Does caste matter for Muslims and Christians in India?
Yes, among Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs. Watch a minute of video here to see examples: https://youtu.be/ZPmAltGay3s?t=1965
Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
121–130 of 213 posts
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Dalits are beheaded for wearing turban, riding a horse, taking their marriage procession from upper caste street. I mean, that sounds precisely analogous to lynching black people for holding certain kinds of jobs, having wealth, or smiling at a white woman. I know extremely little about India so it is possible that I am entirely ignorant. But the situations you describe here sound like 1:1 matches to racist violenc…
Also, the legal system in America is absolutely racist/classist as well. You could be optimistic and think of that as a holdover from more racist times, but either way it does kind of track with the story the op linked to.
> You could be optimistic and think of that as a holdover from more racist times,
But you'd be wrong, since it involves active, current racism by legislators, police, prosecutors, judges, jurors, and witnesses, among others, not just “autopilot” racism in the way people in the a more racist past set up the system.
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
That wasn't the argument. My mom died, I know others that died and I know the history behind it. It used to be truth seeking was important. There is truth to what Trump was saying. At the time he made that statement the opiate epidemic was still in full swing. You can take the media narrative that it was racism, but 70k dead a year for the last decade requires a more nuanced look.
> It used to be truth seeking was important. There is truth to what Trump was saying. No, there is no truth. I consider all the hardworking people, including Mexicans, who harvest my fruits and vegetables, do construction and landscaping labor, work in meat processing plants, and any other task “to be the best”. How one can indict Mexico for the opiate problem rather than the pharmaceutical companies and doctors that…
> How one can indict Mexico for the opiate problem
I never said this and neither did Trump. You should restate it to make sure you understand the real argument.
If you notice I mentioned Oxy. Everyone shares some of the blame.
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
so mexican people are bad because some guy wrote a book about a town where some mexican people sell drugs? very scientific, thank you Hacker News
They setup an entire heroin network of Domino's like franchises spanning the US. Starting in LA, ultimately spreading all over the country by the early 2000s. The heroin resurgence came on the back of enterprising Mexicans who took advantage of loose sentencing of small amounts and rampant Oxy addicts looking for alternatives. > In two years, from 1995 to 1997, Boise’s minor market had a half-dozen crews selling hero…
Did you miss the entire parallel plot in that book about Purdue Pharma lying to pill mill doctors to get pain patients hooked on their "nonaddictive" opioid product? The Sackler family created the demand that those "enterprising" Mexicans fulfilled.
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
In India, you’re born into a socioeconomic position and the likelihood of ever moving upward in the socioeconomic structure is virtually zero. Those at the top of the socioeconomic structure treat those below them like complete shit.
Most of them don't even ask your caste these days. I do not know where you're from. And there's even caste based affirmative action.
Yeah that is all on paper. In practice it is very different
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#126If you are an IITian and still casteist then something is wrong with you! Look IITians are often entitled, opinionated and in rare cases obnoxious. But never during my 5 years in IIT KGP, I have ever felt casteism among students and even amongst alumni after that. Initially during freshman year there’s a slight sense of resentment against quota (affirmative action for lower castes) students but all of that evaporates…
You have a modern view of the world. You'll be surprised as I was back in the day that not everyone is open minded. Ppl still want to keep old systems in place because their parents have brain washed them into thinking that they're upper caste and that Hindu Khatre mein hai
I come myself from middle class Brahmin family in Maharashtra, have a engineering degree from a mediocre school in Maharashtra. If at all I witnessed something negative is snobbishness from people who graduated from better school than me. I have been in silicon valley for over 25 years now. I worked in 2 startups and 4 mega corporations/public companies with friends/superiors/colleagues (some of whom are Brahmin IIT graduates) from various parts of India - I personally never asked anyone's last name to find their caste and neither I witnessed anyone making any derogatory remarks about anyone's caste/religion. I have never experienced or seen any of this that is being reported in this article. It is truly shameful and disgusting if it is happening now or before. Let's stop this right now and right away!
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#127I don’t know anything about Indian culture; could someone who is from there shed some light on how prevalent the prejudiced mindset is? E.g., do 80% of people think the caste system is stupid and outdated whereas the other 20% still hold some prejudice toward Dalits? What about Indians that have moved to the U.S.? And is this issue improving quickly or slowly?
My experience, as an outsider who used to visit colleagues in India regularly, is that it's quite prevalent but very tricky to talk about. It's an understandably sensitive topic. There's obviously a lot of variation, both according to a person's own position within that structure and (I've heard) different parts of the country. Nonetheless, it's hard to miss the visible differences between the people working in a tech office and the people cleaning it, or the people doing manual construction labor, or the people begging. And it's not much harder to notice how they interact with each other.
It's also hard to dismiss caste as an ongoing issue when you find out that all but two out of 50+ engineers you worked with is Brahmin. (I only found that out through the one colleague who was close enough and open-minded enough to discuss such things with me BTW.) Ditto when you find out that one of those two exceptions had been repeatedly passed over for promotion despite being twice as skilled as some of those who were promoted. Once you start looking, the patterns become clear.
When considering these issues from outside, though, it's important to realize how entangled they are with another aspect of Indian culture: high context. Even among people of the same caste, there's a strong idea of social position and "right behavior" with respect to that. Whenever we very-senior Americans came to visit, the jockeying over who was invited to meetings and who was allowed to speak in them was almost comical. Often, the person speaking was clearly unfamiliar with work that had been done by someone more junior. That was considered quite normal.
There was also a darker side. On two separate occasions, people I had formed strong working relationships with were completely shunned by most of their local colleagues because they were perceived as "jumping the queue" by associating with me. After that, I started paying attention to these relationships. If I wanted to speak directly with the junior person who had actually done some work, I made sure to do it as discreetly (even secretively) as possible. I wouldn't mention it to their status-conscious seniors; instead I'd send feedback directly to top-level people who did their reviews and knew how to handle such sensitive communication properly.
Please note that I'm not criticizing Indians here. Having seen how my fellow Americans treat "outsiders" even without an ancient caste system, I doubt that many of them would do better within one. But there are definitely differences in social behavior (the "never say 'no'" thing is another) that anyone working with many Indians either in India or elsewhere would do well to learn.
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
A contributor to the attitude is the caste itself. These kids (huge majority from upper castes) are treated with too much deference at home by the parents, family and society. Since they are served well at home by servants and society when they go to foreign lands their expectations don’t change and they take the baggage with them. Mind you, they’re modulating the behavior a bit abroad because at home it’s even more…
I worked with a dude at a Pac12 who expected rides home because he didn't have a car. I quit after he derisively referred to my friend and his attitude become intolerably obnoxious. This is what happens when someone is raised with 40 servants, becomes a stock broker, and then decides to dabble in medical academia instead. Treat kids like royalty and they will act like they're innately special and deserving more than…
I don't disagree with your general premise, but expecting rides home is not very uncommon in India in my experience. Ridesharing/dropping colleagues off at home if it's on the way is pretty common.
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you’re saying doesn’t track. To folks who mount these cultural hills, racism, classism, and sexism are adjacent to murder in severity. There is no reason to be diplomatic with a person who has offered those ideas. Why would a diplomatic way of making that allegation be necessary? The correct answer is that it’s a shibboleth to organize, and rally, like-minded people.
> To folks who mount these cultural hills, racism, classism, and sexism are adjacent to murder in severity. If you're going to assume everyone who thinks those things are real problems believes something pretty much nobody actually believes, more power to you I guess? Seems problematic . By which I mean "intellectually dishonest", maybe a bit of posturing for likeminded people, maybe a shibboleth to organize and rall…
I didn’t assume that nor say what you’re saying I did. You’re doing exactly what I just said to minimize what you’re interpreting as a personal attack. I said people who mount those cultural hills to fight upon them tend to calculate their values that way.
Fighting on social media is known to be pointless by most people. It is not the steady state of human nature. To keep doing it, and to do it passionately, the cause must be deemed important enough to consider throwing more shit into a pile of shit worthwhile within a limited lifespan, and that value calculus usually results in the moral framework I point out. It wasn’t even my main point; it was to counter the notion that these arguments pay any respect to civility or diplomacy (I mean, look even here).
Nobody worth listening to disagrees that those are extremely important issues within our societies. Some of us believe throwing bricks at each other in comments is counterproductive and don’t subscribe to partisan politics over real social issues. Calling someone’s views problematic, particularly when it’s a restating of their original point, is otherizing and is not a path to influencing people (roughly akin to “you’re on the wrong side” without explaining why).
Put it this way: one is either waging these cultural arguments to influence the viewpoint they find disagreeable or to remove that viewpoint from the discussion. There is no third option. If the approach is “that idea is problematic,” implicitly that tack supports concluding that the goal is removal, which undermines tackling those real social issues by driving the alternative opinion to darker corners where nobody is left to influence them in the direction you’re hoping.
Now look around in general and tell me I’m wrong.
Re: How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
In India, you’re born into a socioeconomic position and the likelihood of ever moving upward in the socioeconomic structure is virtually zero. Those at the top of the socioeconomic structure treat those below them like complete shit.
Most of them don't even ask your caste these days. I do not know where you're from. And there's even caste based affirmative action.
My understanding is that many people don't directly ask about caste any more, but they'll actively try to figure it out based on your last name or "innocuous" questions about where you're from, what schools you went to, dietary habits, etc. Is that not so?