Google cancelled a talk on caste bias • Hacker News Board

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#491

Post by guru4consulting » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

avensec wrote: post #163

sitkack wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just caste discrimination, but also sexism. I have worked at least three companies where if there were Indian women, the vast majority were in QA.

I am a Director-Level in Engineering/QA/Quality Engineering. I currently lead a team where our ratio of Female Indian women is higher than any other engineering group at the company. Every Quality Engineering team I have been apart of has had a higher ratio of females, but not necessarily of any specific background. My N=1 experience is that this can be related, but not always directly about discrimination or sexism.…

cultural oppression - that might have been a valid reason many decades ago but not these days.

Most of the men on H1B visa get married and their spouses arrive on dependent H4 visa. They cannot work with H4 visa (they can work with EAD these days though). Usually, there are a few years gap by the time they get back to workforce.. and what is the easiest field to enter without any programming skill? QA testing !! There are literally hundreds of QA training institutions who train home makers on QA testing and place them in a QA testing role (sometimes inflating the resumes with fake experience).. And there are other subtle reasons like low confidence level, assuming developer roles are more stressful with long hours of coding, cultural bias to focus more on family than career, etc. Outside the fancy startups and tech companies, QA testing is very slowly moving from manual to automated testing. So, it is still one of the easy entry points to the IT industry.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#492

Post by jasonlotito » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

mariodiana wrote: post #270

> In April, Thenmozhi Soundararajan […] was scheduled to give a talk to Google News employees for Dalit History Month. But Google employees began spreading disinformation […] That is not journalism. That's editorializing — and in the very first paragraph, no less. This is how media like the Washington Post encourages a kind of caste of its own, by signaling "right-think" to its readers.

It’s not. You left out the rest.

“…according to copies of the documents as well as interviews with Soundararajan and current Google employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about retaliation.”

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#493

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #136

lolinder wrote: post #15

> “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?

https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

The most appropriate ones here are probably:

> 2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the 'How dare you!' gambit.

> 5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary 'attack the messenger' ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as 'kooks', 'right-wing', 'liberal', 'left-wing', 'terrorists', 'conspiracy buffs', 'radicals', 'militia', 'racists', 'religious fanatics', 'sexual deviates', and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

> 18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you can't do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can further avoid the issues by then focusing on how 'sensitive they are to criticism.'

I'm still astounded by how consistently contemporary defenses of Apartheid blamed the objections to it on "anti-Boer bigotry" in order to derail the conversation.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#494

Post by spaceman_2020 » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

Vaslo wrote: post #65

Question from a layman. How does one know that someone is from another caste? If I was someone from India, how would I know what caste my fellow Indian is from? Is there some kind of code? Or where you are from?

Here in New Delhi, people will straight up ask you, especially if they're older.

Trying to get a house in Delhi as a single, straight male is an exercise in discrimination 101. Landlords will ask you if you drink alcohol, eat meat, have female friends, belong to a non-Hindu religion (especially if you're muslim), your caste, and heck, even what city/state you're from.

My friends have been denied housing simply for being from a state with a somewhat poor reputation. Some were denied because they were lawyers AND from a specific caste (the landlords feared that my friends would somehow take over the property through legal shenanigans). And I won't even get into how hard it is for a muslim male to find housing in India, especially outside of big cities.

So much of this simply never gets talked about in Indian society. But its just accepted as something that happens. Sometimes feel that we're developing backwards as a society.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#495

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

Vaslo wrote: post #65

Question from a layman. How does one know that someone is from another caste? If I was someone from India, how would I know what caste my fellow Indian is from? Is there some kind of code? Or where you are from?

[deleted]

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#496

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

selfhifive wrote: post #232

Vaslo wrote: post #65

Question from a layman. How does one know that someone is from another caste? If I was someone from India, how would I know what caste my fellow Indian is from? Is there some kind of code? Or where you are from?

That problem and increasing intercaste marriages is why casteism is dying in many parts of India. The new generation doesn't know how to determine the caste and are generally not interested. Most of the system in large parts of the country will die out with the previous generation.

[deleted]

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#497

Post by puranjay » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

whoevercares wrote: post #190

I observed it multiple times during CS graduate school. An Indian high caste classmate refused to let his roommate sleep in the same bedroom. The higher caste guy told us that his roommate is of lower caste. The other poor guy ended up very obedient and sleep in the couch for 2 years. They have a group of high caste guys and talk sht about a few fellow low caste guys in the class Eye opening.

High caste people in India will often find ways to casually mention their caste in conversation, sometimes within minutes of meeting someone new. Its reflexive - like subtly turning your wrist to show off a new watch.

And I have no data to corroborate this, but I've felt caste chauvinism increase in the last few years.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#498

Post by walkhour » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #480

walkhour wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'm not doing a study if there's no sexism.

Presumably you wouldn't know without a study, thus you do the study.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#499

Post by gabereiser » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

devnonymous wrote: post #406

thelit wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re a Dalit, you’d know. As I mention in the post, membership to a caste is granted by birth. If both your parents are Dalit, you’re a Dalit too. How do others know: it’s not obvious. Dalits either change their last name to something common enough to not have any caste indicator. They’d avoid any discussion on caste. So effectively, they hide but there are some who don’t and keep their last name. Still, not eve…

Note that there are other 'cues' as well that casteists use to identify your caste, such as the food you eat (veg/non-veg), the social rituals/ceremonies or religious practices you engage in. In fact, you'd see enough Brahmins (in the US!) wear the scared thread[1] and embrace the entire identity of being at the 'top' of the caste system that knowing that you are a non-brahmin is sufficient for them to treat you as a…

We have that same view in software engineering as well. s/Brahmins/FAANGs and s/Dalit/Non-FAANG. Not saying it's everywhere but it exists, even on these very forums. How is one from a coding school or bootcamp ever to be seen as an equal to those that took a traditional route?

For the most part, people treat people equally but I've seen this kind of behavior on here and in person on a few occasions.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#500

Post by 1270018080 » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

anonymousab wrote: post #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 a…

To me, all of these statements 100% confirm caste discrimination exists in America. Whenever I hear confronting history and privilege as "sowing further division" I cringe hard. The parallels in American history are, well... very parallel.