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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

#31

Post by toast0 »

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 couldn't read the article because of the paywall.

I'm going to assume the person in question graduated from IIT as well as gained entry. If so, I don't see how it matters if he got in through a door with a lower bar, if he graduated, he graduated. Unless graduating from IIT is a rubber stamp for showing up?

Also, just because the bar is lower for admissions doesn't mean that people who cleared the bar couldn't have cleared the bar otherwise. I don't see how IIT entrance exam scores are relevant for employment at Cisco anyway.

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

#32

Post by wahern »

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?

It's rare that any single, isolated statement or action will rise to the level of illegal discrimination. Usually there's a pattern of behavior, and that pattern would provide context to prove any alleged implications in bringing up the affirmative action programs. You'd have to read the actual complaint. The journalist is only giving highlights that they feel are newsworthy, which may not strongly correlate to legal significance. However, mentioning the discussion of color is probably exceedingly important. The Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination based on color explicitly illegal. Without that hook it might be more difficult to argue that Federal civil rights legislation applies to discrimination based on caste.

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

#33

Post by olivermarks »

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.

@dsr_ I'd argue it is more of a clique/cluster thing - very common in the bay area. A couple of people get hired and bring 'their' people in, whether from Indiana or Iran. They have the all important inside track on information and hiring criteria and help bolster the first in's career. It's a huge HR problem (and HR are typically oblivious, more interested in hiring and firing to order)

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

#34

Post by jeswin »

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.

Caste system can find its roots in Hindu texts, although just like other religious texts it is possible to defend it interpretation. For example, Shambuka's story [1]. In any case, the only credible interpretation will be to see the implementation in practice.

Caste system is modern day slavery or worse, and unless you're Indian (and especially unless you're from a caste lower down the hierarchy) it's difficult to comprehend. It's woven into the social fabric - even people's names carry their caste so it's often possible to discriminate or favor immediately on introduction. People usually do not marry castes lower in the hierarchy, so this is perpetuated over generations. It's changing, but not fast enough.

For those who are unfamiliar:

- Untouchability still exists in a big way in India. Even today, many Brahmins don't touch (or share meals, space etc) with Shudras. Yeah, not kidding.

- Caste based discrimination at the work place is rampant. Which is a big reason why there are fewer lower castes in the org hierarchy.

- Violence against lower castes happen every day.

- The situation continues to be so bad that there exist elaborate laws to make sure you don't get insulted or harmed over caste. [2]

- Caste is (nearly always) assigned at birth.

Finally, I don't wanna get into Godwin's law territory. But Indians should refrain from arguing about the merits of the caste system, in the same way nobody ever says "but Nazism isn't all bad."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambuka

[2]: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/globalcaste/caste0801-03.ht...

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

#35

Post by mirimir »

IMAYousaf wrote: post #25
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 s…

I'm confused. Was it about the Indian's background, or your father's background?

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

#36

Post by danans »

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.

Kind of, except with caste the "racial" categories have repeatedly both smoothed out and discretized over the millenia, though always with a with a hierarchy. It's a far more complicated system of discrimination and social ordering than the traditional black/white dichotomy of American discrimination.

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

#37

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#38

Post by MattGaiser »

toast0 wrote: post #31
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 couldn't read the article because of the paywall. I'm going to assume the person in question graduated from IIT as well as gained entry. If so, I don't see how it matters if he got in through a door with a lower bar, if he graduated, he graduated. Unless graduating from IIT is a rubber stamp for showing up? Also, just because the bar is lower for admissions doesn't mean that people who cleared the bar couldn't have…

It depends on what theory you believe about why a university degree is valuable. If you see it as a competitive signal of how many people a candidate was better than, then the signal is contaminated.

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

#39

Post by mirimir »

olivermarks wrote: post #33
dsr_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

@dsr_ I'd argue it is more of a clique/cluster thing - very common in the bay area. A couple of people get hired and bring 'their' people in, whether from Indiana or Iran. They have the all important inside track on information and hiring criteria and help bolster the first in's career. It's a huge HR problem (and HR are typically oblivious, more interested in hiring and firing to order)

How so? From TFA, I get that all of the relevant parties are from India.

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

#40

Post by cjsaltlake »

whatshisface wrote: post #14
dis-sys wrote: post #10

shocking but still confused. When they practiced the indian caste system in the US, how would they interact with people not from india, e.g. people with US, EU, Vietnam, Korea etc background? Do they get treated as "high caste" or "low caste" people?

Caste is highly correlated to skin pigmentation, so in practice... this would be almost indistinguishable from regular old racism.

It's not at all highly correlated, and skin color certainly wouldn't trump real caste affiliation.
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