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Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

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Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#381

Post by rendall »

camtarn wrote: post #64
pinephoneguy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously your ancestors aren't British so there's something to the "where are you really from" question. I've been asked similar things even as a White American.

It has rather different connotations in Britain. As far as I understand it from Americans I know, quite a few people in the US have a fascination with where their, and others', ancestors came from, so it could be a fairly innocuous question. Pretty much any American I know would happily rattle off an answer of 'oh, I'm half Irish, a quarter French, and a quarter Spanish' or something similar. Here in the UK, even tho…

When I have given a shy smile and an interested "What is your ancestry?" followed by, if sincere, "You have a really cool look!", I have often gotten very interesting answers and nearly never any offense. Once someone I asked had 8 heritages bestowed by 8 great grand parents, including Sephardic, Chinese, Cree, African-American and Swedish!

I'll ask "Where are you from?" as a way to understand someone's heritage only if it's obvious, from accent or other markers, that they are literally from another country.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#382

Post by sa1 »

gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #278
tsol wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been paying attention to the discourse around the current Ukrainian refugee crisis? It's alive and well in Europe

Putin is not invoking genetic or phenotypic arguments to my knowledge. He wants a cultural genocide, not a biological one. If every Ukrainian tomorrow declared themselves Russian, Putin would be ecstatic. Compare a Dalit declaring himself Brahmin.

Refugees of Indian and African origin aren't being allowed to cross borders or board trains. I presume that is what OP is referring to.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#383

Post by sa1 »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #256
bajirao wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I come from a low caste. The only folks who have asked about my caste and asked if I am from a higher caste are white Americans due to my vegetarianism (voluntary for ethical reasons). Because other Indians will identify your caste based on your last name, food habits, dialect, your family business (etc). They don't need to ask you.

> Because other Indians will identify your caste based on your last name, food habits, dialect, your family business (etc). They don't need to ask you. False. This is a broad generalization. Some large states in India use paternal names as last names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic#India

Only as a result of a successful movement against casteism in only a couple of Indian states.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#384

Post by abliefern »

sanmon3186 wrote: post #372
dang wrote: post #8

Past related threads. I think there have been others. How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments) Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments) How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://n…

Every time such articles pop-up, I wonder what rock am I living under. In 22 years of experience (Half in US/UK and rest in India) in eight global organizations, not even a single time I heard or witnessed any cast based biases. What we regularly see is region/lingustic biases. Cast based discrimination exist in India, but in my experience the issue is overblown in the knowledge industry.

No post body was provided.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#385

Post by azifali »

belval wrote: post #66
wincy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay so curious, I have a South Indian neighbor who is Muslim. I assume Muslims are just a different thing outside of the caste system, despite people saying caste is not rooted in Hinduism? (I’m not saying it is, just curious how an Indian might view their Muslim neighbors).

Seems to exist for Indian muslims as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_among_South_Asian...

Caste system exists in Muslims in India albeit at much lower levels than mainstream Indian Hindus. Muslims have been more steadily organizing as Sunnis, Shias and everyone else.

But invisible cultural barriers exist when it comes to language even though caste barriers have gone away.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#386

Post by unmole »

zozbot234 wrote: post #14

It'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…

Oh, please. The Ramayana and Mahabharata endorse caste based on birth. Vedas are irrelevant to how Hindusim is practiced on a day to day basis.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#387

Post by ericpruitt »

mattzito wrote: post #353
pyuser583 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewing someone from an opposite “frictioned background” is not considered a conflict of interest in law or ethics. “Conflict of interest” is when someone has a clearly defined interest, usually in something of value, that opposes the interests of someone they have a duty towards. In ethnic prejudice, there’s no clearly defined interest. I know this sounds pedantic. But when a conflict of interest arises, the ne…

> In ethnic prejudice, there’s no clearly defined interest. > Ethnic bias is bad, but it’s not a conflict of interests. Okay, so - for sure, if you're from an opposite "frictioned background" and you can interview someone neutrally, you should be able to. But if you have an ethnic prejudice, you literally have an interest against the person you are interviewing. > But when a conflict of interest arises, the next ques…

> But if you have an ethnic prejudice, you literally have an interest against the person you are interviewing.

The original comment by throwaway_dcnt -- "Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese." -- doesn't make any qualifications. I read it the same way that icelancer seems to: they make the determination themselves, assuming it's going to be a problem without actually establishing that it will be. If that is the case, that is literally racism.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#389

Post by mschuster91 »

icelancer wrote: post #185
throwaway_dcnt wrote: post #11

The reason for my current user name here at hn was this exact form of racism. It is the first post I made when I created this throwaway. I was assured that my experience was unique and not widespread. I am both sad and happy to see this, sad because it exists, happy because it is getting some attention here at HN. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everyone of us needs to be vigilant about this t…

>> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons. Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of t…

> What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.

And, as a half-Croat, needed. The ethnic tensions between former Yugoslavian countries have never been resolved, and many emigrants took the unresolved issues with them. The youngest generation is one thing, they grew up without having to live through all that bullshit, but a lot of people 35 and older have lost relatives and friends in one of the wars.

FFS Bosnia is at the moment creeping into the breakout of yet another conflict.

Re: Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

#390

Post by pyuser583 »

hef19898 wrote: post #379
pyuser583 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewing someone from an opposite “frictioned background” is not considered a conflict of interest in law or ethics. “Conflict of interest” is when someone has a clearly defined interest, usually in something of value, that opposes the interests of someone they have a duty towards. In ethnic prejudice, there’s no clearly defined interest. I know this sounds pedantic. But when a conflict of interest arises, the ne…

Maybe not in the legal sense of conflict of interest, a kind of conflict of interest non the less.

The way that you deal with ethnic bias and conflicts of interest is very different.

For example, employees are required to declare a conflict of interest. Declaring ethnic bias is a firable offense.

Imagine a mostly white business in rural Georgia where all the employees have declares they have racial bias against Black people.

As a result, they avoid hiring Black people because they don’t trust they can fairly evaluate their skills.

Realistically if you applied normal conflict of interest rules, it would be very hard to make a company more diverse.

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