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It's weird how racism against Indians online is so normalised. I see the same on reddit too.

by tock 2y ago

fennecfoxy 2y ago
[flagged]
- tock 2y ago
  Just my experience. I reckon a lot of recent events like buying oil from Russia has sadly justified it for a lot of people.
- delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
  Not the parent commenter, but from what I've seen, they are correct, and as far as Reddit is concerned, especially so. Genuine criticism of India's government and some Indian/Hindu cultural practices can quickly devolve into disgusting racist diatribes and stereotypes that wouldn't fly against people from other countries. Try using the hard-r n-word as a non-black person, or calling someone with East Asian phenotypes a 'Chinaman', or any Native American stereotype today, and see how quickly you bring a firestorm upon yourself. Meanwhile, people on Reddit call Indians street-sh*tters or cow pi*s drinkers, and no one bats an eyelid. I have seen these words verbatim on places like /r/worldnews, without censorship or bans whatsoever. Racism against Indians is normalised, full stop.
claudiug 2y ago
[flagged]
hshshshsvsv 2y ago
[flagged]
- navigate8310 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - hshshshsvsv 2y ago
    Generalizing everyone from a region/group with some negative trait is racisam. If your brain try to label me as someone who practice caste system because you think I am from India is lazy/stupid computation and racism. Actually vast majority of the Indians suffer from negative consequences of Castisam since they are supposed to be lower classes and society descrimated against them historically. They want equality more than probably anyone you know of. Indian constitution has done a lot for eliminating this. But there is a lot of cultural baggage that needs cleanup.
    - chucksta 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    Please don't perpetuate hellish flamewars on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lupusreal 2y ago
  I've never seen let alone worked in a team that only had white people. Not once. I've never seen nor heard of a team that only had Japanese or Koreans or Russians or any other singular group except two: Chinese and Indians. These two groups have a unique tendency to form ethnically exclusive teams at companies and get away with it.
  - RestlessMind 2y ago
    I have seen exclusively white people teams, especially at smaller startups. They were all Americans though, so not much diversity of nationalities. Given that China and India are countries with 1.4B population, no surprise that one can find enough people to form exclusively Chinese (or Indian) teams. Another factor is that people from other backgrounds do not want to join such teams even if the hiring manager makes them an offer. When I was at a FAANG, my team composition slowly drifted towards only Chinese and Indian, as people from other backgrounds left in 6-12 months after an Indian manager came in.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      I'm sure it happens at small companies, but at large companies I've never seen it. It wouldn't be allowed to stay that way if it did happen. The number of times I've seen it happen with Chinese and Indians teams, relative to how rare it is for white-only teams to exist, seems highly improbable. White people are the plurality if not majority at most big American tech companies, so if it's all just statistical noise it should happen more with white people and that just isn't what happens.
      - RestlessMind 2y ago
        I have seen enough white-only teams while at FAANG. Those were not in SV but in smaller US cities. Of course that was rare but then again, chinese-only or indian-only teams were rare as well.
  - KwisatzHaderack 2y ago
    Since we're sharing anecdotes here. Around 2012, I attended the very first coding bootcamp in SF. We had a demo day and a (white) recruiter from a local start-up came and literally only talked to every one of the white students (in a class that was half white) but none of the non-white students. Not a single one. When walking by a table with a non-white student, he would just said "excuse me" and squeezed pass. I looked up the company's website later and it was a 50-ish person start-up that was all white males, except 1 Asian girl who was a PM. Now, I'm sure the people at this start-up would probably not think of themselves as "racist" (especially in liberal SF) even though this recruiter behaved in a racially exclusive way. But it really goes to show how subconscious these instincts are. This is why it's unfair to single out Indians/Chinese in this case as the only ones who have an in-group bias; every group has an in-group bias if we're really being honest here. Having said that, the best tech teams I've worked in have been very diverse. They were high performant, but also had a great deal of trust in each other. I think it's because every one knows every one else is a high performer and trust each other's judgment. Nobody is just here because they "just gel with the vibes" and playing group-politics, which sometimes falls on racial lines.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  [flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  > It's okay to be racist against Indians according to hacker news guidelines Please let's not respond to false or mean comments by making up more false or mean things. Nothing could be further against the HN guidelines. We (and I personally) have banned many accounts for posting slurs against Indians (same as against any other group), including in this thread. The only reason posts like that would go unmoderated is that we haven't seen them. We don't come close to seeing everything (or even 10%) of what gets posted to HN. We rely on users to point us to the things that most need attention, so the helpful way to react to such a comment is to flag it and/or email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
p_l 2y ago
Thank WiPro/Infosys/Tata/Cognizant/HCL and everyone who apes their practices. The end result is that you see a mention of "Bangalore" and you get immediate shivers because it doesn't matter how nice and good as a person the people you are forced to work with are, if the entire qualification you can discern is that they are statistically expected to speak english, and their work environment and supervisors enforce certain counter-productive behaviours. Which is honestly abusive to the poor person in Bangalore, because it's not like they can learn the skills this way either. To the point that I once had security team in a company where specific area of security might involve "uncomfortable questions from government" in cases of failure (fortunately not defense industry) actually sponsor my efforts to bypass supposedly crucial firewall - because connectivity including said firewall were handled by TCS.
- kylehotchkiss 2y ago
  But things a LOT of us here use often and might even enjoy are built in Banaglore too, and it's a shame it doesn't get more publicity. Target has a fairly massive office over there working on their tech (plz correct me if I'm wrong) https://india.target.com https://india.target.com
  - p_l 2y ago
    It's somewhat close to how I got myself out of blaming the people trapped in those jobs. It's not the people, it's the specific family of scummy businesses. Fortunately in Poland our local equivalent (Comarch) never got that big, and doesn't suffocate the job market. Also tended to hire slightly higher up, probably because it couldn't compete on rates with WITCH for tech support.
mardifoufs 2y ago
Weird thing to comment on an article about Indian racism, but okay.
Saline9515 2y ago
The article reports about Indian racism in a company, but they are the victims?

It's weird how racism against Indians online is so normalised. I see the same on reddit too.

by tock 2y ago

It's weird how racism against Indians online is so normalised. I see the same on reddit too.

fennecfoxy 2y ago

[flagged]

tock 2y ago
Just my experience. I reckon a lot of recent events like buying oil from Russia has sadly justified it for a lot of people.
delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
Not the parent commenter, but from what I've seen, they are correct, and as far as Reddit is concerned, especially so. Genuine criticism of India's government and some Indian/Hindu cultural practices can quickly devolve into disgusting racist diatribes and stereotypes that wouldn't fly against people from other countries. Try using the hard-r n-word as a non-black person, or calling someone with East Asian phenotypes a 'Chinaman', or any Native American stereotype today, and see how quickly you bring a firestorm upon yourself. Meanwhile, people on Reddit call Indians street-sh*tters or cow pi*s drinkers, and no one bats an eyelid. I have seen these words verbatim on places like /r/worldnews, without censorship or bans whatsoever. Racism against Indians is normalised, full stop.

claudiug 2y ago

[flagged]

hshshshsvsv 2y ago

[flagged]

navigate8310 2y ago
[flagged]
- hshshshsvsv 2y ago
  Generalizing everyone from a region/group with some negative trait is racisam. If your brain try to label me as someone who practice caste system because you think I am from India is lazy/stupid computation and racism. Actually vast majority of the Indians suffer from negative consequences of Castisam since they are supposed to be lower classes and society descrimated against them historically. They want equality more than probably anyone you know of. Indian constitution has done a lot for eliminating this. But there is a lot of cultural baggage that needs cleanup.
  - chucksta 2y ago
    [flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't perpetuate hellish flamewars on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lupusreal 2y ago
I've never seen let alone worked in a team that only had white people. Not once. I've never seen nor heard of a team that only had Japanese or Koreans or Russians or any other singular group except two: Chinese and Indians. These two groups have a unique tendency to form ethnically exclusive teams at companies and get away with it.
- RestlessMind 2y ago
  I have seen exclusively white people teams, especially at smaller startups. They were all Americans though, so not much diversity of nationalities. Given that China and India are countries with 1.4B population, no surprise that one can find enough people to form exclusively Chinese (or Indian) teams. Another factor is that people from other backgrounds do not want to join such teams even if the hiring manager makes them an offer. When I was at a FAANG, my team composition slowly drifted towards only Chinese and Indian, as people from other backgrounds left in 6-12 months after an Indian manager came in.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    I'm sure it happens at small companies, but at large companies I've never seen it. It wouldn't be allowed to stay that way if it did happen. The number of times I've seen it happen with Chinese and Indians teams, relative to how rare it is for white-only teams to exist, seems highly improbable. White people are the plurality if not majority at most big American tech companies, so if it's all just statistical noise it should happen more with white people and that just isn't what happens.
    - RestlessMind 2y ago
      I have seen enough white-only teams while at FAANG. Those were not in SV but in smaller US cities. Of course that was rare but then again, chinese-only or indian-only teams were rare as well.
- KwisatzHaderack 2y ago
  Since we're sharing anecdotes here. Around 2012, I attended the very first coding bootcamp in SF. We had a demo day and a (white) recruiter from a local start-up came and literally only talked to every one of the white students (in a class that was half white) but none of the non-white students. Not a single one. When walking by a table with a non-white student, he would just said "excuse me" and squeezed pass. I looked up the company's website later and it was a 50-ish person start-up that was all white males, except 1 Asian girl who was a PM. Now, I'm sure the people at this start-up would probably not think of themselves as "racist" (especially in liberal SF) even though this recruiter behaved in a racially exclusive way. But it really goes to show how subconscious these instincts are. This is why it's unfair to single out Indians/Chinese in this case as the only ones who have an in-group bias; every group has an in-group bias if we're really being honest here. Having said that, the best tech teams I've worked in have been very diverse. They were high performant, but also had a great deal of trust in each other. I think it's because every one knows every one else is a high performer and trust each other's judgment. Nobody is just here because they "just gel with the vibes" and playing group-politics, which sometimes falls on racial lines.
Rinzler89 2y ago
[flagged]
dang 2y ago
> It's okay to be racist against Indians according to hacker news guidelines Please let's not respond to false or mean comments by making up more false or mean things. Nothing could be further against the HN guidelines. We (and I personally) have banned many accounts for posting slurs against Indians (same as against any other group), including in this thread. The only reason posts like that would go unmoderated is that we haven't seen them. We don't come close to seeing everything (or even 10%) of what gets posted to HN. We rely on users to point us to the things that most need attention, so the helpful way to react to such a comment is to flag it and/or email us at hn@ycombinator.com.

p_l 2y ago

Thank WiPro/Infosys/Tata/Cognizant/HCL and everyone who apes their practices. The end result is that you see a mention of "Bangalore" and you get immediate shivers because it doesn't matter how nice and good as a person the people you are forced to work with are, if the entire qualification you can discern is that they are statistically expected to speak english, and their work environment and supervisors enforce certain counter-productive behaviours. Which is honestly abusive to the poor person in Bangalore, because it's not like they can learn the skills this way either. To the point that I once had security team in a company where specific area of security might involve "uncomfortable questions from government" in cases of failure (fortunately not defense industry) actually sponsor my efforts to bypass supposedly crucial firewall - because connectivity including said firewall were handled by TCS.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago
But things a LOT of us here use often and might even enjoy are built in Banaglore too, and it's a shame it doesn't get more publicity. Target has a fairly massive office over there working on their tech (plz correct me if I'm wrong) https://india.target.com https://india.target.com
- p_l 2y ago
  It's somewhat close to how I got myself out of blaming the people trapped in those jobs. It's not the people, it's the specific family of scummy businesses. Fortunately in Poland our local equivalent (Comarch) never got that big, and doesn't suffocate the job market. Also tended to hire slightly higher up, probably because it couldn't compete on rates with WITCH for tech support.

mardifoufs 2y ago

Weird thing to comment on an article about Indian racism, but okay.

Saline9515 2y ago

The article reports about Indian racism in a company, but they are the victims?