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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

#441

Post by vitaflo »

3qz wrote: post #344
dgs_sgd wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discrimination based on accent is obvious to me but the food surprises me.. what kind of food from that region is looked down upon on the coasts?

It isn’t necessarily the food itself, it’s just that the food marks somebody as lower class. For example, not knowing how to order sushi or use chopsticks. Maybe a better example is not knowing anything about wine. People will think you’re stupid or have bad taste. What would you think of a coworker bringing bologna and ketchup sandwiches to the office?

I would assume they were frugal and trying to pay off a massive student loan debt.

But I’m also from the Midwest and don’t know how to order sushi.

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

#442

Post by outworlder »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #328

”Recently, talking about the incident to the New Yorker, Tanuja said, "A number of e-mails got sent to my VP, to the head of HR, to our chief diversity officer, to our CEO directly, claiming that the talk was creating a hostile workplace, that people felt unsafe, that the speaker was not qualified to speak on the topic and several other allegations." She also claimed that in tech companies, including Google, discrimi…

No post body was provided.

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

#443

Post by codyb »

Mo3 wrote: post #165
stjohnswarts wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know who I would have fired without hesitation.

Yeah. "Caste", "Color", doesn't matter, all the same shit. If someone sees a problem there, they're unfit for a lot of other stuff.

My good friend's Indian and she loved when I described the caste system as "just racism for people who look alike".

Groups gonna group... it's good to see there's some pushback on the bullshit.

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

#444

Post by AareyBaba »

yardie wrote: post #136
paxys wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

LOL. The first Indian American I met with an English surname I assumed was adopted. Then I met another with the same surname and assumed they were related.

India also has a minority population of Anglo-Indians with British surnames. Williams, Jones, Norton, Barnes, Peters, O'Brien are names you can find in Mumbai and Kolkata and Chennai.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Indian_people

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

#445

Post by jefftk »

pc86 wrote: post #410
adamsmith143 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Your question seems to stem from the belief that discrimination is illegal, which it is not. Discrimination is completely legal, including in hiring practices, as long as you're not discriminating against a protected class (either directly or by proxy). That's why the classes are explicitly enumerated, because if it's not in that list you can discriminate based on it. If you want to open a shop and put a sign out tha…

Quibbling with your hypothetical: blue eyes are disproportionately possessed by people of a particular race

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

#446

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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 understand how you can be so dismissive of HR talking about discrimination while at the same time praising legal for firing someone for discrimination, and compensating people for being discriminated against.

What would you like HR to do about caste-based discrimination? Apparently not send emails, or mention it in classes? You just want them to go straight to firing?

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

#447

Post by planetsprite »

tunesmith wrote: post #398

I have this impression that casteism can commonly exist in people that are otherwise progressive and non-racist, is that true? I once had a pen-pal that worked for the UN that at some point told me that she viewed the caste system as a "useful way to organize society". I was rather taken aback since that viewpoint didn't seem to comport with my other impressions of her.

The same people at the forefront of social justice nowadays would likely be considered unforgivably bigoted had they been raised centuries ago. People end up believing a net sum of their cultural and social influences, even if those influences contradict. It's so easy to imbibe nicely packaged cultural trends that people rarely scrutinize the actual moral makeup of their worldview. This pen-pal likely gathered a progressive and non-racist attitude from the UN's human-rights centered hegemony, and a belief in caste systems from the cultural inertia those old practices still have on Indian society, but never put in the effort to ascertain how those two worldviews contradicted.

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

#448

Post by asveikau »

3qz wrote: post #344
dgs_sgd wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discrimination based on accent is obvious to me but the food surprises me.. what kind of food from that region is looked down upon on the coasts?

It isn’t necessarily the food itself, it’s just that the food marks somebody as lower class. For example, not knowing how to order sushi or use chopsticks. Maybe a better example is not knowing anything about wine. People will think you’re stupid or have bad taste. What would you think of a coworker bringing bologna and ketchup sandwiches to the office?

I grew up and got a CS degree in the northeast. Then worked in tech in Seattle and the Bay Area

I can tell you that a lot of coastal techies have stereotypically unrefined tastes in food and wine and they're still successful.

Ours is also a trade in which many are stereotyped as lacking various social skills.

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

#449

Post by AlexandrB »

londons_explore wrote: post #208

A lot of companies try to make policies against things that ought to be dealt with by law enforcement. "Did inappropriate things to someone at the Christmas party" being the classic... That sort of thing should be dealt with by the legal system where the accused has the right to a fair trial etc. Obviously the legal system might need some streamlining to take on the extra workload

There are plenty of things that are not illegal that would also not be acceptable in many workplaces. For example: drinking on the job, coming to work without a shirt on, giving everyone a nickname (e.g. "beardy") and exclusively referring to them by such, etc. You don't have a right to a job, so companies can fire you for any of these reasons. It would be weird if committing a misdemeanour or felony on the job meant you would get to keep working until your trial is over, but you could be fired on the spot for having a beer.

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

#450

Post by registeredcorn »

jl6 wrote: post #436
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…

In the UK, class and ethnicity and accent intersect to create some similarly “invisible to HR” discrimination situations between people who would otherwise be lumped together as white.

Could you explain what you mean, a bit more?
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