Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How To Be An Anti-Casteist

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 309 posts

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#241

Post by fellellor »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #240
fellellor wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF is even that page? You might as well have quoted 4chan. It’s so hilarious, I’m not even offended. To be honest.. I can see it working as a scam of some sort. As long as the “white man” has money you might as well be of the highest caste right? Here we’re trying to eliminate caste, but some geniuses want to give a caste to all sorts. You might as well give gold a caste...

well, the page is on the wikipedia domain, it is a talk page regarding edits to the page (discussion among different Indians I presume.) again as I understand it strictly speaking a foreigner should be casteless, and hence untouchable. But that discussion implies that the actual behavior towards foreigners does not match that, which would seem reasonable to me. Indians will need to interact with foreigners, if they a…

In other words, the quote is completely bogus.

Caste system, on the surface, seems like hereditary fixing of labor roles. If applied universally, it should be easy to accept a member of a strong foreign army, or any army as a Kshatriya. So it makes no sense for every Englishman to assume a high caste, irrespective of profession.

But then, many “castes” are also, basically regional/ethnicities. In short, the rules which apply caste, are not uniform in any way and I would rather ridicule such an exercise than aid it.

A foreigner doesn’t need to have a caste, even if they wish to convert to Hinduism, when our argument is that we need to abolish caste in India in the first place.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#242

Post by drieddust »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #235
drieddust wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why police decides to cremated the body should be investigated for sure. But Equally brutal cases have happenned recently with no outrage at all.[1] Sharing it here for argument's sake. Personally I don't like to share these shitty stories usually. [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/indianexpress.com/article/india...

Just because there was no outrage for X doesn't meant here shouldn't be outrage for Y. You can say that the crime has now been politicized, but in a democracy, crimes are always a political matter. I hope that, if nothing else, it leads to law and order becoming a major election issue.

Rapes are a tragedy and need to be deal above the level of politics.

> Just because there was no outrage for X doesn't meant here shouldn't be outrage for Y.

Yes it is. What would be your thoughts if you are consistently fined but your neighbor is simply ignored for the same offense.

> I hope that, if nothing else, it leads to law and order becoming a major election issue

Ofcourse that is the entire story. There is no desire to change the system. For argument sake this will lead to the change in Government, what will change with that? Bringing back SP and Congress will improve the system? UP under SP was a horrible place. These 2 parties have destroy UP over the years. Land of poets is now land of petty criminals.

And if this is the intention why spare Rajasthan and Kerala? Change their government also for the same reason. We will be changing Government every other day.

Once again I am not against outrage I am against using rape for political gain. But seems like you are ok with it.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#243

Post by srtjstjsj »

I saw a blog post about castes and 10 ways to figh casteism or whatever, and it looked like a run of the mill USA Black anti-racism listicle but with s/Black/[name of caste];s/White/[name of caste]

At first I thought sure the issues must be similar, but then it seemed too exactly the same and I decided it must have been copied from some US site and then minimally translated to use Indian groups.

There are a issues that are important in India/casteism but not in US/racism, like job applications that require a biography of the applicant's parents.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#244

Post by srtjstjsj »

ertian wrote: post #181
kelnos wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here's the thing. I have no doubt that stuff like this does happen. An Indian friend (Brahmin, Indian citizen, has lived in the US for over a decade) has also seen this happen sometimes, and tries to avoid reporting chains with too many Indians down the line, even though it's unlikely he himself would experience discrimination (he just has no patience for ultra-political, back-stabby environments). But labeling al…

It's definitely true that outright dismissing all high-caste Indians is no better than doing the same for low-caste or any other race of people. I have to say, though, if I saw an org chart with a disproportionate number of Indians (relative to nearby & similar companies, or other parts of the same company) I would take that as a warning sign. As you say, in my experience, less political and more open-minded Indian t…

It turns out that when a woman sees an org chart with almost no women, or a Black person sees an org chart with almost no Black people, they have similar concerns.

The language issue is slightly separate factor, of course. Still, insisting that English be the language of business is a pretty huge privilege in favor of native speakers, which can be detrimental to the business when people are forced to communicate in their second language which is slower and less accurate than their native ability.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#245

Post by known »

puranjay wrote: post #202
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.

In America there is no system in place today that forces people to remain separate or keeps one CLASS subservient to another.

If you were born the son of a street sweeper, but excelled, you would be fully accepted by your peers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

Not so in India. The Caste system freezes everyone in place for their life time.

For someone to move from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_caste to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_caste is denied.

http://chng.it/kJphRWWBRr

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#246

Post by throwawaysea »

kingkawn wrote: post #227
throwawaysea wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they haven’t been violently discriminated against for millennia. This is a common colonialist trope spread about India. Your language alone, using Western words like “caste” to describe a system that doesn’t fit that word, is influencing your perception. Caste based discrimination (and all the negative issues that come with it) is very recent, and was nudged into existence by British imperialism, which relied on d…

A social system akin to brahminism and caste can only be created and held together by violence. That you can’t see this is because you are benefitting from it, either in the Indian version, or perhaps in the flavors of the same thing developed in the western world.

Everything in this comment is without evidence. A claim of the form “if you disagree with X you must be Y” is a Kafka trap, a common logical fallacy.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#247

Post by known »

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…

You could have dialed 911

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#248

Post by srtjstjsj »

throwawaysea wrote: post #174
starpilot wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’ pers…

When two members of the same underrepresented group are a reporting pair, they tend to get disproportionately more suspicion of nepotism than when two members of the majority/plurality do.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#249

Post by srtjstjsj »

fellellor wrote: post #186
skissane wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Abrahamic religions are also devoid of the concept of caste. While the Indian concept of "caste" (varna/jati/etc) isn't a native part of Christianity, Christians have varied in their attitude to it – some Christians have insisted that the caste system is incompatible with Christianity and that in becoming a Christian you have to give up your caste identity; other Christians have been accepting of the caste system,…

This isn’t limited to some Christians and Muslims of India. They have wholesale adopted the caste system. To see evidence of this, just pick up any English paper (for Christians) or any Urdu paper (for Muslim) and see the marriage, real estate listings. Sometimes the caste criteria may be kept down low, but is exposed by activists from those communities. The reason this system persists, may be that it’s acceptance fa…

You seem to be conflating "secularism" with "religious diversity". They aren't the same. For example, France and a lot of north/west Europe is largely secular. USA has religious diversity but is not secular.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#250

Post by srtjstjsj »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #165
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…

Do you get nervous when it's too many caucasians too?
Post reply on HN