591–600 of 1001 posts
This is likely an example why it may not always be a great idea to discuss politics at work. I know a lot of us have strong personal opinions on a lot of subjects, but making sure everyone on my team aligns with my beliefs is likely not conducive to teamwork. Quite the opposite. If I was not an IC now, I would definitely be trying to cut discussions like that in a bud.
How is this political? This is standard DEI stuff.
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> As an America-born Indian-American, I honestly don't know what my caste is beyond knowing I'm not Brahmin (I didn't do the string ceremony some of my childhood family friends did) That's not actually sufficient information to infer anything, since people from any of the four savarna castes can participate in the ceremony. It varies a lot by region and community. It's not actually unheard-of for Dalits to have it, a…
Oh huh, TIL! Well, then I have no idea at all what my caste is.
you're an American citizen, by many measures the best caste out there :)
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You claim "at least partly" and then proceed to prove it with anecdotal evidence. You'd need to prove it with a study similar to the ones that send identical CVs to companies, just changing one thing, which is what they want to discover if there's bias against.
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…
1. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Gender-and-Race-Prefer...
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I was trying to show by example that grandparent's definition of sexism is ridiculously expansive to the point of choking out all other dimensions of life. I chose them as two things that don't often get cited as evidence of sexism (though mechanic isn't so dirty a job, and isn't dangerous at all. I have more personal awareness if mechanics, so that's what I chose.)
Male nurses not being as prevalent is definitely cited often as an example of sexism in my circles.
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Oh huh, TIL! Well, then I have no idea at all what my caste is.
> I have no idea at all what my caste is you're an American citizen, by many measures the best caste out there :)
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>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. I've heard some pretty horrible stories about this in particular; like Brahmin kids being legally adopted into Sudra families in order to get into a reserved position at a State University, and rich kids with private tutors getting given…
There is 70% affirmitive action. If you are a Dalit with 50% mark you will get admission to a medical seat and you will be a cardiac surgeon, but if a brahmin girl gets 99% she will not get admission and will be a clerk. Go figure the Indian system. This is why you see thousands of Brahmins in Silicon valley as they are kicked out or disgusted with Indian political system of favoring lower castes. USA benefited immen…
Is it possible for someone with a 50% GPA to finish a cardiac surgery training program in India? Or is that a gross exaggeration?
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Isn’t this just relying on security through obscurity? The knowledge is already out there for anyone wishing to seek it. Why pretend it doesn’t exist? For what it’s worth, I am not of Indian descent.
Take a look at the brown-eye-blue-eye experiment that a teacher did with her students. Everyone already knew the color of their eye, but no one gave it much significance. But as soon as the teacher started talking about the socioeconomic-status associated with eye color, students immediately divided themselves and started fighting over eye color. Never underestimate people's ability to segregate themselves using what…
It wasn't the teacher talking about socioeconomic-status associated with eye color, but explicitly telling the children that blue-eyed kids were better than brown-eyed kids.
So it wasn't just consciousness of differences, but explicitly telling some of the children they were better than others.
All that proves is that you can teach hatred.
But you can also teach peaceful coexistence, where people are aware of ethnic/cultural/biological differences without looking down on those who differ from you. You can be taught to value and celebrate your differences.
Same with people from other castes. There's no reason why one has to be looked at as inferior and the other as superior.
It really reminds me of a Star Trek episode where there's a war between two alien species which are identical except that one is black on the left side of their body and white on the right side of their body, and their enemy is white on the left side of their body and black on the right side of their body: [1] A ridiculous and meaningless distinction, and yet they kill each other over it.
It also reminds me of the religious wars among Christians over minutia like whether one should cross oneself from left to right or right to left. Sheer insanity.
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American caste is just money though.
That's not what caste is. Caste is a value assigned to you at birth that you cannot change no matter what you do. It's similar to race but stupider
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I've slowly come to the conclusion that it's a form of opinion-shaping. A huge number of people aren't particularly interested in what's true, they're interested in what's _popular_. For argument's sake let's assume it's 80/20, with 10% on each side of a topic very passionate for their side. By banning and/or rate-limiting the 10% you dislike in any issue you can sway the 80% to follow the other side thus "manufactur…
I don't think there's any distinction to be made between what's "true" vs what's "popular" when it comes to online discourse unfortunately. Confirmation bias is one hell of a drug, especially when combined with votes, flagging and reports.
How would you scientific-revolution social media?
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.