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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

#551

Post by teakettle42 »

watwut wrote: post #548
teakettle42 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does not logically follows at all. Nothing in what previous poster said prevents analysis of group behavior or treatment. It does not make it impossible to talk about race or gender or age - it only makes it less naive.

It makes it impossible to assign an individual identity — and evaluate individual behavior and status — as merely a function of their coarse-grained group membership.

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

#552

Post by ummonk »

wobbleblob wrote: post #106
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 thought people lose their caste when they cross the "black water".

Yeah, going by the Smriti and Purana scriptures (which no one really follows), we're all polluted in America.

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

#553

Post by ummonk »

registeredcorn wrote: post #523
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real shame is that living in Delhi, I’ve seen caste come back very strongly in everyday discourse. I’ve been here almost 20 years. This city used to be largely caste agnostic. Now when I meet new people, especially outside the elite tech circles, they will casually mention their upper caste status (“As Brahmins, we don’t do xyz of course!”). Even cars carrying caste stickers are more common.

I have not had to work with the caste system before. In your opinion, are there any benefits for low-to-mid caste in such a system?

Traditionally, Brahmins (the priestly caste at the top of the ritual hierarchy) weren't supposed to engage in commerce, landowning, etc. so some of the business-oriented middle castes were much better off economically.

But the very lowest castes which were outside the traditional varna division (i.e. untouchables, known today as Dalits) basically got the short end of the stick with little if any benefit (the only silver lining I can think of is lack of competition for ritually impure jobs that no one else was willing to do).

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

#554

Post by troon-lover »

rendall wrote: post #502
elsonrodriguez wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Interesting. I'd like to read those threads. Can you post a link, please? As an aside, you know that all of our entire comment histories are browsable and searchable, right? I couldn't find them. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=elsonrodriguez&n…

No post body was provided.

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

#555

Post by civilized »

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.

They punished Tanuja Gupta for raising the issue, to the point where she resigned. https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/googles-caste-bias-pr...

Google is taking the issue more seriously, but in an evil direction rather than a good one.

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

#556

Post by colpabar »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #550
ummonk wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies have to protect people from protected classes. That doesn't mean they can't fire people for being assholes to non-protected classes. (It's a separate question of whether casteism would count as discrimination against a protected class - arguably it should, since only people of certain nationalities / races are subjected to casteism.)

My point was that even people in protected classes will be abused with impunity, if the business doesn't believe that credible case law and/or regulation will actually be able to punish them if theey fail to protect them. Expecting business to randomly protect people from abuse is just wishful thinking.

> Expecting business to randomly protect people from abuse is just wishful thinking.

Excellent point! Unfortunately, at least to me, it seems like most people who are pro DEI _do_ think that such policies are enacted for moral reasons. Which would be fine, think what you want, but it’s pretty frustrating to be told that my actual problem with it is that I’m just a privileged white guy who’s afraid.

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

#557

Post by watwut »

teakettle42 wrote: post #551
watwut wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not logically follows at all. Nothing in what previous poster said prevents analysis of group behavior or treatment. It does not make it impossible to talk about race or gender or age - it only makes it less naive.

It makes it impossible to assign an individual identity — and evaluate individual behavior and status — as merely a function of their coarse-grained group membership.

It does not make it impossible at all. And it also does not need to. You can talk about how groups are influenced or how they interact without making all the interaction to be result of "merely" just that.

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

#558

Post by savrajsingh »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #459
savrajsingh wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Sikh way of life, first names are gender-neutral and everyone takes the surname Singh or Kaur (deleting the family last name) to specifically combat caste and gender discrimination. I'm speaking of the ideals of the faith here, I know in practice it's different - caste creeps back in, but the Sikh faith began in the late 1400's as a revolution against caste injustice and discrimination.

"Singh" means "Lion", doesn't it? Is there any significance to "Kaur"?

Kaur can be roughly translated as 'warrior princess.'

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

#559

Post by ajsnigrutin »

lovecg wrote: post #180
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or are you suggesting that some races / genders / etc are better at some things than others? Aren't they? Women are worse at pretty much every sport than men, and NBA teams are very far away from average racial representation in general population. Even with non-physical activities, asians are overrepresented in many technical areas, and there were/are even lawsuits [0] about discriminating asians in favour of othe…

The flaw with this argument is that all the possibly reasonable examples of differences you mention don’t imply that all other observed differences are benign and there’s nothing to be done.

Sure... give all kids the same minimal starting point (schooling). Workplaces should just pick the best candidates, no matter the race or whatever other protected group status they look at.

I live in a former socialist country (we had red stars, parades and a dictator), and considering race or any other non-merit based factor in eg. high school and college aplications would be seen as wrong (and in case of race/gender, racist/sexist). Same for jobs.

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

#560

Post by civilized »

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.

The concept of intersectionality was invented by a black woman who definitely has never had any problem pointing out how black men can oppress black women. Nobody wielding the concept need have any discomfort pointing this out. So I don't think anyone has any idea what point you're making here with the repeated innuendo.

If you were hoping to suggest that intersectionality does not allow black people to be considered oppressors, that's just a right-wing caricature of the concept. You should read about intersectionality from sources that actually describe the concept accurately, rather than ones that merely want to sneer at it.

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