151–160 of 1001 posts
This is what happens when a for profit company LARPs as an ethical one. On one hand they talk about diversity and on the other they desperately hire people they can pay less from areas of the world where "diversity is our strength" isn't really the norm. So in the end the company makes more money thanks to the cheap labor and it becomes even less inclusive and diverse.
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Is there a Wikipedia list of obscure 'race'-isms? I find reading about other cultures or other time period's biases to be informative and wonder what the common elements might be. Off the top of my head, issues I can think of where an outsider may be oblivious between the "sides" are: Indian caste Japanese Barukumin caste Protestant/Catholic in Europe Jewish people in Europe/US/USSR English Class System, or Southern/…
Russian Nazism is very real, leads to rape, murder, forced deportation and torture.
> “We also made the decision to not move forward with the proposed talk which — rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness — was creating division and rancor,” Newberry wrote. This doesn't surprise me one bit. Even on HN, every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a bunch of people crying racism/religionism. How dare we discuss something we don't fully understand? How dare we critic…
That quote from the article gave me pause. It sounds like an admission that they wanted the good PR from having a caste bias speaker, but when having a conversation on a difficult topic actually became difficult, they backed down. Maybe, Google, instead of just giving up you should be asking why a speaker on Dalit rights and inclusion is causing "division and rancor" in your community? Or is that also a difficult con…
99% of corporate DEI initiatives are performative in nature. I realized it when the majority of companies were pushing employees to read a book on systemic racism written by a white woman who was obviously using it as an advertisement for her corporate consulting and training business.
Here's an exercise for you: go through the list of US protected classes [1] and see which ones are explicitly stated and which ones aren't. It's actually enlightening. For example, I don't think I've ever seen ageism specifically called out.
As for the impact of the Indian caste system in US tech, I can't really comment on that. It's not my lived experience. I've worked with many Indians. No idea what their castes were. Saying that, just like racism I find it incredibly plausible that if you grew up in such a system, the effects are pervasive and linger.
So should Google allow such a talk? That's a difficult question. It's clearly a divisive issue. It reminds me of Meta telling employees to stop talking about abortion [2]. Now that issue probably doesn't lead to workplace discrimination (alleged or actual) although you might be able to argue that your political views could hurt you. There's something to be said to keeping your political views to yourself, particularly at work.
I imagine (but, again, don't know from experience) that this might be on the level of racial discrimination in the US workplace. So it seems worth examining. I imagine to mahy outsiders it might not look "real" because at the end of the day they're all Indians (which, to be clear, is also a form of racism).
Is a talk the best way to handle this? I honestly don't know. I can sympathize with avoiding divisive issues and also with the desire of a company to cover their ass and not create an HR nightmare. I really wonder if this ends in a lawsuit.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States
[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/19/23131714/meta-ban-abortio...
> “We also made the decision to not move forward with the proposed talk which — rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness — was creating division and rancor,” Newberry wrote. This doesn't surprise me one bit. Even on HN, every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a bunch of people crying racism/religionism. How dare we discuss something we don't fully understand? How dare we critic…
> How dare we criticize another culture when we have our own problems? Because there are now 4.6 million Indian Americans and they are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the US. So it's our own problem now too.
The point being made is that people who don't want this conversation in public (i.e. people in favor of and/or who benefit from the caste system) will flood the comments with this type of rhetoric which instantly turns the conversation into to a flame war rather than a helpful discourse on how to improve things.
The fact that you and I both instinctively fell for this reaction is evidence that parent is quite correct in the effectiveness of this tactic.
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe, Google, instead of just giving up you should be asking why a speaker on Dalit rights and inclusion is causing "division and rancor" in your community? Or is that also a difficult conversation you'd rather not have? The same reason speakers on Palestinian rights often can. While they may be on the right side of the issue, it's also very easy for closed discussion spaces to rapidly devolve into pretty viciousl…
a specific point of view to talk about it while delegitimizing all other perspectives as inherently beneath consideration it's not gonna go well Why do we owe this degree of sensitivity to some types of bigot but not others? Why don't we need to be careful about "delegitimizing" the beliefs of people who think black people are inherently inferior or gay people are inherently immoral? The realpolitik answer is that Go…
> “We also made the decision to not move forward with the proposed talk which — rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness — was creating division and rancor,” Newberry wrote. This doesn't surprise me one bit. Even on HN, every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a bunch of people crying racism/religionism. How dare we discuss something we don't fully understand? How dare we critic…
> every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a bunch of people crying racism/religionism Is there a term for shutting down a discussion by turning the belligerence to eleven? Such that people outside the discussion tune out not the views of those being belligerent, but the discussion itself?
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Which would give grounds on the hiring manager front for investigating one's employer for de-facto blacklisting. Which is illegal. Just because someone points out the elrphant in the room at a workplace does not make them "radioactive". Quite the opposite. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
As a leftist, one of the things that gives me pause about identity politics and the language of identity divorced from class struggle is how easily it is repurposed by reactionaries: > But Google employees began spreading disinformation, calling her “Hindu-phobic” and “anti-Hindu” in emails to the company’s leaders, documents posted on Google’s intranet and mailing lists with thousands of employees. I don't have a so…