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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

#411

Post by smcl »

nightpool wrote: post #224
happytoexplain wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great example of the kind of hyper-reactivity that makes conversation on most of the internet absolutely impossible. The parent said they didn't see this in the article, don't imagine they'd gain from it, and asked for more info about it - all totally reasonable thoughts and expressed without negativity. And yet you responded with snide superiority, as though your dialogue with this person was already an ar…

I get where you're coming from, but you have to consider these comments in context. The article we're commenting on has an entire section (3 paragraphs!) on this specific Google issue, and it was a very widely discussed news story here at the time that it happened. When smcl took issue with mcv claiming that Google was "taking steps backwards", they were implicitly ignoring or disagreeing with the section of the arti…

> took issue with

You guys really need to calm down and assume a bit of good faith. Again, it sounded like there was some broader caste-discrimination backslide going on I was missing. I didn’t realise they meant that talk cancellation.

I know there are weirdos who hide hatred behind “just asking questions” but this case I was legit was asking if I was missing something. Didn’t realise it would cause such a fuss

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

#412

Post by tomrod »

ummonk wrote: post #281
tomrod wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't sound right. Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially? How would you describe casteism's status among expatriated Indian populations at a population level? Or is the fact one refers to a population at all to be help in contempt as "racism"?

> Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially? No, that's a discredited theory from a century ago. The caste system as we know it began to come into being about two millennia ago, and the relative ancestries of some of the castes did to some extent reflect the impacts of invasions that had happened long before that. But the ancestry correlation is much stronger geographically and isn't even mono…

> If you're assuming that it's widespread amongst educated Indian-Americans in top tech companies

Apologies as I'm not in FAANG, so I am fairly uninformed as to their corporate plights and struggles. What population is using the Indian caste system as a basis for discrimination?

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

#413

Post by lambdasquirrel »

abduhl wrote: post #387
saalweachter wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they weren't sure whether caste was a protected class. Discrimination in law revolves around protected classes (race, religion, national origin, age and sex are the "big five" in the US, and subsequent acts and decisions have added sexual orientation/gender identity, familial status, pregnancy, disability, veteran status, and genetic information). If you act on the basis of that, someone can, well, make…

Why is caste not a subset of national origin or race? Do Indians who discriminate on the basis of caste also discriminate against non-Indians of a lower caste, or is it solely confined to other Indians? If not directly a protected class, why would this not clearly be a disparate impact type of case?

Morally, it may be obvious to us that that's how it should be, but the law doesn't work like that. The law runs on precedents. Taken another way, the law is like code. The "architects" of the code are the legislature who write the laws, and the "programmers" are the judges, who decide exactly what goes in the if-else conditions, based on their interpretation of the law, and those become precedents the next time someone revisits that condition.

The U.S. law on the matter doesn't explicitly mention caste. There are constitutional originalists who take a very "conservative" approach to applying the law, and they might say it isn't illegal until the law is changed to explicitly forbid caste discrimination. When I was growing up, I knew some conservative Indians who would've taken that stance.

The Cisco discrimination suit is the first test of the law, and is likely setting the first precedent. Apple has decided its position (make of that what you will), and chosen to get ahead of the game.

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

#414

Post by tomrod »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #302
tomrod wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, the Indus valley was always Indian and never had external population migrations or conquests that left an impact on culture and dynasties analogous to England's Norman conquest of 1066 and earlier Saxon migrations that impacted the culture to the present day, reflected in socioeconomic class distinctions? Man, guess history is completely wrong.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India

How is all this diatribe related to the fact that AIT (not AMT) is a discarded theory, and jati vyavastha has nothing to do with imagined external conquests?

The statement was not a diatribe as it was neither forceful nor an attack, but I see that you perceive it as such and hence recommend re-reading it under a steelman approach.

1. My statement points out to another population that still has class-based bigotry from prior conquests and migration

2. If you note, you brought invasion into the conversation after my initial comment which neither supported nor refuted AIT, AMT, or other migration theories. I really don't care which theory people believe, because, ultimately, however history unfolded, it's today's Markovian state of the world that holds highest weight.

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

#415

Post by anoonmoose »

zajio1am wrote: post #339
anoonmoose wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political belief should not be a protected class. It's an opinion- everything else you listed, you're born with/can't change that classification (don't want to get into the weirdness of the religion part, but nearly all religious preference can be predicted by geography).

Both religion and national identity are changeable, they are 'just opinions', but both are key historical examples of protected class. You can say that both are predicted by geography, but must conflicts happen in situations where populations of different identities are mixed in one geography. Then you can say it can be predicted by parents' opinions, but that is true for many other opinions, including political ones…

National origin is not changeable. National identity, I suppose.

If push came to shove I'd remove religion from any list of protected classes gladly.

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

#416

Post by toast0 »

abduhl wrote: post #387
saalweachter wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they weren't sure whether caste was a protected class. Discrimination in law revolves around protected classes (race, religion, national origin, age and sex are the "big five" in the US, and subsequent acts and decisions have added sexual orientation/gender identity, familial status, pregnancy, disability, veteran status, and genetic information). If you act on the basis of that, someone can, well, make…

Why is caste not a subset of national origin or race? Do Indians who discriminate on the basis of caste also discriminate against non-Indians of a lower caste, or is it solely confined to other Indians? If not directly a protected class, why would this not clearly be a disparate impact type of case?

I don't think a subset is a protected class. If you don't want to hire/promote/etc people from Oklahoma, that's not explicitly prohibited, because state origin isn't a protected class.

If you only hired/promoted/etc people from upper castes, that would be discrimination on national origin, because anyone who isn't from the historic India region wouldn't be eligible. But if you're promoting upper castes and not lower castes, and you promote people from outside the region, there's not a clear discrimination on national origin. I'm an outsider to the caste system, but I don't think caste is considered to be the same as race? Especially not in the US, where federal race has very limited categories {(select one: Hispanic/Latino, not Hispanic/Latino), (select at least one: American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, White)}.

Of course, IMHO, the underlying anti-discrimination intent is to treat people based on their skills and abilities etc, not based on the circumstances of their birth, and discriminating based on caste is clearly not within that intent.

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

#417

Post by morelisp »

pnathan wrote: post #351
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.

> 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. what's really bleakly funny is that you're right - that's how it's taken, but that's actually a major _point_ of intersectionality.

Well, "DEI" in the end is the neoliberalization of (the capitalist-corporate-compatible parts of) intersectionality, so it's not really surprising that something of significant value was lost in the appropriation.

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

#418

Post by frostwarrior »

lostgame wrote: post #320
dimitrios1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a balance to have. I tried to focus more on tech industry. Tech industry is paying well beyond decent wage. You have to take things in perspective. You are comparing apples to oranges. Again I am not disagreeing with expanding workers rights. Beyond any of these discussions, I was attempting to make an objective observation: The current status of American corporations value those who will put in more hours, a…

>> But as it stands today, someone who will tell their boss "yes, I'll get that done", especially after hours or beyond standard expectations will get promoted more often than not. It's just the way it is. That is…unfortunately, exactly the opposite of what happens more often than not. More often than not - promotions are accrued through social credit and personal preference. You will quite often see the hardest work…

Not everything is corruption and cronyism.

There are cases where the one that gets the promotion it's the one that sells themselves the most, instead of the "overengineer".

Being assertive, going straight to the solution and inspiring security is something that boosts a developer's career a lot.

Some people mistake that being a good professional is saying "yes" to everything and putting endless extra hours behind the code. And often that isn't the case.

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

#419

Post by anoonmoose »

cortesoft wrote: post #326
anoonmoose wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political belief should not be a protected class. It's an opinion- everything else you listed, you're born with/can't change that classification (don't want to get into the weirdness of the religion part, but nearly all religious preference can be predicted by geography).

Why should only things you can't change be protected?

A tautology I suppose, but, because you can't change them. You didn't choose it and it's immutable. Not fair to discriminate against someone for something they can't control. This is, of course, personal opinion of mine.
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