I think I've seen this. People were careless and made a high caste a feature lead and instead of working with our team, she ended up stealing one low caste from his assigned work and bossing him around and micromanaging him the entire time to work exclusively on her feature, in a way that wasn't very friendly. He was, otherwise, a decent employee who was patient, attentive and thorough. It didn't seem appropriate to allow that to happen, in my view.
She eventually left, and then he quit a little while after and got a job which paid a lot more and some role advancement, so it worked out in the end I suppose.
When you find a southeast Asian person talking about "neighborhood" or "neighbors", e.g. "he's from my neighborhood", "they're from a neighborhood over", understand that these are nearly always thinly veiled references to caste (that, or they merely serve as proxies to talk about caste in a socially acceptable manner). You will almost never, ever, hear your everyday person talk about caste.
I'm South Asian, have lived in the US for over 15 years, and don't know wtf you're talking about. Neighborhood doesn't ever mean caste. The reason you never hear people talking about caste is because they don't.
Another South Asian here, you're 100% correct. I can't even imagine what the parent poster is talking about, even twisted 100 ways I've never heard someone imply caste like that.
You may be confusing "neighborhood" with the more common euphemism "community" (which can also refer in India to religion). Another common way of referring to caste euphemistically is that someone comes from a good family. That being said, it's relatively rare, especially outside of india, for people to explicitly talk about caste.
Honest question - once immigrated to the US or other places, what makes ones caste obvious? Is it found out by surname? Can it be faked (not saying that's a acceptable solution, but it obviously doesn't seem work).
While last name is the big giveaway for caste, there's another issue that effects tech workers in the us, the IITs. These are the creme de la creme of indian educational istitutions (and to be honest, the single smartest group of people i've ever met). A certain percentage of seats in the IITs are reserved for people from low castes, and the IITs are tiny, so the graduates tend to know each other. Thus the reputation that you got in in the reservation can follow you.
How would the reputation follow you unless you were working with someone who knew you personally from IIT? And that person would have to be in the same or a closely associated team for there to be any interaction. Those seem to be really long odds, given that, as you said, IITs are tiny. They would be long odds for any college, tbh, and not just IITs.
I think HN has articles about people changing their names.
Also, people who are anti-caste are quite open about it. The rest probably not so much, or will say it's not so bad, or it's been mis-understood, or that the root of it was better than the practice, or the practice of it now is much better than the root was.
It's difficult to reconcile and self-examine the blurring of socio/cultural/political/religious division among a billion people to keep them focused on pinning each other down, instead of building each other up.
Caste also works in the shadows, like every downvote I'm grateful to pay for with not having that kind of karma.
Nothing personal, I just think every human life is equal in potential and things like caste (like education) limit access to opportunity to uplift your own life and the generations after you.
In India caste based reservation system (affirmative actions) applies to 50-60% of population.. and some places much much more [1]. Folks with caste and hence benefactor of the system are in majority, those who don't have that are in actually minority.
In Kerala, whites, blacks, far east asians and Jews are part of this caste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anjuvannam it is a type of caste meant for traders and merchants. Because ancient Kerala experience of whites, blacks, far east asians and Jews are as traders.
Technically untouchables... but in practice white people can be very high caste indeed. I worked with a sanskritist in Chennai who was a very traditional brahman, and he did eat with me, but was extremely careful about separate food and separate plates (Tamilian Brahmans of that type are always careful about these things, but he was more careful than needed. I didn't mind since I'm jewish and used to weird dietary restrictions).
K just wondering. Sometimes they serve guests in silver plates, and usually they don't have more than one set. So it might appear like your utensils are separate.
The food thing might be separate to tone down the spice levels for what's served to you.
I have :) I am Tamil brahmin Iyer myself and I've spent quite a bit of time at the "agraharams". There are some brahmins who are extremely orthodox. They won't eat anything that grows under the ground, share utensils or even physically touch anyone they perceive to be a meat eater. This is however something that you usually observe with people living in temple adjacent communities or in very rural areas with religious duties. The rest are fairly urbanized so you don't see this normally.
I was just trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the family you ate with. But I now know whats going on here.
Indians dont care about judging white people. They will judge you more holistically and education. They are only interested in judging other indians lol
I see the claim made that caste-ism doesn't fall under existing discrimination laws, but I don't really see how it's actually any different from run-of-the-mill racism.
Caste is familially inherited. So a person is being judged based upon their ancestry. The only difference between "that group of families is inherently inferior" and "that race is inherently inferior" seems to be how broadly/narrowly you define "race". So a legal argument should be able to be made that discriminating based on caste is discriminating based on race, a protected class.
Am I missing something? If so could someone correct me?
The law should simply say: do you observe any beliefs that make you treat a group of people in a favorable or unfavorable way, based on criteria other than academic or professional qualifications? If so, you should declare your conflict of interest at the beginning of each meeting and document and be excluded from professional decisions involving hiring, firing, promotions, etc.
Ideally, this should also apply to investors not only employers.
Is "according to my personal experience this person generally knows what they're talking about" a professional qualification, or are you thinking more like formal certs?
Replace "academic and professional qualifications" with "competence-based merit", in order to avoid committing credentialism which can become yet another form of arbitrary clique-like discrimination.
Why should it apply to investors? It is no one’s business where an investor chooses to put their money, their goal is to make a return, not uphold some moral code.
The person who claims they have no such beliefs is lying.
When you remove the human element (including intuition, tacit knowledge, reading of social-behavioral cues, and subjective assessments of temperament and character), you're going to get absurdities that cost society way more than any conceivable benefit.
>The person who claims they have no such beliefs is lying.
prove it.
Anyway, doesn't seem likely, there are first of all various medical and psychological conditions in which intuition, reading of social-behavioral cues, and subjective assessments of temperament and character are impacted, which would mean that some people with these conditions would not be prone to the beliefs that come from these states.
Furthermore there are wide variances in humans as to how much one accepts tradition, authority, how much one searches out newness etc.
given all these factors it strikes me as unlikely that every human would be susceptible to the beliefs that probably affect most of the population around them.
I am however perfectly content to say the person who has no such beliefs is an outlier.
You have four candidates who are all the same on paper--have the same qualifications, experience, etc--and will be serving as a critical liaison between your customers and the technical team.
Which one do you hire?
(1) The candidate with a face tattoo and ear gauges (holes) who was observed to "roll coal" when he left the interview in a lifted truck with entirely too many skulls and anarchist emblems.
(2) The one with an extremely thick accent that is near unintelligible. [HR says he has a top TOEFL score and satisfies the "speaks English" requirement.]
(3) The candidate who showed up a little late, a little underdressed, a little distracted--maybe demure--, and who just generally didn't seem to want the job.
(4) The candidate who is enthusiastic, pleasant, good at small talk, and who uses the "do you have any questions for us?" part of the interview to ask surprisingly pertinent/proactive questions about the challenges your team is facing instead of focusing on benefits/pay etc.
You might argue that many of the attributes I've mentioned are valid "professional qualifications". But remember, that term--under OPs law--will not be your notion of qualifications: it'll be a contorted mess of statue plus case law plus HR policies plus things you can clearly articulate in advance in the job criteria and prove to some jury against a plantiff with a sob story.
first of all you said there was nobody immune to prejudice, but when called on proving it you turn it into a question about my own immunity, which I never claimed to possess.
second of all this seems like a variation of that old interview question - tell me a reason why we should hire you over any other candidate that had your same skills but had X (I was asked once why should we hire you instead of someone who speaks our language better) to which I replied obviously if you have someone who has all the same skills but one thing better than me you should hire that person.
Going back to the problems that were initially under discussion; The problem that is supposed to be addressed is not candidates who have all the same skills and abilities and how to choose one because at that point you might as well just draw lots. The problem is candidates who have superior skills but are not taken, candidates with inferior skills but right social markers being preferred.
> it'll be a contorted mess of statue plus case law plus HR policies plus things you can clearly articulate in advance in the job criteria
HR policies and clear articulation of job criteria are things the company controls, but in your scenario they seem to be some insurmountable barrier put in place to catch them out. An organization that is damaged by its own HR policies and job criteria should do something to fix that.
>and prove to some jury against a plantiff with a sob story.
If you chose a candidate from a list of candidates that all were exactly the same qualified it seems doubtful that the sob story will be much good.
Finally:
candidate number 1 doesn't seem likely to me because my prejudices tells me the candidate with face tattoos AND ear gauges is most likely a member of Earth First, and is not going to roll coal but will probably have gotten to the interview on skateboard or something else generally environment friendly.
Candidate number 2 so you're saying HR made a mistake and he did not pass the speaks English requirement adequately.
I don't think I would care much about differences between 3 and 4.
The interesting thing about caste is that it's basically invisible: unlike race, you can't tell somebody's caste by looking at them. (There is some correlation to skin color, but there are also plenty of eg Tamil Brahmins who are very dark-skinned.) Which is why caste-conscious Indians meeting new people go through an elaborate dance asking about family name, where they're from, if they're vegetarian etc to figure out their caste.
It's often also very local. Everyone knows who some castes are like Patels and Nayars, but how many people in north india know that vellalars are relatively high caste (but not brahman) for instance. And of course the specific relationship between various castes can change village to village.
True if you know all the caste names, but a lot of caste names in the south don't fit into the four buckets used in the north. Which makes for a very interesting discussion.
Due to the actions of EV Ramaswamy Naicker, a lot of Brahmins from Tamil Nadu were forced to give up their traditional surnames, and made to instead take on their father's names.
While in the USA at the moment, I would agree that most racism that's seen is based on clearly-visible skin color, I would argue that's a fairly new development.
My grandparents were born in the 1920s. One side is Polish, the other side is Italian. With the exception of my Grandfather who looked extremely Sicilian, none of them would have their ethnicity readily apparent to someone in the late 30s who may have posted a job with "Poles need not apply". Until they mentioned their surname, of course.
There's plenty of racism still against Jewish people as well, and I would argue that the vast majority of Jewish people are utterly invisible, unless someone jumps through very similar hoops to the Indians you mention, asking about family name etc.
> My grandparents were born in the 1920s. One side is Polish, the other side is Italian.
Columbus Day was started by the Italian community to show that they were 'really American':
> The first national Columbus Day was proclaimed in 1892 by Republican President Benjamin Harrison to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus’s supposed discovery of America.
> But for Harrison, it served another purpose: to help resolve a diplomatic crisis with Italy — and gain support among Italian American voters — after rioters in New Orleans lynched 11 Italian immigrants the year before.
Caste is discrimination based on religion. The discriminator views the victim as being less deserving based on religious ideology. The religious ideology insists that a person born to a certain caste deserves it based on something they supposedly did in a past lifetime. It thus excuses the prejudicial behavior as a form of cosmic justice.
I can understand that this is how those who participate in caste discrimination may justify it to themselves.
But, I do not see how in the US, that claim somehow makes its way around racial discrimination laws, where to someone not sharing that religious belief, it very much appears as though people are simply discriminating based on ancestry i.e. race.
I do not see why caste based discrimination should be legal given the current law, but high caste people have powerful positions in these important companies. They are politically connected. It may take a while for the case law and EEO machinery to put a stop to it.
I wonder what's gonna happen once these reporters find out about regionalism (people favoring those who speak their mother tongue or those from the same state they grew up in India). These type of professional networks at work are so much more common.
Many seem to forget India is a very diverse nation and you end up with entirely different cultures in the same nationality.
Personally, I've not experienced tamilians helping each other in the US a lot. But I see way more cooperation and camraderie amongst Gujarati, Hindi, Malayali and Telugu speaking people. It's nice to see. I might be wrong due to sampling bias.
Just because Tamils don't help each other, it doesn't mean that telugus or hindi folks help each other. You are not just deeply involved with Telugus or hindis or gujartis. There is a special name for this, but I forgot: doctors see the incompetence of medical journalists, whereas physicists find these medical journalists extremely competent. In other words, familiarity in one domain makes them good judges of that domain; as a consequence, they commit a fallacy: they misjudge the competence of people in other domains one is not competent in.
Here are two examples from Telugu folks. One guy came to USA in 1997 on H1-b, and he even sponsored his wife's sister and the latter's husband for green cards. His wife's sister family moved to the states. They even had joint businesses. By 2006, this guy regretted his decision of sponsoring his wife's sister. My friend, another telugu speaker, was working at his check cashing places in Jersey city, NJ, while being on H1-B (this from 2006). Even though my friend took care of two check cashing businesses in Newark, NJ and Jersey cit, NJ, that boss did not want to help my friend. Now this boss owns five check cashing businesses, 50% of a trash collecting company (which he purchased from Italians). One lesson: never underestimate human emotions such as jealousy.
The second example from 2021. Another friend, a telugu speaker, was working as a contractor at a famous shoe company in Portland. One of his colleagues, a telugu woman, whose husband also works at the same company, gave him hard time by sabotaging him. How did she sabotage? When his manager gave him tasks, the manager asked him to take help from this girl. Whenever she share some thing, she hided the crucial detail, and this friend was on the wrong track. Later, this girl started complaining about my friend to the desi manager. Another Indian FTE came to rescue my friend, not because my friend is Indian, but he wanted to assess my friend objectively, and went through the code he wrote, and then helped him change some APIs. Later, this colleague warned about this girl to my friend: "she is badmouthing you in our FTE meetings, be careful with that snake". This is pure, plain jealousy from fellow native language speaker. Many don't want to see their fellow men from India to succeed at work.
Third example: Some Babu is both Tamil and telugu speaker. He claims he is tamil to Tamils, but as telugu to telugu people, because he comes from that part of TN, that is 20 kms away from Andhra border. This Babu told my friend many times: "how did you come to America, and you don't have good personal skills". My friend is more than average at technical stuff, but he lacks the skills of chamchagiri.
The list goes on: just ask gujarati guys about their experience with fellow gujjus, after making friends with them.
Marwaris and Sindhis do help each other (I am not talking about their helping each other in the states). In Andhra, many marwaris come from Rajastan to start samosa, chai stalls, clothing stores, kirana tores, etc. These people recruit 15 years old marwaris from RJ, and make them work for them for five years or so. After that, big boss helps these works to start their own business.
You know what non-marwaris and non-Sindhis do when they are given an opportunity to work for Marwaris in some gold shop or other place? First complaint: why should I work hard? If I work hard, my boss makes more money. Marwari workers work as if they are the boss of the store: they try to learn every thing to succeed as a business owner, as their goal is start a next business and the bosses are ready to help them. The attitude of Marwaris and Sindhis are differnt from non-marwaris/non-sindhis wrt business. Just like Phoenicians (ancient tradesmen, you can see modern phonecians in the successful Lebanese people in Mexico and Africa), Marwaris/sindhis learn "kuladharma" from their grandparents, they don't like to take shortcuts. That's why in many parts of ...
"Countryism" is a thing in Europe as well, eg Ubisoft is well known for favoring French people in its leadership roles. And in the US many people from the South learn to disguise their accents to avoid prejudice from snooty West or East Coasters.
Nah, it can definitely be masked. I doubt many people pick up that Stephen Colbert is from South Carolina.
I had a coworker whose native accent was a southern one, out of Missouri, but he'd disguised it very effectively, if you met him you'd assume just another California techie.
There are so many issues conflated around 'caste' and Indians. Let me unravel a bit using my experiences in the corporate world and anecdotes from friends.
1. Whoever first came to USA on H1-B (just before Y2K) are in high positions at many companies. They are VPs, not because they have good managerial skills, not because they have great competence in solving technical problems. Just they came early, these folks got green cards so fast, and they got Exec MBA from weekend/night schools. You can see a lot them at many FANG companies with MBA from Wharton or berkely-columbia mba, etc.
2. Just like a white VP from X co, hires his subordinates and friends from his old company, these Indians follow the footsteps of these white leaders. Mind this, before harping about 'caste'. When white managers engage in whatever Indians do, you won't call it 'casteism', but you call it cronyism and collusion. You can see this in every mega company, where new SVP brings in his cronies from his old company, and tries to get rid of the old structure.
3. In India, going to USA to work for a software company is seen as a bragging right (unlike those Indians who come to USA to work for cruise liners--C-1/D visa). So, when fellow country men come to work with an Indian in the states, these Indians get jealous, not because of caste, but because of the fact "oh, I am not unique anymore, as more Indians are coming to America". My friend, who is not a brahmin, but belongs to non-reservation category in India, was given hard time by a person belonging to the same caste as he does. In another place, his contract was not renewed even though his Indian manager wanted him, but this full time employee who speaks the same language as my friend, has grudges against my friend. These cases are dime a dozen: no brahmins involved here.
4. The trash from the point 1 (esp senior management who got lucky because they came early to usa, and moved up the ladder faster) is replicating the corporate illness that non-Indians do. Instead of socializing at golf clubs, these people socialize by inviting each other to their homes.
5. H1-B is the large culprit of exploitation of Indians. Karlheinz Deschner, in his 10 volume work on Christianity, said this: "the oppressed become the future oppressors". Same thing is happening here: now, Indian managers at FAANG and other companies, exploit their country men. Here, the white senior management is culprit: they just put Indians as managers for Indians, and ask them to deliver results. When green card process takes decade, what can one do? Here is one example I experienced at CISCO: all team members are Indians, almost all on H1B; I saw my colleagues replying to emails from 6 am to 11 pm. Everyone tries to oneupmanship in these teams.
6. Imagine India sent only 10 Indians every year to USA. In such a case, every Indian would have helped their new countrymen. USA has 3 million Indians. Here, every Indian colleague is jealous of another Indian. I am not saying that white people are selfless. With respect to Indians, one more dimension of jealousy should be added.
7. One of things Indian learned in India is chamchagiri (brown-nosing). Look at all those Brahmin (and non-brahmin as well) authors of Sanskrit to English translations during British Raj. In the second page of their books, you see "dedicated to Lord Viceroy blah blah". This is something almost every Indian has mastered. So, this makes these Indians probe each other about their backgrounds, their interests, their sh1tty after-work cricket/basketball camaraderie, their weekly visits to lunches, etc. Here, everyone is assessing everyone else: if Mr X is super smart in coding/solving problems, other colleagues brown-nose this Indian guy; if Mr Y is a chamcha (ears) for a Sr Director of Engg, people try to be nice to him; this is the shit these people do; etc. Next time, when your Indian colleagues go for beer party, or to play a game or to watch a movie with their Indian manager...
Nicely done. It is rare to see a comment that encompasses so many cultural practices that many people cannot see. Usually you get these black or white comments on casteism that fail to take the real culture that is running the operations vs “he is not in my caste i dont like him”
>They are VPs, not because they have good managerial skills, not because they have great competence in solving technical problems. Just they came early, these folks got green cards so fast, and they got Exec MBA from weekend/night schools.
This seems kind of weird to me. Regardless of how fast they get a green card, they're going to face competition existing Americans. I don't think speed of green card would matter much unless there's a very large shortage of qualified existing Americans.
A good criticism indeed. But look at the growth of the IT sector since y2k. Companies need managers, and it was easy to become a a manger when the field was new. It is like startup, where early joins end up in high positions if they play their cards right.
So a a manger in 2003 will become a vp today, unlike the manager of 2015.
They are willing to work for less salary. There was no large shortage of Americans, just Americans willing to work for less.
After they've come in as managers or VPs, they get to control who the company hires. That's when the casteism comes into play cause they'd only hire from their own caste or village. I've seen whole teams hired, not in the US, where everyone was from the same village and related to each other. Of course this was only known after one of them accidentally let it slip out.
Being from a minority religion in India and being an American of Indian origin, it is strange working on tech, because my family's presumed caste (which I assume is very low because we're not Hindu [1]), ends up dictating a lot of interactions with indians from India. Most American born ones don't seem to care.
[1] the wife of my dad's friend who is high caste brahmin refused to enter our home and stayed in my brother's bedroom during the whole visit because we eat meat. Then she made a big fuss about being brahmin and how awful it must be to be a minority in both America and India. She was not very nice
> ...ends up dictating a lot of interactions with indians from India. Most American born ones don't seem to care.
As a counter anecdote, I know several tens of families of both India-born and American-born Indians, and caste has never been brought up or mentioned in the US. It's...just not something you talk about, a bit like race usually doesn't come up in conversations, unless you're talking about it in the context of an article like this one.
I have certainly heard die-hard vegetarian Indians, for example, not want to eat in a restaurant which cooks both meat and vegetarian dishes, but that's more of a "I don't want food that has been in contact with animal flesh/fat" thing that is perhaps a bit hard, but not impossible to understand.
As a white male who's lived in the US most of his life, I confess that I read these articles about caste-based racism and comments with a measure of disbelief, because to me it is entirely invisible. Mind you, I first learned about India's discriminatory caste system in high school, so I've been aware of it and I know it's real, but it exists in an alternate dimension I simply can't see. I've never noticed people asking where someone is from or their diet, and I've never considered that a last name might be telling me about a person's "status."
But... I don't want to learn which last names are low or high caste. I don't want to learn which regions are low or high. I rather appreciate my ignorance on the matter.
if you really don't want to know don't read this reply, but if I told you a North-Eastern, teetotalling Anglo Protestant with a learned Mid-Atlantic accent is part of America's very own Brahmin caste while someone with a thick southern drawl isn't you're going to be mad at me for spilling the beans?
The US has its own very fine-calibrated class system from blue-blood to redneck that pretty much everyone is aware of.
Yeah, I'm Indian origin and don't give a shit about caste (and honestly, find it pretty hard to tell because I never ask), but it astonishes me to hear Americans drone on about how this is unbelievable and totally not something they'd ever do.
Meanwhile, the same people seem to have no problem automatically discerning that someone living on the Upper East Side in NYC is high class and treating them several times better than someone who comes from Random Town, Kansas.
This is a weird one. I am sure it happens in certain pockets, but I can't say that I have ever heard or directly experienced any form of casteism in my 16 years in North America. Having said that, my background is Tamil brahmin but I am not religious, don't go to temples, and don't wear a poonal (identifying sacred thread). As naive as it may sound, I hope my 6 year old son never hears the word caste in his life.
There is nothing wrong in identifying with a caste, or practising customs related to the caste.
It is thinking only my caste is good or having prejudiced ideas that is wrong.
Caste identity is essential to maintain tribal relations and networks (every part of the world has this and practices this), but feelings of caste superiority are to be eradicated.
I feel pity for your son because instead of giving him a choice and making him understand what is good and bad, you are preventing him from hearing about it at all, which, in my view, is even worse and will be a shock to him when he encounters situations he cannot handle because of your ignorance.
You may keep him away from caste, but the society will not.
People in US will be shocked to know how “caste” politics works in India. It is affirmative action taken to its absolute extreme for no other purpose but gaining political vote. More than half of the seats at all universities, including science and medicine, are reserved for the caste people. Same for government jobs and everything that is under government control. It only makes sense to politicians that caste people are “minority” when they make sure more than half of everything is reserved for them. As someone who grew up in poor non-caste family, I watched my rich caste friends walk into prestigious universities and get admissions like it was no big deal while poor kids like me with much better academics had to settle for less or even give up field of study entirely.
In India, current caste system purely exist as vote bank for politicians. It is sad to see “caste” people now trying to push same affirmative actions with their discrimination shenanigans in US. They grew up entirely on Indian politics holding their hand while pushing out more deserving people. It is completely and utterly bogus claims that these people apparently now being prevented from getting promoted and hired due to discrimination in US. As an Indian living over 3 decades in US, I have never ever seen a single instance of anyone asking or disclosing their “caste”. To uninitiated, there is NO way to tell if some Indian person belongs to caste unless they disclose themselves with some certificate from their village. I grew up in India and I cannot tell which last name belongs to what caste. New generations and cities are extraordinarily cosmopolitan and I have never seen any discrimination based on cast in city I grew up in India for over two decades. Unlike African Americans or immigrants, there is no physical or language or any other externalities that gives away your caste. So, all these discrimination claims are just bullshit.
Hey Reuters, may be once in a while do write about how USA lawfully discriminates against Indians in Green card process, in the name of diversity! Thank you.
As a non-Indian, the caste problem seems so endemic that the only solution seems to be to not hire anyone born in India. Their American-born children will, presumably, have overcome the issue.
Fun fact, caste comes from the Portuguese word castus and has no mention in Hindu scriptures. Ye old British divide and rule used the indian occupation as a mechanism to put a division in
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadThis is going to become easier now once forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts are no longer enforceable.
For many (the 98% who are not the correct caste), caste is a sin that they cannot be freed of.
This has been well being entrenched in place for over 20-25 years. It can be found at any large tech company not just in SV, but beyond too.
Children are destined to be treated as less as if they had control of which families they were born into.
I think HN has articles about people changing their names.
Also, people who are anti-caste are quite open about it. The rest probably not so much, or will say it's not so bad, or it's been mis-understood, or that the root of it was better than the practice, or the practice of it now is much better than the root was.
It's difficult to reconcile and self-examine the blurring of socio/cultural/political/religious division among a billion people to keep them focused on pinning each other down, instead of building each other up.
Caste also works in the shadows, like every downvote I'm grateful to pay for with not having that kind of karma.
Nothing personal, I just think every human life is equal in potential and things like caste (like education) limit access to opportunity to uplift your own life and the generations after you.
[1] In the State of Tamil Nadu, the caste-based reservation stands at 69 percent and applies to about 87 percent of the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India
e.g. this trader from China came via sea to Kerala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
The food thing might be separate to tone down the spice levels for what's served to you.
I was just trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the family you ate with. But I now know whats going on here.
Caste is familially inherited. So a person is being judged based upon their ancestry. The only difference between "that group of families is inherently inferior" and "that race is inherently inferior" seems to be how broadly/narrowly you define "race". So a legal argument should be able to be made that discriminating based on caste is discriminating based on race, a protected class.
Am I missing something? If so could someone correct me?
Ideally, this should also apply to investors not only employers.
When you remove the human element (including intuition, tacit knowledge, reading of social-behavioral cues, and subjective assessments of temperament and character), you're going to get absurdities that cost society way more than any conceivable benefit.
prove it.
Anyway, doesn't seem likely, there are first of all various medical and psychological conditions in which intuition, reading of social-behavioral cues, and subjective assessments of temperament and character are impacted, which would mean that some people with these conditions would not be prone to the beliefs that come from these states.
Furthermore there are wide variances in humans as to how much one accepts tradition, authority, how much one searches out newness etc.
given all these factors it strikes me as unlikely that every human would be susceptible to the beliefs that probably affect most of the population around them.
I am however perfectly content to say the person who has no such beliefs is an outlier.
Which one do you hire?
(1) The candidate with a face tattoo and ear gauges (holes) who was observed to "roll coal" when he left the interview in a lifted truck with entirely too many skulls and anarchist emblems.
(2) The one with an extremely thick accent that is near unintelligible. [HR says he has a top TOEFL score and satisfies the "speaks English" requirement.]
(3) The candidate who showed up a little late, a little underdressed, a little distracted--maybe demure--, and who just generally didn't seem to want the job.
(4) The candidate who is enthusiastic, pleasant, good at small talk, and who uses the "do you have any questions for us?" part of the interview to ask surprisingly pertinent/proactive questions about the challenges your team is facing instead of focusing on benefits/pay etc.
You might argue that many of the attributes I've mentioned are valid "professional qualifications". But remember, that term--under OPs law--will not be your notion of qualifications: it'll be a contorted mess of statue plus case law plus HR policies plus things you can clearly articulate in advance in the job criteria and prove to some jury against a plantiff with a sob story.
second of all this seems like a variation of that old interview question - tell me a reason why we should hire you over any other candidate that had your same skills but had X (I was asked once why should we hire you instead of someone who speaks our language better) to which I replied obviously if you have someone who has all the same skills but one thing better than me you should hire that person.
Going back to the problems that were initially under discussion; The problem that is supposed to be addressed is not candidates who have all the same skills and abilities and how to choose one because at that point you might as well just draw lots. The problem is candidates who have superior skills but are not taken, candidates with inferior skills but right social markers being preferred.
> it'll be a contorted mess of statue plus case law plus HR policies plus things you can clearly articulate in advance in the job criteria
HR policies and clear articulation of job criteria are things the company controls, but in your scenario they seem to be some insurmountable barrier put in place to catch them out. An organization that is damaged by its own HR policies and job criteria should do something to fix that.
>and prove to some jury against a plantiff with a sob story.
If you chose a candidate from a list of candidates that all were exactly the same qualified it seems doubtful that the sob story will be much good.
Finally:
candidate number 1 doesn't seem likely to me because my prejudices tells me the candidate with face tattoos AND ear gauges is most likely a member of Earth First, and is not going to roll coal but will probably have gotten to the interview on skateboard or something else generally environment friendly.
Candidate number 2 so you're saying HR made a mistake and he did not pass the speaks English requirement adequately.
I don't think I would care much about differences between 3 and 4.
Isn't that true?
I'm torn between calling you out and asking for a source for your claim. Going to do both.
Salty much? Plz link to source lol.
My grandparents were born in the 1920s. One side is Polish, the other side is Italian. With the exception of my Grandfather who looked extremely Sicilian, none of them would have their ethnicity readily apparent to someone in the late 30s who may have posted a job with "Poles need not apply". Until they mentioned their surname, of course.
There's plenty of racism still against Jewish people as well, and I would argue that the vast majority of Jewish people are utterly invisible, unless someone jumps through very similar hoops to the Indians you mention, asking about family name etc.
Columbus Day was started by the Italian community to show that they were 'really American':
> The first national Columbus Day was proclaimed in 1892 by Republican President Benjamin Harrison to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus’s supposed discovery of America.
> But for Harrison, it served another purpose: to help resolve a diplomatic crisis with Italy — and gain support among Italian American voters — after rioters in New Orleans lynched 11 Italian immigrants the year before.
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/10/10/columbus-d...
Italians were not "white" to many Americans:
* https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/opinion/colum...
Surely if caste implies a class, that has to have bias for/against others too
But, I do not see how in the US, that claim somehow makes its way around racial discrimination laws, where to someone not sharing that religious belief, it very much appears as though people are simply discriminating based on ancestry i.e. race.
Many seem to forget India is a very diverse nation and you end up with entirely different cultures in the same nationality.
Here are two examples from Telugu folks. One guy came to USA in 1997 on H1-b, and he even sponsored his wife's sister and the latter's husband for green cards. His wife's sister family moved to the states. They even had joint businesses. By 2006, this guy regretted his decision of sponsoring his wife's sister. My friend, another telugu speaker, was working at his check cashing places in Jersey city, NJ, while being on H1-B (this from 2006). Even though my friend took care of two check cashing businesses in Newark, NJ and Jersey cit, NJ, that boss did not want to help my friend. Now this boss owns five check cashing businesses, 50% of a trash collecting company (which he purchased from Italians). One lesson: never underestimate human emotions such as jealousy.
The second example from 2021. Another friend, a telugu speaker, was working as a contractor at a famous shoe company in Portland. One of his colleagues, a telugu woman, whose husband also works at the same company, gave him hard time by sabotaging him. How did she sabotage? When his manager gave him tasks, the manager asked him to take help from this girl. Whenever she share some thing, she hided the crucial detail, and this friend was on the wrong track. Later, this girl started complaining about my friend to the desi manager. Another Indian FTE came to rescue my friend, not because my friend is Indian, but he wanted to assess my friend objectively, and went through the code he wrote, and then helped him change some APIs. Later, this colleague warned about this girl to my friend: "she is badmouthing you in our FTE meetings, be careful with that snake". This is pure, plain jealousy from fellow native language speaker. Many don't want to see their fellow men from India to succeed at work.
Third example: Some Babu is both Tamil and telugu speaker. He claims he is tamil to Tamils, but as telugu to telugu people, because he comes from that part of TN, that is 20 kms away from Andhra border. This Babu told my friend many times: "how did you come to America, and you don't have good personal skills". My friend is more than average at technical stuff, but he lacks the skills of chamchagiri.
The list goes on: just ask gujarati guys about their experience with fellow gujjus, after making friends with them.
Marwaris and Sindhis do help each other (I am not talking about their helping each other in the states). In Andhra, many marwaris come from Rajastan to start samosa, chai stalls, clothing stores, kirana tores, etc. These people recruit 15 years old marwaris from RJ, and make them work for them for five years or so. After that, big boss helps these works to start their own business.
You know what non-marwaris and non-Sindhis do when they are given an opportunity to work for Marwaris in some gold shop or other place? First complaint: why should I work hard? If I work hard, my boss makes more money. Marwari workers work as if they are the boss of the store: they try to learn every thing to succeed as a business owner, as their goal is start a next business and the bosses are ready to help them. The attitude of Marwaris and Sindhis are differnt from non-marwaris/non-sindhis wrt business. Just like Phoenicians (ancient tradesmen, you can see modern phonecians in the successful Lebanese people in Mexico and Africa), Marwaris/sindhis learn "kuladharma" from their grandparents, they don't like to take shortcuts. That's why in many parts of ...
Is such a useless broadbrush; it exists only as a dogwhistle for “reverse-discrimination” (which isn’t a thing; that’s just discrimination).
Make no mistake the southern drawl cannot be masked. *Everyone knows*. Words and actions give one away more than the drawl.
I had a coworker whose native accent was a southern one, out of Missouri, but he'd disguised it very effectively, if you met him you'd assume just another California techie.
1. Whoever first came to USA on H1-B (just before Y2K) are in high positions at many companies. They are VPs, not because they have good managerial skills, not because they have great competence in solving technical problems. Just they came early, these folks got green cards so fast, and they got Exec MBA from weekend/night schools. You can see a lot them at many FANG companies with MBA from Wharton or berkely-columbia mba, etc.
2. Just like a white VP from X co, hires his subordinates and friends from his old company, these Indians follow the footsteps of these white leaders. Mind this, before harping about 'caste'. When white managers engage in whatever Indians do, you won't call it 'casteism', but you call it cronyism and collusion. You can see this in every mega company, where new SVP brings in his cronies from his old company, and tries to get rid of the old structure.
3. In India, going to USA to work for a software company is seen as a bragging right (unlike those Indians who come to USA to work for cruise liners--C-1/D visa). So, when fellow country men come to work with an Indian in the states, these Indians get jealous, not because of caste, but because of the fact "oh, I am not unique anymore, as more Indians are coming to America". My friend, who is not a brahmin, but belongs to non-reservation category in India, was given hard time by a person belonging to the same caste as he does. In another place, his contract was not renewed even though his Indian manager wanted him, but this full time employee who speaks the same language as my friend, has grudges against my friend. These cases are dime a dozen: no brahmins involved here.
4. The trash from the point 1 (esp senior management who got lucky because they came early to usa, and moved up the ladder faster) is replicating the corporate illness that non-Indians do. Instead of socializing at golf clubs, these people socialize by inviting each other to their homes.
5. H1-B is the large culprit of exploitation of Indians. Karlheinz Deschner, in his 10 volume work on Christianity, said this: "the oppressed become the future oppressors". Same thing is happening here: now, Indian managers at FAANG and other companies, exploit their country men. Here, the white senior management is culprit: they just put Indians as managers for Indians, and ask them to deliver results. When green card process takes decade, what can one do? Here is one example I experienced at CISCO: all team members are Indians, almost all on H1B; I saw my colleagues replying to emails from 6 am to 11 pm. Everyone tries to oneupmanship in these teams.
6. Imagine India sent only 10 Indians every year to USA. In such a case, every Indian would have helped their new countrymen. USA has 3 million Indians. Here, every Indian colleague is jealous of another Indian. I am not saying that white people are selfless. With respect to Indians, one more dimension of jealousy should be added.
7. One of things Indian learned in India is chamchagiri (brown-nosing). Look at all those Brahmin (and non-brahmin as well) authors of Sanskrit to English translations during British Raj. In the second page of their books, you see "dedicated to Lord Viceroy blah blah". This is something almost every Indian has mastered. So, this makes these Indians probe each other about their backgrounds, their interests, their sh1tty after-work cricket/basketball camaraderie, their weekly visits to lunches, etc. Here, everyone is assessing everyone else: if Mr X is super smart in coding/solving problems, other colleagues brown-nose this Indian guy; if Mr Y is a chamcha (ears) for a Sr Director of Engg, people try to be nice to him; this is the shit these people do; etc. Next time, when your Indian colleagues go for beer party, or to play a game or to watch a movie with their Indian manager...
This seems kind of weird to me. Regardless of how fast they get a green card, they're going to face competition existing Americans. I don't think speed of green card would matter much unless there's a very large shortage of qualified existing Americans.
So a a manger in 2003 will become a vp today, unlike the manager of 2015.
After they've come in as managers or VPs, they get to control who the company hires. That's when the casteism comes into play cause they'd only hire from their own caste or village. I've seen whole teams hired, not in the US, where everyone was from the same village and related to each other. Of course this was only known after one of them accidentally let it slip out.
[1] the wife of my dad's friend who is high caste brahmin refused to enter our home and stayed in my brother's bedroom during the whole visit because we eat meat. Then she made a big fuss about being brahmin and how awful it must be to be a minority in both America and India. She was not very nice
Caste does not go away if you convert to an Abrahamic religion.
Asian christians pray in separate churches and are buried in separate cemeteries from White Europeans.
Non-black christians/muslims/jews have a history of treating their black counterparts very differently.
that's not due to some artificial separation like caste...
it's something to do with homesickness/cultural/language-related natural phenomenon. (eg. church pastor is a friend of a relative etc)
and no one thinks one is above the other due to the separation. (except for cooking...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting
and conclude that people just regulary kill other people just because they feel like it...
I can only speak to my own experience and this is not mine.
As a counter anecdote, I know several tens of families of both India-born and American-born Indians, and caste has never been brought up or mentioned in the US. It's...just not something you talk about, a bit like race usually doesn't come up in conversations, unless you're talking about it in the context of an article like this one.
I have certainly heard die-hard vegetarian Indians, for example, not want to eat in a restaurant which cooks both meat and vegetarian dishes, but that's more of a "I don't want food that has been in contact with animal flesh/fat" thing that is perhaps a bit hard, but not impossible to understand.
But... I don't want to learn which last names are low or high caste. I don't want to learn which regions are low or high. I rather appreciate my ignorance on the matter.
The US has its own very fine-calibrated class system from blue-blood to redneck that pretty much everyone is aware of.
Meanwhile, the same people seem to have no problem automatically discerning that someone living on the Upper East Side in NYC is high class and treating them several times better than someone who comes from Random Town, Kansas.
It is thinking only my caste is good or having prejudiced ideas that is wrong.
Caste identity is essential to maintain tribal relations and networks (every part of the world has this and practices this), but feelings of caste superiority are to be eradicated.
I feel pity for your son because instead of giving him a choice and making him understand what is good and bad, you are preventing him from hearing about it at all, which, in my view, is even worse and will be a shock to him when he encounters situations he cannot handle because of your ignorance.
You may keep him away from caste, but the society will not.
Google’s caste-bias problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32425308 - Aug 2022 (249 comments)
Google cancelled a talk on caste bias - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 - June 2022 (946 comments)
Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543 comments)
India’s tech sector reinforces old caste divides - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5 comments)
The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5 comments)
How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments)
Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments)
India’s engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 - Oct 2020 (6 comments)
How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept 2020 (47 comments)
Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments)
Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 comments)
California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - July 2020 (56 comments)
California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments)
Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6 comments)
In India, current caste system purely exist as vote bank for politicians. It is sad to see “caste” people now trying to push same affirmative actions with their discrimination shenanigans in US. They grew up entirely on Indian politics holding their hand while pushing out more deserving people. It is completely and utterly bogus claims that these people apparently now being prevented from getting promoted and hired due to discrimination in US. As an Indian living over 3 decades in US, I have never ever seen a single instance of anyone asking or disclosing their “caste”. To uninitiated, there is NO way to tell if some Indian person belongs to caste unless they disclose themselves with some certificate from their village. I grew up in India and I cannot tell which last name belongs to what caste. New generations and cities are extraordinarily cosmopolitan and I have never seen any discrimination based on cast in city I grew up in India for over two decades. Unlike African Americans or immigrants, there is no physical or language or any other externalities that gives away your caste. So, all these discrimination claims are just bullshit.
(Not 100% serious, but not 100% joking.)