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Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

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Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#71

Post by LatteLazy »

torb-xyz wrote: post #56
LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

It's frequently brought up in radical leftist discourse* (marxism, anarchism, etc…) or even center-left discourse (social democracy, social liberalism, etc…). AFAICT it seems to be taboo outside these circles. * I should mention that many people make big point that you shouldn't use economic points like this to ignore things like racism, i.e.: while racism intersects with economics you can't treat it like it's the sa…

That's exactly how I feel. It's taboo to discuss that our economic system is just as rigged as (say) China's.

I also should have been clearer: racism is definately also a factor. Poor minorities fare so badly because they get both racism AND classism (or whatever the appropriate term is for the natural increase of both wealth and poverty).

I think one of the major upsides of the cold war was that western countries were very eager to show we could do better than those dirty commies. That birthed all sorts of programs to give people a chance of improving their lots. Most of those are dead now.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#72

Post by whaley »

blueterminal wrote: post #49
LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

> Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is a ridiculous over-exaggeration in the age of internet.

This discussion made me think of the "Joe Flom" chapter from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - https://www.litcharts.com/lit/outliers/chapter-5-the-three-l...

I post this not really as a rebuttal to your post, or the grandparent, but more of a "here's what success a couple of generations later" actually looks like and what some of its characteristics may be.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#73

Post by brazzy »

golergka wrote: post #47
LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

One of the main human drives in life is to provide for their children. Why shouldn't you be able to spend all the resources you can to give your kids advantage? What I find curious about this discussion, which often occurs when people discuss what advantages are fair and unfair, estate tax and the like, is that they perceive each human being as a completely independent actor. Whereas for me, at least, it's more natur…

> Why shouldn't you be able to spend all the resources you can to give your kids advantage?

Because it's absolutely toxic for society as a whole if inequality gets amplified over generations.

Estate tax should ideally be 100% above a reasonable cap. And by "reasonable" I mean a sum definitely below "never needs to work to support a middle class lifestyle".

> If the first generation achieved success, should it be reset in the next one?

Yes, absolutely.

> Why?

Because many opportunities are essentially zero-sum.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#74

Post by nicoburns »

goldcd wrote: post #57
k__ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. "Oh look at those poor backward indians!!" Well, most of the rich people I know had rich parents. If you can live with your parents while building your company or they gift you a few thousand dollars, that's often the make or break factor that saves your ass when pivoting a few times.

I've always thought it's that last point you touch on, that's most important. There are mechanisms (and we can discuss their effectiveness) that try to balance the playing field in provision of opportunity - but there's a huge gap in "provision to cope with failure" e.g. Two people graduate with equal abilities and are offered an opportunity to found a start-up. One of those people knows his parents can cover rent/fo…

> I'm not even sure I can think of a fair way to level this.

The only way is to reduce the pre-existing wealth inequality. Which is why a lot of people are in favour of strongly progressive taxation.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#75

Post by buran77 »

twoslide wrote: post #38
LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

It's equally probable to say that the driving factor is caste discrimination, which is the underlying cause of economic inequalities. They are two highly correlated variables, and disaggregation is difficult, but there's no (a priori) reason to assume the drive is economics and the "proxy" is race. The idea of "it takes a few generations" is also widely critiqued with respect to racial progress in the US: https://www…

The caste system is worse than just being rich or poor. Poor people rarely accept that they have to be poor and it's the natural order of things.

I remember when I saw this for the first time and it left me speechless. I'd work with a team of Indians, all officially with the same job title and qualifications. But while most of the guys (this was a long time ago, it was all guys) would really work hard, there would always be one who knew nothing about the job and didn't even bother to pretend he's working. He would literally just walk around acting like the CEO on inspection, or even like a slave owner, wearing a suit that cost as much as the yearly salary of the other guys. He was of course paid a lot more then the rest of the team even if he couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag.

But what shocked me the most was that the rest of the guys, even when they knew I'm (very publicly) on their side, still talked as if this is the natural order of things. It was not only normal, it was expected. I realized that it's not like a prisoner obeying the guards because they have guns, it's like someone obeying a priest because "he talks to God".

Those colleagues accepted that their position is immutable, that those things were happening exactly the way they were supposed to happen. The "natural order of things". Maybe things changed in recent times, I certainly hope nobody accepts their position just because someone wants an easier time discriminating them.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#76

Post by thereare5lights »

roenxi wrote: post #26

This article appears to be about a current lawsuit. The claims that are being made are outrageous, but that is what is expected of a plaintiffs claims in this sort of lawsuit. I doubt I'll make many friends adding this in, but an uncomfortable statistical artefact of an affirmative action program is the candidates in that program are very likely going to have lower average competence than the rest of the cohort. That…

Wtf? How is affirmative action relevant in this context?

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#77

Post by coldtea »

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #62
LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

> This is never really discussed directly I see it discussed constantly all over the internet. Also it's not entirely true; there's a bunch of examples where people did make it big. All too often this position boils down to "Capitalism bad" which then just attracts the "Communism bad" opposition and ends in a pointless shitshow buzzword exchange.

>Also it's not entirely true; there's a bunch of examples where people did make it big.

That's totally irrelevant though. People are not saying it's impossible for poor to start a company and make it big (in which case those would be counter-examples), they say it's many times harder.

The discrimination lies in the extra difficulty. As someone said, the rich kids starting a startup get to play startup in "easy mode" (which also doesn't mean they'll succeed easily in the market -- just that devoting time to and trying to succeed is far more easy and less rick prone for them).

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#78

Post by eesmith »

OneGuy123 wrote: post #3

It's funny how this is NEVER mentioned in the media. I guess BLM is "so hot" right now (but to be honest this caste issue was never mention even before BLM also). Perhaps this is because in the West this concepts of casts within society is completely foreign to us. So for a Westerner this does not create any acute psychological response if someone says "I'm a Dalit". A westerner would be like "huh, yeah ok man, I hav…

Bear in mind that "African American activists helped created South Asian America as we know it." - https://blackdesisecrethistory.org/ , and high-social status of Asian-Americans who immigrated after the racist National Origins Formula was replaced in 1965 with a policy which emphasized professionals and other individuals with specialized skills is used as a wedge to attempt to break that solidarity. So if it's taken so long for BLM to be "so hot", perhaps it's not so surprising that an awareness of caste discrimination in the US lags?

Some people say "I don't see race" as of it's a good thing. (See https://www.oprahmag.com/life/relationships-love/a32824297/c... and https://theconversation.com/i-dont-see-race-and-other-white-... for two of a myriad of articles on the topic.)

Most people in the US really don't see caste, because they don't have the training or experience, and therefore also don't really see caste discrimination.

I think this shows a downside of "not seeing" bigotry.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#79

Post by p1necone »

teekert wrote: post #58

So... They nicely fit in with the upper-caste Americans. As long as you have a system where you make some "upper-caste" universities so expensive that only upper-caste people can attend them, you will keep the caste system alive. This is why education should not be privatized, there are no equal opportunities within the US as well as in India. It's all about what family you are born into. The whole caste system is al…

The Indian caste system is a specific, fairly regimented thing. Not really the same as the informal structuring of society that we might colloquially refer to as a caste system.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India)

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#80

Post by _jgdh »

For people who discuss this with Indian co-workers - don't be surprised if they find this bizarre or far fetched. For most upper caste folks, it appears as if the caste system doesn't exist because they've never been at the receiving end of it. Most people (me included) would be tempted to say - I've never discriminated, I've never seen it happen in front of me, I'm confident none of my friends would do it so therefore it doesn't exist.

But it does. It's heartbreaking that my fellow Indians have to deal with this in 2020. Just like BLM educated some white people about the existence of racism, how it manifests, how it affects people etc., we need a similar movement to educate upper caste Indians.

I've also seen the same people say "if we completely ignore caste, it'll go away". It won't. I personally can't tell you what someone's caste is based on their name because I don't care enough to find out the mapping between name caste. If everyone was like this, there wouldn't be a problem. But I know for a fact that there exist people who can map name to caste and these people also discriminate on the basis of caste. These people might only be a minority but they can have a disproportionate effect. As long as they exist, the rest of us can't adopt an ostrich approach to the caste system.

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