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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

#211

Post by ramraj07 »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #158
olcor wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alway…

Sure, we're generalizing about over a billion people here. But I still contend that if you were to take statistically significant samples across the caste hierarchy, you'd find more vegetarians up top.

There's actually a huge regional aspect to it - western states have a large veggie population that traverses many classes.

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

#212

Post by thickice »

clothesline wrote: post #192
thickice wrote: post #86

I am an Indian and have been in US for many years. There is one thing I have noticed among brahmins, during their Naturalization process many of them change their last names to Iyer or Iyengar (two sects of Brahmins). I am referring to guys from the southern part of India where I am from. Its not a common practice there. My interpretation of this is these folks have a perceived sense of superiority feeling about thei…

The social movement started several years ago. Its called the quota system and it has been enforced at various levels of government jobs and education. People just get promoted with no regard to their actual performance in all kinds of government jobs. This type of reservation on the basis of caste is regressive. What about someone who is supposedly from a "higher" caste but is still not economically well-off. Such p…

Fair points. I don't have historical data, but my observation is that the issue of brahmins controlling/dominating lot of sectors was a real problem at some point and the reservation system was a populist response that did provide some benefit for oppressed castes, but created a whole bunch of other problems and unintended consequences. And its still remains such a hot button populist issue no political party would dare implementing the required reforms. The unintended consequence is the emigration of a lot of people from the "higher" castes. I guess its hard to say if it had any material impact on India's progress but the "higher" caste population that doesn't have the means/resources to emigrate is put in a real difficult situation.

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

#213

Post by twic »

manquer wrote: post #67
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

I would say caste is ancestry based discrimination

But not national ancestry, which is what is protected.

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

#214

Post by _8j50 »

lki876 wrote: post #188
_8j50 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caste is another term for race. Both terms are not terms that designate bioligical properties of a person but social grouping based on perceived social differences (e.g.: even if your skin is lighter than some white people, having 1/8th black ancestory will get you classified as black, while actual african americans with wealthy had become "honorary white"). Like others have said, you can't say "I won't hire you beca…

> Caste is another term for race. Both terms are not terms that designate bioligical properties... Caste is based on profession.

Isn't it the other way where profession is based on the caste you are born into? You make it sound like a child born into a lower caste can choose a profession that lets them join a higher caste. It's not different than american back slaves being born into slavery, if you call slavery a profession or jim crow era legal segregation limiting jobs based on race.

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

#215

Post by scandox »

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…

Curious what extreme left ideology looks like in India.

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

#216

Post by linlucas »

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’m sorry that you had to go through this. I’m east Asian myself, and I often cant tell the ethnicity of other east Asians (Korean, Chinese...). So how does Indians determine the caste of other people? Is it by the lightness of their skin?

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

#217

Post by postingawayonhn »

peroporque wrote: post #147
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.

Yes. That's what Sikhs do.

> Male Sikhs generally have Singh ("lion") as their middle or last name, though not all Singhs are Sikhs. Likewise, female Sikhs have Kaur ("princess") as their middle or last name. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhs

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

#218

Post by thewhitetulip »

twic wrote: post #168
youeseh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discriminating based on caste is racism. Actually, the Brits used the caste system to their own advantage* and discrimination based on caste didn't become outlawed until the Indian constitution was written post-independence. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India

Britain has had a very strong class system, which was perhaps at its peak around the time of the empire, so it would not have been a big leap at all to understand the Indian caste system.

They wanted to divide the country so they used it. They didn't actually need to understand it.

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

#219

Post by eklavya »

I am ashamed that a few bad people give a bad name to us all. It reinforces the cast divide and enables a section to trumpet about the bad Indian culture or bad Hindu.

It's despicable and I fail to understand how educated and technical people can still practice something so inhuman.

To the people saying nothing has changed in India, no, so so much has changed, there are many more intercaste marriages and anecdotal but like 50% of marriage news I hear are all intercaste. Casteism is on a decline as far as I can tell. The young generation seems to care about these things.

Also people saying Indian parents don't allow to marry anyone with a lower caste are being selective. Indian parents don't allow to marry anyone outside their "own" caste whether they are higher or lower, practised by both "lower" and "upper" caste parents.

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

#220

Post by seemslegit »

As a cisgender hetherosexual male of European descent (that's apex privilege tier in case it's not obvious) I can't help notice that the things that keep the Indian caste system alive are Brahmins opining against it at every opportunity while prepending their statements with 'As a Brahmin...' and the fact that promoting Brahmins makes sense for many companies with significant Hindu workforce because other castes naturally defer to their authority and in many cases this is pretty much all you want from a line/middle manager.
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