Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

indiatoday.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 667 posts

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

#491

Post by bergenty »

yrgulation wrote: post #452

Here in europe, we have a large minority called Romany (derogatorily known as Gypsy). An indian people that apparently was a caste in india, migrated to europe some 400 years ago, later on ending up as slaves and then finally getting freed (to a certain extent). Sadly this group of indians is heavily misunderstood and massively discriminated against, and there is little to no effort in understanding their culture or…

Pretty sure the Romani were never slaves. Didn’t they always just live on the fringes of society?

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

#492

Post by elsonrodriguez »

outworlder wrote: post #442
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

This has been the case for a while. I've posted videos on here of white supremacists literally saying white people are a "superior bloodline", only to be met with "both sides" pedantry and apologetics.

Part of this is because engineers tend to take devil's advocate positions as a matter of due diligence, but the other part is because of the metaphorical smoke that is this article and countless others showing systemic bias issues in IT companies.

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

#493

Post by teakettle42 »

chowells wrote: post #399
teakettle42 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It's telling that you didn't actually address my point. See, isn't innuendo fun? Telling of what , precisely? If you think my point is false, please do say so. If you think my example isn't accurate, please say so. If you think my example is accurate but not a good analogy for the original discussion, please explain why that matters when I'm refuting a claim you made that is also not related to the original discussio…

> Telling of what, precisely?

The blind spot I posited and which you then summarily demonstrated.

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

#494

Post by mrtranscendence »

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".

Are you denying that the national government of India has taken a reactionary turn under the leadership of Modi?

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

#495

Post by toast0 »

colpabar wrote: post #458
toast0 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is what really bugs me about DEI policies and the people who advocate for them. A lot of comments seem to say "well, caste isn't a protected class so they didn't know what to do,…

> A lot of comments seem to say "well, caste isn't a protected class so they didn't know what to do," which to me means "the company isn't afraid of getting sued for explicit discrimination because it isn't illegal, so no one is going to do anything."

The company is probably also afraid of getting sued for firing the Indian person doing the discrimination that's not explicitly prohibited. With the right presentation, that looks like discrimination based on national origin, because only Indian origin people would be fired for caste discrimination.

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

#496

Post by pc86 »

jefftk wrote: post #445
pc86 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But most people of that race have non-blue eyes.

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

#497

Post by tablespoon »

ska wrote: post #251
teakettle42 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“DEI” is both a very recent and a uniquely western ideological construction.

Dalit activism has been a thing in India for many decades.

> Dalit activism has been a thing in India for many decades.

I was specifically talking about the performative white liberal guilt thing, which "high caste Indians who push this stuff" brought to mind.

It totally makes sense that lower-class/caste people would be pushing for equality, wherever they are.

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

#498

Post by chowells »

teakettle42 wrote: post #493
chowells wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's telling that you didn't actually address my point. See, isn't innuendo fun? Telling of what , precisely? If you think my point is false, please do say so. If you think my example isn't accurate, please say so. If you think my example is accurate but not a good analogy for the original discussion, please explain why that matters when I'm refuting a claim you made that is also not related to the original discussio…

> Telling of what, precisely? The blind spot I posited and which you then summarily demonstrated.

Still waiting for a non-innuendo response. Do you have one?

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

#499

Post by sreevisakh »

yardie wrote: post #69
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?

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…

> In India, yes it does family name is derived from caste.

That is not always correct (but is true in most cases). There are caste-neutral names in India - especially Tamil Nadu. But that itself is a hint about the person's caste, since it is adopted mostly by people of the unprivileged caste.

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

#500

Post by throw_a_grenade »

spinningarrow wrote: post #185
smcl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says in the article that Google (and Microsoft, Dell, Amazon + FB/Meta) aren't (yet?) implementing this, but I didn't see anything about them doing the opposite . Additionally I don't imagine they'd gain much from doing so, as a business. Is there any more info on this?

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.

For those who don't know how to recognise a caste from the name, does anyone have any idea which caste Google's CEO might represent? Can it even be definitely derived just from name?
Post reply on HN