8 ms·

The reason for my current user name here at hn was this exact form of racism. It is the first post I made when I created this throwaway. I was assured that my e

• winterplace 5y ago
  Is there a way to privately message you?
• jvvw 5y ago
  At the organisation where I worked at in the UK, all interviews were panel interviews - it's not ideal in various ways but it does it harder for discrimination (not just racial discrimination) to slip through the net - obviously just because something is illegal doesn't mean that it can't happen and people can't get away with it. I think they also tried to make sure all panels had a woman on them for example - I ended up on more than my share of panels as a result.
• rayiner 5y ago
  > Indians and Pakistanis What do you do with Bangladeshis. :D
• avalys 5y ago
  The solution you propose is arguably just as bad and I suspect it might be illegal in the US. If I am a qualified manager or tech lead, and there is an opportunity to lead a new project, I would be furious to learn that I was passed over for the opportunity because someone believed I was ethnically incompatible with one of the people on the team.
  • rednerrus 5y ago
    The comment was about not allowing them in the interviewing process.
    • avalys 5y ago
      …it says “manage and interview”?
    • oh_sigh 5y ago
      If interviewing is considered a normal job function, isn't not allowing certain people to interview certain people a violation of EEO laws by discriminating based on a protected class(national origin)? Unless you have some specific knowledge that an employee just can't handle people of nationality X, I would be very hesitant to institute OP's advice, at least in the US.
      • michaelt 5y ago
        Probably not? I know plenty of tech companies that make sure female applicants get interviewed by at least one female engineer during the hiring process. They have a good faith belief this reduces discrimination rather than increasing it. Of course, it could stray into discriminatory territory if you're doing something dumb - like sending all minority applicants to a hardass interviewer who rejects everyone; or giving certain employees a burdensome number of interviews on the basis of their race, at the cost of their other duties. But you should already be on top of issues like that anyway.
        • lp0_on_fire 5y ago
          Having a woman in the room when other women are getting interviewed isn't discriminatory. Telling a woman she can't interview someone because she is a woman (or other protected class) is.
          • bradleyjg 5y ago
            The law (in the US) protects everyone against discrimination on the basis of sex. Women have no special status under these laws.
• aletzo 5y ago
  I'm sorry, but can you please elaborate a bit more on Greeks and Turks? I happen to be Greek and have worked with 2 Turkish colleagues without any issues. On top of that, during my many travels across Europe, Turks (along with other Balkan nationalities) are by far the most welcoming people I meet once they learn that I come from Greece and I befriended a few of them. Do you have any different experiences to share?
  • User23 5y ago
    I’m under the impression some people are still upset over Cyprus. Edit: corrected cypress misspelling. Thanks repliers!
    • stickfigure 5y ago
      I mean sure, TJ Rodgers was a controversial guy but he hasn't been involved since the Infineon acquisition.
    • fnord123 5y ago
      Cyprus and it always depends how far back you want to go to determine the 'cause' of grievances.
    • coldtea 5y ago
      "Upset over" is kind of an understatement for invasion and occupation (condemned by the UN even).
  • goto11 5y ago
    There still seem to be some deep-seated resentments from some Greeks towards Turks due to the Greek genocide and exodus a hundred years ago. Turks on the other hand have never heard about that (it's illegal to teach in Turkey), so they are pretty chill. There is some bitterness due to the more recent (and still unresolved) conflict regarding Cyprus.
    • jimmydddd 5y ago
      Similar in some (minor) ways to the North and South in the US civil war. Folks in the North (winning side) learn about it in school for a few weeks and it's like studying ancient history. But in parts of the South, it feels like it just happened yesterday.
• franklampard 5y ago
  > Chinese and Japanese When I interviewed last time; the only company i did not make through phone screen was by a Japanese interviewer. I gave a three viable solutions to an easy question. Had no idea why I failed but probably because of racism
  • simmanian 5y ago
    It's definitely possible that there were other factors in play. I hope you see the danger or irony of automatically assuming that the Japanese interviewer rejected you because of their racial bias.
    • jewayne 5y ago
      I hope you see the danger or irony of stigmatizing the discussion of bias.
      • ramraj07 5y ago
        You threw a racism uno card by asserting that the Japanese guy was racist with zero proof. You’re stereotyping people as much as you accuse others of.
        • loeg 5y ago
          It was a different commenter -- franklampard.
          • renewiltord 5y ago
            Well, then we can certainly say he wasn't hired based on a review of past performance. Lamps has had a terrible managerial career.
        • franklampard 5y ago
          I didn’t think of racism until I saw this.
      • 5y ago
• bleah1000 5y ago
  How would you enforce this? In the US this is completely illegal. In addition, you would have to ask extremely invasive questions of everyone. So is your proposal that you require that your company ask for the detailed ethnicity of everyone? What happens when people refuse, do you just not allow them to interview or manage? What about people who were born in the US, do you assume that if they are of Japanese descent they can't interview someone of Chinese descent?
  • peter303 5y ago
    In India the surname might indicate caste. Then easy to tell in States.
    • thowaway_2mar 5y ago
      True, but in diffrent indian states people from diffrent caste can have the same surname.
    • pantalaimon 5y ago
      How would you know which is which if you are not Indian?
• selimthegrim 5y ago
  I'm a Pakistani American and I've worked well with many Indians. This is overcompensating.
  • zem 5y ago
    also as an Indian it's my experience that Pakistanis and Indians in foreign countries tend to hang together rather than separately, at least in the circles I've been a part of.
  • sumedh 5y ago
    I think Indians and Pakistanis quickly understand that outside their native countries they are probably the same and almost have similar culture/language/food.
    • tsol 5y ago
      They do in their native countries as well, what changes when they leave is they leave behind a tense political rivalry that gets used in service of explaining the shortcomings of the respective countries. Without the political climate as background noise both parties tend to get along
    • BurningFrog 5y ago
      Another angle is that really nationalistic people don't tend to leave the country they love. I was happy to move to the US in part because I was pretty tired if my home country.
      • rayiner 5y ago
        Under-appreciated point about immigrants. My parents left Bangladesh because they weren’t huge fans of Bangladesh or Bangladeshis.
• nradov 5y ago
  There are multiple distinct ethnic / cultural / religious groups in Bosnia. Serbians (from Serbia or Kosovo) tend to get along well with Bosnian Serbs, but there can be conflicts on occasion with Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims). As a practical matter within US companies it's not feasible to assign team members based on avoiding those potential conflicts. Nor can we afford to hire independent observers. I can't imagine trying to justify that additional headcount request to Finance and HR, they would laugh me out of the room! Instead employees are expected to act professionally regardless of their personal feelings and if they can't do so then manage them out.
• jsnodlin 5y ago
• conradev 5y ago
  In all of the interviews I've conducted there have been 2 interviewers to 1 interviewee because everyone has biases and people remember things differently according to those biases. The biases don't even have to involve people to throw off the results. They could be against the usage of a particular API, for example, which I find insane, but I've seen it happen.
• deeteecee 5y ago
  How did your hiring managers respond? That sounds terrible and racist in itself.
• nsajko 5y ago
  Your idea is unfair and would be illegal to carry out. Because it's racist, obviously. Furthermore, I live in the Balkans area (Croatia) and it so happens that companies from this area do employ people of varied ethnicity, and those do work on the same teams.
  • moffkalast 5y ago
    Exactly, the only way to get people to accept everyone as they are is to see that they're exactly the same as them. If a person can't put this sort of thing aside and work with a basic dose of professionalism then they should frankly be fired. You can't tolerate intolerance. You'd think that a nation as varied as the US would know that.
  • wozniacki 5y ago
    I understand your overall argument but one anecdote does not a rule make, whether in this scenario or any other scenario.
• icelancer 5y ago
  >> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons. Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States, but attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.
  • beebmam 5y ago
    It's called a conflict of interest, and anyone who has a conflict of interest in a given business situation should absolutely be removed from making any decisions around that conflict of interest (and they should be more than forthcoming about those conflicts of interest). Standards of Business Practice 101.
    • sokoloff 5y ago
      I agree that genuine conflicts of interest need to be addressed. It seems absurd to declare a-priori that “no Indian shall be the unsupervised leader of a Pakistani (nor vice-versa) because that’s a conflict of interest”.
      • beebmam 5y ago
        I didn't say that. What you've said here is a straw man
        • albedoa 5y ago
          Huh? You said it is a conflict of interest when people from frictioned backgrounds are allowed to manage and interview people from the other side. It's right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30523177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30523177 What is the strawman?
        • InvertedRhodium 5y ago
• coffeeisyummy 5y ago
  You're okay working with people so bigoted that you have to hide them away from certain parts of their job because they might fuck it up with their bigotry? Why are they still employed? How can you be okay with coworkers that can't be expected to treat everyone in the company with a certain level of respect? Do you believe that's just the way "they" are? Is that the way you are? Remind me never to apply for a job at your company. JFC.
  • presentation 5y ago
    I think the idea is that people’s biases are often not obvious or detectable. Not saying this idea is a good way to avoid making decisions on such biases, but I don’t think it’s as black and white as you put it.
    • coffeeisyummy 5y ago
      I'm black and white on the behavior. I absolutely agree with your point about biases being often not obvious. In this case, though, the biases are so apparent that these employees can't be expected to interact with other potential employees. If an employee's behavior is so abhorrent you have to work around them, they should be replaced. Another way to think of it - I'm sure the company has language in it's employee handbook around non-discrimination. These employees are overtly violating this language. By letting them stay on and accommodating their behavior, a clear message is sent that they're not serious about non-discrimination.
• nirav72 5y ago
  Can we please stop conflating casteism as racism? While both equally horrible, one is not same as the other. One can possibly hide their caste. But a person cant change their racial phenotypes.
  • thowaway_2mar 5y ago
    How can I hide me caste without changing my last name?
    • nirav72 5y ago
      I know I might be oversimplifying this. But you can legally change your last name. But you cannot change your race. Unless, your phenotype is somewhat ambiguous and can pass as a person of the majority racial group. But that is rare. By conflating casteism with racism, you're diluting the meaning of what racism is and systemic effects it has had on minorities in the United States. By the way I'm a person of Indian ancestry born and raised in the U.S. According to my grandparents, we're of lower caste as well. But no one has ever asked me what my caste is simply based on my last name. I'm not denying that casteism isn't a problem within the Indian diaspora. But it is entirely different societal problem within the United States compared to racism. In India , it might be similar to racism. But not the same in the U.S. Let me put it this way - a person who hates all minorities or specific ethnic groups, isn't going to care what caste you belong into. He's going to hate you and the higher caste Indian person equally.
      • thereare5lights 5y ago
        If your argument is that one is worse than the other because you can hide then you didn't take into account things like plastic surgery or bleaching one's skin or straightening one's hair. If you're going to tell someone to just abandon their family name then why not tell them to get plastic surgery or anything else to modify their appearance? It's a bad argument.
        • nirav72 5y ago
• namecheap435 5y ago
• danSimmons4 5y ago
• graderjs 5y ago
  No this is so important. I agree that the reality of international and domestic generational conflict there we are mostly oblivious to in the West, should inform HR policy. These things are real, and discrimination based on them can be concealed and is often as the very fascinating article says, invisible to outsiders. I'm with you on the way to address this is by bringing more attention to it than with other commenters who suggest that it's actually racist or discriminatory to acknowledge and address this. It's hard to refute the line of the other commenters cuz on the face of it it is racist and discriminatory to provide affordances for these types of issues because you're assuming someone faces them based on their background. But let's remember something important which is that the words racist and discriminatory in their essence are actually neutral... they simply mean discernment based on something, in one case race. That can be used negatively but it can also be used to try to write the wrongs that were done by the inverse of that. So sometimes to address a specific wrong you have to deal with the same parameters as created the wrong but invert the effect. Otherwise you're basically giving all the power for the use of racial and discriminatory actions to the side that wants to use them for bad. You have to be able to use them for good too but obviously you need to be careful in how you go about this but I don't think that less attention on this issue is the solution, so I like to jump behind the point that this person is making because it seems like a very brave point that they're making but it sounds like a good idea to me. I mean I have no idea how these observers would work in practice but maybe one way to do this is to sort of have like a pre hiring congress where all parties meet and have a chance to discuss their background and any bias and how they feel about people from another place. But saying it, I don't think that would really work so easily, tho it might. Every group of people is unique to some extent...I think it's a very tricky thing to do... But closing one's eyes and not talking about is probably not the way to get progress on this.
  • icelancer 5y ago
    That's all well and good, and the policy might indeed actually work. Unfortunately it's absolutely illegal. Protected classes are not protected from just racism, but discrimination of all forms.
    • graderjs 5y ago
• livinglist 5y ago
  I’m native Chinese and I don’t hold any opinion against Japanese people… especially in my job, that’s just not professional and seems very childish and immature…
  • jhatemyjob 5y ago
    It's the other way around. Japanese look down on Chinese.
    • bgdam 5y ago
      To put parent poster's comment in context, the Japanese committed unthinkable atrocities on the Chinese civilian population during WW2, a lot of which they haven't even bothered to apologize for to this day. Ergo, a lot of Chinese hate the Japanese with a passion.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
• pyuser583 5y ago
  Personally, I’ve much more “empire building” type behavior (let’s hire tons people from my background who will probably support my initiatives), than discrimination against “others.”
  • powerslacker 5y ago
    I've also seen this far more often, especially when there is a major change in a C-level position.
  • bongoman37 5y ago
  • datavirtue 5y ago
    GE, is that you?
• DeWilde 5y ago
  >Serbians and Bosnians I think you might be mistaken with this, even lower class people from these nationalities (the least educated ones) have no problem working with each other. Especially untrue for those with higher education (high school and above).
• twic 5y ago
  > One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. Great - as a British person, this gets me out of conducting interviews entirely!
• Tsarbomb 5y ago
  Jesus fucking Christ what a terrible take and highly illegal in most sane countries. I'm Serb, I've hired and worked with Croatians. I've had colleagues who were Lebanese and worked along side Israelis. I've had a Palestinian coworker report to a Jewish manager. I have seen an adjacent team's Japanese manager rely on their Chinese report as their right hand. Maybe it's because I live and work in Canada where there is absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of garbage thinking.
  • 908B64B197 5y ago
    > Maybe it's because I live and work in Canada where there is absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of garbage thinking. You’ll be quite disappointed if you read about your new country’s history. Even the recent one (the last residential school where natives children were forced to attend and where children unmarked graves were found was closed in … 1998). Or about the province that tried to gain independence twice. Or what happened to the Metis people or the French speakers to the east.. Or just what happens when the dogma of multiculturalism takes over [0]. [0] https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/01/15/as-ndp-leader-jagmeet-singh-campaigns-in-burnaby-south-a-liberal-candidate-brings-race-into-the-byelection.html https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/01/15/as-ndp-leader-j...
• datavirtue 5y ago
  It's weird, the implicit bias is sometimes an advantage--or at least it sheilds us from knee jerk discrimination. Being white and clean cut in America has always afforded me a status that I did not enjoy until I was able to move away from where I grew up. There everyone knew my circumstances and kids who were from "better families" excluded me because I was just other. And school...I had to leave before high school, it was unbearable. Surviving the years up til that point nearly crushed my soul. This caused a lot of anxiety in me and it still does. I suppressed the anxiety through abject narcism. Once I was able to leave school and eventually move away I was assumed to be of the same class as my other white peers. Privileged, university educated etc. There was constant paranoia of being asked about my background and having to see the look on peoples faces when they asked where I got my degree from. Again, I mostly floated through life benefitting from the implicit bias of my peers and others. Luckily I was smart and gravitated to tech at a very young age. To this day I'm still wracked with anxiety at the possibility of discussing my financial situation, upbringing, or education. Seeing this described as a denial of basic human rights in the article shocked me. I had never even thought about the anxiety objectively, until recently.