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Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
521–530 of 656 posts
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point, wouldn't it be difficult for people to tell? A person who grew up outside of India will only have a passing understanding of this nuance anyway, because they would not have been regularly exposed to the other group, so their entire understanding will be from what is passed to them by their parents. And the next generation will have next to zero understanding. Plus, those nuances will probably get erase…
Unfortunately, no. My wife's best friend is Hindu from Upper Caste. (Brahim) she was born in the United States. She always been so liberal and open minded. Most of her friends are Muslims. She is barely religious. But whenever it comes relationships, she brings up caste. She married into upper caste, she was very worried about caste of the guy. If her sister is dating a someone from a different caste, she brings it u…
Unfortunately, some immigrant parents indoctrinate their children in the ways of the old world. I've had many american born Muslim friends growing up, some of them were self professed atheists, but one thing I've never seen any of them do is eat pork. I believe it is because from a young age if you are made to believe that pork is disgusting, unhygienic etc... You develop a reflex that cannot be overcome. It is probably the same with some upper caste immigrants raising their kids to believe that lower caste people are unhygienic, unintelligent etc... I believe the term is dehumanizing and if you do it enough, it works reflexively.
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#523Working for a large Indian outsourcer, the caste system is alive and well, and if you're not Indian, your the bottom of the pile.
How long you been there?
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't generalize. Give strong arguments vs. only relaying your own experience. Otherwise, you are falling into a trap you yourself laid out in point #3 yourself. Question is whether most Indians who come to US for work are actually upper class Indians already and thus this 90% number is what it is. Or do lower class Indians also come to US, face discrimination and thus either go back or struggle to find work. If the…
If you had seen the recent CISCO case, then you'd know it is definitely the latter.
Using 1 example and generalizing is literally what I am arguing against in my comment above.
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#525It's subtle, but you will spot it if you want to.
I've seen Indians do this question with other Indians:"Are you vegetarian or non vegetarian?" That's where it starts and that's how they find out. Once the initial sort of veg/non-veg is done, they can then sort by which type of upper caste you are. It's almost an algorithmic partition+sort.
Almost all upper caste Indians are vegetarian. Imposition of vegetarianism is the current Indian political fad as well, with people eating non-vegetarian food being randomly discriminated against and lynched under the pretext of "he was carrying beef."
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#526I agree, and they act like it too - - snobs. I have been snobbed off by Indian techies more than once in the last 10 years.
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#527ITT: (Possibly) "Upper caste" Indians claiming: 1. This is due to a few bad apples 2. Reservation is the real problem (no it's not) 3. I don't do it therefore it doesn't exist I can tell you by experience the amount of concious and unconcious bias regarding caste amongst Indians both in India and abroad is ridiculous! I'm light skinned so people assume I'm "upper caste" and speak with me as such. My last name doesn't…
> 2. Reservation is the real problem (no it's not) Of course Reservation IS the problem if you're unfortunate to be an upper caste. The problem is that a caste-based reservation did NOT eliminate caste-based bias, it amplified it. More and more castes, outside the original designation, demanded it in exchange for votes, and more and more upper caste Indians felt cheated as they lost limited opportunities that should…
>> The problem is that a caste-based reservation did NOT eliminate caste-based bias.
It is not the goal of the reservation system to eliminate caste-based bias. The goal is to eliminate unfair competition by ensuring candidates of equal backgrounds compete with each other. A low caste candidate who was historically denied education can not compete with a higher caste student from an educated family. Hence the candidates are categorized based on their caste background such as BC, SC/ST etc and they compete within those categories. A BC candidate competes with other BC candidates, a SC with other SCs and so on.
Drawing from the analogy posted elsewhere in this thread. This is roughly comparable to the weight divisions in boxing. The divisions exist because it is unfair to let a lightweight boxer fight a heavyweight fighter. Without weight divisions, the competition is favorable to the heavyweights, which was the case before the reservation system.
Saying reservation should be based on economic status rather than caste is akin to saying boxers should be categorized based on height instead of weight. Economic status is less relevant here because it does not directly affect the chances of success. In a math competition, the candidate born in a family of upper class math teachers has an advantage over a candidate born to rich but uneducated parents who were denied education for generations.
The idea of reservation is to provide opportunity to people who were denied opportunity in the name of caste. They were not denied opportunity because they were poor, but because they were from a low caste. When discrimination was based on caste the remedy should also based on caste. Moreover, economic status is transient, where as the caste is rigid. A poor family can become rich but a low caste person can never become a upper caste as the caste is decided on birth. It is not sound to say a person from a caste who was oppressed for thousands of years should not be given reservation because they become rich in the last generation.
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nobody argues that tech is a meritocracy. That's not true even in the trivial "well I mean that most people don't argue that". I think people in tech are a lot more self-aware then they were 10-15 years ago (when most people in tech I knew would assert that tech is a meritocracy), but I still hear plenty of aspirational rhetoric that either assumes or explicitly asserts this "fact".
late 80s and early 90s were very meritocratic, in my experience. In fact, I left architecture and switched to software precisely because of this fact. Don't forget, this is the time period when you did not tell people in parties you were a programmer. It was decidedly the un-sexy un-cool profession. Check out 80s hollywood products and their portrayal of programmers. The turning point in this industry was recorded in…
I think I’m a little younger than you, but I too remember when being “into computers” was the sort of thing that got you bullied and made your family question whether you’d amount to anything in life.
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2. Reservation is the real problem (no it's not) Of course Reservation IS the problem if you're unfortunate to be an upper caste. The problem is that a caste-based reservation did NOT eliminate caste-based bias, it amplified it. More and more castes, outside the original designation, demanded it in exchange for votes, and more and more upper caste Indians felt cheated as they lost limited opportunities that should…
I have seen this sentiment being reflected by many people (in one extreme case someone called that they were being persecuted by the government). Indian caste system is an unfair oppressive system put together to maintain the hierarchical advantage. Reparations/interventions were needed to bridge the gap, if not the unfairness would be much more rampant. Not sure about IITs, I went to one of the top NITs and thats de…
>> I have personally seen examples of people completely uplifting their family from poverty by the chance they have gotten via reservation.
I am one of the examples. I am from Tamil Nadu, which has 69% reservation and I benefited from reservation and other social polices of my state. Re-posting below, a part of my comment from an earlier discussion on the same topic, as it is relevant here.
Caste system is deeply rooted in the culture for thousand of years. It will take a very long time and massive efforts to eradicate it. Self-respect movement was one of the early efforts in the right direction and it had found great success in my opinion. I attribute my life progress to the effects of Self-respect movement. I was born in a poor low-caste family, raised by a single mother. I completed a STEM masters degree in India, migrated to the US and now work at one of the FAANG companies. I benefited from the educational and social policies of my state govt. and was able to push myself up despite financial and social disadvantages.
The major turning point in my life was when I was able to secure a seat at the top technical college of the state through single-window counseling which was introduced by the state govt. the year before. Without that system, I would have applied to individual colleges separately (costs lot of money) and had been at the mercy of racially biased selection committees, dominated by the so called upper castes. I neither had the light skin, nor the deep pockets to pay for a "management seat".
I made use of the best resources at the institution presented by the opportunity I wouldn't have got otherwise. It changed my life forever.
Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians
#530Inept question: would it be possible to outright lie about ones’ caste, or is it easy enough for someone else to figure out? How? I don’t see an ounce of shame in doing so if it levels an unjust playing field.