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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

#421

Post by lambdasquirrel »

mcv wrote: post #280
spinningarrow wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > Just a few months ago in June, Google, whose CEO Sundar Pichai has Indian roots, cancelled a talk on caste discrimination where Dalit rights activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan was supposed to give a presentation. The talk was organised by Google employee Tanuja Gupta. It’s not the opposite but probably what GP was referring to.

It's why I used the word "seems". It doesn't prove they're going the opposite direction, but it does give that impression. Hopefully Google is taking this issue more seriously.

A lot of racism is not explicit. Plausible deniability above all else.

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

#422

Post by danbolt »

teakettle42 wrote: post #330
pm90 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> ... 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.

I think this is a textbook description of intersectionality[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

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

#423

Post by akomtu »

colpabar wrote: post #382
negamax wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100x this. I told a white SJW colleague that I never felt discriminated by whites, I am a PoC. I was told "You are naive" People take a really small sample set and paint the whole world with a very wide brush

As a white person, I'm so sorry to hear about your internalized racism. /s In all seriousness though, this is an aspect I really detest about anything related to "diversity". It doesn't really seem like it's actually about helping anyone, but more an opportunity for white people to pat themselves on the back without really doing anything other than policing language. All the people I know who "care" about diversity o…

It's corporate priesthood. Their job is to defend dogmas, and their greatest enemy is reason. The moniker "dei" isn't an accident.

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

#424

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #336
tptacek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this an article about white progressivism?

Any such policy at a California company run by white people is either spearheaded by white progressives, or adopted to appease them, and reflects what they consider acceptable versus unacceptable discrimination. Ordinarily, discrimination by and between minorities is swept under the rug in such circles. So a policy that views Indians as capable of being oppressors is a significant.

Just so I'm clear here, your argument is that any policy a California tech company adopts to prohibit discrimination based on caste must either have been spearheaded by progressives --- a political ideology you have contempt for --- or adopted to appease them?

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

#425

Post by lowbloodsugar »

rajup wrote: post #407
bgdam wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nothing that requires much research. The current national government openly supports discrimination on religious and caste based backgrounds. 7 years of this, and people who used to think "Caste is a taboo subject, and we should be working around it", now think "Caste pride is cool".

Hmm the current Prime Minister of India is from a "lower" caste. The current president of India is from a "lower" caste. Curious how you come up with "the current national government openly supports discrimination on religious and caste based backgrounds".

In the same way Hitler was hardly a model, muscled, blond haired Aryan. Those without the traits advocate it more.

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

#426

Post by AlexandrB »

rconti wrote: post #299
tawaywoah2 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> California treats ancestry as a protected class, and discrimination by ancestry is illegal. Not being a Desi, I struggle to see how this is not already covered. It is covered, but not enforced because evidence is difficult. Caste discrimination in Silicon Valley is usually about putting someone from a lower caste into an impossible project that is destined to fail, and boom...now you've got your PIP quota ready fo…

PIP quota? Really?

Not too different from "stack ranking". I'd believe it.

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

#427

Post by muro »

paxys wrote: post #125
yardie wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not Indian American my origins are Caribbean but I have some Indian origins and can offer a few answers from my experience. > Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians? It starts casually with "where are you from?" and the questions get more invasive. > Do names tend to correlate to you caste? In India, yes it does family name is derived from caste. I had some friends adopt English names to ge…

> I had some friends adopt English names to get from under their caste names. So quite a few Johnsons, Smiths, Matthews, Pauls out there. There is an interesting history behind this. When Christian missionaries first arrived in India to spread their religion (in the late 1700s/1800s) they were initially unable to make much progress, but then found success among lower caste Indians by promising them a life of equality…

Christian missionaries arrived in India much, much earlier:

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

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

#428

Post by jahewson »

Zvez wrote: post #348

I wonder is it really necessary to explicitly ban every sort of discrimination? Shouldn't it be simple 'discrimination is not allowed'? Otherwise we will be listing every type of discrimination and revisiting this list every now and then. And it leads to questions like 'is it acceptable to discriminate by boldness if it is not in the list?' While I agree that such not-so-well-known discriminations should be publicall…

Discrimination is allowed, it’s not even necessarily a negative thing - a company may discriminate against employees who are late, for example. What is not permitted are certain types of discrimination. Those either need to be enumerated or we need to all guess what they are.

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

#429

Post by AareyBaba »

paxys wrote: post #125
yardie wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not Indian American my origins are Caribbean but I have some Indian origins and can offer a few answers from my experience. > Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians? It starts casually with "where are you from?" and the questions get more invasive. > Do names tend to correlate to you caste? In India, yes it does family name is derived from caste. I had some friends adopt English names to ge…

> I had some friends adopt English names to get from under their caste names. So quite a few Johnsons, Smiths, Matthews, Pauls out there. There is an interesting history behind this. When Christian missionaries first arrived in India to spread their religion (in the late 1700s/1800s) they were initially unable to make much progress, but then found success among lower caste Indians by promising them a life of equality…

The history was more complex. There are Syrian Christians (600AD), Catholics (1500), Anglican Protestants (1800) and more recently, evangelical Christians. Each group is linguistically and culturally distinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_India

Mangalorean Catholics for instance are mostly Saraswat Brahmins who converted around 1700s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalorean_Catholics

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

#430

Post by lowbloodsugar »

Zvez wrote: post #333
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.

well, no. First companies usually have separate interview for 'cultural fit'. Second, the thing with discriminations, they can be quite hidden. The 'leetcode style tasks' can be performed very differently. If I as interviewer don't like you, I can do a lot to make sure you don't pass it. Starting from making question harder to understand and end with plain 'strong not hire' for vague reasons even if you did well.

Yeah. “Cultural fit” is de facto discrimination, but you have absolutely no chance to prove it unless they haven’t been told by their lawyers not be stupid enough to put it in writing.
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