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Sr Manager at Google Resigns After Dalit Activist Disallowed from Giving Lecture
- Kiro 4y agoFunny to see the HN hive mind implode struggling to find angles where Google is the bad guy.
- jleyank 4y agoWhere 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 4y agoWhich traditional mores might you have in mind, and how would you suggest others (North Americans?) should think about them?
- jleyank 4y agoHost the people who were shamed into not speaking and hit the rest with discrimination charges. I know bigots gotta bigot, but one doesn't have to help them do it. Free speech and all that. Laws about religions. I'm unaware of N American laws where you can't treat people fairly independent of how they're treated elsewhere. If this occurred in India or a 3rd country, the article should have been more explicit about this. Google probably has offices damn near everywhere so seeing glass and their logo's pretty ambiguous.
- davidw 4y agoThe actual WP article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-caste-equality-labs-tanuja-gupta/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-...
- hackernewds 4y agoWere 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 4y agoAccording 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 4y agoI 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.
- godshatter 4y ago> ...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.
- thriftwy 4y agoThat's likely because you belong to a social group whose opinions are considered worthless.
- godshatter 4y agoI don't align well with most of the most outspoken social groups, so, yeah, probably true.
- ushakov 4y agomaybe Basecamp’s no politics at work policy wasn’t that bad after all…
- frostburg 4y agoHow does that work when apparently there are Indian managers that discriminate against lower caste Indians under them?
- criddell 4y agoDoes the Indian-ness of the manager matter? Nobody actually thinks discrimination is okay.
- frostburg 4y agoThis 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.
- scarmig 4y agoCould 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?
- sp332 4y agoTaking the complaint at face value, mentioning that some Hindus discriminate against other Hindus makes non-Hindus feel negatively toward Hindus.
- hef19898 4y agoThat 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 4y ago"Steel man" means the opposite of a straw man argument. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning
- loeg 4y agoAh, you beat me to it by one minute. :)
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- loeg 4y ago"Steel man" refers to an argument that is the opposite of a "straw man."
- colinmhayes 4y agoCome on, this isn't a steelman.
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- testfoobar 4y agoNever 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?
- civilian 4y agoHave you not worked the last five years? Tech companies are chock full of "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" talks
- Waterluvian 4y agoI have never had one in 9 years of working at tech startups. It's a fair question to ask.
- secondcoming 4y agoYou’re in for a treat!
- rmbyrro 4y agoStartups are in survival or hyper growth mode. They don't usually have a lot of time for these topics as much as big tech.
- jonathankoren 4y agoThat's probably because the startup didn't have a HR department. Antibias training is super common.
- Waterluvian 4y agoBoth were over 300 people. Perhaps an alternative idea can be considered: this ontology people have latched onto isn’t accurate and there can be people who don’t know the above answer because indeed they aren’t exposed to a whole lot of social issue talks at work.
- donsupreme 4y agoSerious question: For Indians who live in America or Europe now, why do you even care about caste?
- zaptheimpaler 4y agoI 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 :/
- closetnerd 4y agoTo 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 4y agoI 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 4y agoSheesh. 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.
- someguydave 4y agoThere are many bay area cities that have very large and dense Indian populations.
- cperciva 4y agoPeople 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.
- ALittleLight 4y agoI'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.
- colinmhayes 4y agoWe 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.
- ALittleLight 4y agoSeems like a very fraught topic to me. If I'm part of an interview loop for an Indian person, and one more or of my peers are Indian, how am I supposed to know if my peers are being caste-prejudiced? I would not be able to tell if the candidate was the good caste or the bad caste and asking "What caste is this guy?" seems highly inappropriate. If my peers support the candidate - is that because they like his caste? If they oppose the candidate - do they dislike it?
- honkler 4y agohow does it work with gender/race? If your white co-worker likes a candidate, it is because of his gender, race or actual competence?
- ALittleLight 4y agoI have been a part of something like 150 interview loops. In that time I think I've interviewed exactly 1 white woman. In her case, everyone but a single person was in favor of hiring, and that one holdout was adamantly opposed (and eventually won). The person against hiring never said "I hate her because she's a white woman" but instead had reasonable sounding issues. Given that "white woman" is such a rare category to interview, and, I assume, Dalit is pretty rare as well, AND I don't even regularly interview with the same set of people - how could I possibly tell when another interviewer is motivated by prejudice? Unless the interviewer says they are motivated by prejudice I'm either going to have to give them the benefit of the doubt or make a heckuva leap to accuse them of something.
- throwaway_1928 4y agoWorkplaces 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.
- turndown 4y agoJust 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 4y agoGreat, 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 4y agoUnless the issue is specifically workplace discrimination. Just because it doesn’t affect you personally doesn’t meant it’s not important.
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- phantomathkg 4y agoWorkplace is part of your life, and the collective decision also affect how the employees' life outside work. Work and life never split.
- rossdavidh 4y agoI 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.
- Beltalowda 4y agoI remember a lively discussion last year (not sure which one) where several Indian developers living in the SF area said they experienced discrimination, but also many reporting they did not. I have no idea who is "right" here; I'm neither Indian nor living in the US. But I will add a general comment: experiencing discrimination is not the same thing as being discriminated. For example, let's say I – as a man – have a disagreement with a female coworker, and maybe I'm a bit of an asshole about it. She might genuinely feel discriminated, belittled, man-splained, or whatever you want to call it. It might be I'm doing this because she's a woman and that she's right, or I might just be having a bad day, or I might be an asshole to everyone I disagree with, or I might just have accidentally phrased things in a bad way. This is a big problem; there have been a few cases where this actually happened and people accused me of being racist or sexist, usually online. Sometimes I could have phrased things a little bit better maybe, but I sure didn't do it because of someone's identity. People will say it's due to "subconscious bias", but I find that's what the kids nowadays call "gaslighting". Maybe subconscious bias exists and influences people's behaviour in significant ways (not so sure it does, but that's a different discussion), but all but one of the times it happened I wasn't even aware who I was talking to until they "outed" themselves when accusing me of discrimination. To be clear: no doubt discrimination happens in various ways for various people, but in many instances it can be really hard to say if a specific incident is an instance of it, of if it's due to other reasons. This is problematic because 1) it makes it very hard to actually do something about (systemic) discrimination because you can't punish/fine people easily, but also 2) people will still genuinely feel discriminated against even if there is no actual (or very little) discrimination happening (or is no longer happening). To be clear: I'm not "accusing" those people of "making things up" or anything like that, I really believe that almost all people report genuine feelings and experiences. As one of those white male types I have it easy: if someone is an asshole to me I can fairly safely assume that person is an asshole to me on account of just being an asshole, but for some other groups this can be a lot harder, either due to current or historical discrimination. My point is that experiences aren't everything when it comes to these kind of topics, no matter how honest and genuine. They're also not worthless, and some experiences do describe clear-cut cases, but in general I'm careful.
- yieldcrv 4y agoAm 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 4y agoNot a unique issue either, see the California v Cisco lawsuit: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-accuses-cisco-of-job-discrimination-based-on-indian-employees-caste-idUSKBN2423YE https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-...
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- secondcoming 4y agoHey pal, US identity issues get exported all over the world too. It’s only fair that you import some
- yieldcrv 4y agowe're agreeing that the talk should have occurred, if DEI talks are already occurring there when I was in Mountain View, and again on Blind App, I got the feeling that it was a completely distinct culture that found like company. Everything from relationship woes, to the role of an employee at first could hide behind the maladjusted software enthusiast stereotype, but it crumbles and reveals itself as a high concentration of South Asian transplants which isn't obvious at first, but makes more sense when its noticed. For a region that diverse, it could be useful to understand what is disproportionate in the pipelines from there to Google.
- booleandilemma 4y agoWhat 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 4y agoDupe of yesterday's 875 comment thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799
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- throwawaybxb 4y agoI’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 4y agohttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-accuses-cisco-of-job-discrimination-based-on-indian-employees-caste-idUSKBN2423YE https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-...
- drewcon 4y agoI 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 4y agoIf a policy effects my colleagues, it effects me. If that doesn't effect you, then by all means, do nothing.
- drewcon 4y agoIf the policy affects you at work because of a specific work policy, by all means. If you are protesting SOCIETY at work, I encourage you to leave the building.
- kgwxd 4y agoAnd I would gladly ignore your encouragement without a second thought. Work is a subset of life and society, not a separate reality.
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- hef19898 4y agoWhat the Dalits are facing is similar to what blacks faced in the 60s when the civil rights movement started. Those topics have to be addressed.
- drewcon 4y agoGreat. Either challenge a specific policy at work, or protest at the state capitol. The office is not your church.
- sva_ 4y agoWhat 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 4y agoThings like where you're from, what your parents or grandparents did for work, even your last name, can give away your caste.
- thret 4y agoName, skin colour, and yes they can speak to each other.
- magneticnorth 4y agoMy 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.
- dekhn 4y agoalthough I've been aware of caste for a long time I assumed it mainly existed in india and disappeared in the US. however, in retrospect, the pauses and looks I received when I asked people where they were from in india and whether they were vegetarian make more sense now. Woosh.
- ushakov 4y agoconsider Amazon for example they have whole departments consisting exclusively of Indians and i believe their biggest non-US office is actually in India a manager may know somebody on their team who can tell your caste or maybe suggest your caste based on the region you were from this is as far i understood it
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- gfiorav 4y agoWe’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…
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- dkarl 4y ago> "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.
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- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoGoogle should focus on improving their search engine and making better products or they will soon go the way of Lycos.
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- equalitystreet 4y agoRelatedly, 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. Since then, successive Conservative governments have shied away from making any legislative corrections, preferring to rely on case law to resolve this.
- davidgay 4y ago> This was pointed out at the time, but was unfortunately ignored. I have a hard time believing that was accidental :-( It seems essentially impossible to believe that British politicians would be unaware of Indian caste issues, so I would have to assume it was viewed as too dangerous / too low political benefit to address.
- coldtea 4y agoIt's simple: this cause is not fashionable. Companies care for fashionable causes, not necessarily moral ones.
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- B1FF_PSUVM 4y agoYesterday's story ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 ) made me understand one thing I thought was bonkers. Working a bit with one Indian company, I was puzzled by their mandated usernames of the form FirstnameInitialDigit, e.g. johns1 if you're John Smith. It was sad learning that people had to give up using family names for practical reasons.
- thematrixturtle 4y agoI don't think that has anything to do with caste? Some old systems limited usernames to 8 characters max, Indian surnames can be very long, and there are lots of people with identical names.
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoOoo, that's a really interesting example of a Chesterson's Fence situation. I too would never have thought there might be an extremely intentional meaning behind that naming process and would quite possibly have changed it given the opportunity without further consideration.
- the_only_law 4y agoNever seen so many HN’ers so willing to defend so very opposite the meritocracy they’re always dreaming of.
- elihu 4y ago> A senior manager at Google, named Tanuja Gupta, resigned from the company on Wednesday, 1 June, after a Dalit rights activist was not allowed to give a presentation on caste following emails by employees calling her "anti-Hindu." This doesn't provide any context. Was Gupta resigning because she was for the presentation, or was she involved in blocking it? The recent WP article explains this much better: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-caste-equality-labs-tanuja-gupta/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-... > Tanuja Gupta, a senior manager at Google News who invited Soundararajan to speak, resigned over the incident, according to a copy of her goodbye email posted internally Wednesday and viewed by The Washington Post.
- rafram 4y agoThat information is also in the original linked article, stated almost identically: > Gupta, the senior manager at Google News who had invited Soundararajan to speak on the matter, thus put in her papers on Wednesday.
- elihu 4y agoAh, I missed the "read full article" button and thought the first couple paragraphs was the entire thing. (It seems like they could have included that detail in the intro.)
- yurlungur 4y agoShe also believed she may have been unfairly retaliated against regarding her perf. That's probably the main reason she resigned. Not necessarily that the speaker was not approved.
- voz_ 4y agoRemoved most to leave the core message. Everyone is equal, no one's birth dictates their worth.
- kajecounterhack 4y agoIt matters at companies with high levels of south asian representation, for example Apple, Cisco, Google, etc. When people complain of caste discrimination they aren't talking about it coming from white folks like you.
- hef19898 4y agoI think you both agree.
- _vertigo 4y agoPoor phrasing, but the OP was making the case against caste discrimination, not downplaying caste discrimination. I read it wrong at first. Not the greatest take either way. "I'm from a different culture and I don't notice it so it's probably bullshit". So if you could tell the difference between castes, would it not be bullshit?
- kajecounterhack 4y agoThanks for pointing it out, I misread it too. But also, "castes aren't based on anything real and are obvious bullshit" (paraphrasing the original comment) is not going to be obvious to everyone and not a very helpful statement. Kind of like saying "the world really isn't flat" -- we know, but it's not gonna help anyone because you're not going to stop flat earthers from existing or being sincere about their beliefs.
- rfrey 4y agoYour parent was speaking to people who think that caste matters, the Indian Archie Bunkers I suppose.
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- Overtonwindow 4y agoThis is very strange, this seems to be an issue that people should want to talk about, should want to hear a lecture about, why must people assume critical thinking is direct criticism ?
- nathanaldensr 4y agoPerhaps, but at a private corporation?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y agoPosting for visibility: 100% this goes on at amazon all the time. One time, I googled the last name origin of a whole orgs management structure. All of them were from the same part of India, without exception.
- xxxyz 4y agoThis is not caste, This is regionalism, This is like saying i can see entire depts with lastnames that sound french or spanish. India is like european union if you think about it.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y agoNo I'm pretty sure they were all from the same caste.
- javajosh 4y ago
- kromem 4y agoUgh, get over yourself.
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- bsnal 4y agoIf you change “Dalit” for “gypsy” you can see the title with other eyes.
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- fleddr 4y agoFascinating how the absolute richest of the richest employees in the world, Google employees, seem the most oppressed, or "marginalized". Here's how my "CEO for a day" fantasy would work... The DEI department is de-solved immediately. All non-work slack channels closed. The new hiring strategy is merit-only, using tests that are as neutral as possible, with transparent salary scales and promotion paths. Equality but not equity. Anybody having a problem with this policy, stirring up shit, doing walkouts, trying to get colleagues fired and other wildly unprofessional behavior can leave. Surely many think this is aggressive and that I'm a creepy authoritarian. No, this cleans up the obnoxious 5% that makes everybody's lives miserable, so the outcome is a pleasant, fair and peaceful workplace. A DEI department is a discrimination machine. Division is their output, because if there is none, it's obsolete.
- lkschubert8 4y agoThe question is what are the merit only tests, and how do you have a transparent and merit based promotion path? Honestly if you have the solution for that you don't need to be CEO for a day, start a consultant shop teaching your methods and I'm sure plenty of places will bite.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoWhen you become CEO, let me know. I'd love to work for such a company!
- cr__ 4y agoDo you think there is workplace discrimination taking place against Dalits, and if so, how would you like to see it addressed?
- charia 4y agoI don't know if I'd subscribe to the above person's ideas, but the simple business approach would probably work right? Treat it like any form of behavior that creates a hostile work environment and thereby lowers overall workplace productivity. Businesses are incentivized to keep things running in the most productive method possible. Discrimination costs your business in lowering employee productivity and other affects like possibly losing talent or opportunities. Warning discriminating employees that their behavior could cost them their job or simply firing them depending on the severity of the situation seems like a simple enough solution?
- skullone 4y agoA senior manager of Google News? Someone would actually claim that distinction, one of Google's worst run properties? Maybe they should have talks from sector experts about improving their products first.
- rsstack 4y agoHer title was "Senior Manager", she wasn't what a layperson would think of when hearing "senior manager". I don't know how Google News operate but I doubt she was invited to Google News senior management meetings. Not to diminish her activism or the meaning of her resignation. I just thought to clarify since many tech journalists either don't understand corporate titles or purposefully try to mislead readers by using them in a specific way.
- TheMagicHorsey 4y agoWho even knows who a Dalit is? So people from India come here and sniff out Dalits based on their last names and then discriminate against them? What if the Brahmins are discriminating against White people? Would we even know? All of this discrimination hunting by the Witchfinder Generals at all hours can't be good for Google's productivity. What a shit show.
- lr4444lr 4y agoI don't know why companies court these kinds of social issues talks. The topic is incredibly interesting, don't get me wrong, but not even close to Google's line of business that it would serve professional development goals in any way worth the cost of the controversy it'd generate.
- fuckyah 4y ago[dead]
- uptownfunk 4y agoCaste is a covenant-level concept in Vedic culture ontologically. It is mentioned in the Rg Veda, and in particular, in one of the most import parts of the Rg Veda (The Purusha Suktam ), and so the notion of dissolving caste is heretical. brā̠hma̠ṇō̎-'sya̠ mukha̍māsīt । bā̠hū rā̍ja̠nya̍ḥ kṛ̠taḥ । ū̠rū tada̍sya̠ yadvaiśya̍ḥ । pa̠dbhyāgṃ śū̠drō a̍jāyataḥ ॥ There it is - right there. Of course, no where in the text is it mentioned that you should be violent to those of other castes. In fact it all points to the following - that we all come from the same universal truth, but that people are of different talents, and this variety of talents is what helps society function. The problem is when our egos get in the way. vidya-vinaya-sampanne brahmane gavi hastini suni caiva sva-pake ca panditah sama-darsinah The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and an outcaste. So when we can learn to put our egos aside for a moment, and remember that we are all part of humanity, then we can learn to coexist and thrive. Unfortunately, caste has just become another crutch that the advantaged use to take advantage of the disadvantaged, just like skin color (white skinned people vs. black skinned people) or race (gentiles vs. jews). It is a tale as old as time.
- Avicebron 4y agoI don't know enough about vedic culture to comment on that in particular. But I will say from what I know of American history, a lot of people who genuinely believed they were doing right by society with the phrase "different people have different talents and that is what helps society function" has led down some very dark paths here.
- uptownfunk 4y agoWell on its own that phrase alone shouldn't lead to the dark paths, but what I think you're getting at is that the dark paths come from when someone (the 'advantaged') start dictating what those talents are and aren't (especially to the 'disadvantaged')..
- Avicebron 4y agoYes, I suppose that's closer to where I was going, and I saw that you did address that, I guess I would extend that in saying I'm not sure that pre-imposing advantage and disadvantage to either groups is completely necessary. What I would say is that an overwhelming ideology of where one group "belongs" in the society relative to another can become a self-fulfilling prophecy over time, even if those groups weren't always inherently uneven (it helps if they are obviously). There were plenty in the south that believed that slavery and racial inequality was for "societal good" and that society wouldn't function if this wasn't maintained.
- swayvil 4y agoI'm sure that those who did the "disallowing" (aka censoring, cancelling, etc) felt quite certain in their righteousness. And their friends no doubt all agreed. This is why free speech absolutism is a good thing.
- jp42 4y agoThere is massive distrust in activists in recent years as a lot of them if not all are exposed as peddling political agendas instead of working on actual cause. Combine that with todays cancel culture trend. Now here I suspect narrative will be on cancelling lecture, less on substance.
- Snowbird3999 4y agoSlightly off topic, but I happened to have recently completed google's DEI training as an onboarding googler and was appalled at one of the anecdotes used as an example of inclusion: "Someone suggested sharing baby pictures across our team. A googler said that wouldnt be inclusive because googlers might not have photos from childhood or not want to share them." Isn't this incredibly backwards? A culture where co-workers are being encouraged to self-censor sharing baby photos because someone might be offended is not very healthy IMO.
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- thematrixturtle 4y ago"All hands" is now banned at some companies because it's not inclusive to people who don't have hands. "Postmortem" is apparently next on the chopping block because it's triggering to people who know somebody who has died.
- throw7 4y agoSundar Pichai is a brahmin. He is smiling from on high.
- throwaway_1928 4y ago> Sundar Pichai is a brahmin. He is smiling from on high. His bosses Sergey and Larry are Jewish. They are smiling from on higher.
- Layke1123 4y ago
- mountainriver 4y agoWhen I worked at vmware there was a group of higher ups that allegedly called themselves the “Brahmin Mafia”
- ranjitcool1 4y ago
- twayt 4y agoOne’s social identity should not play a role at work. Companies should reject candidates who have are so clouded by their social identity that they can’t make good objective decisions. This goes both ways, a candidate who takes pride in their identity as someone from a higher caste should be rejected as should one who feels oppressed because they are lower caste. Anyone who can’t focus on the work because of their social identity is a liability. The only kind of talk they should hold is how to grow and get better at your job. You can take any arbitrary characteristic of a person and find someone who likes/dislikes them because of it. The solution is to take power away from people who care about those characteristics that don’t pertain to work. Tired of this nonsense that has taken over the world, wish we could go back to a time when we could appreciate the pure technical contributions of Einstein, Turing, Ramanujan and Marie Curie instead of primarily viewing them as a Jew, Gay, Indian and Woman.
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- gabereiser 4y agoWarning, there’s a whole lot of malware ad-hijacking going on on this site. Read with caution.
- kodeninja 4y agoFor anyone (specially non-Indians) here interested in understanding what's really going on, I strongly recommend reading the book "Breaking India", by Rajiv Malhotra. https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-India-Malhotra-Aravindan-Neelakandan/dp/8191067374 https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-India-Malhotra-Aravindan-Nee... Equality Labs is a known offender. https://cohna.org/repurposing-hate-and-hinduphobia-the-uc-davis-caste-resolution/ https://cohna.org/repurposing-hate-and-hinduphobia-the-uc-da...
- kodeninja 4y agoInteresting. Why is this being downvoted? Have I mentioned anything factually incorrect or irrelevant here?
- throwaway_1928 4y agoYour book recommendation does not fit in with the narrative being pushed here.
- spicyramen_ 4y ago
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- hiyer 4y agoTamil Brahmins have mostly been at the receiving end of caste discrimination in the last century or so. It's one of the reasons so many of them emigrated to Northern parts of India and, of course, the USA as well. EV Ramaswamy, revered even today as Periyar (elder one) in Tamil Nadu, (in)famously gave a speech calling for their genocide in 1973 [1]. Brahmins are mostly persona non grata in Tamil Nadu. There are 3 Tamil Nobel laureates, apart from the mathematician Ramanujam. Unfortunately all 4 of these were/are Brahmins. While laureates like Tagore are celebrated in their home state (West Bengal), you won't find any institute, road or even classroom named after these worthies in Tamil Nadu. Not unlike how Ahmadi Nobel laureate Abdus Salam was treated in Pakistan. 1. https://hindupost.in/history/when-e-v-r-naicker-aka-periyar-compared-brahmins-to-jews-and-called-for-their-genocide/ https://hindupost.in/history/when-e-v-r-naicker-aka-periyar-...