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

Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 656 posts

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#81

Post by nullsense »

raxxorrax wrote: post #69
LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

There are educational systems that mitigate that problem. Not perfectly, but to a large degree. Many people studying today had poor parents that never had any form of higher education. I don't think the US systems is good at this. It concentrates on excellence or at least the appearance of it, although there are probably exceptions if you parents are rich or influential. Bad thing is that it works to a degree because…

>I don't know about the issues in India, but perhaps lower caste members just don't have access to education.

The caste system is about natural born status not tied to economics, but ancestral in nature. You're born into your caste and there isn't mobility within the system. So, try as you might, if you're in the lower caste you're in the lower caste and people higher up are going to treat you that way regardless.

I'm not overly familiar with it myself, but I understand it's a deeply ingrained cultural thing that sounds damaging beyond belief and incredibly bad idea, yet somehow inescapable.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#82

Post by raxxorrax »

corty wrote: post #17
krageon wrote: post #8

This article is almost a caricature of articles like itself. What makes this interesting to people? Is it because it's so over the top with bad tropes it becomes funny?

I guess it is because people often forget that there are downsides to diversity: You are importing foreign cultures that you do not understand and are legally/organisationally unprepared for. The article is interesting because it provides a contrast to the common refrain of "diversity good" and "other cultures provide benefits". There is often a lack of balance and nuance in reporting imho, and this kind of article p…

I don't like diversity/inclusion pushed down my throat either and I think people are actually two steps in front of institutions promoting it the strongest, but the intersecting economic problems are similar all over the world.

Hinduism and its caste system seem alien to most western people, but the "you should know your place, peasant" - argument is pretty similar in some interpretations in Abrahamic religions. But sure, some cultures have their own peculiarities and I think not being apart of religious communities is still very rare in India.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#84

Post by fiftyacorn »

csunbird wrote: post #63
LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

Having more money allows you to make mistakes. Having rich parents allow you to make mistakes that are normally unrecoverable for normal people (e.g. going to college and getting kicked out), because money buys you opportunities. Inheritance is just like caste, you are born with an advantage over others.

That's why inheritance tax is important as a generational reset

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#85

Post by dalbasal »

LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

It is sometimes (often even) discussed directly, but being cross-correlated to these proxies means that there are different perspectives on what the operative or underlying essence is.

Part of the definition of class that is often overlooked in discussions is that it's not just about money. This is why the socio qualifier gets added into the "socio-economic" designation... even though people sometimes use the dash and then ignore it.

A class implies a hereditary, cultural and quasi-ethnic aspect. So does caste, obviously.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#86

Post by roenxi »

thereare5lights wrote: post #76
roenxi wrote: post #26

This article appears to be about a current lawsuit. The claims that are being made are outrageous, but that is what is expected of a plaintiffs claims in this sort of lawsuit. I doubt I'll make many friends adding this in, but an uncomfortable statistical artefact of an affirmative action program is the candidates in that program are very likely going to have lower average competence than the rest of the cohort. That…

Wtf? How is affirmative action relevant in this context?

> The lawsuit alleges that the upper-caste Iyer recognised John Doe and instantly began ridiculing him in front of all the other higher-caste Indian employees at Cisco, saying that John Doe was a Dalit and only got into the engineering school because of affirmative action, which India implemented in 1980 under the then-Prime Minister VP Singh.

If they believed that, it would also explain the other things like lack of opportunities and low wages too.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#87

Post by cassepipe »

LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

While I agree with the general point you make, I think it is a mistake to say race or caste is a proxy because it gives the impression that there's a "genuine" order of things behind the curtain of illusions. This is not a good model for a better understanding of the world around us imo. Hierarchies whether based on material resources or status seems to exist everywhere but are instantiated differently in each place for historical reasons. Race or cast is not a proxy for real hierarchies hidden behind them, it is how some of those hierarchies have taken form at some point in history (and will hopefully disappear at some other point).

As the anthropologist Maurice Godelier puts it in the L'idéel et le matériel, it is not about seeing another reality behind reality but about seeing the same reality with a different look.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#89

Post by Gravityloss »

LatteLazy wrote: post #19

The core issue in market heavy economies is that people with money make money and everyone else doesn't. Being smart and hard working and having poor parents means you will be poor. Being dumb and lazy with rich parents means you will be rich. Maybe with 3 or 4 full generations of nothing but hard work and luck you might make it up from working to middle class. Maybe. This is never really discussed directly. Only usi…

This is measured by things like the Gini index etc that measures social mobility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

In countries with good and available education, competent people from poor families can get good careers. It makes a lot of sense to run companies there as well, as recruiting works well - people are sorted by ability rather than money.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#90

Post by reactspa »

A personal anecdote about caste in India:

I had to move to Chennai to work there some years ago. As I went around looking for an apartment to rent, I was openly told by several Brahmin homeowners that they weren't going to rent to me because I wasn't a Brahmin.

The Brahmins have destroyed India. (I'm from one of the "upper castes" myself.)

Post reply on HN