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Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

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Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#481

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> importing ethnicities means importing their ethnic conflicts too, always Is there evidence for this? Couldn't null be valid: those choosing to emigrate are most likely to be willing or wanting to leave that nonsense behind? Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our founding values. Plenty of Indians emigrate while leaving their caste identity, and any will to act on it, behind. There may remain implic…

So which way do you want it then? Multiculturalism, with all the "nonsense" that comes from those cultures, or do you just want every brown person to come to america and start acting white?

I thought one of the big benefits of multiculturalism (that all big businesses love to tout) is how it brings diversity of cultural values to the workplace. Well I guess mission accomplished because now you've got the indian caste system in the workplace.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#482
post #160

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You see weird reaction in debates about feminism. People go along with the belief that men and women are the same. And then use that to justify male anger about unfairness by just parotting the same talking points. When actually feminist could always accept that there were differences and that was the point. But the argument changes at different levels of abstraction. It's confusing. Individuals should be treated the…

People see that "men and women are different" is used as justification for prejudice (like a person not getting a chance because people of the same sex did rarely have success previously). Which sucks and people feel its unfair. And when trying to conceptualize that unfairness into words, their contra opinion sometimes ends up being "so man and women must be equal" instead of "a persons sex does not justify prejudice…

People can be equal before the law without being equal before a pole vault.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#483

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> I can assure you there is no hidden community of brahmins that look out for each other and help each other succeed and I doubt there is for most castes in India. 2 seconds on google https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-...

What was the result of the lawsuit? Is Cisco guilty?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#484
post #465

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Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? Your posts in this thread have been way over the line, and you've unfortunately done posted this way to other threads too. We ban accounts that do that. I'm not going to ban your account right now but we need you to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules if you want to keep posting here. On a topic like the current one, if yo…

Okay dang i will go ahead and read the guidelines. Sorry for being passionate and being myself, i will try to be someone else. Thank you for not banning my account even though I get ruthlessly downvoted for speaking my opinion and will never hit my karmic goal of being able to downvote posts.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#485
post #74
post #16

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Except racism (and "caste-based discrimination" is also racism) shouldn't be considered "politics", everybody should be able to agree that it doesn't have a place in a modern company.

I'd posit that 99.999% of people agree racism is bad. It's mostly when the definition gets muddied and expanded that people start disagreeing and it becomes political and touchy.

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Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#486

[flagged]

> I can assure you there is no hidden community of brahmins that look out for each other and help each other succeed and I doubt there is for most castes in India. 2 seconds on google https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-...

2 more seconds https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/nyregion/nj-hindu-temple-...

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#488

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Interesting fact: Talk to Indian upper caste women who claim to be feminists about caste; you'll be shut down quickly. I have had countless arguments only to be named "mansplainer". The activism from powerful groups will flow in the same social structure which does not affect their power.

This sounds extremely similar the ~century-ago situation in American feminism. Lesser right for women of "lesser" racial, religious, social, etc. backgrounds were, ah, not much of a concern.

It's also the same the other way around: a lot of male anti-racism activists / communists / etc were very sexist. Some still are. I still think it's nice that feminists are, today and historically, generally ahead of the curve when it comes to these things.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#489
> After Gupta posted a link in the email group to a petition to reinstate the talk, respondents argued that caste discrimination does not exist, that caste is not a thing in the United States, and that efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United States would sow further division.

> Some called caste equity a form of reverse discrimination against the highest-ranked castes because of India’s affirmative action system for access to education and government jobs.

> Others said people from marginalized castes lack the education to properly interpret Hindu scriptures around castes.

Wow. I did not expect saints; every person and organization will be fallible and all that. Yet this is still so... absolutely stunning.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#490
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

> 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…

> I don’t understand the meaning of the term “sex bias”.

This and “cultural bias” and “sexism” are all pretty well established terms you can Google, and are taught in social studies and history courses.

Sex bias means a cultural bias or prejudice based on someone’s sex. I’m using sex here more or less interchangeably with gender right now, but there are times where that distinction matters.

> it’s completely unclear to me that it existed previously and that I want it to stop existing.

There’s no question about whether sex bias has existed, nor whether society wants it to stop existing. Those are facts not being debated. The primary example I had in mind when I said 100 years is women’s suffrage: the right to vote. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage) When women were legally barred from voting, or owning land, or initiating divorce, those things were sex based biases. Women gained the right to vote in the US a while ago, but it took longer before women started to appear in C-level corporate roles, that is still changing today.

> Cultural bias is about people from different cultural having different standards?

Please read the link I posted. Cultural bias is about having ingrained prejudices in large social groups. It can be, but is not primarily about people from different cultures in the sense of, say, Indians vs Americans. Indians have certain cultural biases, Americans have their own separate cultural biases. The idea that nurses should be women is an example of a cultural bias.

> What is the hypothetical ‘fix’, imposing uniform standards

The goal is to remove bias and prejudice that is hurting certain categories of people, preventing them from having equal access to opportunity to improve their lives, and to make decisions about people based on their interests and abilities, and to establish and respect some basic human rights across the board. I don’t know what you mean by “imposing uniform standards for judgement on everyone at all places in all times”, but this sounds like a straw man and that you’re skeptical. It might be described as imposing minimum uniform standards, perhaps.

I will turn your question back on you: what is the alternative you’re suggesting, do you support having different standards for men and women in QA? Why or why not? Do you support the idea that a woman developer who writes the same quality of code and works as hard and has the same level of experience as her male coworker should be paid the same amount?

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