141–150 of 291 posts
Deleted because it’s clear I won’t change anyones mind. People who want to believe that Google is guilty, will believe they are guilty no matter what.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) forum is pretty unambiguously the forum to talk about caste discrimination. What forum is Gupta "highjacking" to talk about caste in your opinion? The lesson to be learned is, if you are offended by someone saying they experienced oppression/discrimination, really, look inward.
If your platform champions people's subjective experience, and Indians at Google feel that Soundararajan is discriminatory herself, then they have a right to oppose her talk without being labelled as caste bigots.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deleted
Your assertion that it's not, is not sufficient. Especially when the very idea of having a talk caused so much tension. If it's a non existent problem, this talk would've been given no more attention than a presentation about bigfoot. Such (pro)active denial usually indicates the denier has something to hide. Now that may not be the case here. But assuming you're right about this not being a Google problem but just s…
One of the best features of homesourcing, one that everybody is thinking about but nobody is discussing, is that it completely sidesteps the need to arrive at a universal, global workplace monoculture. People can be truly diverse, including in ways that other people find offensive, objectionable, or unacceptable, when they're not forced to share the same physical spaces. The question of how google should solve the co…
But supposedly the problem also exists in the United States because many people who work in America come from India.
While sharing physical space requires arriving at a least common denominator culture (watered down western culture), sharing virtual spaces requires far fewer and less intrusive compromises.
Personally, I think work and open source should be done like it was in the nineties, where everybody has an IRC handle and you don't know enough about who they are or where they're from to discriminate against anybody or be offended by anybody's lifestyles and cultural quirks.
We need to stop calling this a "caste-bias problem" and call it what it is: racism. Just because they're not a distinct ethnicity doesn't mean it's not racism, and the people looking down on others because of their caste are no different than the white guy yelling the n word in traffic. Neither should be tolerated, and if you find yourself working with one, they should be fired. It is antithetical to an open society.
Isn't racism based on race or ethnic groups. Caste bias can be like a white person judging another white person because one grew up in the Bronx while the other is from New Jersey. That is not racism but classism maybe mixed in with some religious discrimination.
The caste system has been enforced strictly enough to even have an imprint on the DNA:
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/Caste-system-has-l...
In other words, casts differ from each other in ways that are similar to how Jews differ from other Europeans. And I would definitely label anti-Semitism as racism, even if it is usually difficult to identify a Jew by appearance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only is it not a good comparison but there's not even a good thing to compare it to, which would be some other form of discrimination happening within the work place that can't be discussed. What you're saying sounds to me like this problem does exist and it's so bad that even talking about it should be off limits. That's fundamentally unfair to the people potentially being discriminated against.
Fair enough. I probably could have chosen a better example like an Asian speaker speaking out against affirmative action.
I think the discussion should be had anyways. There might be some value that comes out of it. Like in my own case, I'm on the losing end of these policies in theory despite having very serious disadvantages in my life that aren't on the list of things to account for. Broadening the definition of diversity could alleviate feelings people have that they're not being treated fairly. But because we aren't willing to have difficult conversations about this stuff we have a supreme court case about it instead.
> *I have wondered if the high Asian population is one reason why San Francisco has such conspicuous homelessness. Western religion has some egalitarian ideas such as “The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
> On the other hand if you think a person's fortune now depends on karma they got from past lives then you might think it is a virtuous thing to perpetuate people's misery.
I've also heard rumors about discrimination by Indian managers against non-Indian employees at the largest employers in my city. I'm inclined to believe this is true as I've heard from multiple people who worked there that most of engineering management consists of upper caste Indians now but that group represents a relatively small minority of engineering as a whole. I wonder if these two things are connected. In so…
Friendly reminder that white people are shot by cops at a very high rate and yes, all lives do matter. Regardless of what the New Yorker thinks. Edit: Bring in the downvotes, I welcome them. It’s clear to me that white lives don’t matter to the HN crowd, but that doesn’t surprise me at all considering the main people who come here are white people from California who grew up in completely white society and now have a…
If you think that cops target white folks then you must probably be an avid supporter of reforming law enforcement.
From what I understood, the former Google employee being interviewed here is discussing the problem of not being allowed to discuss 'caste discrimination in India', eg. during Uttar Pradesh elections - and in companies like Cisco. They seem to focus on this blanket ban against discussing this issue at Google, as the discriminatory act - rather than alleging that actual caste discrimination is being perpetrated at Goo…
>"T.G.: There was my own obvious background. My parents immigrated from India in the early nineteen-eighties. I was certainly familiar with the topic. In September, 2021, two employees approached me. I hosted D.E.I. office hours every week where people could come in and talk about these topics, confidentially, and multiple Google employees came into my office and reported that they had faced discrimination when trying to talk about matters of caste in the workplace. There was already a public condemnation of caste discrimination at Google from the Alphabet workers’ union. They had put out a press statement when the Cisco case broke. There were reports from at least twenty Google employees as well. [In June, 2020, California sued Cisco and two of its managers for engaging in caste discrimination. Afterward, Equality Labs received complaints from more than two hundred and fifty tech workers, including twenty Google employees.]"