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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

#481

Post by kingkawn »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #80
helf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is batshit. This article made me read up more in castes and. . . Wtf?

I mean the US had a system like this 60 years ago. South Africa 30. Indian caste system is more a quantitive outlier (I.e the number of castes/classes is the outlier) rather than a qualitative change.

Go to the American military and look for the absence of upper class mannerisms common to any private college…

Go to prisons and look to see the ratio of minorities to white peoples, and look for what portion of people there grew up in poverty

Go to the wealthiest institutions in America and count on one hand the number of people there solely on their merit

Our society is no different than the caste discrimination we claim to abhor, just different superficial rhetoric on top.

Both these cultures need to be overthrown.

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

#482

Post by boplicity »

wang_li wrote: post #473
boplicity wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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! Should you do this even if the other kids kick and scream and say it's "bullshit"? Of course!

This isn't what AA/DEI policies do though. Working with your analogy AA is this: You have two kids a boy and a girl. You give the boy a cookie, and the girl gets nothing. Eighty years later your adult grand kids buy cookies and give them to all the little girls in they neighborhood and explicitly exclude the boys because their great aunt didn't get a cookie. This fixes nothing. The original girl got nothing, the late…

> the later generation girls get a preference though there's no evidence that they were discriminated against in their own lives or even if they lack cookies

If you're going to talk about generational effects of racial discrimination, then, the answer is, yes, there is plenty of evidence that racial discrimination has a profound impact between generations, even if the primary racism was against a previous generation.

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

#483

Post by saalweachter »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #469
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?

Discrimination against eye color would definitely be forbidden as discrimination against race; you can't ban everybody except those with blue eyes without having a racially disparate impact. This is probably true of those other physical characteristics too. But speaking more generally, the principle in America is that if something isn't forbidden, then it is permitted. You could probably get away with some nonsense l…

Thinking about it, astrological sign is probably safe; it shouldn't correlate with any protected class.

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

#484

Post by isk517 »

nharmonia wrote: post #230
FactolSarin wrote: post #41

Out of curiosity, for Indians working in America, how hard is it to hide your caste or pretend to be of another caste altogether? Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians? Do names tend to correlate to you caste? And if so, do people change them as a way of hiding their family caste?

Interestingly, I grew up in India but have no clue what my caste is. I could probably ask my parents and they'd know but it has never come up. Religion and sub ethnicity came up a lot more often while growing up. Funnily enough the only ones who have ever asked me about my caste were white people. I had always assumed the caste system was a thing of the past but looking at how it's still present even at companies in…

Really not surprising considering the size and population of India, but I think the question of real importance is whether you where the one in the bubble or if there are just large bubbles in India were caste is still considered really important.

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

#485

Post by duxup »

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.

From what I saw I don't think it was malicious at all either. I think the HR team really just sort of froze for a while and didn't know what to do when faced with something new to them.

The frustrating thing for everyone is that it was an obvious case of discrimination and HR stalled for a long time. I don't want to get into details but it played out more like HR had a playbook that was stupid simple and suddenly the role players weren't what they expected and they didn't act.

Meanwhile everyone knew it was discrimination.

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

#486

Post by sreevisakh »

pc86 wrote: post #408
abduhl wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My understanding is that non-Indians are simply outside the caste system entirely. So to the extent that there are Indians who view themselves as better than non-Indians, that's less caste discrimination and more good old fashioned racism.

Do you know of any Indians who treat all non-Indians as inferior? My understanding is that non-Indians are judged based on their skin color. That is most certainly racism, but not based on nationality.

Another thing that puzzles me is how you differentiate caste discrimination from racism. The underlying motivations are different. But the treatment, politics and tactics used are almost the same in both cases. I'm curious about your perspective on these.

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

#487

Post by Bolkan »

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?

Both the manager and the victim were part of the same minority as far as the law was concerned.

/IANAL

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

#488

Post by abduhl »

toast0 wrote: post #416
abduhl wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The argument is not that caste is the same as race but that the use of caste as a marker is an additional burden placed ONLY on Indian employees and is therefore based on race or national origin. If you promote only upper-class Indians and no lower-class Indians while promoting other races regardless of caste then you are discriminating against Indians because other races/national origins do not have to clear the additional caste hurdle.

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

#489

Post by thankful69 »

oefrha wrote: post #307
thankful69 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is, is kept very secret between Indian employees, most American engineers (at least I would) will raise the issue. I don't care how high the is Director, I would just tell him that he is being racist , at his face, if he gets me fired, I would sue the company in a second. I have never seen this non-sense at FAANG in the 7 years I have worked here (Amazon first, then Google).

It’s not a secret? I recall having a discussion on this with a bunch of SV engineers a decade ago at a potluck and almost everyone observed how Indian managers tend to hire Indians at their respective companies.

Oh yeah, I was referring to discrimination in the workplace itself. So far all Indians I have met are amazing people, and I have not seen any type of discrimination against other Indians, otherwise I will whine very loud for sure.

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

#490

Post by AlexandrB »

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.

I'm sure it happens all the time. I think people have blind spots based on their upbringing or ideology that can make them unaware of their own racism/sexism/casteism/whatever. Being progressive doesn't magically make you immune to this.
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