Google cancelled a talk on caste bias • Hacker News Board

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#371

Post by adolph » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #76

30944836 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed the text of your comment ins grey, which means someone downvoted you. I disagree on first take of your comment, because QA to me doesn't represent a lower-tier of anything. It's a tech job. Women being in tech is good. Indian people being in tech is good. Will you share a bit more about your thinking? Why do you see this as being discrimination? Sidenote: I once glanced around a team I was working on a few…

The comment is only at zero, it means nothing. I made no qualitative statement about QA being beneath anything. Most developers equate QA is beneath them. I also think QA is just as valid and not beneath dev, but I have also held nearly every roll in modern software companies. How we view QA doesn't mean that is how the tech job market sees it. Pay is lower, qual is lower and at companies that have a sizeable Indian…

> equate QA is beneath them

I think the status quality of jobs is an interesting aspect of discrimination. Why do certain jobs have higher or lower status? If the perceived status of various jobs was flatter, would various discriminatory schemes (intentional or not) continue to operate? Would differences in income persist?

My hypothesis is that demographic clusters of people within certain occupations are in part affinity and in part discriminatory which operate as a yin-yang.

Another hypothesis is that the existence of under-represented demographic segments in certain fields of study/occupation such as STEM means that the over-represented demographic segments are under-represented in other fields. Changing representation has classically focused on importing under-represented folks into high status fields. This effectively overstuffs some fields which decreases effectiveness. A better approach would be to make the other fields more attractive/high status so that the over-represented demographic segments in fields like STEM grow interest in other fields.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#372

Post by imbnwa » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

kbelder wrote: post #250

thereddaikon wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word you are looking for is bigotry. That's the generalized equivalent of racism. Thing is, bigotry in general isn't illegal. Specific kinds of bigotry are in regards to hiring though. Racism is one of them. But caste isn't. A lawyer might be able to make the claim that it would fall under "national origin or ancestry" since, to my knowledge, caste is hereditary and hard to change. But if so then that makes these…

Caste is inherited and runs in bloodlines. Why wouldn't it be considered racism?

'Racism' is absolutely a caste system, since the fundamental point of a caste system is to proportion resource and opportunity between breeding pools, however devised those are. The differentiator is simply the terms used to draw these boundaries. Which matters because different terms, say religious terms vs medico-scientific terms, resource different graphs for further narrativization. Jewish folk from Europe know full well the difference between being narrativized according to religious lines and according to medico-scientific lines, neither even approaching something like true or right. Black folk in America have been hounded about their medico-scientific distinction from the get-go, right down to the resurgence of heritable IQ and multi-regional emergence theory today.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#373

Post by lyaa » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

walkhour wrote: post #365

lyaa wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not obliged to defend every statement I make with a study for my thoughts and experiences to be worth sharing. Also, anecdotal evidence is evidence. Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless as you seem to think. In any case, I have done the five minutes of googling you seem to want. Biases in evaluating resumes based on gender and other such factors are not new nor unknown: here is an earl…

You can sure share your thoughts, and I can share my thoughts on whether you're correct, I'm just pointing out it's not proven your personal experience proves discrimination is part of the explanation. None of those studies support your original claim. They support the more broader claim that women are discriminated in the job market. > Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless as you seem to th…

Do you not see the logical link by which these more general studies contextualize and support my earlier statements?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#374

Post by photochemsyn » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:30 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #101

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This quote from the article best summarizes similar efforts, even outside of Google, >> Longtime observers of Google’s struggles to promote diversity, equity and inclusion say the fallout fits a familiar pattern. Women of color are asked to advocate for change. Then they’re punished for disrupting the status quo. I'm not a big culture warrior, but I believe that if as a company you choose to do a thing, you do it ful…

There's an archive link to the article below; apparently that's exactly what happened:

> "According to Gupta’s letter and Soundararajan, the decision to cancel the talk came from Gupta’s boss, Cathy Edwards, a vice president of engineering, who had no experience or expertise in caste."

And, another excerpt:

> "To Soundararajan, Google was long overdue for a conversation on caste equity. Pichai, the CEO, “is Indian and he is Brahmin and he grew up in Tamil Nadu. There is no way you grow up in Tamil Nadu and not know about caste because of how caste politics shaped the conversation,” Soundararajan told The Post. “If he can make passionate statements about Google’s [diversity equity and inclusion] commitments in the wake of George Floyd, he absolutely should be making those same commitments to the context he comes from where he is someone of privilege.” Soundararajan said Pichai has not responded to letter she sent him in April. Google declined to comment."

Clean your own house before pointing at your neighbor's dirty yard...

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#375

Post by TrackerFF » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:31 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #343

TrackerFF wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be confused with the Romanian people - i.e, people from Romania. (Though some of the Roma people can obviously also be Romanians!). EDIT: I absolutely condone discrimination, but I think for the people that live in areas with very visible Roma people, it's kind of obvious why. At best, you'll just see them begging on the streets. At worst, you'll experience getting hounded down by them, getting robbed, or your…

> I absolutely condone discrimination Did you mean condemn? condemn: express complete disapproval of condone: approve or sanction (something), especially with reluctance

I stand corrected - meant condemn.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#376

Post by Pigalowda » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

dundarious wrote: post #346

Pigalowda wrote: post #307

There are 200+ million Dalits in India. These are the people which were previously called “untouchables”. I work in medicine, many Indians work with me and most are Brahmins with a few Christian Malayali from Kerala. I think the Malayali have shown it is possible to escape the caste system and to have success. However I am worried Dalits have been at the bottom and treated as such for thousands of years that it has e…

What are or should be the consequences of these worries of yours?

The worry is that it will take many generations of significant investment back into the Dalit communities to bring them into parity with the rest of the Indian population. That even after the investment the longterm epigenetic effects from thousands of years of high intergenerational stress will show a significant increase in diseases of all types with higher all cause mortality/lower life expectancy.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#377

Post by okdood64 » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:33 PM UTC

thelit wrote: post #312

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #5

A good read for some additional context on caste discrimination in the American tech industry: https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...

As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience. https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101

Hey there! Thanks for writing this.

One question I've always had is, how do you know you're Dalit if you were born outside of India? How do others?

Especially, say, when meeting other Indians in some tech company in the US?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

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Post by QuarterReptile » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:34 PM UTC

chowells wrote: post #322

lexapro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be more women in QA in general. Genuinely asking: Is this also sexism?

Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA than other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's 100% of the information required to determine that this is the result of sexism. However, a lot of people seem to think that describing reality is an insult to them, so I have to explain further - this is a result of systemic sexism starting at early childhood. It starts with what toys children are given to pla…

>Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA than other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's 100% of the information required to determine that this is the result of sexism.

Car mechanics aren't all women, even though women's hands fit much better into all those tiny spaces in the dashboard and engine bay? Sexism

Nurses aren't overwhelmingly male, despite the fact that a significant part of the job is wrangling patients, who overwhelmingly skew obese? Sexism

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#379

Post by walkhour » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:37 PM UTC

lyaa wrote: post #373

walkhour wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can sure share your thoughts, and I can share my thoughts on whether you're correct, I'm just pointing out it's not proven your personal experience proves discrimination is part of the explanation. None of those studies support your original claim. They support the more broader claim that women are discriminated in the job market. > Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless as you seem to th…

Do you not see the logical link by which these more general studies contextualize and support my earlier statements?

I see why you may think that way, but I don't think you're right.

I guess for you it's a given QA jobs are "inferior" to SWE jobs. I guess you believe the articles you linked proof women tend to get "inferior" jobs just because they're women? (I haven't read the articles, although I believe this to be true).

I just can't make the jump that this applies to QA jobs (granting they are "inferior"). That would imply "inferior" jobs are always overrepresented by women, and there are counterexamples to this, by almost any definition of "inferior".

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#380

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 3:37 PM UTC

labcomputer wrote: post #306

rayiner wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably it’s not protected right? Caste is more or less like the old European class distinction between royals and commoners. Nobody contends that lower caste people are a different race than higher caste people. (And I would argue it would be problematic to try and reframe caste distinctions in racial terms.) As far as I know, class discrimination isn’t illegal in the US.

Not under "race", but CA law lists "ancestry" as a protected characteristic. I'm having some trouble understanding how caste discrimination is anything other than ancestry discrimination.

That’s a good point—I was thinking of federal law.