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Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

indiatoday.in

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Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#361

Post by ummonk »

strken wrote: post #84
ummonk wrote: post #13

I have mixed feelings on this. There are of course things that aren't explicitly prohibited by workplace policies but are no doubt unacceptable - e.g. discriminating against left-handed employees. But it's still useful to have explicit policies against caste discrimination to make clear that it's unacceptable. On the other hand, as an Indian in a top tech company we're more likely to experience racism than casteism (…

Are you in a caste that's likely to experience discrimination? Or is this widely accepted among people who'd be vulnerable to caste discrimination?

I'm from a middle-caste - one that currently qualifies for affirmative action quotas in my ancestral state in India, but is reasonably well off economically. Most Indian tech workers with caste names I can recognize are either Brahmin (priestly caste - highest in the ritual hierarchy, though often poor), or Agarwal (middle-caste but extremely wealthy). I eat meat. Most of the upper castes traditionally don't, but a lot of Brahmins for example eat vegetables.

If I went to an orthodox village or town in India, I would likely face discrimination from Brahmins. On the other hand, in educated circles in cosmopolitan cities in India, caste is unlikely to really come up. The one thing that could come up is diet though - in some regions of India, many or even most landlords (including "lower" caste ones) would deny me housing because I cook meat at home and bring non-vegetarian food home. In America, most landlords won't care, but many vegetarian students / residents do insist on vegetarian roommates (likely more because they don't like the smell of meat than due to the religious vegetarian fanaticism that's seen in some parts of India).

Is it possible that dalits (historically untouchables, who constitute something like 2% of Indian-Americans from surveys I've seen) could be discriminated against in top tech companies in America, unlike me? Yeah it's possible. But I'm skeptical, if only because few Indians could tell apart a dalit from someone like me, given the amount of diversity you see in top tech companies - someone from one region of India won't recognize dalit surnames from another region of India. I could, however, see it coming up in some of the less competitive tech companies, where you tend to see more clustering of people from individual regions of India. I have also heard reports (some from friends of friends) of heavy discrimination by more tight-knit ethnic / caste groups in the diaspora that don't tend to work as engineers in tech - e.g. Jatts in the Central Valley or Patels.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#362

Post by yywwbbn »

howinteresting wrote: post #253
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are lower caste groups in North India that look more "white" than upper caste groups in South India Definitions of race don’t require a skin-color gradient. Plenty of Asians are lighter skinned than white Mediterraneans.

Many people from the Mediterranean and the surrounding areas are white-passing people of color . They've been flattened by the official US race forms into "white", but that's not the same thing as actually being white in terms of day-to-day lived experience. See this book: https://www.amazon.com/Whitewashed-Americas-Invisible-Minori...

Genes which are responsible for white skin were introduced to Europe by “immigrants” from the middle east. It’s a very diverse region due to groups of people moving in/out for thousands of years.

So whatever label you try to attach to them you’ll find plenty of people for whom it makes no sense (e.g. there are groups of people whose ancestors lived in the Levant for at least thousands of years and amongst whom red hair and blue eyes are more common than in most “European” populations)

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#363

Post by boplicity »

Akronymus wrote: post #248
boplicity wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone hires a person based on their color, that's wrong regardless of who's doing it. Let's say a company is set to hire 1,000 employees. For the first 900 hires, they intentionally exclude white people. Should they, then, make up for this intentional exclusion by then prioritizing white people in their hiring? Or should they correct the problem by giving those who were intentionally excluded priority? In othe…

> hould they, then, make up for this intentional exclusion by then prioritizing white people in their hiring? No. More racism isnt the solution to racism.

Can you explain how correcting a past mistake is racism? Imagine you have two kids, and you only give one of them a cookie. Should you make up for it, by giving the next cookie to the kid who didn't get one? Of course!

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#364

Post by richiebful1 »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #349
fritztastic wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior. It would have been dealt with sooner if the employee was white because (assuming they meant white as in western white skinned person) culturally there isn't an equivalent of caste that would…

> Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior. How? Do you really think their language specified that discrimination could only happen from white people to minorities?

My understanding of the situation is that Western countries/companies don't usually have protected class status on basis of caste. Those protections exist for race, gender, age etc.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#365

Post by mikepurvis »

pm90 wrote: post #313
duxup wrote: post #189

I worked at a company where this was an issue at one point (granted this was one situation among a lot of employees). A manager was pretty much dismissive of everything anyone of a lower caste did / wouldn't communicate with them effectively. HR absolutely struggled with the issue. The HR folks tasked with dealing with discrimination issues largely had spent their time constructing company wide emails and classes tha…

I don’t think this is some sort of malicious conspiracy or evidence of anti whiteness or whatever. Processes are created for the common case and when there is an uncommon scenario, it is new territory for everyone involved and someone has to be responsible. In most corporate environments, nobody wants to be that person so inaction is generally the norm unless the course of action is straightforward or has precedent.

I'd imagine this type of situation could also be especially tricky since both sides of it have _some_ claim to minority/victim status.

Not that it isn't still fairly clear what needs to happen, but it's not hard to imagine how even doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons could end up spun as if it's a squabble over a prayer room or something, like "clueless white HR department fires productive manager after disrespecting his cultural and religious background. When will they ever learn??"

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#366

Post by colpabar »

pm90 wrote: post #335
teakettle42 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a blind spot in DEI and intersectionality; the idea that an oppressed class can also be an oppressor class, and that it’s not an attribute of the perpetrator’s class at all, but in fact, situational and individual.

Agreed. In tech especially, certain minority groups (East and South Asians) are over represented so our processes must evolve to deal with the situations that result from them.

I'd rather the processes evolve to treat all discrimination on factors such as race or caste as bad, regardless of the race or caste of the people doing the discriminating.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#367

Post by webmobdev »

dixie_land wrote: post #345
ab_testing wrote: post #245

I think this is a reason why Leetcode style interviews are popular. They remove at least one type of bias of race - the ability to solve coding problems. If you can solve Online Assessment, Phone Assessment and Onsites, you keep moving on to the next round, regardless of your race or ethnicity. It is a way for companies to claim that there is no bias in hiring.

Have you seen the discussion boards of Leetcode? It’s all Indians

That's because we understand how the system works, and are competitive - it's ingrained in us from childhood how important it is to study and compete and understand the system because there are a billion+ of us and so few opportunities.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#368

Post by adamsmith143 »

richiebful1 wrote: post #364
adamsmith143 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior. How? Do you really think their language specified that discrimination could only happen from white people to minorities?

My understanding of the situation is that Western countries/companies don't usually have protected class status on basis of caste. Those protections exist for race, gender, age etc.

Ok are there also specific legal protections for Eye color, Hair Color, presence of Freckles, etc? Does every possible way to discriminate need to be clearly spelled out for it to be illegal?

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#369

Post by eweise »

ajross wrote: post #240
greatpostman wrote: post #12

looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him It’s all lip service. Nepotism is rampant at FAANG

To be fair: nepotism is rampant everywhere, and has been throughout history. How many groups have you worked in or seen where everyone got recruited from the same set of schools? Where everyone used to work together at some other company? The difference with what you're seeing is all down to who is allowed to be nepotistic. When south asian engineers were predominantly junior immigrants, you didn't notice anything wr…

Nepotism where everyone hired is the same race is called racism.

Re: Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

#370

Post by Manuel_D »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #216
wang_li wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't correct racism against Bob be being racist in favor of Carl. Which is one reason why Affirmative Action is bullshit.

In an ideal world, it would be. However, because of mainly the US' political system, people of different demographic backgrounds - like class, race, family wealth, etc - will not have access to the same education as others. In an ideal world, everybody (in in this case the US) would have access to the same standard of living, the same standard of education, and everyone would start at the same point in their career,…

Oftentimes, blind interviewing produces results opposite what people expect: https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...
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