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Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

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Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#441

Post by lthornberry »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #40
cafard wrote: post #3

Quoted post unavailable.

Yeah, high school history tends to skip from the civil war to WW1, so most students miss out on reconstruction, and pretty much no curricula will talk about the explicit race discrimination in the GI bill/redlining.

This varies massively by school or district. I teach history to undergrads, and some of them come in having had entire high school classes on the history of civil rights--these students are usually either from majority-black districts, or from elite private schools. Others had history classes that don't even acknowledge that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#442

Post by causi »

naravara wrote: post #425
causi wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to about 3 of these Equality Labs workshops and just gave up on them because in each one they were throwing around "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" level disinformation Ah, I see how it could cause problems with that type of "equality lab". The equality, discrimination, etc training I've had was very different, and boiled down to "here is a list of behaviors; if you do any of them or anything like any of t…

> I've had was very different, and boiled down to "here is a list of behaviors; if you do any of them or anything like any of them your ass is fired." Yeah this is good in general but needs tempering through a bit of conflict resolution/appeal process built in. Discrimination issues can often just be the result of misinterpretations and blind spots people have, especially when bridging cultural divides. There's some…

The ones I went to involved being told I needed to make "anti-casteism" part of my identity and pick arguments with my aunts and uncles when they make 'problematic' statements

I admire that you kept your composure in the face of such ludicrous demands. An employer has to be insane to think they can even suggest how I should interact with my own family.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#443

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

NoGravitas wrote: post #436
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I hate this conversation. Maybe? If we follow that thread, everything is a social construct. It gets silly fast. Now, if were to look for a biological definition from Webster(1), race would be defined as: a group within a species that is distinguishable (as morphologically, genetically, or behaviorally) from others of the same species How is skin color not a distinguishable trait? Now.. it might not be politicall…

It's okay to just admit you don't know something. Here's the American Anthropological Association's public outreach site on the subject, so you can catch up on the relevant science. https://understandingrace.org/

This may be where the disconnect is. The definition I provided was from a biology domain and not from humanities domain ( not that there no attempts to do the same in biology ). This is not discredit anthropology as it is a fascinating study. I just do not think it is relevant here.

I do happen to think that, where there are clear physical differences ( gasp ) between white and black people, it may be a good idea not to try to cover it with yet another social construct. Unless, naturally there is a disagreement that there are real physical differences ( for example, if we wanted to move from skin pigment, there are documented issues that affect black people more than whites ). Are those issues racist?

That said, it is somewhat interesting that the main quote on the website provided does not come from a renowned representative of the group, but relatively unknown historian ("[Racism] is not about how you look, it is about how people assign meaning to how you look"). Quite frankly, that is not racism. That is otherism and it goes back to the previous comment about how the waters and definitions are muddied further to pigeonhole something for one reason or another.

To be blunt, there is a good reason for a society ( and its members ) to not be focused on race, but pretending race does not exist is a disservice to that society as it is hiding the reality from its members.

Maybe I am approaching it the wrong way. Maybe I should try Socratic method here.

Are there black people?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#444

Post by mountainriver »

hef19898 wrote: post #314
mountainriver wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I worked at vmw and they have a huge caste/sexism problem. Funny how liberal Americans stand by and let it happen

Because for us Westerners this form of discrimination is, well, invisible. It is based on subtle things we don't see. It stays within a group, that to us, seems completely homogenous. Plus, how many Westerners actually are aware the Indian caste system exists at all? men discriminating and harrassing women? Sexism, check. White discriminating people of color? Racism, check. One Indian being a dick to another Indian?…

Agree there is a ton of nuance, at vmw I didn't notice it till I heard about it, then I did, but like you said its really hard to know how to intervene

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#445

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #245
oofbey wrote: post #241

Google’s culture is dominated by arrogance. Management repeatedly tells employees they work on the world’s hardest problems using the world’s biggest computers and the world’s smartest people. Doing anything less is “ungoogley”. It doesn’t necessarily follow that this would encourage racism. But it sure isn’t surprising.

Why would you assume "best" = "racist"? Also - which companies are saying they hire the worst people? I've worked at several companies - every single one of them claimed to hire the best. It's just corporate psychobabble at this point.

Corporate psychobabble and/or normalized supremacist.

The idea of "best" is ultimately a lie and it's the same lie that supremacy tells.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#446

Post by dundarious »

Pigalowda wrote: post #403
dundarious wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifestyle factors drastically dominate when it comes to mortality/life expectancy. Also, the whole idea is highly speculative and would/should have no implications for workplace/hiring practices regardless.

Yes it is true that with improvement in maternal/fetal survivability modifiable lifestyle factors drastically dominate life expectancy. However that's a throw away line to disregard significant differences. It's basically zooming out far enough to say it doesn't matter. And yes, its a speculative idea that I proposed, I certainly didn't suggest it was dogma. However this kind of observation is what would lead to a st…

It’s not “a throw away line to disregard significant differences” when I say that almost all the genetic factors you’re concerned about are subordinate to lifestyle factors — they are. Genetic factors can be governed (genes switched on/off) via lifestyle factors such as diet, activity, etc. Never mind that whole populations have endured famines, passing on harmful traits epigenetically, and yet, those populations have recovered well.

I don’t think you’re wasting my or anyone else’s time, but I think your post was missing crucial info, especially given the context. If there was a post about career achievement or discrimination of Finnish people, I wouldn’t post about their unfavorable epigenetic profile since the famines of WW2, lest it be construed as partial justification.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#447

Post by dahart »

burrows wrote: post #285
dahart wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Genuinely asking: Is this also sexism? One way to look at it is that the disparity may be a symptom of complicated cultural biases, and we may not know the specific reasons. Since there’s nothing gender or sex related to doing the job of QA, then if the disparity actually is measurable and widespread, it does reveal cultural bias. This is currently true for nurses and for elementary school teachers in the US, for e…

> Since there’s nothing gender or sex related to doing the job of QA, How do you know this to be true? > cultural bias What definition are you using for this term?

The question you need to be asking is the opposite: how can you demonstrate that bias has been eliminated? Sex bias was absolute and baked into law 100 years ago, and it has been slowly getting eliminated, but there has not been any point in time where we can demonstrate it’s gone, precisely because we have evidence it’s not gone yet. (Pay gap still exists, gender disparities between schooling and employment still exist, etc.)

We know for a fact that bias hasn’t been completely eliminated, because the ratios and disparities of many jobs including QA are changing quickly, they have not settled, and they are not the same from country to country. That is proof that cultural bias exists and is affecting today’s distributions. You can’t even reasonably ask the question of how to know how much a job depends on sex or gender until after you’ve eliminated cultural bias, because cultural bias masquerades as gender based preferences.

This page for cultural bias is as good any any other definition for my purposes here, which was purely to say that “cultural bias” is less inflammatory than “sexism”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_bias

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#448

Post by Consultant32452 »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #289
Consultant32452 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having public messaging about negative social behavior often results in more of the negative behavior. Studies suggest lots of media about school shootings results in more school shootings. Similarly, messaging about getting help to reduce self-harm results in more self-harm. DARE resulted in no reductions in drug use. If the people creating these programs/talks don't understand this, they don't deserve the platform.…

So the problem shouldn't be discussed? So for security vulnerabilities, disclosing them allows them to be exploited. So 0-days and their corresponding patches shouldn't be discussed or released?

A thoughtful person might change their behavior once they learn that their behavior is getting the opposite of the result they intended.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#449

Post by bena »

delecti wrote: post #327
bena wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something can be both. Incredibly low-skilled and easy yet valuable.

I said QA is viewed as lower tier , not less skilled . QA, especially SDET style QA, is plenty difficult, but gets very little respect.

Yes, there are levels of QA. But QA, at its most difficult is also software development, but for the most part, is not.

I would say, that on average, QA is a lower skilled profession than software development. If I were to make an analogy, QA is the nurse to the developer's doctor.

And, yes, it is a lower tier. You hire developers before QA and fire QA before developers. But, like you said, it deserves respect. Just like all professions. And I'd say that a competent QA staff is the sign of a successful organization. Because while you can have your developers test, it's better to move those responsibilities off their plate so they can focus on their core work. Just like you could have your employees take out the trash and sweep up, but once you're beyond the "5 people in a garage" setup, you're going to hire a cleaning service.

To the point of the higher up comments.

It is an issue. Even if QA were more difficult, challenging, etc than development, we can't get around the fact that it is perceived as supplemental to development. It is a place where organizations put people who want to be developers but the organization doesn't want to be developers. Or a dumping ground for 1x developers. And it seems, a way to tweak diversity numbers without actually doing anything.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#450

Post by thereddaikon »

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?

Because your caste isn't a race. Caste is just taking the class system further. That's why its bigotry but not racism. I've no idea why people seem to want to extend racism to mean all of these things when there already exists a word for it.
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