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Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

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Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#891

Post by hahaxdxd123 »

avar wrote: post #641
hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gender/racial/age discrimination are not surface-level obvious in America these days Yeah yea, tell that to the people who "ching chong" me whenever I leave the liberal coasts. Incredible how you people paint one of America's greatest strengths, one that few other countries possess - the willingness to speak about racial problems and create a real _home_ for talented immigrants - as a bad thing. There's a reason pe…

> "the unobsessed French, 22.7% of whom are unwilling to live next to non-white neighbors" Numbers like that tell you little more than how blunt the French are, and what's considered acceptable to tell a pollster over the phone. The real data is in the ground truth of ethnic divides. I'm pretty sure the US's "white flight" phenomenon and its self-segregated inner cities are more pronounced than anything happening in…

> I'm pretty sure the US's "white flight" phenomenon and its self-segregated inner cities are more pronounced than anything happening in France.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20171020/more-than-570-slums-house-1...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#892

Post by michaelmrose »

skyde wrote: post #769
michaelmrose wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attend more carefully to what I'm saying please. I said that discrimination is just discrimination. The term "reverse discrimination" is semantically nonsense. Selecting people based on skin color is always discrimination. That said the situation as it stands is so tilted against minorities in favor of white dudes that this injustice rarely leaves a white guy in the red on net and fixing what pitifully little prefere…

you just confirmed my assumption, by saying “it will on average net out”. I agree that “on average” the white population will still not be disadvantaged. But it’s still morally wrong because for one particular individual it would not. It the same thing as laws making it illegal to own a pit bull dogs in some city. Maybe it’s true the majority of pitbull are dangerous! but is it still fair to the pitbull owner that ha…

It doesn't merely average out in terms of population it averages out even in the case of individuals because a single individual in the course of putting out many job applications will deal with far more employers who will give them preference because they are white than those that will give a minority preference.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#893

Post by throwaway_1928 »

nondravidian wrote: post #726
civilized wrote: post #679

Hmm... > To Soundararajan, Google was long overdue for a conversation on caste equity. Pichai, the CEO, “is Indian and he is Brahmin and he grew up in Tamil Nadu. There is no way you grow up in Tamil Nadu and not know about caste because of how caste politics shaped the conversation,” Soundararajan told The Post. “If he can make passionate statements about Google’s [diversity equity and inclusion] commitments in the…

Sounds like she is actually trying to drag Pichai into a caste fight. Par for the course.

She did the same thing with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. It must be her modus operandi to target Indian American CEOs.

https://twitter.com/dalitdiva/status/1465358123640655875

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#894

Post by throwaway_1928 »

civilized wrote: post #877
throwaway_1928 wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Soundarajan is a known anti-India baiter. She also trolled Twitter and its CEO for his caste [1]. Google did the right thing by keeping her out. [1] https://twitter.com/dalitdiva/status/1465358123640655875

Advocating for the condemnation of casteism is only anti-India if you think casteism is an essential property of India that cannot and should not be changed. Do you think casteism is an essential property of India that should not be changed, throwaway_1928?

India itself condemns casteism by, among other things, granting 60% job reservations ("affirmative action") to its 'lower' castes.

Does the US condemn the mass murder of and continent-sized land theft from Native Americans and the mass kidnapping and centuries-long enslavement of Africans by granting them 60% of all jobs at every level of government?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#895

Post by throwaway_1928 »

DigiDigiorno wrote: post #871
throwaway_1928 wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Soundarajan is a known anti-India baiter. She also trolled Twitter and its CEO for his caste [1]. Google did the right thing by keeping her out. [1] https://twitter.com/dalitdiva/status/1465358123640655875

anti-India? Do you mean anti-highest-Indian-caste or something? both the OP and your citation are her complaining about a tech CEO being Brahmin and avoiding the caste conversation...

Why is the Indian American CEO obligated to discuss caste?

Must the Jewish founders of the FAANG companies share their views on the Israel-Palestine conflict?

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#896

Post by ummonk »

Vaslo wrote: post #65

Question from a layman. How does one know that someone is from another caste? If I was someone from India, how would I know what caste my fellow Indian is from? Is there some kind of code? Or where you are from?

In many regions / castes, the last name is specific to a caste. Also sometimes you can tell by appearance, e.g. I can often recognize Brahmins from my ancestral region just by looking at them.

That said, one of the reasons I'm really skeptical claims that casteism is widespread in Silicon valley is that I have a last name that's caste-ambiguous (could be anything from dalit to brahmin) and yet I've never been asked my caste. So it's rather bizarre that casteism could be so widespread without me having ever encountered it.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#897

Post by healsdata »

throwaway_1928 wrote: post #895
DigiDigiorno wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anti-India? Do you mean anti-highest-Indian-caste or something? both the OP and your citation are her complaining about a tech CEO being Brahmin and avoiding the caste conversation...

Why is the Indian American CEO obligated to discuss caste? Must the Jewish founders of the FAANG companies share their views on the Israel-Palestine conflict?

> "If he can make passionate statements about Google’s (diversity equity and inclusion) commitments in the wake of George Floyd, he absolutely should be making those same commitments to the context he comes from where he is someone of privilege," she added.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#898

Post by rmk »

roflyear wrote: post #712
qorrect wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you witness?

Personally, I've witnessed issues with the Indian caste system in many large corporations. From Johnson & Johnson - where there is actually a development team - where they hired other Indians who were horribly unqualified (multiple times they were poached from IT support - I enjoy seeing people move up in tech, but they were entry level techs with no programming experience) and almost exclusively hired other Indians…

This is a case of corruption, which is endemic in Indian culture. There are countless examples of mid-high level Indian Managers convincing management to move work to bodyshops from which they either receive kickbacks, are started by close friends so they get to profit also, or use as a side-channel to push their own people (relatives, immigrants from back home) into the organization.

It's shockingly widespread and because the management structures at many tech and IT companies are Indian, no-one bats an eyelid. This is one example of foreign cultures actually degrading American work culture. There are a few others in this category.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#899

Post by rmk »

ThinkingAgain wrote: post #884
rramadass wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. Americans have no idea of what caste-based discrimination looks like and hence merely use it to foist their own prejudices (i.e. "they terk err jerbs") onto the Indian community. Indians have such diversity amongst themselves (North vs. South, State vs. State, Linguistic, Religious etc.) that anything can be used as a bone of contention (real or imagined). The first thing to realize is that people with gri…

I was also initially surprised when I heard about caste based discrimination in USA. There are few points which helped me in understanding: 1) Personally a person may not have seen or heard of sexual harassment incidents. It doesn't mean "sexual harassment" doesn't exist. 2) Even if a lower caste person is not being discriminated, but if the person is feeling "uncomfortable" about revealing his/her caste it means tha…

Allowing rabble-rousers to deliver 'talks' about caste discrimination is not going to change the hearts and minds of people who set store by caste affiliations. There will always be people who will be cagey about revealing aspects about themselves, including gay, queer, furries, upper-caste, lower-caste, nudists... the list goes on. People seem to take the aphorism 'bring your real self to work' a bit too literally. We all put a lid on certain aspects of our personalities at work, and endeavors to change that or eradicate that are highly misguided.

Re: Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

#900

Post by ummonk »

thelit wrote: post #312
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #5

A good read for some additional context on caste discrimination in the American tech industry: https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...

As a Dalit myself, I wrote a Dalit 101 for non Indian audience. https://thelit.substack.com/p/dalit-101

Two quibbles. First, the Rigveda itself didn't separate castes into hierarchical varnas - that was more of a later vedic thing. Second, jatis aren't exactly sub-varnas. Some jatis span across varnas (e.g. because their members engage in both farming (shudra) and soldiering (kshatriya)), and particularly in South India the jati system exists even though the varna system has only been incompletely applied (a lot of regions in South India don't really have any defined varnas outside of Brahmins).
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