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California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

latimes.com

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Re: California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

#21

Post by ignoramous »

Bang2Bay wrote: post #17
dis-sys wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you defending the caste system?

caste system would have no problems. Caste discrimination is the problem. Every religion and Entire world has caste system in one form or the other. otherwise there would be no fights.

> Every religion and Entire world has caste system in one form or the other.

Except one thing isn't like another. If you think otherwise, I'd appreciate examples.

> caste system would have no problems. Caste discrimination is the problem.

That's like saying, apartheid isn't the problem, the ensuing discrimination is?

Re: California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

#22

Post by IMAYousaf »

pokeman12345 wrote: post #12

This guy is a Principal Engineer at Cisco. This is nearly as high as you can go on the engineering track. The fact that he's complaining about being discriminated against while some how making it to the 95th percentile paygrade is a bit revealing. Not saying it's impossible, but I dont buy it.

I looked at Cisco's salaries here:

https://www.levels.fyi/company/Cisco/salaries/Software-Engin...

For Cisco's Principal Engineer position, which seems super high up relative to other titles at other tech firms, the pay is actually quite low for what that position's requirements seem to be.

I wonder how this dynamic played out. Disgusting anyway you look at it but the nuance of corporate structure here is worth thinking about.

Re: California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

#23

Post by [deleted] »

mahaganapati wrote: post #9

As a Hindu I'd like to take the opportunity to share that the implementation of the caste system is not based on what it really means to be Hindu. The Vedas state that one's caste is fluid (not based on lineage) and can change in one's lifetime, and that further a person of the worker class is not lesser than someone of the priest caste, they both perform dharma necessary for the community.

[deleted]

Re: California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

#24

Post by rutherblood »

mahaganapati wrote: post #9

As a Hindu I'd like to take the opportunity to share that the implementation of the caste system is not based on what it really means to be Hindu. The Vedas state that one's caste is fluid (not based on lineage) and can change in one's lifetime, and that further a person of the worker class is not lesser than someone of the priest caste, they both perform dharma necessary for the community.

Not an expert on the Vedas thus not sure if any value judgement is made regarding the varnas in it or not but I am definitely SURE it nowhere says that all "varnas" are equal and that mobility between varnas is possible or based on one's "merit". the varna division just by articulation implies a hierarchy. Who wouldn't see the priestly class, the keepers of knowledge, as superior than the sewage workers? Saying that the Vedas say that caste is not based on lineage is utmost tomfoolery. Show me any instance in history where this mobility has been possible; is or was there some kind of "merit committee" in India who decides which caste you belong to, that i have heard nothing of? Which brahmin or other upper caste parent would willingly let their child be judged for which caste they should belong to by merit, be this at any point in history or present? By saying this all you are doing is revising history and saving the face of scripture you deem "holy" and "flawless". At the very least Vedas are definitely not the latter.

Re: California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

#25

Post by IMAYousaf »

ramraj07 wrote: post #8

Interesting because this is not the first time I've heard that Indians in Cisco are extremely cliquey. Definitely remember hearing story of a workplace discrimination settlement from there. In that case it was argued in the gender angle, but the person involved said it's actually a group of Indians who were allegedly pulling all stops to promote each other while trying to exclude other Asians. I'm from India, and can…

I've sadly heard stories about forced deference, though not seemingly as overt as in Cisco, at other tech companies.

The most shocking experience is actually a personal anecdote. Someone from India from a client once asked my father, who also works in tech in a senior position, why people listen to him given his background. Kind of jarring given that the discrimination in the US tends to be much more structural and sinisterly subtle as opposed to some Indian or South African style outright "one drop rule" thing.

Re: California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

#27

Post by tesseracted »

"The suit alleges that Iyer told other workers the employee was Dalit and had gained entry into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology through affirmative action."

Indian law explicitly requires a much lower standard of admission for the lower castes. Is it illegal to take consideration of this fact?

Re: California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

#29

Post by mirimir »

dsr_ wrote: post #13
danans wrote: post #6

This will be an interesting case because it will need to test how a construct like caste maps on to the protected classes of US anti discrimination law. There's plenty of overlap between caste and many US protected classes, including race, class, and religion, but there is not a tight fit to any of them. Perhaps countries like the UK have more experience with this, because they have proportionally much larger and old…

It's the equivalent of hiring white supremacists and letting them make employment decisions.

It does seem a lot like that. And I did find an article which suggests that caste and skin color are associated:[0]

> Our understanding of the genetics of skin pigmentation has been largely skewed towards populations of European ancestry, imparting less attention to South Asian populations, who behold huge pigmentation diversity. Here, we investigate skin pigmentation variation in a cohort of 1,167 individuals in the Middle Gangetic Plain of the Indian subcontinent. Our data confirm the association of rs1426654 with skin pigmentation among South Asians, consistent with previous studies, and also show association for rs2470102 single nucleotide polymorphism. Our haplotype analyses further help us delineate the haplotype distribution across social categories and skin color. Taken together, our findings suggest that the social structure defined by the caste system in India has a profound influence on the skin pigmentation patterns of the subcontinent. In particular, social category and associated single nucleotide polymorphisms explain about 32% and 6.4%, respectively, of the total phenotypic variance. Phylogeography of the associated single nucleotide polymorphisms studied across 52 diverse populations of the Indian subcontinent shows wide presence of the derived alleles, although their frequencies vary across populations. Our results show that both polymorphisms (rs1426654 and rs2470102) play an important role in the skin pigmentation diversity of South Asians.

0) Mishra et al. (2017) Genotype-Phenotype Study of the Middle Gangetic Plain in India Shows Association of rs2470102 with Skin Pigmentation. Journal of Investigative Dermatology: 137, 670-677. doi:10.1016/j.jid.2016.10.043

https://www.jidonline.org/article/S0022-202X(16)32648-3/pdf

Re: California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system

#30

Post by mirimir »

tesseracted wrote: post #27

"The suit alleges that Iyer told other workers the employee was Dalit and had gained entry into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology through affirmative action." Indian law explicitly requires a much lower standard of admission for the lower castes. Is it illegal to take consideration of this fact?

I suspect so. Affirmative action laws would be meaningless, otherwise.
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