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How To Be An Anti-Casteist

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Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#221

Post by kbenson »

Udder_nonsense wrote: post #171
andreilys wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mannerisms could be anything from how articulate the candidate is and the depth of their vocabulary, to how they dress and the types of questions they ask. I’m not saying it’s okay to discriminate candidates by it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Go to any finance firm on Wall Street and tell me how many people employed there grew up on food stamps.

- Mannerisms could be anything from how articulate the candidate is and the depth of their vocabulary, to how they dress and the types of questions they ask. Those are all qualitative things that tell me about the person's intelligence, social acumen, experience, worldliness, etc. Those things usually matter for hiring. Has nothing to do with caste or race or gender or identity or age or sexual orientation any other…

Or it tells you how much time they've put into trying to suppress their individual characteristics they developed as they grew to adulthood in favor of ones perceived as more palatable to those hiring.

You could say they're smarter because they're doing what's needed to game the system... but that's only needed because people are judging them on those aspects. Chicken or egg?

Does a thick German or Scandinavian accent count against them? What about Mexican/Spanish? What about Ebonics/Black English? That has well understood rules for how it's used, even though many people don't realize it.

Presumably what you actually care about when hiring is their ability to work well with their peers and managers, and how well they accomplish the work they are given. If so, you are using mannerisms to help inform about these attributes you actually care about because you think those mannerisms correlate in some way. But what do you have to go by to actually support this evidence? If it's from personal experience, how rigorous have you been in making sure you note the data, and didn't subconsciously discount or ignore instances counter to your expectations?

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#222

Post by unsignedchar »

samatman wrote: post #53
clumsysmurf wrote: post #2

After an interview I attended at a fintech company, my Indian team lead straight out said she was trying to figure out the interviewee's cast. I was not familiar with the concept -- so my expression was mostly blank -- but she immediately followed up with "oh, I shouldn't have said that". I took no action, but wasn't sure what to do. After I learned more about it, I started to wonder where I was in this hierarchy. If…

There's a couple ways to read this one, and no context for deciding between them. Indians have a deeply engrained culture of noticing caste. This is true whether they are ok with discriminating on that basis, or staunchly against it, caste permeates the culture. So either she was only interested in hiring Brahmins, and realized that she shouldn't have tipped her hand... or she was curious about it, and then realized…

#notallindians

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#223

Post by neilsense »

mhuffman wrote: post #147
drieddust wrote: post #95

I have structured the post better and would appreciate if people can let me know what's wrong with this comment. India is struggling hard to get rid of this menace introduced during colonial era. We have reservation in education, government jobs, and politics to bring backwards at par. Almost 50% of seats in education and government jobs falls under this category. Seat are also reserved into politics. But the the iro…

> Irony of India is that caste as a system was introduced by European. The BBC seems to believe that the caste system is 3000 years old. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35650616

This is a normal screw up by the West. The Vedas mention castes in that of division of labour, not division of importance.

I don't believe the British introduced the caste system in its current form (division of importance) to India - more likely it was a very normal evolution during the phase just before the Mughals took India over. Having huge inequality weakens countries and allows people to target oppressed demographics.

The sadness of India being unable to get rid of the system now is that it leaves us open to being attacked again for such a stupid reason when Vedic/Hindu scripture doesn't condone this.

And this is what is happening in the West and especially in the US now. We don't have the caste system in the West per-se, but we've left many people behind. This has become our weakness as they can be easily provoked and guided elsewhere, away from our founding principles. I can only imagine how gleeful enemies of the West feel when they see what we've done to ourselves and how easy we've become to manipulate.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#224

Post by neilsense »

mavelikara wrote: post #72
blinkingled wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I can't say that I have experienced caste in same light as the article - in many jobs and across many hiring decisions it was never about caste but rather sometimes about language, geography and compatibility. It's also a matter of preferences as far as marriage goes - Brahmins for e.g. marrying within is not so much of a given today and whatever percentage of it is still happening is more about familiarity and…

> Brahmins really are the new Dalits in India The fraction of wealth and power Brahmins hold is still disproportionately high when compared to population.

This is untrue, just survey the top earners, top media personalities, news network owners, etc - very few are Brahmins. Even look through past prime ministers.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#225

Post by _b4ut »

tclancy wrote: post #52
tharne wrote: post #32

I have to admit it's somewhat amusing to see how surprised some people are to realize that people who aren't white can be racist too. Humans don't change much culture to culture once you get past a lot of the more superficial stuff.

Amusing how?

B/c it is being ignored while in plain sight.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#226

Post by mav3rick »

john_max_1 wrote: post #85
thewarrior wrote: post #24

There has been a lot of outrage over the past week in India over the rape of a lower caste woman by upper castes. The police sided with the culprits and forced the family to cremate the victim to destroy evidence. This is a common tactic by upper castes to spread terror and keep the lower castes in line. Goes to show how entrenched the system is especially outside the big cities.

FWIW, There were thee more incidents and in all the cases lower caste girl was raped by Muslim guys. So, much for unnecessary giving caste/communal angle to a case of corruption and power.

Why can't you condemn all such cases. Why do you try to bring down one by citing the other.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#227

Post by kingkawn »

throwawaysea wrote: post #132
kingkawn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not two sides to this. The lower castes have been violently discriminated against for millenia and need protection to have any hope of not being viciously held in their place by the Brahmin hegemony.

No they haven’t been violently discriminated against for millennia. This is a common colonialist trope spread about India. Your language alone, using Western words like “caste” to describe a system that doesn’t fit that word, is influencing your perception. Caste based discrimination (and all the negative issues that come with it) is very recent, and was nudged into existence by British imperialism, which relied on d…

A social system akin to brahminism and caste can only be created and held together by violence. That you can’t see this is because you are benefitting from it, either in the Indian version, or perhaps in the flavors of the same thing developed in the western world.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#228

Post by frank2 »

kingkawn wrote: post #227
throwawaysea wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they haven’t been violently discriminated against for millennia. This is a common colonialist trope spread about India. Your language alone, using Western words like “caste” to describe a system that doesn’t fit that word, is influencing your perception. Caste based discrimination (and all the negative issues that come with it) is very recent, and was nudged into existence by British imperialism, which relied on d…

A social system akin to brahminism and caste can only be created and held together by violence. That you can’t see this is because you are benefitting from it, either in the Indian version, or perhaps in the flavors of the same thing developed in the western world.

And since it is held together by violence, it is ok for you and your allies to use violence to oppose it, eh?

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#229

Post by Arun2009 »

The basic problem is that hierarchical organization of the society where a human's worth is determined by his birth is a core classical Hindu (i.e., "Brahmanical") value; egalitarianism is not.

Either Hindus must rewrite the theology of Hinduism to accept an interpretation of the concept of varNa in a way that is concordant with humanistic and egalitarian ideals, or Hindus must accept that Hinduism will be reduced to a minority religion in India. I can't imagine why anyone would agree to be part of a religion that formally considers him or her as a lower class human by birth than certain other humans in the same religion.

Re: How To Be An Anti-Casteist

#230

Post by drieddust »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #211
drieddust wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: I would truly appreciate a discourse. Simple downvoting provides no feedback. India suffers from this colonial system and unfortunately media takes every single opportunity. Like recent rape cases. Only case with victim from lower class and culprits from higher class is getting all the media attention. I am not saying it's unnecessary but having a dialog requires honest intentions. Just like BLM these media hyp…

> Only case with victim from lower class and culprits from higher class is getting all the media attention Or maybe it was because of the exceptional brutality of the crime itself, and the shocking behaviour of the police - cremating the body at 2:30AM without the family's approval.

Why police decides to cremated the body should be investigated for sure. But Equally brutal cases have happenned recently with no outrage at all.[1] Sharing it here for argument's sake. Personally I don't like to share these shitty stories usually.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/indianexpress.com/article/india...

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