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How To Be An Anti-Casteist

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Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#171

Post by Udder_nonsense »

andreilys wrote: post #148
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> interests, hobbies I don't ask about these in interviews, and don't use them to make decisions. You like My Little Pony or have a massive collection of guns? Or both? I literally could not care any less, it's none of my business. > mannerisms I'm not really sure what you'd see here in a regular interview beyond being literate and maybe nervous. The signal here is murky at best -- other than red flags, you shouldn't…

Mannerisms could be anything from how articulate the candidate is and the depth of their vocabulary, to how they dress and the types of questions they ask. I’m not saying it’s okay to discriminate candidates by it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Go to any finance firm on Wall Street and tell me how many people employed there grew up on food stamps.

- Mannerisms could be anything from how articulate the candidate is and the depth of their vocabulary, to how they dress and the types of questions they ask.

Those are all qualitative things that tell me about the person's intelligence, social acumen, experience, worldliness, etc. Those things usually matter for hiring. Has nothing to do with caste or race or gender or identity or age or sexual orientation any other protected status.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#172

Post by throwawaysea »

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

This is correct. “Hinduism” is convenient colonialist/reductionist way of framing a culture the British colonists wanted to control and depict in certain tones. Calling “Hinduism” a religion is like inventing a term like “Americanism” and using it to refer to everything that America entails (its history, its inventions, its culture, its people) a religion.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#173

Post by higerordermap »

blinkingled wrote: post #55
la6471 wrote: post #40

This interview seems one sided though. I know that for last two decades Brahmins and other so called upper caste Indians have been protesting India’s quota system which is basically affirmative action whereby certain percentages of college seats and job vacancies are reserved only for people who do not belong to the upper castes. So there have been numerous occasions where meritorious but poor upper caste youths did…

Yeah. I can't say that I have experienced caste in same light as the article - in many jobs and across many hiring decisions it was never about caste but rather sometimes about language, geography and compatibility. It's also a matter of preferences as far as marriage goes - Brahmins for e.g. marrying within is not so much of a given today and whatever percentage of it is still happening is more about familiarity and…

Why is this downvoted? Affirmative action carried out on caste basis without consideration about economic state of candidate is a real problem in India. It even harms genuine candidates even from reserved categories. But it is not fixed due to political reasons.

The "upper caste people are successful because they are wealthy" meme needs to die. Many upper caste people are poor as well.. It also doesn't explain why Tamil Brahmins (an upper caste) are seen more successful educationally despite being much less in number than North Indian Baniyas (Also an upper caste).

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#174

Post by throwawaysea »

starpilot wrote: post #133
troyjfarrell wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience (anecdote) is the opposite. I worked for an Indian manager in a game studio. I don't know what caste, except that he wasn't Christian or Muslim, probably because he didn't think it worth mentioning. He hired based on demonstrated skill, so we had a diverse group of coworkers. He actively encouraged the group to eat together, arranging meals out with careful consideration for the group's preferences. He…

Parent comment is about multiple indians in a reporting group, not just one. This can greatly affect the group dynamic.

But no one ever calls it out when a white manager reports to another white manager who reports to another white manager and so on. That has an effect on the group dynamic as well, where an Indian employee or those of other backgrounds may not feel included. Another example is the comments here calling out Indian managers’ nepotism, which feels like an assumption without basis. Referrals and leveraging employees’ personal networks are a key hiring strategy for every tech company. And yet when Indians do it, an ugly label of “nepotism” gets affixed to it, with accusations of racial or religious discrimination.

I’m very disappointed in how HN views Indians - it seems like they are not treated as other minorities in America, and aren’t afforded the advantages of being white in America either. Instead a different standard is used against them, labeling standard professional practices with ugly terms. I wonder if the HN crowd also regards other Asian coworkers similarly.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#175

Post by sundarurfriend »

klmadfejno wrote: post #74
vats wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, people (at least in northern parts of India) tend to use the word as a synonym for "last name" in common parlance. It can be used without an intention to discriminate (though the consequences depend on the context, since you can figure out the community from a last name in most cases). Was the interviewee of Indian origin? Unless you are of Indian origin, it's not applicable to you. If the interviewee was…

As a non indian, that sounds like an incredibly weak form of plausible deniability covering one's ass.

That's reasonable if you've only ever come across castes in this context. When I think of American buses, I think of Rosa Parks and racism, because that's the only context I have - but that doesn't make that the only relevant characteristic of them.

We here in India hear the "caste as abhorrent discrimination" side from a very early age (and that's certainly important), but it's taken me years of experience to learn that in practice it's more than that. People think of caste as a form of extended family, or as shared culture, or of understanding someone's roots. That person might have said that just as someone might say "I can't figure out if their accent is from New York or New Jersey": that might be an intent to discriminate, but might also well be idle curiosity about the person.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#176

Post by andreareina »

foogazi wrote: post #89
samatman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a couple ways to read this one, and no context for deciding between them. Indians have a deeply engrained culture of noticing caste. This is true whether they are ok with discriminating on that basis, or staunchly against it, caste permeates the culture. So either she was only interested in hiring Brahmins, and realized that she shouldn't have tipped her hand... or she was curious about it, and then realized…

I think when it gets to saying these things out loud it might be too late The fact that it would be top of mind at all Could be curiosity or it could be a status play. Are there castes she would/would not hire from, would it be a problem to getting work done? Edit: I’ve worked with indians my whole career and only recently learned via HN that caste system “carried over” to the US

I have all sorts of thoughts that I don't act on, or actively work to counteract. Should I be judged on these thoughts that, to a first approximation, I cannot control[1] yet I don't let affect what I do?

I'm flawed, but I used to be more so. A big part of that improvement is thanks to the people that judged my actions and not every aberrant thought that entered my head.

[1] responsibility is there of course, and I work to reduce their future frequency. But that change takes time, and until then the best remedy to unwanted ingrained patterns is to not act on them.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#177

Post by peanutz454 »

mandliya wrote: post #83

I am quite surprised! I am not saying it doesn’t happen, but I am plain surprised. I have been in US for 8 years and reported to Indians most of the time (I am Indian too), and thought of happening something like this here never occurred to me. I believed like minded, educated Indians who mostly comes from Middle class would never do this.

You cannot cure sick people. Caste is just an excuse they would use, if it were not caste they would use some other means to be an ass. In 10 years of office environment, I never faced any caste based issues in India. Outside of office is a slightly different story, but even then as a north Indian I only faced issues from north Indians and mostly ignorable.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#178

Post by sundarurfriend »

higerordermap wrote: post #156
gautamdivgi wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw - she shouldn't have said that or even thought that way. But I'm not sure why she was "trying to figure out his caste". The last name is a dead giveaway most of the times. Quite a few Indian last names and their castes are documented in wikipedia.

In South India people don't always use surnames. Rather it is in format or wise versa.

Yep. At least in my state (Tamilnadu), this is because people gave up caste names voluntarily as part of the anti-caste-discrimination movement, and became mononymous. Then, those of us who had to interact with people and entities that strictly assume a two-name structure started using Father's name as last name, simply because a lot of registration forms (and some people too) cannot cope with the idea that someone doesn't have a lastname.

It's not universal though, or even a majority - a lot of people still are mononymous, and many are confused when Facebook and the ilk ask for "Last name" (and sometimes fill in hilarious things).

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#180

Post by creata »

drieddust wrote: post #144
throwawaysea wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in discussions like this is that hordes of gullible/uninformed commenters filled with cynicism and essentially colonial senses of superiority are willing to make gross generalizations about other cultures like India without knowing any of the history, culture, precolonial way of living, etc. They eat up skin deep coverage of complicated topics like the article linked here, with stories pushed by certain g…

I am getting downvoted for merely stating the origins of caste system. This speaks volumes about echo chamber in which HN audience is living.

Please don't assume motives for downvotes, it's a fruitless endeavor that only makes you look bitter.

You were not "merely stating the origins of [the] caste system." You justified it, by stating that "all mature societies need division of labor." Firstly, that is a very vague claim, and secondly, you neglected to explain why on Earth that "division of labor" should be hereditary.

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