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Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

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Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#621

Post by vkou »

noduerme wrote: post #601
akavi wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument that "efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United States would sow further division" isn't totally without merit. 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), and have basically zero idea of how I'd identify someone else's caste. I imagine that that'…

>> Educating people like me about that would suddenly create the ability for them to identify a difference that they wouldn't have noticed before. This seemingly small insight goes miles toward explaining the current American obsession with racial and gender identity. Gender/racial/age discrimination are not surface-level obvious in America these days, which is why once people are told they're being victimized and di…

I think the worst thing you can do is continue to be victimized, without raising a fuss.

It is very convenient for if you do just that, though.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#622

Post by ZoomerCretin »

noduerme wrote: post #601
akavi wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument that "efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United States would sow further division" isn't totally without merit. 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), and have basically zero idea of how I'd identify someone else's caste. I imagine that that'…

>> Educating people like me about that would suddenly create the ability for them to identify a difference that they wouldn't have noticed before. This seemingly small insight goes miles toward explaining the current American obsession with racial and gender identity. Gender/racial/age discrimination are not surface-level obvious in America these days, which is why once people are told they're being victimized and di…

> Racism isn't real anymore, except for being a manufactured socio-political construct to create (D) voters

How sheltered are you that you believe this?

EDIT: Because calling you sheltered for your ignorance of racism isn't enough:

You're claiming that people who think they're experiencing racism are simply primed to view negative interactions as racism, raising their sensitivity and lowering their specificity of racist experiences (i.e. that they can't tell the difference between assholes or reasonable setbacks in life and racism).

You're using this perception of minorities' racist experiences to prime yourself to dismiss every racist experience. Do you see how this is problematic?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#623

Post by danans »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #452
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's might have been true of the more "enlightened" Indian engineers who immigrated to Silicon Valley in the 80s and 90s. There were also ambitious Indians who liked the old ways but lacked the opportunity to engage in such discrimination until they adapted or the opportunity eventually arose. Either way, as more and more of a certain ethnicity/race enter a country for the purposes of bettering their financial pros…

>> It's antithetical to our founding values

> If we're excluding slavery as a de facto caste system

I agree that caste and slavery have overlap, but banning slavery was about making our country more in line with its founding values. America is an evolving project, not a single point in time.

We still have a long way to go, and are regressing in many ways of late, but still more in line with those values than we were at the founding.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#624

Post by endominus »

machinerychorus wrote: post #610
tremon wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which are quantifiable Are they really? I mean, I understand we can quantify generational or class-based inequality, but can we really quantify how much of that difference is attributable to slavery and/or segregation? Or is the implicit default to attribute 50% to slavery and attribute the other 50% to segregation?

Yes, it's actually pretty simple. Non-white groups lag in almost all economic categories. The fed publishes a lot of this data[1], you can see for yourself. There are also lots of other things to look at, like rate of incarceration. The effect is real, and there are basically two explanations: Either it's due to systemic oppression, or its due to non-white racial groups being inherently inferior. Unless you're racist…

>Non-white groups lag in almost all economic categories.

Why are the data for Asian people not shown on those graphs? It only lists Black, Hispanic, and White. Is it because (at least according to the stats on Wikipedia[0], sourced from the US Census) they don't reinforce that narrative? In fact, according to that data, the median white income is ~$66K, which is surpassed by Ghanaians (~$69K), South Africans (~$98K), and Indians (~$150K). I can think of several reasons for that that have nothing to do with racial superiority or systemic oppression. Deciding what must be the cause of the problem ahead of time and claiming anyone who disagrees is a racist is both poor form and ineffective in actually solving problems of inequality.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#625

Post by naravara »

causi wrote: post #442
naravara wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This wasn’t an employer, it was a volunteer effort by a Hindu group to organize legal representation for Syrian refugees caught up in Trump’s Muslim ban. There were a few people on the committee who were really intent on spending time doing stuff like this instead of connecting people to legal resources they needed.

The group has, since, dissolved for obvious reasons.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#626

Post by vkou »

noduerme wrote: post #613
ajross wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an America-born white hippie, though... I have a hard time seeing an argument like that and not equating it with attempts to suppress discussion of racial equality issues here at home[1]. The fact that you don't experience discrimination doesn't mean that no one does. And you should know if people do, and why. Nothing gets better if the skeletons stay in the closet, basically. It's no different for caste awareness…

It's always the white folks who claim this. The often false assumption that people who are non-white must be being discriminated against and that being colorblind is not enough, etc., is just a new version of the "white man's burden." It's neocolonialism dressed up as empathy. Most people want to be treated as just... people . Not handled with kid gloves or lumped into a racial group and having all kinds of assumptio…

This is a fascinating thesis, but it utterly fails to take into account that, well, maybe actual discrimination, as opposed to imagined discrimination still exists.

> equal rights were fought for, and won.

Some of them were won, to some extent, leaving plenty of gaps. We've reached civil equality about as well as the USSR reached 'true communism'.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#627

Post by mr_toad »

guru4consulting wrote: post #491
avensec wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 !! Ther…

> 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.

So why aren’t the women arriving on H1B visas and their spouses on dependent H4s?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#628

Post by crooked-v »

noduerme wrote: post #601
akavi wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument that "efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United States would sow further division" isn't totally without merit. 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), and have basically zero idea of how I'd identify someone else's caste. I imagine that that'…

>> Educating people like me about that would suddenly create the ability for them to identify a difference that they wouldn't have noticed before. This seemingly small insight goes miles toward explaining the current American obsession with racial and gender identity. Gender/racial/age discrimination are not surface-level obvious in America these days, which is why once people are told they're being victimized and di…

> Gender/racial/age discrimination are not surface-level obvious in America these days

We literally had a mass shooting within the last month that specifically targeted black people.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#629

Post by [deleted] »

noduerme wrote: post #613
ajross wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an America-born white hippie, though... I have a hard time seeing an argument like that and not equating it with attempts to suppress discussion of racial equality issues here at home[1]. The fact that you don't experience discrimination doesn't mean that no one does. And you should know if people do, and why. Nothing gets better if the skeletons stay in the closet, basically. It's no different for caste awareness…

It's always the white folks who claim this. The often false assumption that people who are non-white must be being discriminated against and that being colorblind is not enough, etc., is just a new version of the "white man's burden." It's neocolonialism dressed up as empathy. Most people want to be treated as just... people . Not handled with kid gloves or lumped into a racial group and having all kinds of assumptio…

[deleted]

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#630

Post by [deleted] »

whack wrote: post #559
gomoboo wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]
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