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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

#141

Post by HelloNurse »

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…

You are the only one talking about vegetarianism.

It's fairly obvious that from the traditionalist point of view of the poster's friend a Brahmin is expected to care more than inferior people from no-good castes about religious and semi-religious precepts like not eating lard (to avoid eating inappropriate animals, not because lard isn't vegetarian).

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

#142

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#143

Post by saagarjha »

hef19898 wrote: post #126
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…

Some master-level mental acrobatics I assume? Because, if you work really hard to convince yourself, a caste is neither race (at least for white folks, all castes are Indian aren't they), nor Religion (they are all Hindu, right?) or sex (as long as you don't distinguish between men and women). So everything is fine, and we (HR), don't have to do anything, case closed, back to lunch. Happy to see the thing blowing up,…

Nit: Hindi is a language, a Hindu is a person who practices Hinduism

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

#144

Post by olcor »

8ytecoder wrote: post #139
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…

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’…

> It requires nuance to understand how deeply and yet subtly embedded caste is in India

And this is the nuance I'm talking about. I understand vegetarianism definitely has positive connotations in India, but it's rarely about caste, which is what we're looking at here.

There's a lot of different opinions in a country of a billion people, but just labeling it as caste isn't going to do any of it favors.

> It’s not a light subject

None of it is. It's not fun being a vegetarian in the States; doesn't mean people have ostracized vegetarianism because they love their meat burgers. Two different things here, we can't get to the root of things if we don't parse them properly.

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

#145

Post by thewhitetulip »

randomguy2379 wrote: post #54
paloaltokid wrote: post #38

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. On some level it feels to me like it's something Indian folks don't share because they feel it would be misunderstood (which makes a lot of sense). Or maybe it's a kind of "not airing out the laundry in publi…

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…

I am sorry that you had to face it.

> how hindu society openly supports and promotes it

My 'high class' friends always bring up their caste even when it is not related at all.

'in Bramhins we don't do x'm 'In us Rajputs, we don't do x'

They can easily say, 'I am a veg or I dont' drink or my family is xyz'. But no. their caste _has_ to come up.

A friend of mine had asked one of her friends who used to do this: 'okay, we get it that you are a Bramhin, there is no need to bring it up in every other sentence.' She was shell shocked and never ever did I hear her say "oh we Bramhins we do xyz".

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

#146

Post by saagarjha »

samfisher83 wrote: post #93
dragonwriter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I was HR why wouldn't you just fire the manager and move on. Because HR generally doesn't have arbitrary hiring and firing power, and because their job in most firms is to protect, first, the company bottom line from unacceptable risk of legal liability for employment actions and, second, the company’s management (who presumably are looking out for the bottom line in other ways).

It would seem to me to reduce the risk you fire the manager.

Depends. The manager can always turn around and come after you, and usually managers have more investment put into them so if you look at it from just a numerical perspective it might be worse to do so.

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

#147

Post by peroporque »

walt0 wrote: post #99

I live and work in India and I would like to throw more light on this. Me and my friends like to joke around that you will never get your dues, either pay raise or promotions unless you have the last names jain, gupta, sharma, verma. I had a guy on my team who was very capable but did not have the right last name, he was being harassed for promotions for 4-5 years. On the other hand the manager class was entirely "ja…

Couldn't people just change their last name? I imagine if suddenly everyone's last name was Gupta, that kind of discrimination would become difficult.

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

#148

Post by hef19898 »

saagarjha wrote: post #143
hef19898 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some master-level mental acrobatics I assume? Because, if you work really hard to convince yourself, a caste is neither race (at least for white folks, all castes are Indian aren't they), nor Religion (they are all Hindu, right?) or sex (as long as you don't distinguish between men and women). So everything is fine, and we (HR), don't have to do anything, case closed, back to lunch. Happy to see the thing blowing up,…

Nit: Hindi is a language, a Hindu is a person who practices Hinduism

Thanks! I knew there had to be something wrong in there!

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

#149

Post by olcor »

HelloNurse wrote: post #141
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…

You are the only one talking about vegetarianism. It's fairly obvious that from the traditionalist point of view of the poster's friend a Brahmin is expected to care more than inferior people from no-good castes about religious and semi-religious precepts like not eating lard (to avoid eating inappropriate animals, not because lard isn't vegetarian).

Not always. As I mentioned, an American (not of Indian origin, and presumably without thinking about caste) warned me about rennet when he knew I was a vegetarian. Please don't misunderstand my words.

I talk about vegetarianism because the GP talked about it through the lens of caste, and I stated that I thought otherwise.

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

#150

Post by slim »

tathougies wrote: post #12
js8 wrote: post #9

Maybe somebody can clarify this for me. It seems that there is a difference in American and European laws about discrimination, where U.S. has a concept of protected groups (i.e. they explicitly enumerate who is not to be discriminated), while EU has laws based on equality of the groups (or more generally, humans). It seems to me that the American system is more antagonistic, in the sense it really prefers some group…

Can you explain the EU law? If a man applied to be a girl's PE teacher that would be in a locker room, is that allowed? Certainly not, right? The US allows discrimination in general as long as it's not based on membership in certain groups, unless such membership is germaine to the job. So you could limit gender in my PE teacher example, but you can't for a crossing guard (because presumably, anyone can be a crossing…

A better example would be casting for a film. You can definitely cast only Aryan men for a Nazi role. That would be reasonable and the law permits that. Generally speaking cases of discrimination are settled in court and judges have the latitude to, well, judge.
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