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Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

reuters.com

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Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#81

Post by Barrin92 »

khazhoux wrote: post #69

As a white male who's lived in the US most of his life, I confess that I read these articles about caste-based racism and comments with a measure of disbelief, because to me it is entirely invisible. Mind you, I first learned about India's discriminatory caste system in high school, so I've been aware of it and I know it's real, but it exists in an alternate dimension I simply can't see. I've never noticed people ask…

if you really don't want to know don't read this reply, but if I told you a North-Eastern, teetotalling Anglo Protestant with a learned Mid-Atlantic accent is part of America's very own Brahmin caste while someone with a thick southern drawl isn't you're going to be mad at me for spilling the beans?

The US has its own very fine-calibrated class system from blue-blood to redneck that pretty much everyone is aware of.

Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#83

Post by samarthr1 »

rg111 wrote: post #73
thematrixturtle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing about caste is that it's basically invisible: unlike race, you can't tell somebody's caste by looking at them. (There is some correlation to skin color, but there are also plenty of eg Tamil Brahmins who are very dark-skinned.) Which is why caste-conscious Indians meeting new people go through an elaborate dance asking about family name, where they're from, if they're vegetarian etc to figure ou…

Indian friend told me that you can know the caste by their last names. And this is true for most last names. Isn't that true?

Due to the actions of EV Ramaswamy Naicker, a lot of Brahmins from Tamil Nadu were forced to give up their traditional surnames, and made to instead take on their father's names.

Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#84

Post by bryanrasmussen »

arise wrote: post #72
29athrowaway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law should simply say: do you observe any beliefs that make you treat a group of people in a favorable or unfavorable way, based on criteria other than academic or professional qualifications? If so, you should declare your conflict of interest at the beginning of each meeting and document and be excluded from professional decisions involving hiring, firing, promotions, etc. Ideally, this should also apply to inv…

The person who claims they have no such beliefs is lying. When you remove the human element (including intuition, tacit knowledge, reading of social-behavioral cues, and subjective assessments of temperament and character), you're going to get absurdities that cost society way more than any conceivable benefit.

>The person who claims they have no such beliefs is lying.

prove it.

Anyway, doesn't seem likely, there are first of all various medical and psychological conditions in which intuition, reading of social-behavioral cues, and subjective assessments of temperament and character are impacted, which would mean that some people with these conditions would not be prone to the beliefs that come from these states.

Furthermore there are wide variances in humans as to how much one accepts tradition, authority, how much one searches out newness etc.

given all these factors it strikes me as unlikely that every human would be susceptible to the beliefs that probably affect most of the population around them.

I am however perfectly content to say the person who has no such beliefs is an outlier.

Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#85

Post by throo12345 »

anon291 wrote: post #63

Being from a minority religion in India and being an American of Indian origin, it is strange working on tech, because my family's presumed caste (which I assume is very low because we're not Hindu [1]), ends up dictating a lot of interactions with indians from India. Most American born ones don't seem to care. [1] the wife of my dad's friend who is high caste brahmin refused to enter our home and stayed in my brothe…

> which I assume is very low because we're not Hindu

Caste does not go away if you convert to an Abrahamic religion.

Asian christians pray in separate churches and are buried in separate cemeteries from White Europeans.

Non-black christians/muslims/jews have a history of treating their black counterparts very differently.

Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#86

Post by quadrifoliate »

Barrin92 wrote: post #81
khazhoux wrote: post #69

As a white male who's lived in the US most of his life, I confess that I read these articles about caste-based racism and comments with a measure of disbelief, because to me it is entirely invisible. Mind you, I first learned about India's discriminatory caste system in high school, so I've been aware of it and I know it's real, but it exists in an alternate dimension I simply can't see. I've never noticed people ask…

if you really don't want to know don't read this reply, but if I told you a North-Eastern, teetotalling Anglo Protestant with a learned Mid-Atlantic accent is part of America's very own Brahmin caste while someone with a thick southern drawl isn't you're going to be mad at me for spilling the beans? The US has its own very fine-calibrated class system from blue-blood to redneck that pretty much everyone is aware of.

Yeah, I'm Indian origin and don't give a shit about caste (and honestly, find it pretty hard to tell because I never ask), but it astonishes me to hear Americans drone on about how this is unbelievable and totally not something they'd ever do.

Meanwhile, the same people seem to have no problem automatically discerning that someone living on the Upper East Side in NYC is high class and treating them several times better than someone who comes from Random Town, Kansas.

Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#87

Post by More-nitors »

throo12345 wrote: post #85
anon291 wrote: post #63

Being from a minority religion in India and being an American of Indian origin, it is strange working on tech, because my family's presumed caste (which I assume is very low because we're not Hindu [1]), ends up dictating a lot of interactions with indians from India. Most American born ones don't seem to care. [1] the wife of my dad's friend who is high caste brahmin refused to enter our home and stayed in my brothe…

> which I assume is very low because we're not Hindu Caste does not go away if you convert to an Abrahamic religion. Asian christians pray in separate churches and are buried in separate cemeteries from White Europeans. Non-black christians/muslims/jews have a history of treating their black counterparts very differently.

> Asian christians pray in separate churches

that's not due to some artificial separation like caste...

it's something to do with homesickness/cultural/language-related natural phenomenon. (eg. church pastor is a friend of a relative etc)

and no one thinks one is above the other due to the separation. (except for cooking...)

Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#88

Post by throo12345 »

More-nitors wrote: post #87
throo12345 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I assume is very low because we're not Hindu Caste does not go away if you convert to an Abrahamic religion. Asian christians pray in separate churches and are buried in separate cemeteries from White Europeans. Non-black christians/muslims/jews have a history of treating their black counterparts very differently.

> Asian christians pray in separate churches that's not due to some artificial separation like caste... it's something to do with homesickness/cultural/language-related natural phenomenon. (eg. church pastor is a friend of a relative etc) and no one thinks one is above the other due to the separation. (except for cooking...)

In extreme cases, white christians even kill the non-white christians in their separate christian church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting

Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#89

Post by quadrifoliate »

anon291 wrote: post #63

Being from a minority religion in India and being an American of Indian origin, it is strange working on tech, because my family's presumed caste (which I assume is very low because we're not Hindu [1]), ends up dictating a lot of interactions with indians from India. Most American born ones don't seem to care. [1] the wife of my dad's friend who is high caste brahmin refused to enter our home and stayed in my brothe…

> ...ends up dictating a lot of interactions with indians from India. Most American born ones don't seem to care.

As a counter anecdote, I know several tens of families of both India-born and American-born Indians, and caste has never been brought up or mentioned in the US. It's...just not something you talk about, a bit like race usually doesn't come up in conversations, unless you're talking about it in the context of an article like this one.

I have certainly heard die-hard vegetarian Indians, for example, not want to eat in a restaurant which cooks both meat and vegetarian dishes, but that's more of a "I don't want food that has been in contact with animal flesh/fat" thing that is perhaps a bit hard, but not impossible to understand.

Re: Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy

#90

Post by throwaway_1928 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #89
anon291 wrote: post #63

Being from a minority religion in India and being an American of Indian origin, it is strange working on tech, because my family's presumed caste (which I assume is very low because we're not Hindu [1]), ends up dictating a lot of interactions with indians from India. Most American born ones don't seem to care. [1] the wife of my dad's friend who is high caste brahmin refused to enter our home and stayed in my brothe…

> ...ends up dictating a lot of interactions with indians from India. Most American born ones don't seem to care. As a counter anecdote, I know several tens of families of both India-born and American-born Indians, and caste has never been brought up or mentioned in the US. It's...just not something you talk about, a bit like race usually doesn't come up in conversations, unless you're talking about it in the context…

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