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How To Be An Anti-Casteist

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Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#161

Post by higerordermap »

throwawaywg wrote: post #77

The strict social hierarchical dynamics of Indian culture is damaging to a lot of workplaces. 2nd generation Indians are great. The Indians that are from lower casts or from oppressed groups like Christians or Muslims are really great. But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly. This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting…

> But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly.

This is also bigotry.

But I should agree that the people who come to become managers are likely to have the attitude that favours nepotism. These people are not interested in what they are doing. They just want to be a manager.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#162

Post by yedava »

blinkingled wrote: post #71
canistel wrote: post #48

See, you can have discourses on caste, you can deliberate as you will, but endogamy - marrying within your caste - is still the norm across India, even in the states where people are not that finicky about caste. Until this chain is broken, the shadow boxing on the sidelines will continue. Interestingly the Caribbean communities have somehow managed to shed caste, while retaining the Hindu identity.

I fail to understand how marriage is anything but a justifiably personal preference. Jobs are a different story - you can't prefer one race/ethnicity/caste over the other for obvious reasons. Marriage on the other hand is very personal - it would be ridiculous to expect people to marry into other races/castes/ethnicities as the norm - it never happens that way in any part of the world no matter how advanced - people…

There is a lot of violent policing in India on who you are allowed to marry. Even if two consenting adults chose to marry, one of their families or both may not like it. These families then take it upon themselves to do everything in their power, starting from emotional blackmail and upto murder to stop the intermixing of castes.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#163

Post by kelnos »

awakeasleep wrote: post #146
kelnos wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though I really don't understand why lower caste dalits in the US continue to stay Hindu, when they could just change their religion and avoid the whole caste discussion altogether. Perhaps it's just they have strong religious belief in Hinduism? I don't have more than a surface understanding of the religion or how devoted people tend to be, but if I think about the various sects of Christianity, many people of cer…

Hinduism isn't a religion, it's just a word the British made up to refer to all the (non muslim) beliefs in India in convenient shorthand

Even if that's true (it's not), my point still stands. Religion isn't something you change like a jacket.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#164

Post by paloaltokid »

klmadfejno wrote: post #70

The dialogue here seems foreign to me. Playing a coy game where you realize someone is trying to infer something about you so you dodge the question. It's weird to imagine that people engage in a cultural dance where you need certainty of arbitrary facts before you decide to act like a dick (oversimplified). But it's really weird to see that there's not overt cultural movements to shed this stuff. Trying to hide the…

> The dialogue here seems foreign to me. Playing a coy game where you realize someone is trying to infer something about you so you dodge the question. It's weird to imagine that people engage in a cultural dance where you need certainty of arbitrary facts before you decide to act like a dick (oversimplified).

Okay but where are you really from?

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#165

Post by UncleOxidant »

throwawaywg wrote: post #77

The strict social hierarchical dynamics of Indian culture is damaging to a lot of workplaces. 2nd generation Indians are great. The Indians that are from lower casts or from oppressed groups like Christians or Muslims are really great. But the higher castes are extremely insular, and treat anyone of any race poorly. This might be taboo, but every time I see a situation where there are multiple Indians in a reporting…

I get nervous when I see too many of one ethnic group in a reporting structure in a large tech company - no matter what the ethnic group is. It's a red flag if a manager is primarily hiring people from his/her ethic group. And yes, if you end up being the only white person in the group you definitely can end up being the odd person out (and I wouldn't exempt Chinese from this as you have). It's uncomfortable, but you can see this as a cultural learning experience - the opportunity to see how it feels to be a minority. It's not often that we white people experience this in the US.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#166

Post by whimsicalism »

drieddust wrote: post #149
glitcher wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you just saying it's already common, or that you are in support of social status profiling?

Most companies look for "cultural fits"? Isn't that a form of caste discrimination? People from similar social background have similar taste hence fits well culturally.Isn't that obvious? If racial discrimination doesn't exist why Blacks are economically poor across in west?

I mean there are two effects:

1. Ongoing discrimination 2. Different starting points + law of large numbers.

If you start one racial group off in a country with property and let them acquire wealth for a few hundred years, then free another racial group from slavery with absolutely nothing - even after a long while those wealth differences will persist.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#167

Post by paloaltokid »

hairband wrote: post #159

Quoting from the article: > Years ago, these invitations to go swimming with American friends and neighbors were a sign of acceptance. But now the same invitations for his fellow Indians felt like a trap to out him as a Dalit. Not trying to defend casteism or anything, and Maybe I understood it wrong, but this makes it seem like if Indian guys are inviting him for swim then it must be ascertain his caste, but if Amer…

I think you misunderstood. The point is that it's not in his head - he knows his Indian colleagues are trying to figure out his caste. Non-Indians don't have a caste so he knows it's safe in that situation.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#168

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #118
edoceo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many ethnic stereotypes, personal samples only (I doubt this person kept diligent notes) then classified as truth. Sad to read when the topic is ethnic bias.

it's definitely more than an anecdote, the NYT ran a piece about it recently. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/caste-cisco-india... ) There's entire ecosystem of chat groups of higher-caste Indians in American firms who systematically hire based on it and even go as far as to expose others.

[deleted]

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#169

Post by Natsu »

erklik wrote: post #45
Natsu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know if someone is fishing for someone's caste or the markers thereof? Sadly, I wouldn't necessarily even know if a colleague was doing this unless they were really direct about it.

There's quite a few examples of this in the article but it seems mainly things like neighborhood, names, "background", and other things of that nature.

Those seem relatively obvious, but I would never have figured out things like white threads or the thing with kitchens.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#170

Post by [deleted] »

tt433 wrote: post #56
canistel wrote: post #48

See, you can have discourses on caste, you can deliberate as you will, but endogamy - marrying within your caste - is still the norm across India, even in the states where people are not that finicky about caste. Until this chain is broken, the shadow boxing on the sidelines will continue. Interestingly the Caribbean communities have somehow managed to shed caste, while retaining the Hindu identity.

And the stateside anglo version of this: how many white college grads marry other white college grads? Worth reflection

[deleted]
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