it, they often don't see how the same processes play out in other ways with other less obvious group memberships. I've always said, when you see some kind of "obvious" discrimination going on in an organization -- sex, age, race, caste, whatever -- I almost guarantee that's manifesting in some other ways as well.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
commandlinefan 5y ago
> "this doesn't exist because I've never seen it" By that logic, bigfoot, UFO's and the Loch Ness monster all exist.

by jmyeet 5y ago

tomc1985 5y ago

> There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. Is there? While my experience comes from living in a cosmopolitan border town, it is hard to imagine anyone seriously lumping Asians in with Africans, short of the outright rascists raging against "immigrants"

YeezyMode 5y ago
The following sentence clearly mentions what kind of lumping takes place; "All Africans" / "All Asians" etc.
- jeffy90 5y ago
  I think it's common of all groups to lump individuals of other groups. Someone might say "<republicans | democrats | asians | whites | blacks | chinese | americans | rich | poor> all think that <insert thing here here>". it's worth noting that those with more power have greater potential to cause damage with their haphazard lumping
bobbles 5y ago
But what you will absolutely find is people for example lumping Asian people together, whether theyre from Japan, China, Korea, etc.
- geodel 5y ago
  Huh, most people do not have time and patience to learn all the differences unless they absolutely have to. Back in northern India anyone from southern state is just South indian , no knowledge about Telugu, Kannadiga, Tamil, Malayali and so on. Similarly in south India I wouldn't be surprised if a typical local think all North Indians are same butter chicken/paneer eating assholes.

bin_bash 5y ago

> This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism. If you don't think MIT/Stanford grads in their mid 20s at Big Tech companies have more doors open to them you're crazy. Of course they have more doors open to them. They went to a good school and worked at a well known company.

j_walter 5y ago
Yep...and this is just how society works. Like saying that if you think Harvard/Yale grads have more doors open to them in politics then you're crazy. Like of course they do...Since 1992 all of the president except Trump have had law degrees (Yale, Harvard, Syracuse) or an MBA (Harvard). Even Trump still had an Ivy league education...
_jal 5y ago
Different 'good schools' are received differently, though. If you work in Bay Area tech, a Stanford degree is more equal than others. --Someone who went to a good non-Stanford school and works for a well-known company
- bin_bash 5y ago
  Are you saying (for example) Stanford is ranked higher than Yale for tech companies in the Bay? I feel there is an implication this is somehow unfair which I find ridiculous. I mean, it is unfair I guess but it isn’t wrong. And this is coming from someone that went to a mid-sized state school.
  - vmception 5y ago
    > Are you saying (for example) Stanford is ranked higher than Yale for tech companies in the Bay? I feel there is an implication this is somehow unfair which I find ridiculous Yes. And yes it is ridiculous because the jobs don't require anything unique from Stanford from employees, and neither should it matter for potential members of the C-Suite or Board, or clients.
    - 5y ago

rajin444 5y ago

> privilege is invisible to those who have it. Just think about that This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false) and I’d question the intent of who taught you this - it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate.

MegaButts 5y ago
> This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false) Please prove it's false.
randomhodler84 5y ago
I think it is true. How can you easily disprove it. Myself, from a more privileged background, was not even aware of the issues “on the ground” until I saw and lived it for myself. It’s very easy to see where personal bias can cause one to overlook or fail to notice the experience of others. Is your objection to privileged background failing to notice privilege, or objection to the notion of privilege itself?
lolinder 5y ago
> it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate This kind of language ("cult" and "indoctrinate") is a conversation-stopper and does nothing to help anyone. If it's so easy to prove the idea is false, could you do that instead of using baseless invectives?
- beerandt 5y ago
  >This kind of language Same can be said for current usage of "privilege" and "equity".
  - lolinder 5y ago
    In some contexts, yes, but there was nothing in the OP's use of "privilege" that attempted to silence any further discussion.
    - 5y ago

zarkov99 5y ago

> There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. Is unique to the West? Do people in Asia distinguish one European from another? How about in Africa?

fluster 5y ago
I’m not sure if this is a legitimate question or an attempt to make some sort of “but also not-the-West is bad!” point; if the latter, this is a comment on an article about caste discrimination in California, which is probably why the its observation focuses on the West, instead of talking about parallels in other cultures.
lofatdairy 5y ago
I imagine OP says its a tendency in the West as to avoid generalizations outside their personal experience, not because it's necessarily not the case outside the West. Anecdotally, I think there's at least some distinction between white people in Asia. For instance, there seems to be a distinction from white Americans from white Europeans. That said, I don't think the claim quite holds that westerners view all minorities as the same. East Asians, while maybe initially assumed to be Chinese or Japanese, have generally unique stereotypes in the US. I also recall a story reported in This American Life[1] that describes a black American woman in Paris, and how her treatment depends on whether she's seen as an African or an American. I think it's perhaps a bit more accurate to say that the broad appearance of a minority group invokes certain stereotypes, but these stereotypes will become more specific with more information about the individual. There's obviously a limit to this, since a Chinese person from Shanghai and a Chinese person from some small city in Henan is a distinction that probably won't mean much to most non-Chinese, but I think people would realize there _is_ a difference, just not know where that difference manifests itself, and obviously cannot change their mental models without that knowledge. [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris/act-three-11 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris/act-...

Clubber 5y ago

>There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. I think it's because the news and the politicians view them in categories of demographic, then report on that demographic. I've lived in the South and always think it's funny when people say they should "punish the South," by withholding funds for whatever reason, apparently not realizing the South has the largest Black population in the US by far. Of course if funds are ever withheld, that large black population would also be punished, because they are also southerners. This is pertinent because southerners and blacks are pretty large minority demographics in the US that politicians try to garner favor with. Societies are complex. It seems like a lot of people want to blurt out the first simple answer that comes out of their noggin.

drawkbox 5y ago

> discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism This is why remote work is so important, the politics of the office and "culture" is more about delivery with remote over internal politics. Remote work emphasizes the external view over the internal view which is always skewed in office environments. Remote work opens up a broader market of workers and can flow with life changes of employees easier like a move, families or travel. We all do lots of remote already to everyone outside the office. Most communication is virtual now even within the same company, across offices in different areas and most importantly, to the customer of the product. The external view is most important, always. Remote can help automatically focus on external perception over internal perception. Remote work can minimize the weight of office politics and "culture". Another legacy area we need to change is removing health insurance from the job. We don't get our home/auto/life insurance through work and it would be a pain if we did, imagine changing all that on jobs. Contracting or entrepreneurship helps to get your own benefits for healthcare and it is truly a better way. Health insurance removed from the job will help businesses compete with countries that do have public options or private markets not connected to the employer, allow workers more freedom to change jobs, allow people to start jobs easier and isn't constantly a hassle. Getting healthcare on your own or not requiring it to be business level is both pro-business and pro-worker. It also can fix pricing as the customer is now individuals/families not employers, all we need to do is group similar to Medicare groups. Right now grouping is based on the company and this puts sole/small/medium companies at a disadvantage in pricing.

pm90 5y ago
I don’t think remote work is gonna eliminate class/caste.
jmyeet 5y ago
I actually think remote work will make it worse. Why? Because physical proximity tends to break down social barriers. Not always of course. Remote work doesn't get any of that benefit. There are obvious upsides of remote work, sure, but my hypothesis is that generalizations are going to be stickier.

derbOac 5y ago

Swap out whatever "class" you want and many of the same processes arise in various places. Not disagreeing with you, but it's sometimes frustrating to me that even when there's obvious discrimination, people still question it, and when they don't question it, they often don't see how the same processes play out in other ways with other less obvious group memberships. I've always said, when you see some kind of "obvious" discrimination going on in an organization -- sex, age, race, caste, whatever -- I almost guarantee that's manifesting in some other ways as well.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

commandlinefan 5y ago

> "this doesn't exist because I've never seen it" By that logic, bigfoot, UFO's and the Loch Ness monster all exist.