How To Be An Anti-Casteist • Hacker News Board

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#201

Post by 082349872349872 » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:35 AM UTC

sundarurfriend wrote: post #178

higerordermap wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

and sometimes fill in hilarious things

Many odd dutch surnames date back to dutchies, who had previously been using patronymics, having fun with the first census, taken under Napoleon in 1811.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#202

Post by puranjay » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:41 AM UTC

imheretolearn wrote: post #193

I am an Indian and I genuinely don't know exactly where I stand in the cast hierarchy. In India it was pretty common for people to ask me my caste. However, what struck me the most was, that during my Master's in the US, other Indians who I was attending university with, would ask me the same question. When I would tell them that I genuinely don't know the answer, they would mock and imperceptibly laugh at me. I felt…

If you don't know your caste, you're most likely upper caste.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#203

Post by occamrazor » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:42 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #157

andreilys wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it’s already common. Look at the concentration and over representation of Ivy League schools in industries like finance. It’s very unlikely those places would even bother interviewing someone with low social status (I.e. poor and grew up on food stamps). I don’t think it’s great that this happens, it insulates elites from those with working class backgrounds and accelerates inequality.

> Ivy League schools in industries like finance This also has to do with the fact that, in consulting and finance, it is the perception of intelligence by the customer that is much more important than the actual intelligence. Managers would rather hire the team of consultants from the Ivy League and rich people would rather pay the management fees for the Ivy League team to manage their money. In industries that are…

This doesn’t justify the practice. If my clients were racist, should I be allowed to only hire white people?

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#204

Post by bryanrasmussen » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:47 AM UTC

clumsysmurf wrote: post #2

After an interview I attended at a fintech company, my Indian team lead straight out said she was trying to figure out the interviewee's cast. I was not familiar with the concept -- so my expression was mostly blank -- but she immediately followed up with "oh, I shouldn't have said that". I took no action, but wasn't sure what to do. After I learned more about it, I started to wonder where I was in this hierarchy. If…

> I started to wonder where I was in this hierarchy . I guess you're not Indian, so as I understand it that actually makes you casteless - untouchable, by strict adherence to the rules but here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACaste%2FArchive_1#Forei...

there is the quote: "if memory serves, Westerners (particularly English) are held to be Brahmin, "

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#205

Post by dang » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:48 AM UTC

john_max_1 wrote: post #80

I saw this on quite a few anti-India pro-pakistani sub-reddits where they are brigading this to top of hacker news.

This submission was upvoted by long-established users. I see no evidence of brigading. Please review the site guidelines, because you broke them with your comment.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#206

Post by dang » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:48 AM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #103

john_max_1 wrote: post #80

I saw this on quite a few anti-India pro-pakistani sub-reddits where they are brigading this to top of hacker news.

I’m not surprised. There’s been an unusual spike in very similar stories being pumped to the front page of HN by low karma accounts.

Please don't break the site guidelines like this. If you think you're seeing evidence of abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. Posting evidenceless insinuations of astroturfing, shilling, etc., is not allowed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#207

Post by mprovost » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:51 AM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #76

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an interim manager who did this subtly. It wasn't hard for us to catch on after some time, we brought it up to HR and he was disciplined as far as I know, and soon left the company, not sure on what terms. It's absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by something like caste, or social status. It's like if your lead said she was trying to determine if they were an inferior race.

It's absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by something like caste, or social status Caste no, social status? Absolutely, happens all the time. It’s very easy to proxy social status based on interests, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Those that don’t pass the sniff test, are deemed “bad culture fits”.

At my current company we're actively discouraged in training from making small talk during interviews for exactly this reason. Even asking how their weekend was can lead to something like "Oh you played a few rounds of golf? I play golf too!" and you'll end up subconsciously judging them differently.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#208

Post by drieddust » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:53 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #166

drieddust wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree completely. The Question is what is being done to erase that difference?

IMHO trying to find cultural fit is a form of ongoing discrimination[1] and it strengthens the effect of different starting points[2].

India is countering [2] by enforcing a 50% quota in education, Jobs, and politics. AFAIK West on the other hand is wishing it to vanish without doing anything concrete.

India is taking right steps in the right direction and I am hopeful this will vanish as generation born with caste concepts die off slowly.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#209

Post by sudosysgen » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

drieddust wrote: post #117

dilippkumar wrote: post #68

From Cynthia Tablot’s Precolonial India in Practice[0] > One peculiarity of Andhra society is that many of the leading warrior families made no pretensions to ksatriya status but instead proudly proclaimed their descent from the creator Bramha’s feet. This is an allusion to the famous origin myth first found in the Rig Veda wherein the four varnas are said to have originated from different portions of the body of Pur…

Edit: I would truly appreciate a discourse. Simple downvoting provides no feedback. India suffers from this colonial system and unfortunately media takes every single opportunity. Like recent rape cases. Only case with victim from lower class and culprits from higher class is getting all the media attention. I am not saying it's unnecessary but having a dialog requires honest intentions. Just like BLM these media hyp…

To be fair, classes in Western societies, like lower, middle, upper middle, and upper, are essentially "fake" classes, and have no real definition as well as don't actually fit the generally accepted definition of class in sociology.

If you try to do a class analysis of Western capitalist societies, pretty much everyone is of the same class, which is the working class and comprises anyone from foodstore clerk to tech lead. There are at the margins different classes, like the owner class, the landlord class and the destitute class, but those account altogether for less than 10% of society, and actually see a lot of class mobility.

So while people tend not to marry in such a way that their income will be drastically reduced, it's not really fair to say that outclass marriage is rare, because it generally isn't, and because western societies are fully proletarized and dominated by the working class, which is actually a good thing in many ways.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#210

Post by Gibbon1 » Fri, Oct 02, 2020, 7:00 AM UTC

082349872349872 wrote: post #199

saagarjha wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you should mock them for asking about such a thing.

When filling out forms in the US that asked for race, I entered "mutt" but admittedly I could afford to mock.

My dad always jokes about being... Irish and possibly Catholic.