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How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

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Re: How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

#21

Post by belltaco »

iaw wrote: post #9

Pertinent John Doe line 'When John Doe indicated to Cisco's human resources team that he wanted to file a complaint, he was allegedly told by the department that "caste discrimination was not unlawful".' Pertinent Cisco line 'We have robust processes to report and investigate concerns raised by employees which were followed in this case dating back to 2016, and have determined we were fully in compliance with all law…

There are many things that are not unlawful but people assume they are, for example workplace discrimination(like forcing extra workloads on people on work permits) based on immigration status is 100% legal.

Re: How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

#22

Post by princevegeta89 »

ausjke wrote: post #20
princevegeta89 wrote: post #8

This is probably a reflection of the recent Cisco scumbaggery committed by two castist idiots that discriminated a fellow employee who was allegedly reporting to them. On the other hand, as an Indian myself, I've seen some really backward idiots spread all over America that try to reinforce the notion of caste and propagate that idea to others. Most of them are really uncivilized with narrow and closed minds. I know…

I know caste is for historical reasons, but is there some constitution amendment in India to do away with Caste for the whole country? considering India claims to be the largest democratic country on earth, if Caste is not strongly forbidden it can last forever and yes, it will be here in USA where more Indians are either working here, or acting as management roles these days. It's bad.

There is not one yet afaik. The problem is the majority of people aren't ok with the removal - they want special rights, reservations, and treatment. The sheer power of all these people combined will overthrow any decision made by the government in that direction. These people aren't stupid but just uninformed/uneducated. It then goes into politics - the leaders are way too dumb or just don't care. They fail to spread awareness to anyone whatsoever.

Re: How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

#25

Post by acephal »

toast0 wrote: post #17
wow_yes wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism is power + prejudice, and POCs like Indians have no power in the US. What's going on here is unfortunate but nowhere near a real issue, and certainly not racism.

Sure, there's a technical issue of is a caste the same as a race. But for all intents and purposes, the situation is the same. The employee had bad outcomes alledgedly because people with power (his managers) were prejudiced against him because of who his parents were.

It still blows my mind that people think race in America isn't a caste system. It absolutely is a caste system.

Re: How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

#26

Post by nanna »

A major conflict recently broke out in my (uk, academic) organisation between two colleagues originally from India. The aggressiveness of it really stunned everyone, especially as we thought they were friends. Turns out that none of us had recognised the caste difference between them, which was how the one from a lower caste explained it. It hasn't been resolved. If the one from the upper caste was white and the other black, it would certainly have been swiftly and directly resolved. I don't really know what to do.

Re: How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

#27

Post by golemotron »

toast0 wrote: post #17
wow_yes wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism is power + prejudice, and POCs like Indians have no power in the US. What's going on here is unfortunate but nowhere near a real issue, and certainly not racism.

Sure, there's a technical issue of is a caste the same as a race. But for all intents and purposes, the situation is the same. The employee had bad outcomes alledgedly because people with power (his managers) were prejudiced against him because of who his parents were.

Wait until it's common knowledge that political disposition is heritable.

Re: How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

#28

Post by rtx »

ausjke wrote: post #20
princevegeta89 wrote: post #8

This is probably a reflection of the recent Cisco scumbaggery committed by two castist idiots that discriminated a fellow employee who was allegedly reporting to them. On the other hand, as an Indian myself, I've seen some really backward idiots spread all over America that try to reinforce the notion of caste and propagate that idea to others. Most of them are really uncivilized with narrow and closed minds. I know…

I know caste is for historical reasons, but is there some constitution amendment in India to do away with Caste for the whole country? considering India claims to be the largest democratic country on earth, if Caste is not strongly forbidden it can last forever and yes, it will be here in USA where more Indians are either working here, or acting as management roles these days. It's bad.

Caste based discrimination is illegal. We have many programs which give preference to students and job applicants from historically oppressed castes.

Though people prefer to stay in their own groups (caste), you cant really ban that.

Re: How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

#29

Post by rbecker »

iaw wrote: post #9

Pertinent John Doe line 'When John Doe indicated to Cisco's human resources team that he wanted to file a complaint, he was allegedly told by the department that "caste discrimination was not unlawful".' Pertinent Cisco line 'We have robust processes to report and investigate concerns raised by employees which were followed in this case dating back to 2016, and have determined we were fully in compliance with all law…

> Cisco's HR lawyers decided Caste discrimination was legal

A risky decision, since it's effectively ethnic discrimination:

These groups remained genetically distinct, and the linguistic history of India suggests they spoke languages with dramatically different origins. Nevertheless, it appears there was a good deal of intermarriage [..] But then there is a sea change about 1,500 years ago. [..] People had to marry within their castes. And suddenly, we no longer see signs of intermixing between different groups.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/the-caste-system-has...

Re: How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley

#30

Post by egypturnash »

I find myself wondering why someone from one of the lowest castes does not simply claim to not be that when they are halfway across the world from the society that has a tradition of maintaining this?

I can assume there’s a bunch of subtle class signaling that people do reflexively (speech patterns, dress preferences, whatever, I mean I live in a city with like five different distinct dialects that immediately tell a local what social stratum someone is from), as well as maybe an element of defiant “fuck you I am proud to be someone from the lowest caste who can run rings around your Useless Aristocrat caste ass”. Possibly some distinctive physical features due to centuries of it being forbidden to marry across caste lines?

I apologize if any of these questions are offensive, I know fuck-all about this. I also know it ain’t your job to explain all of this to my white American ass, a quick link to a good Caste 101 For Stupid Americans would be fine :)

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