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Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#471

Post by dotopotoro »

vijaybritto wrote: post #461
swayvil wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you just lie and tell everybody that you're brahmin (or whatever the alpha caste is)? Do you need identifying papers? Is there a big market for forgeries?

I wish it were that easy. First of all lying like that is near impossible unless you know every single thing done in a Brahmin household, you'll be caught eventually. In a workplace setting, you might be boycotted but if this were in India, you have a high chance of getting murdered brutally. Dalits get killed for just riding a horse, walking through upper caste residential streets and many normal things. In this sca…

Murdered by which caste? Allegedly of course. Brahmin or somebody else?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#472

Post by dragonwriter »

aaron_m04 wrote: post #466
notacoward wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> failure to differentiate Israel (the state and government) with Judaism (the religion) with Jew/Hebrew (the ethnicity) That has not been my experience. AFAICT even people who are extremely careful and specific about criticizing the state of Israel - even more specifically the IDF or a political party within Israel responsible for a particular act - still get tarred with the "anti-Semitic" brush. Jewish people have…

Somebody should introduce Israeli government hardliners to the concept of "blowback".

Blowback validates the wordlviee hardliners are selling; in a different context, that was pretty central to al-Qaeda’s strategy, where provoking blowback was a way of selling their clash of civilizations narrative.

Hardliners of all stripes tend to recognize and actively exploit blowback.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#473

Post by bluesroo »

vijaybritto wrote: post #461
swayvil wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you just lie and tell everybody that you're brahmin (or whatever the alpha caste is)? Do you need identifying papers? Is there a big market for forgeries?

I wish it were that easy. First of all lying like that is near impossible unless you know every single thing done in a Brahmin household, you'll be caught eventually. In a workplace setting, you might be boycotted but if this were in India, you have a high chance of getting murdered brutally. Dalits get killed for just riding a horse, walking through upper caste residential streets and many normal things. In this sca…

The parent comment died while I typed my response, so I'm just throwing it here to elaborate on your comment:

I'm not Indian, but I read a lot about this when the Cisco stuff came out. The gist that I picked up from interviews with Indians dealing with this was that there is A LOT of cultural background that you'd be very unlikely to know if you hadn't grown up in a certain caste.

A (likely shitty) analogy: You can learn about WWII all you want, but unless you were deployed it would be hard to fake that you were at a specific battle or did a specific training. There's probably minute details that were not written down, but people who were there would casually know. There may be habits or turns of phrase that would have been picked up. Maybe a certain landmark or destroyed thing that had a funny nickname. Maybe it's knowing a certain soldier or commander by a nickname that hasn't made it into the history books. "Oh you trained at X? Man I loved tuna Tuesdays even though noone would touch the stuff. Do you remember when private Y did..."

Through casual conversation, it's very difficult to keep the ruse up. Now if the interlocutor is actively trying to root you out its basically impossible. In the interviews I was listening to, the best case scenario was that the higher caste member came away not knowing what caste your from, but definitely knew you were not a Brahmin... Because if you were, you'd casually bring up X, Y, and Z and use these phrases and these gestures and and and...

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#474

Post by ridiculous_leke »

dandare wrote: post #334

After a quick google search I can see some very controversial comments by Thenmozhi Soundararajan. Hopefully the world is changing and demonising ones race, even if that race is white or Hindu, will soon be neither celebrated nor even acceptable.

What exactly did she comment?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#476

Post by CydeWeys »

dandare wrote: post #334

After a quick google search I can see some very controversial comments by Thenmozhi Soundararajan. Hopefully the world is changing and demonising ones race, even if that race is white or Hindu, will soon be neither celebrated nor even acceptable.

I do want to point out that Google allows all sorts of talks onsite. You can see some of them here: https://youtube.com/c/talksatgoogle

I've definitely been to a few of those in person that were more controversial than talking about caste (and also did not have the benefit of actually being useful, like addressing workplace discrimination is).

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#477

Post by nyolfen »

TrackerFF wrote: post #116
likis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sami people is another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi#Discrimination_again...

Not sure how the Sámi people are treated in Sweden, Finland, or Russia - but here in Norway there has indeed been a long history of discrimination against the Sámi. But tbh, it's just half a century ago that pretty much all people from Northern Norway were discriminated against, in the southern parts. Which is why most people moving south were recommended to change accent - fast. More so if you wanted to work in any…

> (sea/coast Sámi vs hill/raindeer)

can you speak more to this? i'm totally unfamiliar with the folk taxonomy

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#478

Post by pessimizer »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #378
chowells wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your point here is unintelligible for me.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#479

Post by allenu »

NoGravitas wrote: post #91

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…

It's definitely frustrating. Culture, religion, sexual orientation, skin color, and politics often get combined into one, so it becomes impossible to criticize particular cultural or religious practices and beliefs without getting jumped on as racist or ignorant. This strategy of calling someone anti-X is a great way to end actual discussion about specific issues.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#480

Post by pessimizer »

walkhour wrote: post #265
lexapro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The truth is that there are no studies (that I'm aware of) that research into whether there's sexism in QA. So the answers to your question are going to be filled with speculation.

There's no sexism until I see a study, and I'm not doing a study if there's no sexism. Doing a study at all when there are no previous studies would be a clear case of anti-male bias.
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