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

531–540 of 667 posts

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

#531

Post by toast0 »

colpabar wrote: post #521
toast0 wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Sure, I completely understand that. But a wise man once said: > 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. I think we agree and I appreciate the insight. I am just very against deceptive advertising, and the way people advocate…

Yeah, I think we agree. HR is likely to follow the explicit portions of the law, and not follow the intent, and that's part of what makes DEI policies often feel hollow or performative. I had to take a 'managing within the law' course given by HR at a big corp once, and it was immensely clear what they were most concerned about, and also immensely clear that I didn't want to be associated with being in management ;) From the HR perspective, their job is to reduce employee lawsuits, and managers are their tool to gather information so that HR can do their job effectively. I'd rather just be in charge of computers and not people, thanks.

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

#532

Post by rajup »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #494
rajup wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Probably not, I do think the current government leans a bit more towards religious intolerance than co-existence.

I do however take issue with bashing the government for every social justice issue du jour. It’s convenient but very distracting for all sides involved. For example GP here accuses the current government of caste intolerance. If you think about it though it doesn’t make much sense, given the Indian government’s nationalist agenda of uniting all Hindus and instilling in them pride for their culture etc. Sowing caste divisions would be the exact opposite of what they would want to do in this scenario.

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

#533

Post by [deleted] »

trs8080 wrote: post #508
morelisp wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does one "neoliberalize" intersectionality? What parts of intersectionality are "capitalist-corporate-compatible"?

[deleted]

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

#534

Post by toofy »

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.

you may be thinking of something different from intersectionality.

this situation is a perfect example of one of the most basic foundational concepts of intersectionality.

- person A is discriminated against because of some trait

- person A may use whatever power they have to diminish another person because of some trait their own group has historically oppressed.

discrimination isn’t a direct straight line. it’s much more complicated, it intersects in many strange ways.

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

#535

Post by ticviking »

snickerbockers wrote: post #310
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're more likely to experience racism than casteism (though both are relatively rare) I have seen zero evidence for this. The relative or absolute frequency claims. > this policy is likely to increase racism and result in Indians (and other South Asians) getting singled-out and scrutinized for casteism Strongly disagree. I have Indian heritage. I have no problem with such policy, and am increasingly convinced—in p…

>(It’s almost certainly already law.) Is it? I suppose this will vary depending on which country we're talking about, but as far as i know there's nothing in the US that makes it illegal to discriminate based on caste unless the determination of caste overlaps with another -ism, like race.

Not a lawyer, but as I recall there's case law suggesting that the US laws on ethnic or national origin and religion in practice are a protection against caste discrimination

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

#536

Post by wang_li »

boplicity wrote: post #482
wang_li wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody admits averages or hires averages, they admit individuals and hire individuals. For any given individual you can't say that they suffer any disadvantage simply by way of being a member of a particular identifiable group.

Anyone who uses group metrics to include or exclude an individual is just being racist, sexist, or some other -ist.

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

#537

Post by teakettle42 »

toofy wrote: post #534
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.

you may be thinking of something different from intersectionality. this situation is a perfect example of one of the most basic foundational concepts of intersectionality. - person A is discriminated against because of some trait - person A may use whatever power they have to diminish another person because of some trait their own group has historically oppressed. discrimination isn’t a direct straight line. it’s muc…

That’s the theory, which, if you actually took to its logical conclusion, would result in treating and evaluating every individual as an individual, and the entire concept of group identity as a short-hand mechanism for assigning “intersecting identities” would have to be abandoned.

That’s not how it is applied in practice.

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

#538

Post by thaeli »

Gorbzel wrote: post #515
kevinmchugh wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NB: "where are you from?" is a question your HR training should already explicitly tell people not to ask candidates. I'm not in HR or management and I still make sure to mention it to new hires before doing my first interview alongside them. National origin is a protected class. Even within the US , "where are you from?" can proxy for a protected class. Race, mostly, or possibly religion. It's also a question that's…

Ugh, this is a classic example of skewed logic going way too far before the underlying truth can catch up. I am in tech management (also a recovering attorney) who routinely conducts interviews, and it is perfectly acceptable to ask where someone is from in a professional setting. The unacceptable part, as OP at least hints at, is using the response as a proxy for some other verboten criteria or perhaps to kickoff an…

If you don't collect the data in the first place, you can't misuse it - and it's much easier to prove that you didn't misuse it, because all you have to show is that you never had the dangerous data in the first place. This is the same advice we give about handling PII in applications.

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

#539

Post by jefftk »

pc86 wrote: post #496
jefftk wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Still probably enough to fall under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

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

#540

Post by rayiner »

tablespoon wrote: post #529
washbrain wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think there are folks in India interested in discussing DEI with respect to caste or colorism? What about in the EU? You don't think there are people there enthusiastically discussing DEI?

> What about in the EU? You don't think there are people there enthusiastically discussing DEI? There probably are but: 1) I understand it's often thought of as an Americanism there, and 2) Europe doesn't have the same history, which would make its ground less fertile for it (white people are aboriginal there, and I understand there's little to no history of domestic radicalized slavery, etc.).

> white people are aboriginal there

The Picts would like to have a word with you.

Post reply on HN