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Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#821

Post by whoevercares »

sshlocalhost98 wrote: post #812
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.

Hello ? Any source please? Anyone can talk nonsense and say it’s a personal recount

Think about the “MeToo” movement, do you think it was nonsense before? Obviously until this movement there aren’t any sources.

In this case believe it or not, it’s a personal anecdote and true story. I’m not interested in revealing the identity or source in case of internet violence

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#822

Post by monkeycantype »

barrysteve wrote: post #739
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.

My fear is that Australia now has a large workforce of people on fragile visas with no political representation and that this is corrosive for our democracy, so this situation will last much longer than it should

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#823

Post by alex_smart »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #738
nondravidian wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>So, a reasonable question is, "Well, what does a real instance of caste-based discrimination look like?"

Given that the example came in the context of this question, the answer is a resounding "not like that".

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#824

Post by vijaybritto »

sshlocalhost98 wrote: post #810
vijaybritto wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. It will be any upper caste who are above Dalits. There is no one perpetrator here but all of them. The main point to note is that the caste hierarchy is sacred and will be enforced by endogamy (arranged marriages) and other occupational rules. You will be shown your place very very quickly. Love marriages are quite deadly and parents killing their own children and the lower caste grooms are extremely…

Ambedkar said similar things to muslims as well, you can stop hating on Hindus. Hinduism does not condone honour killings, it’s a cultural thing. The amount of hate and comments from you is appalling, while everything you say is not wrong but please be civil.

hating on Hindus? I'm not sure what's hateful here for describing actual events. The ones receiving the caste oppression are also Hindus. Dalits are not Hindus you mean?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#825

Post by rramadass »

jjeaff wrote: post #816
rramadass wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. Americans have no idea of what caste-based discrimination looks like and hence merely use it to foist their own prejudices (i.e. "they terk err jerbs") onto the Indian community. Indians have such diversity amongst themselves (North vs. South, State vs. State, Linguistic, Religious etc.) that anything can be used as a bone of contention (real or imagined). The first thing to realize is that people with gri…

I may be an American, but sometimes it doesn't take an expert on the Indian caste system to spot caste discrimination. I have literally heard people say "I don't have to listen to him, he is of a lower caste" or some variation of that sentence. In fact, just yesterday, I was watching an episode of one of Gordon Ramsay's kitchen shows. The chef was Indian and said "he can't tell me what to do, we are the same caste an…

Not everything in life is simple and in particular; nuances matter very much when it comes to understanding other Cultures/Social Structures.

Anecdotes like yours really bother me because they sound so outlandish that their veracity cannot be taken on faith. Having spent a considerable part of my working life in the US, i can state that never once has the subject of Caste ever been a topic of relevance with my Indian colleagues i.e. it has never ever come up in any discussions, implicit or otherwise. None of my American colleagues knew much about it; and i have worked across a bunch of companies so the sample space is quite spread out.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#826

Post by Melting_Harps »

rramadass wrote: post #820
mission_failed wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caste-splaining

Not Quite. The people i have referenced are experts/scholars in this field (and non-Indians to boot) so you can be sure that it is as close to factual as you can get. The Wikipedia page contains links to their papers/books which you can refer for edification.

> The people i have referenced are experts/scholars in this field (and non-Indians to boot) so you can be sure that it is as close to factual as you can get. The Wikipedia page contains links to their papers/books which you can refer for edification.

What are the cliff notes, because every time I bring this up here one gets accused of being a bigot and missing the nuances of what is essentially nepotism and racism that gets a pass because A: Indians make up an inordinate amount of CEOs in Tech, and B: Well, we've always done this and anything deviation from this brings everything else into question.

I worked in the health sciences before and I saw a lot of this, and got so fed up with just abjectly horrible most workers were who got a pass because of their surname. It's odd, my colleague was a MSc in Microbiology and was Indian, too, but we both had to claw our way into the Industry (in different fields) and she was always worried he H1 Visa would be the only thing that kept her in the US.

My only conclusion was she wasn't a high ranking member of the caste system which is why she was just as hungry as us undergrads in the 2008 financial crisis. She ended up quitting her role in a Govt agency, and did her PhD last we spoke.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#827

Post by shultays »

sumedh wrote: post #100
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?

Your parents tell you your caste. You can also get a caste certificate from you local municipal office which helps you take advantage of some perks if you belong to a "lower" class. Generally you wont be able to figure the caste of someone but there are clues like skin color, fairer skin generally is "upper" caste, sometimes your surname also gives away your caste. Unfortunately some Indians specially from the "upper…

    caste certificate
What, caste is an official thing in India?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#828

Post by rusticpenn »

JCharante wrote: post #713
rusticpenn wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty easy to find out. There are identifiers from the name to the dialect one speaks, what you eat etc

> what you eat etc This may sound uneducated, but do Indians in the US only eat Indian food? How would someone know if you rotate through different cuisines every day?

If you see Indians in KFC asking for vegetarian choices, you can guess that they are upper caste. Alternatively, if you see Indians speak of animal rights, while wearing leather bags/ belts or shoes you could also guess from that.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#829

Post by ZeroGravitas »

HKH2 wrote: post #437
olddustytrail wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since always. It's an extreme dislike ( the opposite of "philia"). "Revulsion" might be a better translation than fear or hatred.

> Since always. Is was used like that in Greek? Even the clinical meaning today does not include hatred. > "Revulsion" might be a better translation than fear or hatred. Fear does not require disgust. I am scared of snakes but I think they are beautiful animals.

I don't think fears are phobias though? If someone said there's a poisonous snake behind you, then it's not a phobia to move away.

Like many psychological things the line is more "when your response is damaging to yourself and others".

I knew someone with a phobia of stickers on fruit. Just tried to Google what that is called and found this comment from a sufferer:

"I can't have them on my skin and if anyone put one on me without prior warning I would panic and scream. I HATE HATE HATE ones on fruit"

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#830

Post by HKH2 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #803
HKH2 wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was making a comment about the trend in general. Some native speakers also agree with your definition. > Though the line between fear and hate is quite thin and blurry in human psychology. In some instances it may be, although the word 'awe' has no sense of hatred in it. > The arachnophobes I know do, in fact, hate spiders with a passion. Okay, well how about snakes? I'm afraid of them but I don't think anybody is…

> although the word 'awe' has no sense of hatred in it. Awful has some meanings that are close https://www.etymonline.com/word/awful

'awesome' does not.
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