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

Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

siliconvalley.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 478 posts

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#81

Post by rexreed »

hnbad wrote: post #56
avip wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism is embedded in human nature and in every culture. Though it takes different forms. I don't think "Indians" deserve any special mention on that one.

It's telling that we're quick to ascribe anything bad to "human nature" while balking at the notion that anything positive might also be human nature. Greed and exploitation? Yes, absolutely, human nature, nothing you can do about it. Racism? Totally human nature, just look at this random animal species. Cooperation, trust, hospitality? No, those must be unique virtues expressed only by the pure of heart or the naive…

Before there was race there were tribes. Which goes back to the very roots of humanity.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#82

Post by miningape »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #73
ewuhic wrote: post #54

How to fight back when you see this happening at line management level, but not yet proliferated to upper management? Indian product owner taking mostly to Indian peer developers, bypassing normal communication channels. Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest. Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restauran…

> Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all? Are you seriously asking how to "fight back" on Indians going to restaurants and joking with each other? As an Indian in a flyover state who has been routinely excluded from golfing events, and had my d…

Yeah, and I'd expect that treatment as a white person working/living in India, and I would adapt to fit in with local customs / culture or else leave. But they are in the US, working for a US company - why is it somehow acceptable when you are a foreigner to create these isolated professional enclaves that exclude the "native" population?

(A group of people casually getting together is totally different to someone's work environment where they have to attend to bring a paycheck home - I'm talking exclusively about professional/work environments)

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#83

Post by mdorazio »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #73
ewuhic wrote: post #54

How to fight back when you see this happening at line management level, but not yet proliferated to upper management? Indian product owner taking mostly to Indian peer developers, bypassing normal communication channels. Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest. Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restauran…

> Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all? Are you seriously asking how to "fight back" on Indians going to restaurants and joking with each other? As an Indian in a flyover state who has been routinely excluded from golfing events, and had my d…

The parent post was clearly asking how to fight back against a culture of exclusionism against non-Indians, which leads to racism.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#85

Post by lazide »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #34
lazide wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The beauty of casteism, and religious discrimination (and less so racism/sexism, though it is certainly possible ) is the near fractal nature of the ability to discriminate against someone. After all, there are 3000 ‘main’ castes and 25,000 sub-castes. [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India ], and with religious discrimination you can always go into sectarianism/what guru to follow. It’s the discrimi…

The fractal nature of it is truly remarkable. When you zoom out, you see what was essentially one people split along religious borders with India and Pakistan. Zoom in, and you see finer and finer levels of cultural discrimination.

Yup. One of the most fundamental parts of the human experience is that everything is relative.

So, when someone wants to feel better, or even objectively have it better, the easiest way to do it is to make sure there is someone else having it worse nearby.

And doing that all the time based off fuzzy, changeable things like merit is a lot of work. Or even worse, something that someone has to do all the time or maintain, like results or wealth.

Both for the downtrodden trying to improve their station, and the ones ‘on top’ trying to keep them down.

Much more stable to systematize it, and use things like permanent labels on entire family lines, eh? And bonus points if you can do it in a fine grained enough way, that essentially everyone has someone lower than them to shit on.

Then all anyone has to do is exist, and push the buttons provided for them. Easy peasy.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#87

Post by iinnPP »

f1shy wrote: post #22
sidcool wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same as saying all whites are racist. Both are wrong.

I do not understand “… is in culture X” same as “all X are …”

There's a not insignificant group of people who go out of their way to avoid their culture. So no, they are not the same.

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#88

Post by quadrifoliate »

miningape wrote: post #82
quadrifoliate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all? Are you seriously asking how to "fight back" on Indians going to restaurants and joking with each other? As an Indian in a flyover state who has been routinely excluded from golfing events, and had my d…

Yeah, and I'd expect that treatment as a white person working/living in India, and I would adapt to fit in with local customs / culture or else leave. But they are in the US, working for a US company - why is it somehow acceptable when you are a foreigner to create these isolated professional enclaves that exclude the "native" population? (A group of people casually getting together is totally different to someone's…

> Yeah, and I'd expect that treatment as a white person working/living in India, and I would adapt to fit in with local customs / culture. But they are in the US, working for a US company - why is it somehow acceptable when you are a foreigner to create these isolated professional enclaves that exclude the "native" population?

Non-Hispanic white Americans are not native to the US, and I don't see a reasonable basis for concluding that non-Hispanic white culture should be the "native" or "default" culture in the US.

Sure, it might be the dominant culture — but there are other subcultures like Black or Hispanic cultures that are pretty strong here. Would you feel comfortable asking how to stop a group of Black coworkers from going to a restaurant that serves Black cuisine, or Hispanic coworkers from going to the local taqueria? If not, then why are you singling out Indians?

Re: Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees

#89

Post by skywhopper »

zo1 wrote: post #75
bbor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna dip into politics a bit for my assertion that “fight racism with racism” isn’t a great move, either for the societal long term or the personal/legal short term.

That is the entire premise of DEI initiatives. It's yet another "an eye for an eye".

This is a delusional and hateful lie.
Post reply on HN