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California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

reuters.com

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Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#131

Post by hef19898 »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #30
duxup wrote: post #3

>At Cisco, the unnamed employee reported Iyer to human resources in November 2016 for outing him as a Dalit to colleagues. Iyer allegedly retaliated, but Cisco determined caste discrimination was not illegal and issues continued through 2018, the lawsuit states. I wouldn't expect HR to side with the lower level employee as generally HR groups are there to protect the company.... but I would wonder what their findings…

This didn’t protect the company very well... someone in HR ought to catch the flack on this too. Discrimination is bad for businesses. Not just if it hits the press, but those employees being discriminated against aren’t going to be as productive as those being encouraged. Fire bad managers. HR works for the company, not middle management.

HR seems to work as much for the powers to be and the status-quo as they do for the "company". As one German career consultant famously said: "Companies don't have interests, people do. And the most important people for your career are your managers". As much as I hate tjyis statement, for all practical purposes it is true. Very short-sighted, as almost all big business scandals show. But still true.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#132

Post by james412 »

tomcam wrote: post #112
randomguy2379 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am someone who was born a hindu dalit and I am so ashamed of sharing that identity of mine that I am posting anonymously. Hindus believe that humans are like dogs and they have a breed. So a person who is born in a higher caste is of a better breed than a person born in a lower caste. Numerous genetic studies have found no significant difference amongst Indian castes. The moment an upper caste person realizes that…

Easy for me to say, but if I were you, assuming you’re in the USA, I’d own the hell out of it. To be ashamed of it here is to give power needlessly to whole populations who do not own you. And the States love an underdog. This is the country where “Yankee Doodle” started out as an anti-American insult by the Brits and ended up being one of the nation’s favorite songs. The nation that used the N-word seriously until a…

This is one of those replies that rekindles my faith in the always double-edged HN spirit for another few months :) "Dalit and proud" could literally be the baseball cap powered cultural revolution India needs to be swept up by, assuming it didn't lead to more civil unrest along the lines of cow vigilantism

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#133

Post by olcor »

distant_hat wrote: post #124
olcor wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a very white guy living in California and I often get the impression that caste is something that Indian folks living here are aware of amongst each other, but they don't really discuss it with white people. The level of conformance (or even awareness!) to caste is different for different Indians even. Some don't even know much about the system apart from what has been taught in the textbook, being raised in a…

Its not just remnants. In major cities like Bangalore caste is regularly a part of who people will rent their house or sell their property to and is definitely a major part of marriage discussions. All Indian dating portals have caste up front and center in their selection criteria.

As I said, ~not all places~ varies from place to place. Haven't myself had an issue yet, coming from a not-so-desirable caste, and I know plenty who haven't either.

> definitely a major part of marriage discussions

Again, not all of them; speaking from personal experiences. Most of those sites have a "don't know/don't care" field, and many have that option set :) I agree that the field itself shouldn't be there, but I tend to highlight progress wherever possible

I don't deny this happens, but it doesn't happen _all_ the time, or even the majority of the times nowadays (I can only say what I've experienced, I know others would have seen differently).

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#134

Post by hef19898 »

ardit33 wrote: post #55
awakeasleep wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give you a concise answer, USA Federal law only prohibits discrimination based on the following characteristics: Race. Color. Religion or creed. National origin or ancestry. Sex. Age. Physical or mental disability. Veteran status. Genetic information. Citizenship. Anything else you can think of is a legal reason to discriminate

you could argue that caste, is a combination of color+religion+origin/ancestry combo... it has a racial + religion + ancestry undertone.... i.e. it is something you are 'born into'.

Sure. But maybe to complex for most people. And more often than not, people seem to be quite happy with excuses to not do anything.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#135

Post by sharpneli »

jcheng wrote: post #44
dcolkitt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One underlying difference is that the US has at-will employment. Meaning an employer can terminate employee for any reason, except specific no-no reasons. In the US, it's perfectly legal to fire someone, just cause you think their haircut is stupid, they stole your girlfriend, they root for a sports team you don't like, or you just plain don't like them. I don't want to over-generalize, because Europe is a collection…

That makes a lot of sense for termination. How about hiring? Do you know if the European system specifies what attributes are and aren’t allowed to be considered when it comes to hiring employees?

EU is a collection of many countries with their unique laws, even if the principles might be similar. I can only speak of Finnish law.

Our constitution simply states that no-one can be treated unequally, without acceptable reason, based on race, sex etc etc or any other trait related to the person itself.

So caste discrimination would be illegal here as it is a reason based on the person. The loophole of ”Acceptable reason” there is mostly to allow them to put only people with testicles in mandatory military service without it going against constitution.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#136

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

olcor wrote: post #80
ramraj07 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced caste-based "weirdness" of a slightly different flavor - I look like a brahmin (the highest caste), but am not one. Every once in a while I'll meet some indian-origin guy who's brahmin who will come ask me if I am okay with eating that tortilla since it contains lard. Once I let it deliberately slip that I'm not in-fact brahmin, they will be like, "oh" and change topics. The oh always sounds to me…

> eating that tortilla since it contains lard I'm not a Brahmin (and am technically from a much "lower caste") and I wouldn't eat lard (I'm a vegetarian). IMO caste and vegetarianism are different concepts. While certain castes/communities/regions might promote vegetarianism and some might not, I'm not sure if they're always an identifying marker. A lot of people in India are vegetarian for a multitude of reasons and…

It's not 1:1, but there's a clear correlation. To caricature a bit, the Brahmins at the top of the hierarchy can afford to have an elaborate "pure" vegetarian diet with lots of ghee etc (the Jains, mentioned earlier, even exclude root vegetables that would kill the plant), somewhere around the middle of the pile you start eating animals because you need to get your protein where you can, and at the very bottom are the outcastes who do the dirty jobs like butchering animals.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#137

Post by slim »

paloaltokid wrote: post #114
throwaway781341 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wanted to mention few things because they need be said. I hope it helps. Caste system and Varna system in India are 2 different things. Many people including Indians fail to understand this. Caste system and what was written in Manusmruti (some guidelines book for Hindus) was debated even in ancient times but some high-caste-people did take advantage of it and it went screwed up in-between years. Caste system…

Thanks for your reply. Can you explain this one a little bit? > One more example in the context of "untouchable" and Brahmins to help you understand the point of not touching others - If lady in a Brahmin house is preparing food in the morning (she will always take bath first), NOBODY (her parents, kids, husband, whatever) in the house is allowed to go to the kitchen, touch her or even drink water from there until th…

I think parent means that it's not racism and that there are similar activity based segregation rules within the same family living in the same house

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#138

Post by hef19898 »

yedava wrote: post #27
usaar333 wrote: post #10

> lawsuit found that 67% of Dalits surveyed felt treated unfairly at their U.S. workplaces. I'm more surprised 67% of Dalits would have coworkers knowing their caste. Can someone give context on how this happens?

Caste is not just some arbitrary marker. It dictates quiet a few things in your life - like what dialect you speak, your diet, who you marry, which part of the city/town/village you hail from, and even your politics. So for an Indian, identifying someone's caste is pretty easy.

Which gives me pause. German speaking countries have a wide range of dialects, even regional. I am able to tell a guy from Vienna from someone from Tyrol. Upper Bavaria from Lower Bavaria, Berlin from Hamburg. There are older people who can tell from Bavarian county and which mountain valley you are. The latter becoming more difficult, so, with people moving around. Just imagining to use these differences to discriminate people gives me the chills, because it would so damn easy to do. And also, at least superficially, maybe even legal.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#139

Post by 8ytecoder »

olcor wrote: post #80
ramraj07 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced caste-based "weirdness" of a slightly different flavor - I look like a brahmin (the highest caste), but am not one. Every once in a while I'll meet some indian-origin guy who's brahmin who will come ask me if I am okay with eating that tortilla since it contains lard. Once I let it deliberately slip that I'm not in-fact brahmin, they will be like, "oh" and change topics. The oh always sounds to me…

> eating that tortilla since it contains lard I'm not a Brahmin (and am technically from a much "lower caste") and I wouldn't eat lard (I'm a vegetarian). IMO caste and vegetarianism are different concepts. While certain castes/communities/regions might promote vegetarianism and some might not, I'm not sure if they're always an identifying marker. A lot of people in India are vegetarian for a multitude of reasons and…

Vegetarian is a huge identity marker. Quote from a professor from my college to my then girlfriend about me - “I wish he was at least a vegetarian”. I happen to be a vegan now and I have a lighter complexion and I clearly get assumed to be “upper caste” and somehow “smart” goes along with it.

Answering to GP above - I don’t mind talking about it but some bar conversations have opened with it. That’s not pleasant. It’s not a light subject. It’s like me opening with some light chat about racism in America. It requires nuance to understand how deeply and yet subtly embedded caste is in India. You can’t get a house for rent in certain neighbourhoods of even major metros. It’s the reason I don’t use a last name at all. Not even legally. If people shun the practice of disclosing the caste it’ll one day disappear. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#140

Post by olcor »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #136
olcor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> eating that tortilla since it contains lard I'm not a Brahmin (and am technically from a much "lower caste") and I wouldn't eat lard (I'm a vegetarian). IMO caste and vegetarianism are different concepts. While certain castes/communities/regions might promote vegetarianism and some might not, I'm not sure if they're always an identifying marker. A lot of people in India are vegetarian for a multitude of reasons and…

It's not 1:1, but there's a clear correlation. To caricature a bit, the Brahmins at the top of the hierarchy can afford to have an elaborate "pure" vegetarian diet with lots of ghee etc (the Jains, mentioned earlier, even exclude root vegetables that would kill the plant), somewhere around the middle of the pile you start eating animals because you need to get your protein where you can, and at the very bottom are th…

Yes well if we want to go all Veblen, we can see that throughout the world, not just India.

But let us be real here, there are a lot of people in poverty following vegetarian diets, especially because meat doesn't always come cheap in India, and dal/milk relatively are. Some follow it because they were raised in a vegetarian culture. Some do it because they dislike the thought of eating animals.

Brahmins aren't always rich/powerful, and the "lower castes" aren't always that hard off, and this has been the case throughout history.

Some of my friends my well-to-do friends eat meat (sometimes including beef) just fine, some don't. Same with people from different socio-economic levels. This just doesn't reflect reality any more.

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