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Google cancelled a talk on caste bias

• HidyBush 4y ago
  This is what happens when a for profit company LARPs as an ethical one. On one hand they talk about diversity and on the other they desperately hire people they can pay less from areas of the world where "diversity is our strength" isn't really the norm. So in the end the company makes more money thanks to the cheap labor and it becomes even less inclusive and diverse.
  • Zigurd 4y ago
    That's pretty harsh. Google would have no trouble hosting a police reform discussion because they have no local PD fearmongering through highly dependent local media. They do have a number of employees who could be made uncomfortable by a discussion of caste. That's hypocrisy. That's doing the easy things. But it isn't an indictment of for profit enterprise.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
  • lupire 4y ago
    Hiring local means hiring their ethnic conflicts also.
  • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > importing ethnicities means importing their ethnic conflicts too, always Is there evidence for this? Couldn't null be valid: those choosing to emigrate are most likely to be willing or wanting to leave that nonsense behind? Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our founding values. Plenty of Indians emigrate while leaving their caste identity, and any will to act on it, behind. There may remain implicit biases. But these can be aspired to be corrected versus assumed to be the default.
    • aahortwwy 4y ago
      Happens pretty frequently. One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Irish_Americans_in_Boston#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Irish_Americans_in_...
    • zen_1 4y ago
      • wizwit999 4y ago
        Don't both sides, there's no groups, the only military group there Americans are joining is the IDF.
        • zen_1 4y ago
          Eh I'm sure you'll find a few American citizens fighting for various groups in Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan, but that's besides my point.
    • sumedh 4y ago
      > Plenty of Indians emigrate while leaving their caste identity Caste is something most Indians grow up with, you dont really lose it just because you go to another country. Most kids of these Indians fortunately dont really care about caste.
      • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > you dont really lose it just because you go to another country One may not lose it. But one can reject it. That's the gist of my implicit biases line.
    • hbosch 4y ago
      >Caste has no place in America. It's antithetical to our founding values. "Caste" as being your ring in the social hierarchy is present in almost any culture or civilization, and prejudiced treatment of people in either higher or lower social rings is definitely (in my opinion) a part of American culture. This country definitely offers special treatment and privilege to those in higher "castes"... Hell, even just having a Southern accent in America will grant you a prejudiced treatment in many settings.
  • yunohn 4y ago
    > due to current policies To be clear, are you talking about open immigration? Not that it’s truly open or easy to immigrate, but you seem to be hand waving in that direction. What do you think should be done about this? It’s not clear to me that closing borders somehow fixes anything.
• istjohn 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/16knM https://archive.ph/16knM
• india_usa 4y ago
  • oh_sigh 4y ago
    What caste are you? > For tech companies like Google who hire purely by merit, if someone has made inside Google that's it. Otherwise if there is discrimination they would not have hired it. I don't think anyone is claiming that companies like Google are organizationally enforcing caste discrimination, more like some employees within the company are doing it on their own. > Thenmozhi is a radical leftist out to create division rather than love. Pointing out wrongs may indeed create division, but that doesn't mean it is wrong to do so. > her father is a doctor, so if they are suppressed how come he is a doctor. Maybe he would be surgeon general(or equivalent) right now if he wasn't? This logic is just plain wrong - it would be like saying that racism didn't exist in the US in 1967 - otherwise how would Thurgood Marshall be on the Supreme Court?
  • throw93 4y ago
    >> There is no caste discrimination. PERIOD. I have witnessed up close. How can you be so certain, especially when you’re mentioning “Dalits” as 3rd person? “Trust me” is not a source. >> For several generations Dalits enjoy a superior position Literally not true. https://m.timesofindia.com/india/presence-of-scs-sts-in-govt-jobs-still-inadequate-centre-tells-supreme-court/amp_articleshow/86822033.cms https://m.timesofindia.com/india/presence-of-scs-sts-in-govt...
• kadayadi 4y ago
  The most number of Hindus in west support RSS and in these western countries are so much vocal about minority rights and discrimination. In fact, most RSS support is from the creamy urban layer of Hindu society. It's not surprising to see the bad PR for Hinduism prevention is being done.
• RustyConsul 4y ago
  Bias exist in us all. It's innate. It's what makes us alive. However, We've never been able to effectively label our bias. We build up these preconceived notions based on our experience and we put them in certain categories that often turn out to be mis-categorized. Taking an example from the article >I think we would perform better under a non-indian manager Instead of labelling your bias with 'Race/Class/Caste X', label behavior. We as a society need to be more honest about our bias and use stronger words like "Incompetent, lazy, scattered, arrogant, ineffective". Otherwise you have miscatergorized an entire group of people, not based on behavior but because of some inherited trait.
• tediousdemise 4y ago
  Can someone with information on the caste system chime in on how caste members recognize one another (especially outside of their native environment/homeland where cultural modes of expression such as clothing may be vastly different)?
• obnauticus 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/ZF8xg https://archive.ph/ZF8xg
• cafard 4y ago
  • ntoskrnl 4y ago
    I would love to live in a world where no racial violence has happened since the 1950s.
    • deleted 4y ago
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  • MontyCarloHall 4y ago
    True, but not germane to the article, which is discussing India’s racial difficulties. Indeed, suggesting that deep-seated structural racism is far from a uniquely American problem also makes some people upset.
  • lexapro 4y ago
    The truth is in fact very upsetting, yes.
  • adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    Yeah, high school history tends to skip from the civil war to WW1, so most students miss out on reconstruction, and pretty much no curricula will talk about the explicit race discrimination in the GI bill/redlining.
    • salawat 4y ago
      What high school students curricula are you following? All of those topics were covered where I went. Though interestingly, the ones I do also tend to get across the point that caste discrimination was made illegal in India, and never tend to go into much explicit detail on how just because something is illegal, it doesn't mean it isn't done/is regularly enforced.
    • jcranmer 4y ago
      > high school history tends to skip from the civil war to WW1 I very, very highly doubt that. In terms of US history, this period covers several important topics: * Reconstruction * Settling of the American West * Rise of the Granger and later Progressive movements * Burgeoning immigration to the US, and all the tensions that result from that * Second Industrial Revolution, which also fuels the Gilded Age and labor movements * Beginnings of American imperialism (and somewhat ironically, the end of it... the US becomes pretty uninterested in territorial expansion almost immediately after experiencing its first major bout of imperial expansion in the Spanish-American War). It's possible that you just don't remember what you learned in US history classes in this time period, but completely excising a quarter of the country's history would be rather surprising, especially when it's the part of the history that covers both the biggest shift in self-image (from an agrarian country distancing itself from world politics to an industrialized powerhouse increasingly engaged in world politics) and the development of mass political consciousness worldwide in the late Long 19th Century.
• lupire 4y ago
  Corpos naturally have split personalities, but it wasn't "Google's plan". Mid-level people proposed it and high-level people blocked it. What's not often said clearly is that corpos don't want social justice which might come at the cost of rancor, they want "DEI PR" that they can charge to the marketing budget. In other words, they want the low-hanging fruit they can get by having recruiters source employees from more places, and artists and photographers draw multicolored graphics, and asking people to be less cruel when all other tradeoffs are neutral,and if that makes the world more fair, that's great. But they management won't allow anything that risks disrupting the moneymaking operations, regardless of long term potential benefits (which almost certainly don't exist -- racism exists because it works, locally, for economic and social benefits, not because people are moustache-twirling comic-book supervillains). This is why free markets alone can't solve injustice, and broader social movements are the tool that works.
• MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  A good read for some additional context on caste discrimination in the American tech industry: https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidden-caste-system/amp https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidde...
  • sitkack 4y ago
    Not just caste discrimination, but also sexism. I have worked at least three companies where if there were Indian women, the vast majority were in QA.
    • notsureaboutpg 4y ago
    • vijaybritto 4y ago
      Interesting fact: Talk to Indian upper caste women who claim to be feminists about caste; you'll be shut down quickly. I have had countless arguments only to be named "mansplainer". The activism from powerful groups will flow in the same social structure which does not affect their power.
      • bell-cot 4y ago
        This sounds extremely similar the ~century-ago situation in American feminism. Lesser right for women of "lesser" racial, religious, social, etc. backgrounds were, ah, not much of a concern.
        • pasabagi 4y ago
          It's also the same the other way around: a lot of male anti-racism activists / communists / etc were very sexist. Some still are. I still think it's nice that feminists are, today and historically, generally ahead of the curve when it comes to these things.
          • 4y ago
• A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  This is likely an example why it may not always be a great idea to discuss politics at work. I know a lot of us have strong personal opinions on a lot of subjects, but making sure everyone on my team aligns with my beliefs is likely not conducive to teamwork. Quite the opposite. If I was not an IC now, I would definitely be trying to cut discussions like that in a bud.
  • gman83 4y ago
    I think that discussing caste-based discrimination is great for a western company to do. Especially one with a lot of Indian workers. Most western workers/managers have little understanding of this topic, and will probably miss it if a coworker is being discriminated against because of their caste. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
  • rob74 4y ago
    Except racism (and "caste-based discrimination" is also racism) shouldn't be considered "politics", everybody should be able to agree that it doesn't have a place in a modern company.
    • zo1 4y ago
      I'd posit that 99.999% of people agree racism is bad. It's mostly when the definition gets muddied and expanded that people start disagreeing and it becomes political and touchy.
      • knorker 4y ago
        I don't think it's a matter of definition. Unless you mean "it's not racism when I say it. When I say it it's just a fact". Whether they use the N word, or saying "being on time" is "whiteness", racism is always defined as "not what I'm doing". Actually the only real definition of racism I would say is "mentioning race in any way, except the way I do it". For your 99.999%, I would say that WAY more than one in a hundred thousand would overtly say that their group (race, religion, skin color, gender) is "better" than another. Especially as you leave western countries. Though in some countries their racism doesn't even place themselves at the top. 27% of Americans say that homeopathy is an effective treatement. I've never met anyone who would admit to this. I know someone who believes in crystals and fortune tellers though. I don't know how many people are pro-racism, but it's not three orders of magnitude less than people who believe in the power of nothing.
• bko 4y ago
  Do we need every mega-corporation to weigh in on every social issue globally? The thing I like most about work is that its a relatively diverse group of people working together on shared goal. People have known for a long time that work should be professional and you should avoid politics and religion. But I guess people have to relearn these lessons every few decades.
  • rsstack 4y ago
    They don't have to weigh in. But, if few Indian managers discriminate against Dalits, how are their non-Indian peers and managers supposed to correct that discrimination if they don't even understand what are castes? This isn't political, it's professional: US laws and Google policies forbid discrimination, and so people need to be trained in understanding what discrimination looks like. You don't categorize "security awareness training" as political either.
    • smugma 4y ago
      Discrimination against protected classes is illegal. For example, until somewhat recently it was legal to discriminate based on someone’s sexual orientation (don’t ask, don’t tell). Case law matters, and caste seems to not have clear answers as to whether it qualifies. If caste is considered equivalent to race, it would.
    • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > US laws and Google policies forbid discrimination Does U.S. law have precedent for discussing caste? There is a case for typing the lowest-caste Indians, the Dalits this cancelled talk was meant to discuss, as a race and thus protected class under U.S. and Californian law. But I don't know if this is legally precedented.
      • toper-centage 4y ago
        Isn't racism fundamentally a type of caste/class discrimination? Not as well defined castes like seen in India, but "black people" are discriminated as a result of slavery, "asians" as a result of mass immigration. To the point where in many countries you were not allowed or able to marry outside your "caste", had different rights than locals/whites etc. People today don't feel racism as caste discrimination, but to say that there's no precedent in the West is being pedantic IMO.
• lolinder 4y ago
  > “We also made the decision to not move forward with the proposed talk which — rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness — was creating division and rancor,” Newberry wrote. This doesn't surprise me one bit. Even on HN, every thread on this topic turns into a flame war with a bunch of people crying racism/religionism. How dare we discuss something we don't fully understand? How dare we criticize another culture when we have our own problems? It's the same arguments every time, and then the article ends up flagged to death. The role of caste within the US is a super important conversation to have, and every resident of the US is entitled to participate, but there are a lot of people with a vested interest in shutting it down and the tools to do so.
  • BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    • throwaway049 4y ago
      A weak argument is a weak argument. Or are you saying brahmins and confederates have a lot in common and ought to spend more time together?
      • djbusby 4y ago
        • acheron 4y ago
          Good thing they've all been dead for close to a hundred years then.
          • monetus 4y ago
            Having stayed in Columbia TN for a decent while, I can tell you that the legacy is alive and well. Really, visit if you ever drive by - the confederate headquaters is in an anti-bellum house where they give tours, and they never say anything bad about the social dynamics of the past. It really leaves an elephant in the room, when they are selling battle flags in the gift shop embroidered with things like history not hate.
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Is there a Wikipedia list of obscure 'race'-isms? I find reading about other cultures or other time period's biases to be informative and wonder what the common elements might be. Off the top of my head, issues I can think of where an outsider may be oblivious between the "sides" are: Indian caste Japanese Barukumin caste Protestant/Catholic in Europe Jewish people in Europe/US/USSR English Class System, or Southern/Northern Jim Crow, or North/South or Midwest Vs coastal, WASPs, or Nativism. Ainu in Hokkaido. Ukraine vs Russian is topical at the moment.
  • rob74 4y ago
    The common element is always in-group vs. out-group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_and_out-group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_and_out-group). It doesn't have to be based on race or ethnicity, it can also be e.g. Democrats vs. Republicans in the US, supporters of different football clubs etc. etc.
    • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      I nearly listed football/sport team support but thought it might be too out there a reference for most people. Now I'm wondering how global such sporting based rivalries are, and if they always originally grew from one of the others.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • inglor_cz 4y ago
    Add "Muslim/Kafir" to the list. And Sunni/Shi'a.
    • ralmidani 4y ago
      Bad analogy. A person’s deeply-held belief that a given religion is true, and calling others to that belief, is not the same as saying “you were born of a lower caste and should never be able to escape that.” Of course, it goes without saying, perceiving you belong to the true faith does not justify violence or discrimination. But faith-based identification is not analogous to a caste system.
• rob74 4y ago
  > Soundararajan appealed directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who comes from an upper-caste family in India, to allow her presentation to go forward. But the talk was canceled, leading some employees to conclude that Google was willfully ignoring caste bias. > 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 wake of George Floyd, he absolutely should be making those same commitments to the context he comes from where he is someone of privilege.” Sounds like Mr. Pichai has some explaining to do...
  • newsclues 4y ago
    He doesn’t have explaining to do because he holds the power and is choosing not to.
  • devnull3 4y ago
    I doubt it. In fact attrocities on brahmins is rarely discussed [1]. Infact his state TamilNadu there is a strong anti-brahminism sentiment in political sphere. This is one of the reason why lot of upper-caste men/women go outside India. [1] https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/the-brahmin-files-why-atrocities-on-brahmins-remain-one-of-the-best-kept-secrets-in-independent-india-10555251.html https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/the-brahmin-files-why-atro...
    • ethanbond 4y ago
      Doesn’t excuse any discriminatory behavior here in the States. Or, frankly, even in India.
      • devnull3 4y ago
        I never said that. Just because Sundar is of certain caste does not mean he has explaining to do. It's like holding any white British person to explain all the bad things British did in their colonies.
• nradov 4y ago
  California sued Cisco over caste discrimination in 2020 and it was discussed here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083
• car_analogy 4y ago
  Left unstated is the assumption that Brahmins limit their discrimination to Dalits.
  • criddell 4y ago
    I'm not understanding the implication. Does it matter how limited the discrimination is?
    • car_analogy 4y ago
      The implication is that it's not limited. If they discriminate against Dalits, they probably discriminate against others too.
      • yunohn 4y ago
        Which is true of all bigoted groups tbh. Quite harmful in how it manifests and grows, esp in corporate companies.
      • criddell 4y ago
        > The implication is that it's not limited. Right, but what are the implications of it being limited or not? Is there a tolerable level of discrimination?
        • psyc 4y ago
          That has nothing to do with it. There's no tolerable level, but more is still worse than less, and GP's point means more people with a direct vested interest in calling for change.
  • albert_e 4y ago
    Oh while we are on this topic there are branches within Brahmins and each group gets to feel superior to other Brahmins because reasons. In some regions, there were also some devout worshippers of one God that take adverserial position about worshippers of another God (Shiva versus Vishnu) Luckily most of these (I think) are on their way out and don't manifest in professional workplaces of today. These tendencies must have definitely shaped careers and unfairly disadvantaged people as recently as a couple of decades ago.
• iJohnDoe 4y ago
  Google outsources more than people realize. A lot of things happen out of India. The minimum amount of customer support that Google provides happens out of India. The mystery account bans, that sometimes get a lot of attention, happens out of India.
• jimmaswell 4y ago
  Democracy dies in darkness, please enter your credit card to continue.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• anonymousiam 4y ago
  • zo1 4y ago
    Not sure I understand the usage of the term radioactive here? Did you mean toxic?
    • anonymousiam 4y ago
      I guess toxic is an adjective with a similar meaning, but a worse connotation in my view. Both words imply that she is to be avoided, and she will probably have some difficulty finding a new job after her very-public departure from Google.
  • salawat 4y ago
    Which would give grounds on the hiring manager front for investigating one's employer for de-facto blacklisting. Which is illegal. Just because someone points out the elrphant in the room at a workplace does not make them "radioactive". Quite the opposite. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
    • anonymousiam 4y ago
      Organizing a labor protest because of unfair working conditions, or as an attempt to unionize, is "protected" by US regulations (not necessarily laws). Organizing a labor protest because of a (real or perceived) culture of sexual harassment is not. If she had a valid and provable claim of wrongdoing, she should have approached an attorney and sued Google to elicit change (and maybe some compensation). I believe I read that her protest was staged to "bring awareness" to the issue. If you were an employer (regardless of your views on the topic), would this be okay with you? The same thing goes for trying to organize a meeting with a speaker who will talk about the caste system in Silicon Valley. Yeah, caste == bad, but is the employer obligated to host such a meeting (at their expense)? Obviously she could rent a venue and invite others to the presentation on their own time, but why must Google submit to her demands for them to pay for it?
• Vaslo 4y ago
  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?
  • jjaaammmmy 4y ago
    this NPR podcast was pretty insightful about this issue https://www.npr.org/transcripts/915299467 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/915299467
    • medler 4y ago
      That NPR story was great, thanks. The transcript is definitely worth reading for anyone curious about this. In a nutshell, people can sometimes tell by your last name, and if they can’t, they will ask you questions about your background, such as what town and/or neighborhood your family is from, until they figure it out. In one example in the story, a guy is outed as a Dalit by a coworker who knew him from college.
      • hef19898 4y ago
        Outing a co-worker is pretty mean. And asking all kinda of private background questions in order to judge someone's social standing and treat them accordingly is intrusive and bigotted. As usual, racists are more often than not mean bigots. It is somewhat different if you grew up in the caste system, and the discriminatory behaviour was just ingrained. If you start falling back to that based on, e.g., surname it's hard to avoid. Actively seeking information you can use to treat people like shit is a different level all together!
        • ryandrake 4y ago
          > And asking all kinda of private background questions in order to judge someone's social standing and treat them accordingly is intrusive and bigotted. This also happens in the west and it's not caste-related. Go to a suburban barbecue or something, and observe: people will ask what you do for a living, which neighborhood you live in, how long have you been living here, where did you originally come from, and so on. Often they are doing this kind of small talk just so they can figure out where you are on the social totem pole.
• knorker 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• boredumb 4y ago
  "rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness — was creating division and rancor" Insert every social movement in the last 10 years. Absolutely hilarious that a company that goes out of it's way to participate in the US culture war identifies an actual systemic issue in the country where the CEO just happens to originate from, it is suddenly a divisive action to make half baked hyperbolic social statements.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• NoGravitas 4y ago
  As a leftist, one of the things that gives me pause about identity politics and the language of identity divorced from class struggle is how easily it is repurposed by reactionaries: > But Google employees began spreading disinformation, calling her “Hindu-phobic” and “anti-Hindu” in emails to the company’s leaders, documents posted on Google’s intranet and mailing lists with thousands of employees. I don't have a solution, just a depressing observation.
  • 7952 4y ago
    You see weird reaction in debates about feminism. People go along with the belief that men and women are the same. And then use that to justify male anger about unfairness by just parotting the same talking points. When actually feminist could always accept that there were differences and that was the point. But the argument changes at different levels of abstraction. It's confusing. Individuals should be treated the same, but are different statistically and in aggregate.
    • blueflow 4y ago
      People see that "men and women are different" is used as justification for prejudice (like a person not getting a chance because people of the same sex did rarely have success previously). Which sucks and people feel its unfair. And when trying to conceptualize that unfairness into words, their contra opinion sometimes ends up being "so man and women must be equal" instead of "a persons sex does not justify prejudice". Peoples feelings about fairness and justice are always valid, but hell, many people suck so hard at putting it into words.
      • whatshisface 4y ago
        People can be equal before the law without being equal before a pole vault.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • allenu 4y ago
• yalogin 4y ago
  The talk should have allowed to go through. The post I think said it right, people wanted to shut it down and the only way to do it is to discredit the speaker because they know there is truth to the arguments. However we should step back and think about how important it in the American context. What purpose is that talk going to serve? I don’t know if it does anything other than satisfying esoteric learning needs of a few. It may be an issue in he US but the problem may be among single digit or double digit individuals at best. Is it worth spending cycles on it?
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • heretogetout 4y ago
    Racism and bigotry are worth addressing at all levels, IMO. But I question your assumed figures: surely there are a lot more than 99 Indians of lower castes that are affected by caste-based bigotry in the US?
  • ffggvv 4y ago
    idk woke people are obsessed with protecting very small minority groups. in fact often the smaller the better in terms of virtue signaling points. so it just goes to show how hypocritical Google is being when they are mega woke on every other facet. probably because their ceo harbors a like for the caste system
    • deleted 4y ago
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  • FactolSarin 4y ago
    Isn't the fact that it got shut down by higher caste Indians proof that the talk is important in some way?
    • yalogin 4y ago
      This is just assuming malice without any information. Dangerous to do in any situation
• jmyeet 4y ago
  There's a lot of bias in the tech industry, not just caste. if your company is sufficiently large it will have various HR policies on this and in my experience they will enumerate the kinds of discrimination they don't tolerate. Here's an exercise for you: go through the list of US protected classes [1] and see which ones are explicitly stated and which ones aren't. It's actually enlightening. For example, I don't think I've ever seen ageism specifically called out. As for the impact of the Indian caste system in US tech, I can't really comment on that. It's not my lived experience. I've worked with many Indians. No idea what their castes were. Saying that, just like racism I find it incredibly plausible that if you grew up in such a system, the effects are pervasive and linger. So should Google allow such a talk? That's a difficult question. It's clearly a divisive issue. It reminds me of Meta telling employees to stop talking about abortion [2]. Now that issue probably doesn't lead to workplace discrimination (alleged or actual) although you might be able to argue that your political views could hurt you. There's something to be said to keeping your political views to yourself, particularly at work. I imagine (but, again, don't know from experience) that this might be on the level of racial discrimination in the US workplace. So it seems worth examining. I imagine to mahy outsiders it might not look "real" because at the end of the day they're all Indians (which, to be clear, is also a form of racism). Is a talk the best way to handle this? I honestly don't know. I can sympathize with avoiding divisive issues and also with the desire of a company to cover their ass and not create an HR nightmare. I really wonder if this ends in a lawsuit. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_States [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/19/23131714/meta-ban-abortion-discussion-at-work-facebook-workplace-roe-v-wade https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/19/23131714/meta-ban-abortio...
  • nemothekid 4y ago
    This feels like whataboutism. First off, activism is uncomfortable - it’s about changing the status quo and anyone who benefits will take issue with it even if they don’t actively perpetuate the system. MLK wasn’t met with open arms; he was harassed, arrested and ultimately assassinated. Personally I’ve worked with many Indians too and I have never heard anyone one of them bring up caste; but I’m not Indian, so why would they? A better benchmark is how many people of lower caste have you talked to and how do they feel about it? It may be the case that the structures of American Indians have already expunged all the lower caste Indians from your workplace.
• 0daystock 4y ago
  Google has cancelled many discussions about various bias; their "Talks" have not been thought-provoking or even relevant for some years now, probably since middle management from other mediocre companies percolated the organization.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• whoevercares 4y ago
  I observed it multiple times during CS graduate school. An Indian high caste classmate refused to let his roommate sleep in the same bedroom. The higher caste guy told us that his roommate is of lower caste. The other poor guy ended up very obedient and sleep in the couch for 2 years. They have a group of high caste guys and talk sht about a few fellow low caste guys in the class Eye opening.
  • puranjay 4y ago
    High caste people in India will often find ways to casually mention their caste in conversation, sometimes within minutes of meeting someone new. Its reflexive - like subtly turning your wrist to show off a new watch. And I have no data to corroborate this, but I've felt caste chauvinism increase in the last few years.
    • sangnoir 4y ago
      > And I have no data to corroborate this, but I've felt caste chauvinism increase in the last few years. ...as has Hindu nationalism, as noted in the article.
      • ReactiveJelly 4y ago
        A worrying trend. The vibe of nationalist theocracy in the USA has not been fun for me as a non-Christian.
      • int_19h 4y ago
        There's a broad trend in the rise of populist ethnocultural nationalism around the world, which usually brings with it a revival of all kinds of discriminatory outlooks because they're "traditional".
    • known 4y ago
  • lotophage 4y ago
    That's horrible
• usrn 4y ago
• oofbey 4y ago
  Google’s culture is dominated by arrogance. Management repeatedly tells employees they work on the world’s hardest problems using the world’s biggest computers and the world’s smartest people. Doing anything less is “ungoogley”. It doesn’t necessarily follow that this would encourage racism. But it sure isn’t surprising.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Why would you assume "best" = "racist"? Also - which companies are saying they hire the worst people? I've worked at several companies - every single one of them claimed to hire the best. It's just corporate psychobabble at this point.
    • me_me_mu_mu 4y ago
      I’ll bite with anecdotal pov. I think most of the people who are the “best” are advantaged from the beginning. Whether it is attending prep schools (40k a year or more private school for 12 years), having a home (not moving multiple times, sometimes in a year over many years), or honestly having the familial backing to “take risks”. The last point is so wild when I hear it from some VCs or successful CEO. It’s easy to take a risk when your parents and family are loaded, even if you have nothing to your name at the time. It’s easy to say such things when your parents are doctors or entrepreneurs who put you through private school and then you got into Stanford. I’m sure they’re smart, but they bought their way in when you reduce it. Sure they took it from 20-100, but many people can barely get from 1-10 due to socioeconomic circumstances. I respect the people who manage to go from 1-100 way more than someone who was bound to be reasonably successful at worst from birth.
    • zach_garwood 4y ago
      Racists tend to be ethno-supremecists, ie they think they belong to the "best" race.
      • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
        So racists are inclined to think they're "the best". Why are people who think they're "the best" inclined to think it's in part / mostly / solely due to race?
• mariodiana 4y ago
  > In April, Thenmozhi Soundararajan […] was scheduled to give a talk to Google News employees for Dalit History Month. But Google employees began spreading disinformation […] That is not journalism. That's editorializing — and in the very first paragraph, no less. This is how media like the Washington Post encourages a kind of caste of its own, by signaling "right-think" to its readers.
  • jasonlotito 4y ago
    It’s not. You left out the rest. “…according to copies of the documents as well as interviews with Soundararajan and current Google employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about retaliation.”
• thwjerjl23432 4y ago
  [flagged]
• jamesfisher 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/16knM https://archive.ph/16knM
• vt85 4y ago
  Oh just fuck off with these Marxist bullshit already. If you suck you aren’t going to be hired. If you are good you will succeed. Whatever discrimination there is against Indians, it’s way less than what they deserve. Actually Americans give them too much credit, which then we have to fix it Eastern Europe.
• Pigalowda 4y ago
  There are 200+ million Dalits in India. These are the people which were previously called “untouchables”. I work in medicine, many Indians work with me and most are Brahmins with a few Christian Malayali from Kerala. I think the Malayali have shown it is possible to escape the caste system and to have success. However I am worried Dalits have been at the bottom and treated as such for thousands of years that it has effected more than just their psychology. In a high population density area with food insecurity there will be high baseline stress, malnutrition, and starvation. Those will cause epigenetic modifications to DNA which are (surprisingly) heritable. Over thousands I imagine these effects will produce behaviors which are going to be hard to overcome.
  • dundarious 4y ago
    What are or should be the consequences of these worries of yours?
    • Pigalowda 4y ago
      The worry is that it will take many generations of significant investment back into the Dalit communities to bring them into parity with the rest of the Indian population. That even after the investment the longterm epigenetic effects from thousands of years of high intergenerational stress will show a significant increase in diseases of all types with higher all cause mortality/lower life expectancy.
      • dundarious 4y ago
        Lifestyle factors drastically dominate when it comes to mortality/life expectancy. Also, the whole idea is highly speculative and would/should have no implications for workplace/hiring practices regardless.
        • Pigalowda 4y ago
          Yes it is true that with improvement in maternal/fetal survivability modifiable lifestyle factors drastically dominate life expectancy. However that's a throw away line to disregard significant differences. It's basically zooming out far enough to say it doesn't matter. And yes, its a speculative idea that I proposed, I certainly didn't suggest it was dogma. However this kind of observation is what would lead to a study. Lastly, while this discussion is tangential to Google hiring practices, it is a related topic. I'm sorry if you feel like I robbed you of your time.
• mountainriver 4y ago
  Google is so morally bankrupt at this point they have no idea what is right. The far left has given everyone the impression that standing up to this nonsense is racist
• gedy 4y ago
  Okay, what DEI talks have they not cancelled in that case? Might show their biases.
• steve76 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• dandare 4y ago
  After a quick google search I can see some very controversial comments by Thenmozhi Soundararajan. Hopefully the world is changing and demonising ones race, even if that race is white or Hindu, will soon be neither celebrated nor even acceptable.
  • throw93 4y ago
    Source please. What exactly did you search for? I did not find any controversy when I googled her name.
  • alex_smart 4y ago
    How is Dr Subramanian relevant to this article again?
    • dandare 4y ago
      Typo (old clipboard). Thanks for pointing it out.
  • ridiculous_leke 4y ago
    What exactly did she comment?
  • CydeWeys 4y ago
    I do want to point out that Google allows all sorts of talks onsite. You can see some of them here: https://youtube.com/c/talksatgoogle https://youtube.com/c/talksatgoogle I've definitely been to a few of those in person that were more controversial than talking about caste (and also did not have the benefit of actually being useful, like addressing workplace discrimination is).
• tristor 4y ago
  Related, Washington Post previously published an anonymous open letter from Dalit women in 2020 in the wake of Cisco being sued for caste discrimination: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/a-statement-on-caste-bias-in-silicon-valley-from-30-dalit-women-engineers/d692b4f8-2710-41c3-9d5f-ea55c13bcc50/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_17 https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/a-statement-on-caste-... One of the most interesting things that stood out to me from this letter and that lawsuit was the assertion by those affected that discrimination on the basis of caste was more impactful and more severe than discrimination suffered due to immigration status, race, and gender in US society, and the letter goes so far as to state "We know that we thrive when we work under a non-Indian boss. Our work is seen and evaluated on merit, and we are integrated rather than being excluded." It makes these discussions of castes even more important, especially as Indian immigration continues to rise and Indian culture begins to take precedence in the tech industry. Being a white American from the Midwest, I had no awareness of caste or caste discrimination when I began my career, but as I got more experienced began to learn about it and unfortunately I have personally witnessed some incidents in the workplace during my career. I wish that Google had allowed this talk to move forward, because I think ending workplace discrimination is a critical path to ensuring a merit-based free market open to all.
  • qorrect 4y ago
    What did you witness?
    • roflyear 4y ago
      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 to a larger tech firm in the US (where I am now) that is not Google or Cisco. I've also seen this in smaller companies and startups, but there it is usually the Indian CTO or manager hiring an Indian contracting company, where big surprise, there is some prior relationship. I haven't ever had these arrangements work out. I have nothing against Indian people - but this is an issue in tech, and I feel like it is becoming a larger issue.
• sashu123 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • nyolfen 4y ago
    > I can assure you there is no hidden community of brahmins that look out for each other and help each other succeed and I doubt there is for most castes in India. 2 seconds on google https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-accuses-cisco-of-job-discrimination-based-on-indian-employees-caste-idUSKBN2423YE https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-...
    • nyolfen 4y ago
      2 more seconds https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/nyregion/nj-hindu-temple-india-baps.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/nyregion/nj-hindu-temple-...
    • ridiculous_leke 4y ago
      What was the result of the lawsuit? Is Cisco guilty?
      • anonymousab 4y ago
        Still ongoing. But given that one of Cisco's arguments is simply "how dare you, Caste discrimination isn't illegal!" I don't see them as particularly deserving of any benefit of the doubt.
  • devnonymous 4y ago
    > No doubt lower caste members have disparate outcomes compared to Upper Caste but this is not due to "Caste Discrimination". This sort of opinion forming based purely on personal anecdotes is why talks such as the one under discussion are needed. You've convinced yourself that caste discrimination doesn't exist just because you didn't happen to encounter it in your personal limited experience! Please listen, read and learn from first hand experiences of those that live it every day. Even today. Click on this on any random day and then come here saying caste discrimination doesn't exist https://twitter.com/search?q=dalit%20beaten%20&src=typed_query&f=top https://twitter.com/search?q=dalit%20beaten%20&src=typed_que...
• sandGorgon 4y ago
  This is a followup to that news article - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equality-labs-demands-accountability-from-google-to-address-caste-discrimination-after-employee-resignation-301560319.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equality-labs-deman...
• DoItToMe81 4y ago
  I can believe caste discrimination is a serious problem. Though not in anything tech related yet, I've had Indian bosses and colleagues, and among them were some of the most spiteful and vitriolic people I've ever known in my life, especially to people from the 'wrong' parts of the Indian subcontinent. I dread to think how they'd abuse others if they got into higher management.
• samstave 4y ago
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• dang 4y ago
  Related threads - others? Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543 comments) India’s tech sector reinforces old caste divides - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5 comments) The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5 comments) How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments) Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments) India’s engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 - Oct 2020 (6 comments) How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept 2020 (47 comments) Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments) Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 comments) California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - July 2020 (56 comments) California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments) Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6 comments)
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • throwaway_1928 4y ago
• iepathos 4y ago
  Ugh, bigotry is an ugly look Google.
• anonymousab 4y ago
  > After Gupta posted a link in the email group to a petition to reinstate the talk, respondents argued that caste discrimination does not exist, that caste is not a thing in the United States, and that efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United States would sow further division. > Some called caste equity a form of reverse discrimination against the highest-ranked castes because of India’s affirmative action system for access to education and government jobs. > Others said people from marginalized castes lack the education to properly interpret Hindu scriptures around castes. Wow. I did not expect saints; every person and organization will be fallible and all that. Yet this is still so... absolutely stunning.
  • jjcon 4y ago
    > efforts to raise awareness of these issues in the United States would sow further division. I think is a real point and is true of many issues - the problem is how do you fix a problem silently in the background? Can it be done with better results than hyperfocusing on it? I would guess and hope there might be a way but don't know how.
    • crooked-v 4y ago
      Talking about social problems only "sows further division" in the sense that people who currently benefit from those problems get angry that you want to change things.
  • 1270018080 4y ago
    To me, all of these statements 100% confirm caste discrimination exists in America. Whenever I hear confronting history and privilege as "sowing further division" I cringe hard. The parallels in American history are, well... very parallel.
    • skyde 4y ago
      The problem is "affirmative action" is just reverse discrimination and this is why it bring further division. Because people from both sides now, no longer feel reward is based on merit alone anymore. If there is another solution than "affirmative action" this might not be divisive.
• kart23 4y ago
  It'll be interesting to see how this issue evolves with more american-born Indians entering the workforce. Hopefully it'll fade like a lot of other old-fashioned discrimination has.
• WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  I’ve got this impression that all these diversity and equality programs employed by large American corporations are annoying to some and lame generally because they are astoundingly myopic. Like, they do a vastly simplified, explain-like-I’m-five take on these issues (blah blah white male middle- and upper-class are evil type of thing) and tackle it with full ineptitude of five-year-olds. I think a lot of people benefit from such approach. First, hordes of people are generating busywork and you don’t really need mad skills or even basic competence to be doing it. A lot of busywork paints a picture of the company press and shareholders will love. Meanwhile, all the bullies keep on bullying. There’s this culture where you will be treated better or worse based on the color of your badge. Race/religion/gender are off-limits, but discriminatory employee-contractor dynamics are blessed! There’s this other bit of corporate culture that flew under the radar of any and all equality/diversity effort where managers of Indian origin would treat their also-Indian reports like shit because the poor schmucks happen to be of a lower caste. They would also make an effort to halt their career progress. Those same managers would treat their overseas office teammates (in Poland) as if they were below the lowest caste possible. Speaking about companies that have offices in both USA and, say, Eastern Europe, the Eastern Wuropean teammates are often treated as second-class people. They don’t get to participate in any project discussions of importance, presumably because those discussions happen informally, at the watercooler, in the US office, and should be content with all decisions handed down, like it or not. I’m seeing the same kind of attitude starts happening now with onsite/WFH workers: since you don’t see the latter ones face to face, they are not quite real people. Oh, and if you want to see a full-fledged rampant racism and supremacism, you should try working for a Korean company as a worker of their European branch office. But apparently such issues are way too complex to be actually worked on by your off-the-shelf diversity and equality teams, for whom the white/nonwhite and male/female divide is the upper limit of comprehension.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• amriksohata 4y ago
  Sadly most caste accusations come from a place of extreme hatred for Hindus. I have seen this when questioned by people who talk of Caste and the Hindu religion and when I dig deep, they often have a extreme dislike of Hindus more than anything. Caste comes from the Portuguese word "Castus". There is no literal translation found for this word in ancient Hindu Sanskrit texts. The quoted article comes written from a time under British Raj where peoples backgrounds were used to further divide society so that they would not rise up against the British. Caste in the same sense of occupational background exists in all cultures but was never used in such a divisive way like the British Raj did. For example people of the "Smith" surname used to be Goldsmiths or Blacksmiths. But the British put a sense of elitism into some communities in India, telling them they are higher than others. There is no Hindu scripture which says who is high or low, but merely responsibilities. Skilfully sidestepping any explanation of the metric being used to measure “high”, the educated spiritual priests in British Raj times and intellectuals were all banded together into one and labelled "highest caste" because they represented the “highest threat” to Anglican domination and those who represented the “lowest threat” to the Anglican were pushed into the lowest caste. During the British Raj of the 540 principalities existent at that time, over 400 were ruled by Shudra Kings (Professor Vaidyanathan, IIM Bangalore) which the British denoted as low caste. When the British left, the second largest landowner in India after the Indian Government, was the Church and thus it’s reasonable to note that the largest transfer of assets and land from was in fact from the Shudra groups (Lord Harries’ so called low-castes) to the Church. Further, there is readily available overwhelming historical evidence that the Dalits “the Untouchables” were themselves a creation of the crushing sanctions created and imposed by the Anglican Colonialists of the Church of England as is clarified below. The castes and tribes “notified” under the 1871 Act were labelled as Criminal Tribes for their so-called “criminal tendencies”. As a result, anyone born in these communities across the country was presumed a “born criminal”, irrespective of their criminal precedents. Mixing castes was normal as it was based on deed back few thousand years ago, only recently caste mixing wasn't allowed. Some further reading: https://pragyata.com/caste-system-pointers-for-the-social-media-world/ https://pragyata.com/caste-system-pointers-for-the-social-me... https://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-gene-data-reveal-two-millenia-of-caste-relations-in-india-081213 https://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-gene-data-reveal...
• auganov 4y ago
  Extremely dishonest article. Tries very hard to trick people in believing "Hindu nationalists" didn't like her talk because they're great fans of the caste system. Yet it's common knowledge they're against the very idea of caste. > sites and organizations that have targeted academics in the United States and Canada who are critical of Hindu nationalism or caste hierarchy. Whatever the real grievance is, the article definitely doesn't talk about it. Presumably people felt her activism actually strengthens the caste system/division rather than combats it.
• screye 4y ago
  Every couple of months an article about caste is posted on HN. The article and the reactions are always the same. * Shallow allusions to how caste dynamics = white-black dynamics in the US * Any one in opposition = caste supremacist = hindu nationalism * Belief that caste dynamics in the US = caste dynamics in rural India I am going to buck my own trend of writing explanations about how western interpretations of issues faced by foreign civilizations are wrong. I will instead link to older comments [1] I have written before: Choice quotes: > Caste related pieces in the western press miss the entire context around 1st-world-discrimination among Indians. It annoys me to no end, because discrimination is still a major problem in certain communities. But, the western media has cast it onto their agonizingly shallow concept of privilege and bigotry. > caste is not caste anymore. The nature of internal sharding, class division, and discrimination in the diaspora has its own patterns that don't abide by caste lines. I have some strong suspicions on why caste has suddenly become a major issue in California politics over the last decade. I know better than to talk about on a pseudo-anonymous account. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22India%22%20%22caste%22%20%22screye%22&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
• monkeycantype 4y ago
  I’m a white Australian and am in my last few weeks of a decade long stint in a large company, caste discrimination is certainly not the only discrimination in Australia, but it is the most overt explicit discrimination that I see every week. We have laws and company policies on other forms of discrimination, but the predominantly white corporate culture hasn’t figured out how to talk about caste discrimination without sounding like it is criticizing Indian culture so has just turned a panicked blind eye to it. I regularly see or am told of behavior that should lead to arrests, but because many Indians in Australia are on fragile visas it is swept under the rug.
  • barrysteve 4y ago
    That can't last. Integrating an Indian subculture and taking the sting out of the caste system is going to become necessary.
    • monkeycantype 4y ago
      My fear is that Australia now has a large workforce of people on fragile visas with no political representation and that this is corrosive for our democracy, so this situation will last much longer than it should
  • boruto 4y ago
    > but it is the most overt explicit discrimination that I see every week. Could you give some examples?
    • monkeycantype 4y ago
      Yes, Two employees hired via an Indian recruiting firm were not paid wages they were legally entitled to, that my company was paying for, and threatened with cancellation of their visas and legal action in India if they reported the underpayment. In one case my colleague agreed to pay back his last three months wages when he quit to the recruiting firm, not to my company that had already paid the wages. He wasn’t contractually obliged to do this it was just bullying. (He had also not been paid superannuation for three years) Other Indian workers were bullied to secretly to work for other clients and phone in sick. (Australian workers get paid sick leave) others were regularly required to write fake resumes for candidates applying to work at my company and coach candidates on their fake work history. These are the explicit extreme examples, the mistreatment an dismissive behavior towards Indian women and my Tamil colleagues is unpleasant but more subtle, one female Sri Lankan colleague deliberately adopted an Australian accent to be accepted by some of our Indian male colleagues. In all of these cases the managers responsible were higher caste than the workers, who accepted the mistreatment despite Australian law being strongly on their side.
• sizzle 4y ago
  Genuine question, what is stopping you from identifying as another caste in 2022 with the mass adoption of the concept of identifying with different genders? Just like being assigned a sex of Male or Female at birth, those who don’t want to associate can identify with another gender identity or even transition their bodies to whatever sex they please. I don’t buy the notion that once a Dalit by birth you are destined to a lifetime of suffering, especially if you made it to FAANG in the USA, you won the lottery are in the top 1% of Dalits that are in the cohort of successful, wealthy, educated technologists who can break down the walls of caste identification back home. With the protection of civil rights laws and freedom of religion in the USA, you can use your money and influence to start a movement that breaks the chains of caste identity for the oppressed community back home. I know the college youth in Delhi are very progressive and champion Women’s rights and protesting as a movement emerged when the horrific rape trials were brought to global attention. Maybe tap into this educated youth cohort to be the change for future generations to come and break caste identity at a conceptual level. Money and freedom in another powerful country = power and influence to change the narrative back home as a symbol and poster child of Dalit role models changing the world. Sorry I’m rambling, but if you made it to FAANG and aren’t paying it forward to your oppressed communities back home, then is your inaction to take a stand against Caste discrimination benefiting your oppressors because the top 1% of Dalits who can affect change left India as part of the brain drain of skilled individuals trying to make a better life for themselves abroad? Let casteism die with the older generations, start a movement with the youth to turn the tides in favor of fluid caste identity until it is no longer relevant conceptually. Someone please help me articulate this stream of consciousness into a single concise paragraph that is actionable. Thanks for listening, I would love to help in any way I can.
  • ip26 4y ago
    Imagine trying to identify as a midwesterner except you secretly grew up in Canada. Sooner or later someone is going to figure it out, eh?
    • hammock 4y ago
      Not really. There are scores of famous Hollywood actors, musicians etc who most would never guess were Canadian.
• civilized 4y ago
  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 wake of George Floyd, he absolutely should be making those same commitments to the context he comes from where he is someone of privilege.” > Soundararajan said Pichai has not responded to letter she sent him in April. Google declined to comment.
  • throwaway_1928 4y ago
    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 https://twitter.com/dalitdiva/status/1465358123640655875
    • DigiDigiorno 4y ago
      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...
      • throwaway_1928 4y ago
        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?
        • the_only_law 4y ago
          Is the Israeli-Palestine conflict happening in their office? I’d certainly hope the CEO would say something if their Israeli employees and Palestinian employees started firing rockets at each other on work time.
• yes_really 4y ago
  The real reason why Google canceled the talk is because the speaker has a long history of anti-hindu rhetoric and multiple employees complained about the talk to HR. That Washington Post article is lying (or being extremely disingenuous) to take advantage of outsiders without context of the situation.
  • yes_really 4y ago
    Note: I'm not saying there isn't caste bias. I'm saying that articles like these are shamelessly lying about what happened.
  • tavish1 4y ago
    That would be because casteism is deeply tied to hinduism. You can't criticize it, without also implicitly criticizing the other. What is the context that would make this okay?
    • desi_ninja 4y ago
      That is an insincere take. You are confusing varna system with casteism which became an issue later. It is not a Hindu problem but South Asia issue where muslims and Christians allow follow it, apart from discriminating against infidels and non believers
  • throwaway_1928 4y ago
    The Washington Post does not like India or Hinduism.
    • int_19h 4y ago
      They don't like Modi and BJP for sure. But if you're drawing equality between these and India or Hinduism, you're kinda implicitly asserting that the things that are problematic with the former stem from the latter.
      • throwaway_1928 4y ago
• kingkawn 4y ago
  the same as caste discrimination has got to go, so too class discrimination in the west is no different and should be eradicated.
• namecheapTA 4y ago
  I was walking with an Indian coworker once, past another Indian. After the guy passed, he mutters "remember, don't ever trust the dark ones"
• Thermosetty 4y ago
  • t-writescode 4y ago
    The United States is one of the least racist countries in the world. Yes, really. Yes, we have too much racism still; but it’s a lot easier to look less racist when a whole country, 1/10th the size of the US is one nationality. And if you’re from any of the New Worlds, go look how your country did or still treats its original population. We’re all in glass houses and the US is actually one of the better ones, if you can believe it. We’re not good. We have a long way to go. But look in the mirror, or if you’re American, go read another country’s history books.
• DSingularity 4y ago
  I don’t know what to say about this, but the ultra-nationalists in India are the one people I fear might one day get triggered and murder millions.
  • throwaway_1928 4y ago
    In the same manner as the Europeans have already done repeatedly in history?
    • edzillion 4y ago
      Yes
    • DSingularity 4y ago
      My statement was on the present and in no way an easy-vs-west value judgement. Everyone knows that the European colonialism and the ongoing neocolonialist story are pure evil.
      • throwaway_1928 4y ago
        A rational person would fear those with a long history of reckless violence a lot more than those with a marked history of non violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa
        • int_19h 4y ago
          This is like a European pointing at the Bible and saying, "see, our holy book preaches non-violence, don't believe the naysayers!" Meanwhile, how many Muslim pogroms have there been in India since independence?
          • throwaway_1928 4y ago
            Islam conquered and ruled India by the sword. Similar to how Europeans conquered many 'western' lands today. Islam and Europe are then quite similar to each other and quite dissimilar from India in their lust to conquer and subjugate and their generous use of violence.
• hristov 4y ago
  Did hackernews just delete this story?
  • hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
    I found it just now by browsing the front 2 pages of HN. What makes you think it was deleted?
    • hristov 4y ago
      Yesterday, I found it on the top of my front page. Then barely an hour later it disappeared from the front page and I could not even find it when I searched for it. Very suspicious.
• humsa 4y ago
  I am surprised at how far from reality many of the comments are! I am an Indian living in both USA and India and I never witnessed cast-based discrimination to the extent some of the comments describe (I do understand it exists subtly) .. at least in the urban part of India where we live it is almost non-existent. I want the cast system to diminish - for me, the casts of my colleagues never mattered and so does for many of my Indian friends. but some people will link everything and anything to caste bias - they like to live in that shit. If you are telling them they need to improve performance, they will say you are saying this because I am so and so caste. There is a law called 'atrocity' heavily skewed towards victims where if a lower cast person complains of abuse, police will make immediate arrests. I know many upper cast people unfairly in jail due to misuse of this law. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduled_Caste_and_Scheduled_Tribe_(Prevention_of_Atrocities)_Act,_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduled_Caste_and_Scheduled_...) Brahmins are the most abused community in many parts of India for something their earlier generations did .. I read wome people complain about groupism in colleges - why there won't be, when upper cast person has to get 90% and above to get into a good college and due to reservation policy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India), lower cast person will get into same colleges even for 50-60% that too for free .. many people are reaping the benefits for reservation for generations now and getting richer and richer .. while poor Brahmin boys have nowhere to go.. Somebody needs to tell this part of the story as well..
  • horns4lyfe 4y ago
    I hope when discussions of the more Americanized discrimination comes up, you remember what you just wrote and recognize the parallels in discussions.
• foolinaround 4y ago
  How many folks here know about the word 'pariah'? Do you use it in regular conversations or writings, or come across it in new articles/quotes etc and don't flinch at all? Can you consider if you would have the same reaction if the 'pariah' word was replaced with the dreaded N-word? I think this could be an educational issue. This too is a slavery issue, instead of a group of people we know suffering through centuries of mistreatment and worse, these people in India have suffered for millenia...
• Nkuna 4y ago
  Ah! Perfect occasion to quote from the paragon of pacifism and morality. “The ideal bhangi of my conception would be a Brahmin par-excellence, possibly even excel him. It is possible to envisage-the existence of a Bhangi without a Brahmin. But without the former the latter could not be, It is the Bhangi who enables society to live. A Bhangi does for society what a mother does for her baby. A mother washes her baby of the dirt and insures his health. Even so the Bhangi protects and safeguards the health of that entire community by maintaining sanitation for it. The Brahmin’s duty is to look after the sanitation of the soul, the Bhangi’s that of the body of society. But there is a difference in practice ; the Brahmin generally does not live up to his duty, the bhangi does willy-nilly no doubt. But that is not all. My ideal bhangi would know the quality of night-soil and urine. He would keep a close watch on these and give a timely warning to the individual concerned. Thus, he will give a timely notice of the results of his examination of the excreta. That presupposes a scientific knowledge of the requirements of his profession. He would likewise be an authority on the subject of disposal of night-soil in small villages as well as big cities and his advice and guidance in the matter would be sought for and freely given to society. It goes without saying that he would have the usual learning necessary for reaching the standard here laid down for his profession. Such an ideal bhangi while deriving his livelihood from his occupation, would approach it only as a sacred duty. In other words he would not dream of amassing wealth out of it. He would consider himself responsible for the proper removal and disposal of all the dirt and night-soil within the area which he serves and regard the maintenance of healthy and sanitary condition within the same as the summum bonum of his existence.” – Mahatma Gandhi More: https://scribe.rip/@dalitdiva/why-it-is-time-to-dump-gandhi-b59c7399fe66 https://scribe.rip/@dalitdiva/why-it-is-time-to-dump-gandhi-...
• throwjune22 4y ago
  There’s another dimension to this that people outside Google don’t understand. There’s a lot of disengaged Googlers specially in the traditional AdTech part of the business. Career progression is very slow and the performance review process which has been in place for god knows how long was so damaging to individuals, on top of consuming an amazing amount of time 2x a year as people desperately tried to piece together “packages” proving they’re better than mediocre, that it’s been completely replaced with a new system. My point being, there’s lots of people bored, feeling like they can’t “win” and with a high degree of uncertainty as to what metrics will have an impact on their career prospects or the company. combine that with a culture of speaking your mind and potentially a feeling of superiority for being special enough to work a Google… you get some very disparaged but entitled people who I think consciously or not, are trying to denigrate the company.
  • throwjune22 4y ago
    I believe these issues are all important and should be dealt with. I *don’t believe* it should be discussed out in the open within a “for profit business”. Leadership should acknowledge the issue, state their direction clearly and end the conversation.
    • throwjune22 4y ago
      Also I’m from a South American background and unfortunately was very ignorant of the Indian culture and have never met an Indian person until I immigrated. I have Indian colleagues and a one of them became a good friend. I asked him once or twice about castes and how it worked etc. He said it’s all bullshit and it didn’t matter and I felt like it was a topic he was felt awkward discussing so I made a mental note not to ask him about it. I Googled around and found his surname was from basically the 2nd highest caste. A few years later a young Indian woman joined our company and I was very impressed by her. She was confident, eloquent and seemed eager to make an impact. I told my friend something like: “man the newbie is here to kick ass isn’t she?! Loved how she spoke at that meeting” To which he made the only comment on castes I’ve ever seen him make, something along the lines of: “She’s a brahmin bro, she thinks we all work for her”. That’s when I knew it wasn’t “all bullshit”.
• known 4y ago
• candid1 4y ago
  Lower and upper caste divisions are made by government for reservation. Mostly they use them as vote bank. 50-60% of seats in govt. are reserved for so called lower castes defined by govt. Along with promotions. 50-60% of college seats are again reserved. The law is extremely favorable to lower caste. Now discrimination is everywhere in India. It is in the blood of everyone including both lower and upper caste. Once the lower caste reach higher status, they discriminate against others. Even many caste with in lower caste discriminate among themselves. Similarly, castes within upper caste discriminate among themselves. Both castes discriminate against citizens of other counties. Infact, discrimination is everywhere. Even among lower caste. Even among upper caste. Even towards each other. There are particularly some castes in India like Brahmins in Tamil Nadu. Choudhary in Andhra. They show extreme favoritism. Once they are in a company, they only recruit or promote only their caste. One should not think this favoritism as discrimination. Because they show this against other castes too including upper caste. Now, at least in this corporate companies. Many people find respite that this has not infiltrated in them. Any start of this conversation within corporate world itself should be looked with suspicion.