741–750 of 1001 posts
A good read for some additional context on caste discrimination in the American tech industry: https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...
As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience. https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101
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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.
The sacred thread is exclusive to Brahmins and a distinct caste marker. Non-Brahmin Hindus are not allowed to wear the sacred thread. Turbans and burqa do not have such intra-religious restriction. Comparing the sacred thread to turbans/ burqas is a false comparison.
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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.
Calling people out for what they’re doing isn’t anywhere near the same thing as assigning lifelong attributes to them for their heritage.
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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?
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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…
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Imagine trying to identify as a midwesterner except you secretly grew up in Canada. Sooner or later someone is going to figure it out, eh?
Not really. There are scores of famous Hollywood actors, musicians etc who most would never guess were Canadian.
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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.
I have very little in common with either Clinton, but it’s hard to disagree with that assessment (even though it’s misconstrued), given the facts. Basically everyone that could be harmed by their coalition has been or is in their sights. Basically every bit of progress to make our society more inclusive has been under threat. The defectors from that program have been high profile but very lonely in their principled s…
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The sacred thread is exclusive to Brahmins and a distinct caste marker. Non-Brahmin Hindus are not allowed to wear the sacred thread. Turbans and burqa do not have such intra-religious restriction. Comparing the sacred thread to turbans/ burqas is a false comparison.
Many Brahmins I know don’t wear it. So how is it a caste marker? Heck I wear it only during certain ceremonies. So the point the gp was making about people wearing the sacred thread condoning the caste system and discrimination is patently false and bigoted.
But only Brahmins have the right to wear it.
Wearing a "sacred thread" in a society that wants to eliminate caste based discrimination is promoting and condoning discrimination.
As an extreme example, how is this different from a klan member choosing to wear a "hood" in public.
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If you were born outside of India, it would be pretty much like any other national /racial identity -- inferred from family (based on family names for instance). Like mentioned in the GPs write-up: > Unlike race, it’s easier to hide your caste, especially in a new country. Many dalits change their official last name to something common enough that it’s hard to identify them.
Ah, like how in my home country, it’s a ‘well known fact’ that people lower on the economic ladder like to give their children foreign sounding names, whereas people that are well off give their children traditional, and even double traditional names. Guess the country :)
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Somebody should introduce Israeli government hardliners to the concept of "blowback".
Blowback validates the wordlviee hardliners are selling; in a different context, that was pretty central to al-Qaeda’s strategy, where provoking blowback was a way of selling their clash of civilizations narrative. Hardliners of all stripes tend to recognize and actively exploit blowback.