Google cancelled a talk on caste bias • Hacker News Board

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#731

Post by nondravidian » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:26 AM UTC

quadrifoliate wrote: post #724

roflyear wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I've witnessed issues with the Indian caste system in many large corporations. From Johnson & Johnson - where there is actually a development team - where they hired other Indians who were horribly unqualified (multiple times they were poached from IT support - I enjoy seeing people move up in tech, but they were entry level techs with no programming experience) and almost exclusively hired other Indians…

I hear a lot of instances of favoritism or nepotism in what you describe, possibly even corruption, but not much sounds like caste-based discrimination. "Incompetent person hires a lot of people they know instead of qualified candidates" is not really what's being discussed here, and I think Ms. Soundararajan would agree. As a side note, this illustrates quite neatly why most of us who come from India are somewhat re…

Except that this is not just weird and far-fetched. It is also very unusual for such diet-based discrimination to happen. I am a vegetarian. All managers (with the exception of one) who hired me in the past 12 years (in India) were not vegetarians. Unlikely that they saw vegetarians discriminating, and did not practice a little reverse discrimination themselves. The problem today in India is not that there is a caste competition between one caste and another, it is that the IT field is desperately in need of developers and testers. And, the employers are unable to pay the high salaries being demanded.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#732

Post by ReactiveJelly » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:26 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #223

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 Isn't that the first step in the flame war, attacking, dismissing, and blaming one side (and before they even say something)? How will someone with a good faith interest in discussing concerns about racism or religionism act, seeing this comment - they will feel shut down, and like they won't be heard and will be atta…

> It would be extremely valuable to society to find a way to conduct constructive conversations

It's tough.

I mean this sincerely - It requires heavy moderation.

The government can uphold a free speech ideal, but the good conversations happen in bubbles where someone can't create a burner account and start talking shit as loud as anyone else.

Some years ago, Christopher Hitchens gave a talk about free speech. It's very compelling. Nobody yelled "FIRST!" over him, cause it wasn't an Internet comment thread.

Maybe we should distinguish between free speech and "free-for-all" speech. I'll listen to Hitchens saying we have the Right To Read about Holocaust deniers, but I don't want any given thread to be over-run by the same Holocaust deniers.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#733

Post by rajup » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:29 AM UTC

ordu wrote: post #728

rajup wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, I wear the thread the same reason a Sikh wears a turban or a Muslim woman wears a niqab/burka. Wearing a sacred thread has about as much relation to condoning/accepting caste discrimination as wearing a niqab has to terrorism, but these kinds of bigoted ignorant comments are exactly why Google was right in not allowing the talk to happen.

> I wear the thread the same reason It doesn't matter what reasons you have. What matters is the consequence of your behavior, namely, it is visible difference between castes, which makes discrimination easier and avoiding discrimination harder. All previous fights against discrimination shared one phenomenon: priveledged start to whine that they are reverse-discriminated. And at some point they probably are discrimi…

> It doesn't matter what reasons you have. What matters is the consequence of your behavior, namely, it is visible difference between castes, which makes discrimination easier and avoiding discrimination harder.

Not unless I go running around naked

> And your comment show that you are not concerned in a slightest about discrimination. Tradition is more important to you than people.

How exactly do you infer that? You don’t know me. I care about discrimination just as much as the next person. What I don’t care much for is rank identity politics disguised as benevolent activism spewed from a non-existent moral high ground.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#734

Post by pdfscan » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:30 AM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #673

Genuine question, what is stopping you from identifying as another caste in 2022 with the mass adoption of the concept of identifying with different genders? Just like being assigned a sex of Male or Female at birth, those who don’t want to associate can identify with another gender identity or even transition their bodies to whatever sex they please. I don’t buy the notion that once a Dalit by birth you are destined…

It's a fair question. And I think that logically it's equivalent.

However, to maybe see why people don't do it (I imagine, I have no personal experience on this), let's put it in a US perspective. What if a visibly black person identifies as white? Or vice versa? Do you think it would be taken seriously by even the most ardent liberals?

EDIT: For context, let's remember the case of Rachel Dolezal [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#735

Post by noduerme » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:31 AM UTC

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #622

noduerme wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 rac…

Please see my other responses. I'm not dismissing the fact that racism exists, and I've personally been the target of it dozens of times. I have an issue with the notion that it defines and circumscribes our experience as individuals, or that it should be grounds for declaring our identity or the presumed lived experience of others, because that's not a path out of it and it's immensely destructive to the project of equality to create categories of victimhood based on skin color. One of the things I find most racist and offensive is other people telling me how I should feel or what I've experienced because of my race. We've gone back fifty years in the name of "equity" which is, substantively, white people's way of continuing to divide people into racial groups while acting holy about it.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#736

Post by barrysteve » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:31 AM UTC

chowells wrote: post #322

lexapro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

People don't fit into the workplace based upon their physiological capability to grasp the highest role. You need more information than that to determine systemic sexism.

People have free will, life circumnstances seperate to corporate goals and a nature.

You can track a bias towards food and water that starts from birth and runs through all of society. We don't explain the lack of people in deserts as systemic waterism. Why do we see women working voluntarily with women in some roles as sexism when it has happened since the beginning of time?

The systematic worldview breaks down when it hits the nature of people. We aren't all pawns in a corporate game 24:7, so there are many reasons for people to work they way they do. One would hope they are freely choosing their work roles and not living their lives according to the dictats of gender equality statistics.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#737

Post by namecheapTA » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:36 AM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #702

eyelidlessness wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Genuine question, what is stopping you from identifying as another caste in 2022 with the mass adoption of the concept of identifying with different genders? Since this is a genuine question, there’s something you should know about not conforming to the gender you were assigned at birth: we’re not accepted for our identity either. The concept of self-identification is separate from cultural acceptance of it. Moving…

What would it take to plant the seeds of change in the youth to abandon casteism conceptually as technology allows us to be on a more equal platform with all the world’s information at our fingertips?

Hillary Clinton called 25-50% of the country deliverables, and it was basically well accepted by the media and most on her side. I don't think labeling the other is going away any time soon.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#738

Post by quadrifoliate » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:38 AM UTC

nondravidian wrote: post #731

quadrifoliate wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear a lot of instances of favoritism or nepotism in what you describe, possibly even corruption, but not much sounds like caste-based discrimination. "Incompetent person hires a lot of people they know instead of qualified candidates" is not really what's being discussed here, and I think Ms. Soundararajan would agree. As a side note, this illustrates quite neatly why most of us who come from India are somewhat re…

Except that this is not just weird and far-fetched. It is also very unusual for such diet-based discrimination to happen. I am a vegetarian. All managers (with the exception of one) who hired me in the past 12 years (in India) were not vegetarians. Unlikely that they saw vegetarians discriminating, and did not practice a little reverse discrimination themselves. The problem today in India is not that there is a caste…

The instance being described is mainly in the US, where the talk described was given. I know that such discrimination is highly unlikely, especially in the Midwest where there aren't a ton of Indian employees to begin with, and probably even fewer Indian hiring managers.

However, I was merely stating it as an example of caste discrimination – which you seem to grasp readily, probably because you're Indian or work in India.

Explaining to an American person how diet-based discrimination can be an instance of caste discrimination is harder than you'd think. The OP is basically going "I saw an Indian person doing this bad thing, so it must be caste-based discrimination!", which I'm trying to correct by citing an example of (so to say) actual discrimination on the basis of caste.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#739

Post by barrysteve » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:38 AM UTC

monkeycantype wrote: post #604

I’m a white Australian and am in my last few weeks of a decade long stint in a large company, caste discrimination is certainly not the only discrimination in Australia, but it is the most overt explicit discrimination that I see every week. We have laws and company policies on other forms of discrimination, but the predominantly white corporate culture hasn’t figured out how to talk about caste discrimination withou…

That can't last. Integrating an Indian subculture and taking the sting out of the caste system is going to become necessary.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#740

Post by eyelidlessness » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:42 AM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #702

eyelidlessness wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Genuine question, what is stopping you from identifying as another caste in 2022 with the mass adoption of the concept of identifying with different genders? Since this is a genuine question, there’s something you should know about not conforming to the gender you were assigned at birth: we’re not accepted for our identity either. The concept of self-identification is separate from cultural acceptance of it. Moving…

What would it take to plant the seeds of change in the youth to abandon casteism conceptually as technology allows us to be on a more equal platform with all the world’s information at our fingertips?

I truly don’t know and fully defer to people who are directly familiar for that portion of the discussion. My only point in responding was to say that increased (public) diversity of gender identity hasn’t been a panacea of acceptance.

If anything I’ve seen the opposite, much more transphobia and even just ignorant objections to parts of speech, in recent years. I can speak a little bit to that, but technology has mostly been more of a problem than a potential solution. A century of advances in access to information and how quickly it travels has nothing on a century of lessons learned mechanizing terror and pain.