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Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
261–270 of 592 posts
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#262My parents are from India, im from Canada. Luckily ive never really seen any caste discrimination, but we are from a religion that specifically outlawed this hundreds of years ago (sikhism), even though it didn't exactly dissappear. I know its something that exists though, its mind boggling that people still adhere to it. Hopefully it goes away though. Here is an interesting interview type video on it. https://www.yo…
Yeah, as a Sikh from Delhi, I can confirm that you've read the fairy tale version. Caste is ever present in Sikhism.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#263As someone born and raised in India, things like this were a bit "distant" from me when I was in school (it came up but I was never a victim). But the more I got to know Indians who were more privileged than I have been, the pattern started to clearly emerge. I distinctly remember thinking - "people who are better educated than I am tend to be richer or from an upper caste background, usually both". I try to not let…
> But data seems to confirm it. Can you share this data. I am curious.
https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When...
I'll edit this with more links later, it's 3am in my TZ atm.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#264It's so disappointing to see in the article that caste discrimination is still being blamed by some on the religion of Hinduism. There's no dharmic status whatsoever for "caste" in the commonplace sense. The Vedas occasionally talk about something that gets misinterpreted as caste, but it's very clear from the texts that they're talking about individual callings and aptitudes, and not any sort of immutable status. Th…
Because it is easy to do so.
Western media is extremely India phobic and Hindu phobic.
The caste system, as per scriptures, is just a categorization of work that people do. Every one is prescribed their duties and jobs as per caste. However, there are innumerable instances in the scriptures when people have taken up jobs of other castes, as per situation demands.
The discrimination of people based on castes, is an invention of society and its degradation.
However, I often find that an ingrained sense of "my religion is holier than thou" leads to a subtle thread of anti-Hindu outputs.
Some publications are blatant. Some are not.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#265I am from “upper caste”. My experience might not be commonly heard perspective. In 10th grade of schooling, my parents changed my lastname to avoid that folks figure out the caste. Due to affirmative action (aka reservation) on steroids, upper caste were losing opportunities. My parents wanted to avoid that I lose out on selection, promotions.., where subjective discretion was involved. I do not recall ever seeing ca…
I grew up in urban India and my experience with caste system is the same, never really experienced discrimination personally but I know of it being widely prevalent in the country. This scene from an Indian movie I saw recently made me realize that the caste system is not just prevalent and absurd but also has a very complicated hierarchy built into it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4N98tQsp64 (<2 min, with subtit…
Fantastic clip
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#266It's so disappointing to see in the article that caste discrimination is still being blamed by some on the religion of Hinduism. There's no dharmic status whatsoever for "caste" in the commonplace sense. The Vedas occasionally talk about something that gets misinterpreted as caste, but it's very clear from the texts that they're talking about individual callings and aptitudes, and not any sort of immutable status. Th…
I think it's fair to say that the caste system is greatly influenced by the flavor of reincarnation in hinduism and vice versa. the buddha himself set out to seek enlightenment and free himself from suffering when he saw that so many people from the lower castes are suffering. it eventually led him to reject hinduism and teach that nobody suffers in this life because of something that happened in "past" lives (in fac…
What are you talking?
https://www.learnreligions.com/reincarnation-in-buddhism-449...
Buddhism has a similar concept, named and understood differently.
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a Pakistani American and I've worked well with many Indians. This is overcompensating.
I think Indians and Pakistanis quickly understand that outside their native countries they are probably the same and almost have similar culture/language/food.
They do in their native countries as well, what changes when they leave is they leave behind a tense political rivalry that gets used in service of explaining the shortcomings of the respective countries. Without the political climate as background noise both parties tend to get along
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#268Also, this is the reason students in their board exams (+2 / Twelfth-grade tests) were forbidden from writing their last name in the answer sheets. Teachers in India openly discriminated against students from other castes/jatis/varnas by giving them lower marks. Not just caste but discrimination based on the state-of-origin/language are often committed by identifying your group based on your last name. There are ofte…
You are speaking as if all teachers belong to one caste. There is affirmative action in teaching staff too.
https://theprint.in/india/governance/57-of-indias-teaching-f...
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#269Its real and yet it feels like 'fun' to write about the 'exotic' caste system rather than the very real visa hierarchy, hb1 strategies etc. that are in play
Care to elaborate?
Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system
#270as a complete outsider to the caste system, say i was american-born or otherwise "white-washed". would I still be subject to this system?
Fellow outsider here. Got curious and did some searching; would love to hear from some real Indian folks to confirm or deny this line of reasoning. As non-Indians, it seems we exist outside the system, which could be ambiguously interpreted to either have no connotation at all, or to exist at the bottom of the social strata. [1] Anecdotally, the kind of treatment you'll get in practice depends a lot more on your race…
Fellow outsider here. I worked in one of the FAGMAN in a group of about 50 Indians. It became clear rather quickly that I would never move up or get any serious promotion/raise. So at least this one group treated outsiders as lower-caste.
There were a couple Russians and Chinese in the group who seemed also permanently stuck at the bottom.
For the most part, if you wanted to move up, you left this group and moved into some other group in the company. I just left the company entirely.