Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

https://www.wired.com/story/trapped-in-silicon-valleys-hidden-caste-system/

by Brajeshwar • 4 years ago

691 537 4 years ago

txcan• 4 years ago

Only to be bogged down by a level higher "country-of-birth" based discrimination system for GreenCards in the US.

Countries have borders, we invest a lot of money in our children and people and would like a return on that investment. In order for that to be possible we have to reject the people who would abuse the system.

shitlord• 4 years ago

Abusers like highly paid tech workers earning 10x what the average American makes?

ToxicMegacolon2• 4 years ago

How are the doctors, engineers who work for American companies on employment based visas abusing the system?

simmanian5• 4 years ago

I am not from India but I would like to be connected to these groups. Any idea how I can reach out?

edit: I guess this is as good as it gets https://ambedkarinternationalcenter.org/join-the-mission/aic...

belval3• 4 years ago

To Indian commenters on HN, how much of that is true? Do you feel threatened when a coworker asks about where you are from? It's something I do ask from time to time (not during interviews obviously, but during lunch for example) out of pure curiosity. Should I stop?

I guess that I should explicitly add that I am not from India. Cross-cultural communications can be a bit difficult at times and I'd rather not make blunders like that.

Bhilai3• 4 years ago

A lot of stuff mentioned in the article is true. I would even go ahead (at peril being downvoted by Indian patriots) that India is a deeply racist country. My parents, educated upper middle class working folks use to 'educate' me to not get married outside our caste and such. Caste system is deeply rooted in India and you can pretty much read about it from lots of sources online. India has a lot of right provisions (like the reservation system for SC/ST/OBC akin to affirmative action type of stuff in US if I am not mistaken) but in a typical fashion those provisions are either not applied properly or are abused by people in such categories. India is also a deeply poor country with a history of systemic racism so its not surprising some of the beliefs have landed in silicon valley too.

Do you feel threatened when a coworker asks about where you are from? It's something I do ask from time to time (not during interviews obviously, but during lunch for example) out of pure curiosity. Should I stop?

I think its a fair question. Its not as much about where a person is from but "what caste they belong to" type of stuff that might be offensive.

lisper• 4 years ago

It would never even occur to me to ask someone what caste they were from, not just in Silicon Valley where I happen to live, but anywhere in the U.S. Seriously, who does that?

wincy• 4 years ago

Okay so curious, I have a South Indian neighbor who is Muslim. I assume Muslims are just a different thing outside of the caste system, despite people saying caste is not rooted in Hinduism? (I’m not saying it is, just curious how an Indian might view their Muslim neighbors).

rdedev• 4 years ago

There was a new story of a matrimonial ad that was asking for a groom for a gay man. It had a preferred caste for suitors. So yeah, it runs pretty deep in some corners of India

https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/matrimonial-ad-s...

cscurmudgeon2• 4 years ago

A lot of it is FUD.

California withdrew it's Cisco case but you wont' see any coverage of that here.

https://thewire.in/caste/california-drops-caste-discriminati...

I am from India and have been in the US for more than a decade.

I come from a low caste. The only folks who have asked about my caste and asked if I am from a higher caste are white Americans due to my vegetarianism (voluntary for ethical reasons).

Do you feel threatened when a coworker asks about where you are from?

No, not at all.

But I did get upset when my PhD advisor (a white American) wanted to know if I was from the priestly class.

There is definitely casteism in India, but I have not seen it in Silicon Valley.

Casteism is there in India and is unfortunately widespread but steadily disappearing. India's PM and President are from lower castes but you won't see coverage of that in Western news.

Bhilai3• 4 years ago

Who is spreading the FUD and why?

bajirao2• 4 years ago

I come from a low caste. The only folks who have asked about my caste and asked if I am from a higher caste are white Americans due to my vegetarianism (voluntary for ethical reasons).

Because other Indians will identify your caste based on your last name, food habits, dialect, your family business (etc). They don't need to ask you.

otterley• 4 years ago

It appears that the Federal case was dropped, likely due to the fact that there’s no Federal law prohibiting discrimination against caste; but that the agency plans to re-file in State court and pursue the case under State law. So this sounds like a jurisdictional shift, not an admission that the case is meritless or that the conduct is lawful.

rajeshp1986• 4 years ago

I don't find any truth in it at all not especially in Silicon Valley. These articles are a coerced effort to bring up the caste divide from India into US and divide the Indian diaspora.

simmanian5• 4 years ago

The article mentions there were hundreds of people who joined a Zoom call to give testimonies. In your view, is the author exaggerating?

redtriumph2• 4 years ago

This is just my experience. But I can point you to handful folks from my circle whose friendship worthiness depends on belonging to one of the "dominant caste". In fact, I can also share an anecdote when person A was really fond of person B since B had last name that sounded like one of "dominant caste" last names. Once person A came to know the subtle difference in person B's last name, there was noticeable behavior change in person A.

dhanvantharim1• 4 years ago

Its possible some of it is true, I know well educated brahmin acquaintances who have outright said they are superior. I look like a brahmin person and they tend to let their guard down around me, But no one has ever asked me about my caste (Maybe because they assume my caste based on how I look). At the same time there are lots frivolous lawsuits from the groups mentioned in this article so its hard to say.

fhrow4484• 4 years ago

I look like a brahmin person
they assume my caste based on how I look

I'm curious in this comment, are you dressing up a certain way that is typical of brahmin, or are there some other characteristics that makes you look brahmin?

mama12311• 4 years ago

As with racism, casteism does exist among people with lower economic, intellectual or competency trying to compensate.

12ian342• 4 years ago

I'm Indian born with British nationality and I look Indian. It doesn't bother me if people ask me where I'm from - I am often curious about where others are from. It does, however, start to slightly grate if upon me responding with "I'm British", I am quizzed further with "But... where are you really from?" I hear this less nowadays, but it used to be common enough to "slightly grate", particularly from older, Caucasian Brits. Not everyone that is British/American is also Caucasian.

I don't think you should stop asking people where they are from. But perhaps don't interrogate them (we get enough of that at airports), implying that they're obstructing their true origin from you. Also, tone matters, whether you like it or not. Saying "where are you from" can sound genuinely curious, but it can easily sound disgusted and derogatory.

On any implied caste system, I can speak for the London tech startup world in which I've worked for several years. I've probably had dozens of (South) Asian colleagues and have never noticed the slightest hint of intra-Asian racism or classism.

pinephoneguy3• 4 years ago

Obviously your ancestors aren't British so there's something to the "where are you really from" question. I've been asked similar things even as a White American.

stickfigure2• 4 years ago

This is on topic and pretty damn funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU_htgjlMVE

AussieWog932• 4 years ago

"where are you from"

Based on the fact that you took some (minor) offense to the followup questions, I'm assuming you're middle-class or higher?

I've spent a decent chunk of my adult life living in working class, high-immigrant areas (Noble Park and Sunshine, to any other Melbournians - both actually really nice places).

What struck me as interesting is that in these environments, probing about one's ethnicity is nothing more than smalltalk. Everybody has one; they're curious about yours and will ask directly.

In more upper-middle-class environments, though, it can be really taken the other way as ethnicity is something semi-taboo that needs to be treated far more carefully.

cameronh902• 4 years ago

Is there a correct way to ask about your family background/ ethnicity/whatever? For context, I am a white English-seeming (but not actually) person in London.

I never ask, as I don't want to offend, however I am often quite curious. Not because I doubt anyone's claim to being British - most British Indians are likely more British than I am. Usually, I just want to talk about food, ask if you've been to India, hear your life experiences, reminisce about when I visited India, etc.

One of my favourite work relationships was with an older Indian man who, when he found out I was vegetarian and liked Indian food, he would bring me food his wife had made and give me recipes to cook myself. Sadly he died of Covid, but I still cook the recipes he gave me often - albeit with less ghee.

I feel like it's a little sad that racists have made it hard to talk about any issue touching on ethnicity without worrying that one may be coming from a place of hatred or aggression. My girlfriend is a Filipina so I can pick up the accent, and when I was making small talk with someone I asked if they were from the Philippines. They said yes, but instantly clammed up and didn't really talk to me for the rest of the interaction. But hey, I'm autistic so maybe I'm misunderstanding what I did wrong.

vl• 4 years ago

While not direct example of this, everyone who worked at big corps saw tight clusters of Indian managers that took over some orgs. Another example of "national specialization" is some groups working on some high-complexity software that primarily would be stuffed with Russian/east-European engineers.

bajirao2• 4 years ago

Its 100% true in my experience. You can identify caste of most Indians based on their last names. This is one of the reasons some Indians do not use last name at all. (e.g. from Tamil Nadu or from Northern states of India). At work you can't hide your last name, so other Indian co-workers can identify your caste with trivial effort. However, I try to hide my last name in any type of social (non-work) related conversations and try to avoid any groups where group members are really curious about my last name.

manquer• 4 years ago

---

I don't think any one would be threatened by asking where they are from, even in India unless you grew up around in the same state or region, location is not a nuance (in the caste sense) you would be able to easily get. For example some one from the south, won't know anything about punjabi castes or where they hail from, even one state over it is hard to know they would usually speak a different language after all.

A foreigner asking is generally not considered threatening, they however might be worried you would say something to another indian colleague without understanding the implication and that can be difficult for them.

---

Most of the article is certainly true, it is important to note that all groups discriminate not just ones on top, disproportionately high representation of forward communities among the Indian diaspora makes it seem it similar to black racism here it is more complex than that [1]

There many groups collectively known as dalits, form one end of the spectrum, other castes form the middle, and forward/dominating castes a the end, every group discriminates against everyone else, and there are sub groups within groups. family, lineage, language, color, religion[2], region and dozen other factors to break into further sub groups.

It shouldn't be that surprising, India as country has as much or more diversity and double the population of Europe. You find similar discrimination of Europeans too, by country (Poland,Serbia etc), region of a country, language (Catalans), groups (gypsies) race/skin, religion (even with Christianity: Catholic, orthodox, Protestants etc ) and so on and on.

[1] This happens because these groups have access to more funding/ education, relatives already living give a boost and so on

[2] Caste is not limited to Hindus, there are plenty of communities where you will find mix of Hindus and Christians, or Muslims , depending who is dominant the others would be discriminated

dotnet002• 4 years ago

I have never personally experienced it and never really learned anything about castes the way others seem to treat them (ie I couldn't tell a person's caste from their last name). I have noticed that some people's first question after hearing a name is to confirm which caste that would refer to, but I've never really seen it as all too meaningful beyond an odd curiosity.

As such I don't really feel particularly threatened by being asked where I'm from. I do have a bias towards groups with more diverse teams (ie not just Indians) but that's more about enjoying the cultural exchange that comes with that instead of the homogeneity and conflict that can come from staying within one's own cultural influence.

If anything I've seen much more nepotism than casteism.

mama12311• 4 years ago

Historically peoples names included their village name, son of x and their caste/jaati - which indicated their profession or specialization. That meant getting new business when introducing themselves in the neighboring village.

This is true with European names too (masson, taylor, carpenter, miller ....), and has the exact same origin.

However, today due to the politicization first by the colonialists and the church, and now mostly by a leftist-church nexus it has become politically incorrect if it feels like they have an agenda behind it.

Strangely at least among the current generation, I have experienced probing questions about my diet as well as probing hands (pretending to be a friendly shove or pat) not from Hindus but from Christians.

In my understanding it is a way for them to ensure that I am not an "evil Brahmin" and can be trusted enough to part take in what every gossip they have and an assumption I would have to submissively accept their "righteousness".

random31415• 4 years ago

This has to the most contrived and ridiculous comment I have seen. Virtually all Brahmins proudly advertise their caste and their caste is also obvious from their last name. There is literally no need to pat their backs.

mohanmcgeek2• 4 years ago

You can't find somebody's caste from knowing where they're from. But last names generally are associated with their caste.

For this reason, my state got rid of surnames ~50 years ago. It sure is inconvenient in some places: I have to explain that I don't have a last name and that they're calling me by my father's first name. But given the pros, I don't know why the other states haven't followed suit

newyankee• 4 years ago

I was in US before but not any more. I would say there are subconscious traits in people which are influenced by Caste more than anything else which I started picking up when I started working. I grew up in a very caste agnostic and liberal city in India. There are actually numerous divisions in society which may exist more in the rural areas than urban but it is just the way people cluster. I want to put forward a few points without any specific order

- Have found regional identities to be stronger than others. Some regional identities based on languages and ability to form together as a group are much stronger than others (Punjabis, Gujaratis and last decade or 2, Telugu people)

- Some communities in India like business communities of Jains and Marwaris are quite closed like Jewish folks in some instances. They do not allow other folks inside their sanctum

- Fights are mostly a symptom of other issues - limited resources, significant population and a lot of it are kept alive by the democratic nature of the country where politicians exploit the divisions

- Affirmative action has made it much easier for people for downtrodden communities (SC, ST) to get Govt jobs, promotions etc. However a lot of these benefits are only accruing to second and third generation of privileged people from their caste and festers resentment in middle class whether urban or otherwise including myself who is classified as OBC (Other backward classes) which is one of the most illogical way of grouping people as any. A lot of OBCs have a lot of land and wield a lot of power

I just want to say that the issue is very complicated and also has a lot of colonial influence still hanging around it to this day. Having said that, things are so much better than what they were 3-4 decades ago based upon my conversation with family elders.

PS. - Anecdata. I was rejected by many SC/ST i.e. women from backward castes in arranged marriage website because they did not want to lose the "privilege" affirmative action will bring to their children. Ultimately I had to find someone from my own caste. My attempt to be open minded and different fell flat on its face.

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

No not really.

In some cases the village might indicate one's caste. In most cases, it does not.

If two Indians are from the same region, they know the demographic of that region pretty well.

So, that might be revelatory. But this is only true for some regions in India where villages are segregated.

Most villages in India are not segregated, i.e. Brahmins, upper-caste (they call themselves that), general castes, Dalits live together. But the neighborhoods are often segregated. But they do go to the same schools.

But as you are not an Indian, whether the one being asked is a Brahmin or a Dalit, will not tell you his village name- simply because you will not know it.

And in megacities, people from every caste are there.

As someone from outside India, you can safely ask where someone is from. They will probably tell you- "Mumbai" or "a small village near Delhi". No risk there.

Never ever ask people their caste.

s_trumpet2• 4 years ago

Yes. I'm Indian, lower-caste (not Dalit) with a surname that does not reveal it, working in India. One of my most vivid memories is hearing colleagues at my first job (a large multinational conglomerate) casually use caste slurs (ch*mar) in my presence. Ever since, I never enter discussions about politics or religion. I keep my cards close to my chest.

dang• 4 years ago

Past related threads. I think there have been others.

How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - 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 - Oct 2020 (322 comments)

How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - 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 - Sept 2020 (613 comments)

Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - 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 - July 2020 (56 comments)

California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments)

sg472• 4 years ago

Cisco is a hell hole that attracts a particular type of employee without talent who indulge in this type of discrimination blatantly. Narrow-minded Indians (I'm speaking as an Indian myself) who bring their Indian attitudes abroad. These types of Indians put others to shame. This is another side effect of doling out H1Bs and L1s without consideration for assimilation. I'm not sure if this is endemic to Indians though. I had a North Vietnamese classmate who used to complain that South Vietnamese students did not speak properly with them or respect them. Fundamentally boils down to growing up as human beings.

kamaal3• 4 years ago

Telecommunications industry seems to be particularly toxic, I hear there are in Santa Clara, and in Bangalore too, buildings full of 'Automation engineers'. There are like thousands and thousands of people whose whole job is to plugin in some values in a Jenkins job and pull out values, and mail it to the next person up the chain. And yes most of these people are on H1B, and many times are even given GC's in EB1 by cooking up legal documentation.

In a set up where there is such low/non-existent value going around and nothing much to show for, I'd expect toxic politics for every little thing.

There are quite a few places like this in this industry, and it can be very hard to achieve anything of value both personally and professionally at such places. And its all about identity politics, and cartel behaviour at the end.

Frazo• 4 years ago

Cisco is a hell hole that attracts a particular type of employee without talent who indulge in this type of discrimination blatantly.

I work for Cisco. Best place to work for, best salary in the market, the smartest people I've ever come across. Best work life balance.

I'm not Indian though, so maybe I'm not aware of all the details.

sanmon31863• 4 years ago

Every time such articles pop-up, I wonder what rock am I living under. In 22 years of experience (Half in US/UK and rest in India) in eight global organizations, not even a single time I heard or witnessed any cast based biases. What we regularly see is region/lingustic biases.

Cast based discrimination exist in India, but in my experience the issue is overblown in the knowledge industry.

pm906• 4 years ago

I respect your tenure but that itself does not justify calling the issue as overblown. If workers are experiencing it and it’s being reported in multiple teams, it exists.

A thing to keep in mind is that the Tech industry is very large. Even within organizations culture can be really different; cue Amazon engineers sharing horror stories while others paint it as the best place they’ve ever worked at.

novok2• 4 years ago

I was in a rating sync once and noticed some very strange crab bucket behavior that only came from more sr Indian managers and engineers with regards to another jr Indian-origin teammate who never even lived in India AFAIK. The fact that the negative detractors were only Indian, and everyone else was positive about the person made me connect the possibility that maybe there was something going on that I couldn't tell culturally.

I never saw this negative behavior out in our day to day, so it surprised me. This might be how the discrimination happens.

ignoramous• 4 years ago

...in my experience* the issue is overblown in the knowledge industry.*

Let me hazard a guess: You're "not lower-caste" (and that's how you can then dismiss your own assertion).

gadders• 4 years ago

I don't think I've seen it in 20+ years in banking, but I don't know the caste of the Indian people I've worked with. For all I know they could have all been the same caste.

Is there a way to tell an Indian's caste? I'm guessing it's impolite to ask.

tallanvor• 4 years ago

That's the thing with different types of discrimination - most of the time it's not done out in the open, and it's easy to allow yourself to not see it if you aren't being negatively affected.

You have a choice: you can assume you're correct that this is "overblown" and do nothing, or you can recognize that it clearly does happen (even if it really is rare) and make sure you're actively watching for it and reporting it when you see it.

fouc• 4 years ago

It's spelled "caste" not "cast"

throwaway_dcnt• 4 years ago

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 experience was unique and not widespread. I am both sad and happy to see this, sad because it exists, happy because it is getting some attention here at HN.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everyone of us needs to be vigilant about this type of racism. 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. Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese.

One way I solve this is by introducing an independent observer/participant when situations like this emerge. This is costly but it has really worked to not only address this problem but also created an amazing diversity in my teams because it takes care of some of the implicit bias we all have to some degree.

avalys2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

The comment was about not allowing them in the interviewing process.

newsclues• 4 years ago

Affirmative action does that!

graderjs3• 4 years ago

Perhaps the law needs to be updated... Maybe the current state of US law reflects a misunderstanding or a lack of context on how important these things can be and Law's dynamic it evolves over time so it's not inconceivable that at some point these kind of considerations would be worked into law and policy somehow. And it's important to note that the legal issue is going to be a large inertial blocker for companies to consider this because of the risk aversiveness on hiring the funny thing is in trying to do the right thing by avoiding discrimination they may actually be enabling the perpetuation of it by not providing processes that are able to address bring attention to an and focus on some things like the article talks about. I'm no expert and we're not going to come up with a solution today I think but it's good to see discussion of this on hacker News I think. As sad as it also is that this is something that so greatly affects many people and it's clearly not the responsibility of a particular company or the tech industry to solve these social and international problems but I don't think that means there's nothing that could be done there to address them.

winterplace• 4 years ago

Is there a way to privately message you?

aletzo• 4 years 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?

User234• 4 years ago

I’m under the impression some people are still upset over Cyprus.

Edit: corrected cypress misspelling. Thanks repliers!

goto11• 4 years 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.

wiseowise• 4 years ago

NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzL_MXgc24E

jimmydddd4• 4 years ago

Ottomans (Turks) occupied Greece for 400 years, ending in 1821. Turkey constantly trying to take over Greek islands, etc. Turkey dropping off immigrants on rafts just outside Greek shores. But it doesn't seem to translate to the US much, especially in second generation.

stavros2• 4 years ago

I'm Greek as well, and now that you mention it, Turks were indeed the people I tended to have very good relationships at work with. They are especially welcoming, at least the ones I've worked with.

namecheapTA• 4 years ago

I work in sales and saw a Greek salesperson kick a deal out that cost him thousands because he didnt want to spend another few hours with someone that was Turkish. And this is in California. The easy money didn't matter to him. If someone is willing to lose thousands of dollars to feel good, imagine what little things theyre willing to do that dont really have a cost to them.

wozniacki3• 4 years ago

As with many other one-off cases in this & other threads, one instance does not a rule make.

Just because your experience was fairly positive, that does not negate the general trend of such occurrences in hiring decisions among such pairs ( Greek-Turk, Indian-Pakistani, Japanese-Korean, Japanese-Chinese, Russian-Polish, Serb-Bosniak, Serb-Croat French-Algerian and countless other pairs in the Middle East & other parts of the world )

Theres surely some information that can be gleaned from anecdotes & oral histories. But we need data & objective studies to back them up if we are to make any progress on these issues.

tradertef• 4 years ago

Turk here.. no problem working with and being friends with Greek folks. I actually prefer to work with them over Turkish people since we do not need to worry about cultural baggage from Turkey (politics, religion, etc.), and we can focus on finding the best Baklava in town.

franklampard2• 4 years 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

simmanian5• 4 years 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.

bleah1000• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

In India the surname might indicate caste. Then easy to tell in States.

selimthegrim2• 4 years ago

I'm a Pakistani American and I've worked well with many Indians. This is overcompensating.

zem• 4 years 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.

sumedh3• 4 years 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.

nradov• 4 years 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.

conradev• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

How did your hiring managers respond? That sounds terrible and racist in itself.

nsajko• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

wozniacki3• 4 years ago

I understand your overall argument but one anecdote does not a rule make, whether in this scenario or any other scenario.

icelancer6• 4 years 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.

beebmam2• 4 years 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.

mushyhammer2• 4 years ago

attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.

It would because it did and it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Steelworkers_v._Weber

Spooky232• 4 years ago

You needn’t be ham handed and stupid about it, just use meaningful internal controls.

Not just for this issue. If everyone hires friends and family, people from the hometown, place of worship, etc you run into other conflicts of interest. It’s always good to have disinterested parties involved in the hiring process.

winternett• 4 years ago

One of the primary things these stories never truly elaborate properly on in the quest to establish social rank out of a caste-based society is that Black Americans, that were native to the US, and even for black migrants to India and other countries, are some of the most affected by caste politics of this kind in employment and work opportunity.

Often having darker skin, Black Americans are even prone to more discrimination domestically. Any editorial that doesn't recognize that fact as a truth has no legs to stand on in my opinion. The fact that people still hang on to caste ideology in any way, and treat it as a continuing reality should disqualify them from any role concerning equal opportunity. "Gradual change and understanding" is not a reasonable discussion in America, or we're all coddling the same violent and hateful past that America was born from.

I write this as someone who has lots of Pakistani and Indian friends, and has regularly struggled to get them to understand how different each of the dynamics are on this matter, but zero tolerance is essential to get people to understand that the issue is more serious and damaging than they could ever know.

ardit33• 4 years ago

It is called a 'conflict of interest'. (in this case it is national interest).

Fifa has often rules for this, where it avoid drawing to teams to play together when they are in constant/active conflict.

So, if there are some national tempers flaring, or a war somewhere, it is a better idea to have some boundaries.

Why we hope most people are good natured, we don't live in a perfect world, and it would be insane, or completely naive to believe that 'biases' do not exist.

The other side of it is 'ethnic nepotism', where people hire and favor people from their own countries, creating this pools of mono-ethnic teams in a company which statistically are not probable. This is actually a very common sight in Tech companies and we all know it.

mschuster91• 4 years ago

What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.

And, as a half-Croat, needed. The ethnic tensions between former Yugoslavian countries have never been resolved, and many emigrants took the unresolved issues with them. The youngest generation is one thing, they grew up without having to live through all that bullshit, but a lot of people 35 and older have lost relatives and friends in one of the wars.

FFS Bosnia is at the moment creeping into the breakout of yet another conflict.

robinsoh4• 4 years ago

I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States,

Until relatively recently, the United States has always had a very strong strictly enforced caste system, even written into law, still the case in some Southern states. Some people were even allowed to buy and sell other types of people! As we can see some people are still allowed to kill certain types of other people with no consequences.

inlined• 4 years ago

> What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons

Not going to touch the moral implications here, but _is_ that actually illegal discrimination? Is there any benefit for interviewing a particular candidate than an employee would miss out on? Again, not picking a side here; just curious.

coffeeisyummy2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

nirav726• 4 years 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_2mar14• 4 years ago

How can I hide me caste without changing my last name?

bradleyjg3• 4 years ago

This is not so cut and dry. The US has a long history of people “passing”.

rayiner2• 4 years ago

Indians and Pakistanis

What do you do with Bangladeshis. :D

graderjs3• 4 years 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.

icelancer6• 4 years 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.

livinglist• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

It's the other way around. Japanese look down on Chinese.

pyuser5833• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

I've also seen this far more often, especially when there is a major change in a C-level position.

datavirtue3• 4 years ago

GE, is that you?

DeWilde• 4 years 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).

jvvw• 4 years 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.

twic• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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-j...

datavirtue3• 4 years 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.

zozbot2345• 4 years ago

It's so disappointing to see in the article that caste discrimination is still being blamed by some on the religion of Hinduism. There's no dharmic status whatsoever for "caste" in the commonplace sense. The Vedas occasionally talk about something that gets misinterpreted as caste, but it's very clear from the texts that they're talking about individual callings and aptitudes, and not any sort of immutable status. The latter were merely a historically contingent development within Indian society, very similar to those that were leading towards feudalism and serfdom in the West.

simmanian5• 4 years ago

I think it's fair to say that the caste system is greatly influenced by the flavor of reincarnation in hinduism and vice versa. the buddha himself set out to seek enlightenment and free himself from suffering when he saw that so many people from the lower castes are suffering. it eventually led him to reject hinduism and teach that nobody suffers in this life because of something that happened in "past" lives (in fact, he almost categorically rejected reincarnation as a process where individuals are born again and again, something many buddhists today do not understand), that everyone can attain true freedom and happiness. I assume this teaching is why Ambedkar came to reject hinduism and embrace buddhism as shown in the article.

phyzix5761• 4 years ago

As a Theravadan Buddhist I can say you are mistaken. There is the concept of rebirth in Buddhism and dependent origination which starts with actions that happened in the past. Including actions in past lives. In fact, there are multiple realms where one can be reborn like heaven, human, animal, hungry ghost, hell, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theravada#Core_teachings

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

kumarvvr5• 4 years ago

What are you talking?

https://www.learnreligions.com/reincarnation-in-buddhism-449...

Buddhism has a similar concept, named and understood differently.

zozbot2345• 4 years ago

Reincarnation does not involve the ordinary notion of "individuals'" personal identity in Hinduism properly understood, only a generalized awareness called 'Atman', which is indistinguishable from the universal awareness called Brahman. The belief in personal identity is decried in Hinduism as one of many attachments that lead directly to suffering and the cycle of Samsara. Buddhism has a very similar understanding, except that they go as far as to pragmatically even discourage any belief in Atman because it's believed that this will not be useful, but will only cause attachment and suffering. "Universal" awareness and liberation from suffering is instead sought mainly as a direct experience via stream entry, which is only one of many avenues in Hinduism and not privileged over others.

There are plenty of folk superstitions in both Hinduism and Buddhism, so it's not impossible that some folks may have believed what you wrote above at some point. But the actual agreed-upon views are pretty clear.

tsol6• 4 years ago

You'd be surprised by the diversity in Buddhism. Once I got a book on Buddhism and was reading it in front of my Indian Muslim parents. They gave me a strange look and asked me if I was going to convert. I laughed and explained, as a western educated person does, that Buddhism is more like a philosophy than a religion and that they don't actually pray to the Buddha. My mom laughed and said the Buddhists in her village would pray to the Buddha every day and give sacraments to the statue. This is when I realized that everyday folk religion is very different from what you find in books and summaries. No one goes around telling Buddhists in obscure small villages that they're not supposed to pray to the Buddha. If anything, the idea that the Buddha isn't a god like figure comes more from a western understanding of Buddhism that tries to summarize the global collection of practices into a single ethos

fastball2• 4 years ago

it's very clear from the texts

Not sure that applies to any religious text ever. Regardless, it is clearly not clear, since people are misinterpreting it.

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

This person is spreading propaganda.

Read Manu Smriti, Yajnabalka Smriti, or Parashara Smriti.

You can find them online.

In Bhagavad Gita, there are no verses that directly say bad things about so-called lower castes, but liberation is offered to people "even if" the seeker is a woman, a son of a prostitute, or a "dog-eating lower caste".

The Hindu scriptures themselves are casteist and sexist.

kumarvvr5• 4 years ago

Because it is easy to do so.

Western media is extremely India phobic and Hindu phobic.

The caste system, as per scriptures, is just a categorization of work that people do. Every one is prescribed their duties and jobs as per caste. However, there are innumerable instances in the scriptures when people have taken up jobs of other castes, as per situation demands.

The discrimination of people based on castes, is an invention of society and its degradation.

However, I often find that an ingrained sense of "my religion is holier than thou" leads to a subtle thread of anti-Hindu outputs.

Some publications are blatant. Some are not.

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

The caste system, as per scriptures, is just a categorization of work that people do.

This is blatantly false. Can you cite me some?

Even the Lord Rama killed Shambuka because he wanted to learn the Vedas as a Sudra.

Another incident I don't remember from the Mahabharata where one person was keen for reaching brahminic status. And that was denied. And was said as an example.

there are innumerable instances in the scriptures when people have taken up jobs of other castes, as per situation demands.

Cite me two or three.

And please don't say Parshuram being a warrior or Viswamitra being a sage. Both were upper caste Brahmin or Kshatriya.

All religions are bad. Degree varies.

unmole8• 4 years ago

Oh, please. The Ramayana and Mahabharata endorse caste based on birth. Vedas are irrelevant to how Hindusim is practiced on a day to day basis.

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

It is mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads that brahmins were born from the head of the Purusha and the Sudras from His feet.

Dalits are even outside of these four varnas.

TulliusCicero3• 4 years ago

There's a difference between what's written in holy books for any religion and how that religion plays out in practice. Tons of Catholic beliefs and practices are to be found nowhere in the Bible, for example. Ditto for both Sunni and Shia Islam and the Koran.

But when people leave a religion, they're not just leaving what the religion is on paper, because that's not what anyone engages with. They're leaving how the religion operates in practice, and that includes how people practice that religion day to day.

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

There's no dharmic status whatsoever for "caste" in the commonplace sense

I have read many verses from Manu Smriti, Parashara Smriti, and Yajnabalka Smriti.

They are ripe with casteism.

In Vedas, too, it is mentioned that Sudras are created from the feet of Purusha, and Brahmins from the head.

And also, Mahabharata mentions that brahmins can't face capital punishment. The most that can be done is banishing them.

Indian scriptures are deeply casteist and sexist, too.

Hinduism itself should be blamed for casteism.

Even Buddha fought against casteism.

zozbot2345• 4 years ago

The varnas are not castes, they're social occupations, aptitudes or callings. They're very close to the Confucian idea of the "four categories of the people", or to the tripartite social division (First, Second and Third Estate) that's thought to be rooted ultimately in Indo-European belief systems, and is well known in the West. You might as well suggest that the modern "secular" Western idea of a "Fourth Estate" of influencers-intellectuals writing in the popular press (who definitely have "sacred cows" of their own, so ironically brought out in full display in this Wired article - while a tradition encompassing thousands of years is carelessly disparaged with such false and outrageous claims) is itself casteist.

jelliclesfarm• 4 years ago

[..]In Vedas, too, it is mentioned that Sudras are created from the feet of Purusha[..]

That is the varna system. There is no caste system in Vedas or in Hinduism.

The same verse from Purusha Suktam also appears in Zoroastrian Avesta Yasna and the Pahlavi Denkard.

‘Caste’ comes from ‘Casta’, a Portuguese word.

Now…what does it mean by allocating different parts of the body to different categories of people?

‘Purusha’ is the cosmic man. Before the gods were created, there was Purusha. The gods themselves came from the sacrifice of Purusha. The immortality of gods was granted to them because they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the mortals/humanity. So every time they perished, they were resurrected.

The concept of yagna in Hinduism symbolises the sacrifice of the gods. Vedas say that our lives too are a sacrifice. We live and we die. We merge with a universal consciousness. When we are no different from this universal consciousness, we are resurrected too. That is the principle of reincarnation. In sacrifice, we will find our resurrection.

The sacrifice of a god and the resurrection of said god is a recurring theme in many faiths and religions.

The Purusha Suktam is a poem about sacrifice of The Cosmic Man. He has a thousand heads and a thousand limbs. And how his sacrifice comes down as the five elementals of fire, air, earth, water and space. From these, all of creation is born..as earth and skies, planets and stars, forests, oceans, land forms. This disembodied Cosmic Man enters as sunshine and rain. Plants, mammals, birds and insects are created. And then so is man..sun becomes the soul and moon becomes the mind. Seven sheaths of gross matter is formed as the physical bodies..from his body, the four varnas are created so man can create division of labour. Nowhere is caste mentioned. Nor do the Vedas ask people to discriminate against each other.

A Brahmin lives on charity and studies Vedic knowledge for teaching and for the world benefit. A Kshatriya takes that knowledge and implements it as a ruler. A Vaishya takes care of the material needs that fuels the system. The Shudra works and creates what society needs.

The varna system reflects the four purusharthas: dharma, artha, kama, moksha. The Brahmin has to uphold Dharma(divine law). The Kshatriya has to deliver artha(material goals) according to Dharma. Vaishya and Shudra are motivated by artha and kama(material goals and desires). Moksha is for anyone who seeks it..and hence for everyone.

Brahmin lives on charity but is bound by religious rules and regulations. Kshatriya has power, but also has duty. Should be ready to fight and die to protect his people. Vaishya is free to accumulate wealth but also has responsibility to fund the entire society. Shudra only needs to work to take care of his desires, has to bear burden of labour and owes nothing to anyone. This system worked as there were many small manageable kingdoms and there was conformity. Conformity means less conflict. There was mobility between small kingdoms that if one was allergic to the homogeneity, there was another place to belong to..until the Muslim invaders came first abs then British raj came and got rid of the kingdoms.

Now Brahmins had to work and Kings were useless. Merchants were burdened to pay dictators and invaders and colonial masters. Resources were diminished and there was no more fair redistribution of available resources. It was a survival game now. The solid foundation and implicit safety net was gone. Every one of the varnas has one benefit and one handicap. So each one depended on the other three and peaceful balance was easier to maintain.

It’s like a game of Jenga. Take away one piece and everything comes crumbling down. Invasions and colonialism keep pulling pieces all the time but the system was self healing. Until it wasn’t.

You are mistaken. There is no caste in Hinduism. Purusha suktam is about the sacrifice of The Cosmic Man. It appears in the Rig Veda and also in other religions of that time. Hinduism is the only surviving polytheistic religion. It draws ire because of it’s very existence. It’s a threat abs irritant to the monotheistic faiths because of its foundational difference of opinion wrt individual soul, consciousness and it’s place in the universe.

Monotheism cannot erase Hinduism although there has been efforts to tarnish its core. Yes..Purusha Suktam is part of Hindu scriptures. Varna is mentioned. Caste isn’t. Social edits to a religious text is someone else’s responsibility. That is collateral damage due to civilizational pressures.

Hinduism is not for everyone. And that’s ok. There are many religions in the world. And different faiths. As well as atheism and agnosticism and ignosticism. But I don’t think a casual assassination of the Hindu faith that is followed by approximately one billion people is warranted or should be condoned due to incomplete religious literacy.

nraynaud• 4 years ago

I can't imagine the crazy headache for management, like are you going to ask your Indian teamates their cast when you suspect there is foul play in the team?

rootusrootus• 4 years ago

In my experience, the answer is always some form of "there are no castes any more." They know that most non-Indians lack the ability to prove otherwise, we can't even detect it.

birdyrooster2• 4 years ago

A bit off topic but, separate from Indian culture, the United States has a hidden caste system too that flows from antiquity and is given texture through American slavery. If your family was a slave or you look like a slave you are, unconscious in the minds of most, systemically bottom caste here.

Sorry if it is an unsatisfying critique of America but its obvious. Go look at the wealth data, look who is thriving and has net worth or success in business.

johntiger12• 4 years ago

from my understanding, the caste system is thousands of years old (in fact one of the reason islam was welcomed and later sikh religion developed). are you sure that american slavery was the origin?

vmception7• 4 years ago

They are talking about the US distinctly. The US caste system, which has morphed primarily into a class system as the laws no longer explicitly single groups out, despite the correlations of effects that remain.

Sebguer• 4 years ago

They're not implying that the Indian caste system originated in American slavery, they're stating that America also has a caste system.

pinephoneguy3• 4 years ago

Has vs had. I suppose you could say the races that were former slaves are now given an artificial advantage but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a caste system.

gerdesj2• 4 years ago

This is waaaay off topic.

Carry down that line of thought and you might fall into all sorts of nonsense. Note things like Pope Gregory (n?) saw a pair of slaves in a market in Rome in the n00s. These two were picked up from somewhere that would eventually become part of England/GB. He was told they were Angles. The story goes he quipped that they were "surely Angels" due to their physique and long blonde hair. Part of England is known as Anglia still and of course England itself is "Angleland".

It seems a bit odd that, that anecdote and play on words survives a good 1500 years during which time English has gone through three major stages (old/middle/modern). However you can easily posit from that story that Britons were also enslaved, if you very carefully define "Briton"!

Anyway, my point is that you can't really use terms like american slavery. History can't be stuffed into boxes like that with pejorative terms scattered like confetti.

The caste system being discussed here is nominally an indian sub continent thing and way older in origin than the slavery employed around C17th onwards with the horrendous triangle of trade.

birdyrooster2• 4 years ago

Yes off topic, and I edited my comment to reflect this. American slavery is a distinct type of slavery because of the geography and people involved. That is all I was saying.

yrgulation2• 4 years ago

The caste system is so deeply entrenched in the culture of those abused by it that even centuries after leaving india they cant leave it behind.

Romania has a considerable group of such people. The Gipsy (also know as Romani) are an Indian people that are thought to have been part of a caste and fled India hundreds of years ago. To this day they cant lift themselves up, and frankly the government of Romania is not doing much at all. To call it an injustice it would he an understatement.

zxienin4• 4 years ago

Gypsy — India connect, would be interesting TIL for me. Is there a reputed citation on this?

gunfighthacksaw3• 4 years ago

Read the history of the Roma on Wikipedia. It is commonly accepted that they migrated from the Punjab in the Middle Ages.

thowaway_2mar14• 4 years ago

From wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people#Origin)

Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma. Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani migration's early history are based on linguistic theory. There is also no known record of a migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.

vishnugupta2• 4 years ago

India also has a non trivial number of nomadic groups/tribes. In my part or India they are called “Lambani”. Their lifestyle closely resembles that of Gypsy, however I’m not knowledgeable enough to comment if they are related.

Here’s an article from DDG search:

https://indiantribalheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/Lambanis...

noodlesUK• 4 years ago

Just an FYI to other HNers reading this, in Europe there is more than one group of (somewhat, complicated) unrelated people referred to as “Gypsy/Gipsy” (which is often but not always seen as a slur) which includes Irish travelers in the UK and Ireland as well as Yenish people in Northwestern Europe (and a few other groups). That’s in addition to Romani people that Parent is referring to which is what most people worldwide probably associate with that word.

yrgulation2• 4 years ago

Thanks for the clarification. Totally forgot about the other groups. Also worth noting, in the UK many people confuse Romani with Romanian. The history and culture of the Romani is widely misunderstood and under appreciated.

mama12311• 4 years ago

There isn't any proof that the Romani left because of their caste.

There is a strong evidence that they might have been driven away by the Islamic invasions, because their timelines coincide.

random31415• 4 years ago

This is another instance of right wing upper caste hindu nationalists making up pseudo history on the fly.

johntiger12• 4 years ago

as a complete outsider to the caste system, say i was american-born or otherwise "white-washed". would I still be subject to this system?

sparky_• 4 years ago

Fellow outsider here. Got curious and did some searching; would love to hear from some real Indian folks to confirm or deny this line of reasoning.

As non-Indians, it seems we exist outside the system, which could be ambiguously interpreted to either have no connotation at all, or to exist at the bottom of the social strata. [1]

Anecdotally, the kind of treatment you'll get in practice depends a lot more on your race and national origin. [2]

1: https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/3898/what-caste... 2: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/let-s-talk-about-r...

akvadrako• 4 years ago

So, assuming there is a hierarchy and Indian are not better than all other races, it seems the conclusion must be all societies have some kind of caste system, it's just we don't see it since we don't look for that sort of thing?

philovivero• 4 years ago

Fellow outsider here. I worked in one of the FAGMAN in a group of about 50 Indians. It became clear rather quickly that I would never move up or get any serious promotion/raise. So at least this one group treated outsiders as lower-caste.

There were a couple Russians and Chinese in the group who seemed also permanently stuck at the bottom.

For the most part, if you wanted to move up, you left this group and moved into some other group in the company. I just left the company entirely.

anonporridge• 4 years ago

Interesting question. In other words, is the Indian caste system effectively simple racism that follows a person regardless of whether they were raised in that culture, or is there a more subtle cultural undertone.

An analogy might be black Brits getting discriminated by Jim Crow laws in the old American South. That was simple racism based on skin color and it didn't matter if you were American or not.

UltraViolence• 4 years ago

It took hundreds of years for the tribal system to become fully abolished in North-Western Europe and I suspect it will take a similar amount of time before the caste system is eradicated.

fdgsdfogijq3• 4 years ago

In a well known big tech company (FAANG), I have seen many many examples of a whole layer of management from the same caste. So like under one director, every senior manager will have been from the same part of India. Sometimes this will extend to another layer of managers below them. Behind the scenes, there is a strong communication network that is often not caught or shown in org charts. This will include high ranking engineers and managers from sister organizations.

It usually doesnt extend beyond that, since HR will be all over it. Often they will even go out of their way not to hire Indians as their directs, so as to deny any discrimination based hiring. But its rampant.

Bhilai3• 4 years ago

Let me guess, its Amazon?

TedDoesntTalk4• 4 years ago

I saw the same at a prominent financial services firm. 50 - 60 Indians in the same dept from the same region. A big number.

I even asked a senior manager if I needed to be Indian to excel at the company. He said the very fact I asked that question is a problem, whether or not it is true.

civilized• 4 years ago

Was the problem your asking the question, or was the problem the apparent pattern of rampant casteism?

colechristensen• 4 years ago

I heard a very similar story about a department in a higher education institution.

elevenoh• 4 years ago

Perhaps the manager was critiquing your absolutist use of the word 'need' here.

;)

mathattack• 4 years ago

This is similar to having the first 30 engineers all come from the same school. Helps with speed in the short term but sub-optimal in the long term. This is why forms like Google centralize hiring.

safog• 4 years ago

There's a huge language / culture divide in India and yes managers of a certain culture can hire reports of their culture to be their yes-men but it's not exactly based on caste.

It's effectively a French guy hiring another french guy or a German guy stacking their team with other Germans. It's a bit more complicated than that because if you look at things like power distance index (PDI), India measures way higher in the chart than any western country (i.e., culturally Indians are more accepting of hierarchy than their western counterparts, so an Indian subordinate is more deferential to their boss than an American one for example)

fdgsdfogijq3• 4 years ago

Logically this makes sense. In reality, its not what I have seen in my career. I cant recall ever discovering that meetings about high level objectives were taking place where everyone but one group was excluded, where that group was german, italian, french or any group other than Indian. I've just seen it too many times at too many companies.

pansinghkoder2• 4 years ago

Or almost like a white man hiring another white man?

oceanghost2• 4 years ago

I think it extends beyond Indian folks. I once worked at a company where, Manufacturing engineers were overwhelmingly Vietnamese. Safety staff was Chinese, Engineering was mostly white, and the machine shop was entirely Hispanic. In each case the manager of the department was of the aforementioned race.

There was also a son of a bitch who was an aggressive baptist. He though I was a baptist because I had dated a baptist once, and knew some of the lingo. I really liked him until I saw him treat a Chinese person like crap for no reason. He treated anyone who wasn't a Christian like garbage.v

fdgsdfogijq3• 4 years ago

It really doesnt to the same degree. People claiming otherwise are trying to hide a very real problem

ToxicMegacolon2• 4 years ago

So like under one director, every senior manager will have been from the same part of India.

Just because people are from the same part of India doesn't mean they have the same caste.

mohanmcgeek2• 4 years ago

And people who emigrated 20-30 years ago would all be from the same part of India for Socio-economic reasons of that time.

ngc2482• 4 years ago

>> from the same part of India

being from the same part of India does not mean they will be of the same caste.

jmyeet2• 4 years ago

It's crazy to me to see people saying "this doesn't exist because I've never seen it". Here's a good rule to live by: privilege is invisible to those who have it. Just think about that.

I'm not Indian so can't speak to that experience but discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism. If you don't think MIT/Stanford grads in their mid 20s at Big Tech companies have more doors open to them you're crazy.

There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same. Like all Africans are somehow viewed the same in many ways despite their being significant cultural, religious and language differences that go back centuries. The same is true in Asia (eg a lot of Chinese in Malaysia face significant discrimination such that they end up going to university overseas because they can't locally).

So a deeply ingrained caste system like India's I can totally believe doesn't magically disappear because those raised in that system now happen to live and work in the United States.

tomc1985• 4 years ago

There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same.

Is there? While my experience comes from living in a cosmopolitan border town, it is hard to imagine anyone seriously lumping Asians in with Africans, short of the outright rascists raging against "immigrants"

YeezyMode• 4 years ago

The following sentence clearly mentions what kind of lumping takes place; "All Africans" / "All Asians" etc.

bobbles• 4 years ago

But what you will absolutely find is people for example lumping Asian people together, whether theyre from Japan, China, Korea, etc.

bin_bash4• 4 years ago

This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism. If you don't think MIT/Stanford grads in their mid 20s at Big Tech companies have more doors open to them you're crazy.

Of course they have more doors open to them. They went to a good school and worked at a well known company.

j_walter• 4 years ago

Yep...and this is just how society works. Like saying that if you think Harvard/Yale grads have more doors open to them in politics then you're crazy. Like of course they do...Since 1992 all of the president except Trump have had law degrees (Yale, Harvard, Syracuse) or an MBA (Harvard). Even Trump still had an Ivy league education...

_jal• 4 years ago

Different 'good schools' are received differently, though. If you work in Bay Area tech, a Stanford degree is more equal than others.

--Someone who went to a good non-Stanford school and works for a well-known company

rajin444• 4 years ago

privilege is invisible to those who have it. Just think about that

This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false) and I’d question the intent of who taught you this - it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate.

MegaButts• 4 years ago

This is not true (very easy to prove it’s false)

Please prove it's false.

randomhodler84• 4 years ago

I think it is true. How can you easily disprove it.

Myself, from a more privileged background, was not even aware of the issues “on the ground” until I saw and lived it for myself. It’s very easy to see where personal bias can cause one to overlook or fail to notice the experience of others.

Is your objection to privileged background failing to notice privilege, or objection to the notion of privilege itself?

lolinder3• 4 years ago

it’s the kind of method religions/cults/political parties use to indoctrinate

This kind of language ("cult" and "indoctrinate") is a conversation-stopper and does nothing to help anyone. If it's so easy to prove the idea is false, could you do that instead of using baseless invectives?

zarkov99• 4 years ago

There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same.

Is unique to the West? Do people in Asia distinguish one European from another? How about in Africa?

fluster• 4 years ago

I’m not sure if this is a legitimate question or an attempt to make some sort of “but also not-the-West is bad!” point; if the latter, this is a comment on an article about caste discrimination in California, which is probably why the its observation focuses on the West, instead of talking about parallels in other cultures.

lofatdairy• 4 years ago

I imagine OP says its a tendency in the West as to avoid generalizations outside their personal experience, not because it's necessarily not the case outside the West. Anecdotally, I think there's at least some distinction between white people in Asia. For instance, there seems to be a distinction from white Americans from white Europeans.

That said, I don't think the claim quite holds that westerners view all minorities as the same. East Asians, while maybe initially assumed to be Chinese or Japanese, have generally unique stereotypes in the US. I also recall a story reported in This American Life[1] that describes a black American woman in Paris, and how her treatment depends on whether she's seen as an African or an American. I think it's perhaps a bit more accurate to say that the broad appearance of a minority group invokes certain stereotypes, but these stereotypes will become more specific with more information about the individual. There's obviously a limit to this, since a Chinese person from Shanghai and a Chinese person from some small city in Henan is a distinction that probably won't mean much to most non-Chinese, but I think people would realize there _is_ a difference, just not know where that difference manifests itself, and obviously cannot change their mental models without that knowledge.

[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris/act-...

Clubber• 4 years ago

There is a tendency in the West to view all minorities as somehow being the same.

I think it's because the news and the politicians view them in categories of demographic, then report on that demographic. I've lived in the South and always think it's funny when people say they should "punish the South," by withholding funds for whatever reason, apparently not realizing the South has the largest Black population in the US by far. Of course if funds are ever withheld, that large black population would also be punished, because they are also southerners. This is pertinent because southerners and blacks are pretty large minority demographics in the US that politicians try to garner favor with.

Societies are complex. It seems like a lot of people want to blurt out the first simple answer that comes out of their noggin.

drawkbox• 4 years ago

discrimination masquerading as "culture fit" is just as rampant in Silicon Valley as it is in the rest of the US. This includes racism, ageism, misogyny and classism

This is why remote work is so important, the politics of the office and "culture" is more about delivery with remote over internal politics. Remote work emphasizes the external view over the internal view which is always skewed in office environments. Remote work opens up a broader market of workers and can flow with life changes of employees easier like a move, families or travel.

We all do lots of remote already to everyone outside the office. Most communication is virtual now even within the same company, across offices in different areas and most importantly, to the customer of the product. The external view is most important, always. Remote can help automatically focus on external perception over internal perception. Remote work can minimize the weight of office politics and "culture".

Another legacy area we need to change is removing health insurance from the job. We don't get our home/auto/life insurance through work and it would be a pain if we did, imagine changing all that on jobs. Contracting or entrepreneurship helps to get your own benefits for healthcare and it is truly a better way. Health insurance removed from the job will help businesses compete with countries that do have public options or private markets not connected to the employer, allow workers more freedom to change jobs, allow people to start jobs easier and isn't constantly a hassle. Getting healthcare on your own or not requiring it to be business level is both pro-business and pro-worker. It also can fix pricing as the customer is now individuals/families not employers, all we need to do is group similar to Medicare groups. Right now grouping is based on the company and this puts sole/small/medium companies at a disadvantage in pricing.

pm906• 4 years ago

I don’t think remote work is gonna eliminate class/caste.

jmyeet2• 4 years ago

I actually think remote work will make it worse. Why? Because physical proximity tends to break down social barriers. Not always of course. Remote work doesn't get any of that benefit.

There are obvious upsides of remote work, sure, but my hypothesis is that generalizations are going to be stickier.

derbOac• 4 years ago

Swap out whatever "class" you want and many of the same processes arise in various places. Not disagreeing with you, but it's sometimes frustrating to me that even when there's obvious discrimination, people still question it, and when they don't question it, they often don't see how the same processes play out in other ways with other less obvious group memberships.

I've always said, when you see some kind of "obvious" discrimination going on in an organization -- sex, age, race, caste, whatever -- I almost guarantee that's manifesting in some other ways as well.

commandlinefan4• 4 years ago

"this doesn't exist because I've never seen it"

By that logic, bigfoot, UFO's and the Loch Ness monster all exist.

vmception7• 4 years ago

One day it occurred to me that I can tell if someone is from India, but that I'd never considered to notice more nuances than that, for such a big country with so many groups of people.

I have just begun to notice, but I have no idea about the identity politics. I recall in college that some of my friends from India would fawn over certain last names, and I felt it was something to do with the caste system, but I had concluded that the people I was around in universities and in the workforce were mostly from a level of privilege that it wouldn't be possible to learn more. I always found Indian nationalism to be strange, where so many people would interject that everything is perfect. Makes it easier for me to avoid my own US nationalism, because it must be just as comical to others.

In this article it mentions Dalit. How many people from that group would be in Silicon Valley, is it impossible to know since it is insensitive to ask and disastrous for them if people did know?

Seems like there is a potential for solidarity amongst more vocal groups pushing for representation.

thowaway_2mar14• 4 years ago

^ How many people from that group would be in Silicon Valley

Less that 10%

Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments)

^ Seems like there is a potential for solidarity amongst more vocal groups pushing for representation.

Good luck, but I don't believe that's happening anytime soon considering that SV is upper-caste dominated also no politician really gives a damn unless your group has the population significant enough to win the elections.

Also, do you know prop-16 was rejected by Cali, the most progressive state in the US. see https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/prop-16-failed-in-californ...

random31415• 4 years ago

The 10% can be split into 2 more layers - Dalits (untouchables) and Shudras. Dalits are significantly worse off than Shudras.

vmception7• 4 years ago

California didn't reject Prop 16 because of a consensus against this form of progressiveness, they rejected it because people read the implementation of Prop 16 and saw it was flawed. California has enacted a great number of "feel good" things that screwed everyone, voters are being more discerning.

random31415• 4 years ago

In India dalits are about 20%. In Silicon valley, I would be surprised if they are more than 2%.

India is like 3 different countries when sliced by caste. The highest castes are about as privileged as the typical Chinese. The middle are at sub saharan Africa levels. The bottom 25% constitute probably the most deprived population in the world. Better off than the Rohingyas but not by too much.

"Jay Bhim" is a great movie based on a real incident. Bhim refers to the social reformer profiled in the article Bhimrao Ambedkar.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15097216/

thowaway_2mar14• 4 years ago

^ India is like 3 different countries when sliced by caste. The highest castes are about as privileged as the typical Chinese. The middle are at sub saharan Africa levels. The bottom 25% constitute probably the most deprived population in the world. Better off than the Rohingyas but not by too much.

Not true, at all. It depends on your state of birth and the caste. A Dalit from a poor state like Bihar is underprivileged than a Dalit of Kerala or Tamil Nadu.

thowaway_2mar14• 4 years ago

^ typical Chinese

Is it not racist?

mama12311• 4 years ago

The movie is quite controversial as it twists reality to target and tarnish specific castes.

The perpetrators in real life were Christians but portrayed as Hindus.

The Hindu villagers who in real life helped the victim seek justice are portrayed as casteists who hinder justice.

A lot of literature, news articles and movies are made to exacerbate the problem and create problems where none exist.

unmole8• 4 years ago

One day it occurred to me that I can tell if someone is from India

Can you really tell if someone is from India and not from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh? Because I can't and I am from India.

vmception7• 4 years ago

After hearing their name, dialect and seeing their mannerisms, yes, I can tell. Several other comments mentioned there is an overrepresentation of specific groups from India, within the US, so I am attuned to recognize that group as "Indian heritage".

These things are rarely as simple as looking at someone visually from afar or in a lineup and making a complete decision.

zxienin4• 4 years ago

I am from “upper caste”. My experience might not be commonly heard perspective. In 10th grade of schooling, my parents changed my lastname to avoid that folks figure out the caste. Due to affirmative action (aka reservation) on steroids, upper caste were losing opportunities. My parents wanted to avoid that I lose out on selection, promotions.., where subjective discretion was involved.

I do not recall ever seeing casteism at workplace. So reading these reports have been surprising to me, since these are not subtle, but rampant. I can only attribute it to my privilege driven echo chamber. Or the fact that I never worked in US. (only briefly in India).

What I read in media disgusts me. I am very motivated to make sure nothing like this happens in my zone of control / influence, at work.

I know casteism is deeply rooted in Indian society. I do not relate with it. Many folks I know, don’t either. On optimistic side, I hope that means with newer generations, casteism will dilute and wither away.

baybal2• 4 years ago

I am a non-white citizen of Russia through a rather bizarre family history.

My parents changed my, and their names, and surname to Slavic sounding for reasons you can understand. Out of many, lower risk of being drafted (being non-white, and living in far-east increases likelihood of draft 10x,) ease of getting into a good school, or university for me, and simply lower chances of getting into random troubles with officials.

At the same time, knowing this, I am as much as discomforted by practice of meritless "diversity hire" just for the sake of putting people of colour to pass the diversity checkbox.

Pretending to play a role of "smart south Asian" while yes-manning, and knowing you being a decoration is as bad as discrimination, if not worse.

Mezzie• 4 years ago

I'm a white American, but I'm a homosexual female with a disability and I feel the same way as you.

Sometimes, it could be an advantage, but using it that way just feels wrong given I know what it's like to lose out on things due to my sex/sexuality/disability. Why would I ever want anyone to lose to me because they're male/straight/not-disabled?

I do wonder if I'm hampering myself, because those aspects of myself have presented some difficulties, but who's to say a straight white man didn't have difficulties of a similar level that were ignored because they didn't tick the diversity box? (Good luck to impoverished straight white men or straight white men who are autistic or have mental health problems).

And I don't know about your experience, but mine is that a lot of the diversity checkbox people are in this for their personal brand/career and they're just as slimy and backstabby as any white men have ever been. At least the straight white dudes just call me a bitch to my face. I can respect that.

jeffy902• 4 years ago

These posts consistently make it to the front page of HN. I'm not denying that casteism exists, but since the subject draws so much attention, reporters must feel incentivized to write about it.

thowaway_2mar14• 4 years ago

^ draws so much attention

Outrage, I would say.

droopyEyelids• 4 years ago

It reminds me of the situation where a student returns from college and tells their parents that something is racist.

The parents feel like their child has been taken over by some weird agenda to make such a big deal out of normal stuff!

pm906• 4 years ago

Or, perhaps the issue is pretty rampant and reporters are doing their job by reporting it.

asdadfaadsadf• 4 years ago

I grew up in urban India and my experience with caste system is the same, never really experienced discrimination personally but I know of it being widely prevalent in the country.

This scene from an Indian movie I saw recently made me realize that the caste system is not just prevalent and absurd but also has a very complicated hierarchy built into it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4N98tQsp64 (<2 min, with subtitles)

tomcam• 4 years ago

Fantastic clip

amznbyebyebye• 4 years ago

Great suggestion

unmole8• 4 years ago

I am from “upper caste”. My experience might not be commonly heard perspective. In 10th grade of schooling, my parents changed my lastname to avoid that folks figure out the caste. Due to affirmative action (aka reservation) on steroids, upper caste were losing opportunities. My parents wanted to avoid that I lose out on selection, promotions.., where subjective discretion was involved.

I'm sorry but this makes no sense to me whatsoever. Reservations in India follow a formal documented process and do not apply to private enterprises. Changing one's surname will make zero difference.

russelldjimmy• 4 years ago

Perhaps if something doesn’t make sense, ask for clarity instead of asserting that changing one’s surname makes zero difference.

I am also familiar with many upper-caste people who have changed their surname to something generic (like Kumar) to avoid revealing their caste. This doesn’t just apply to job seeking in private enterprises. They do this to avoid any kind of attention drawn to their surname, and hence caste. This attention can then play out differently in different scenarios.

jck• 4 years ago

You are right. This anti "affirmative action" rhetoric is quite common among upper caste people in India. Unless OP managed to get faked documents and pretended to be from a lower caste, they absolutely did not gain anything.

commandlinefan4• 4 years ago

upper caste were losing opportunities

I wondered about that right away - is any of this just sour grapes from lower caste folks taking it out on higher caste folks now that they're in an environment where the playing field is suddenly level?

zxienin4• 4 years ago

I suspect so. Maybe justifiably so.

<preachy> The challenge is to transition into equal rights mode, rather tribal one. Sooner the better. </preachy>

redtriumph2• 4 years ago

One day, Siddhant’s older son shared a story from his own life. A teacher had asked a group of kids, who were all of Indian descent, about their family backgrounds. One by one, the kids shouted out their religion, region, and caste.

How can a school teacher ask kids about religion and caste? How does this not contribute to discrimination based on <religion, caste.. >?

cpitman• 4 years ago

It doesn't sound like they did. They asked about family background, which often is a way to say "tell me about where you come from?"

The telling part is the kids assuming the most important part of their background is religion, region, and caste.

monkeycantype• 4 years ago

I've been pretty lucky with how and where I grew up, materially I lacked nothing I needed , but my father who grew up in what Americans would call 'housing projects', despite his advanced maths education and subsequent successes still carries something of that background in his appearance, speech and humour, and has imparted a certain cultural stamp on all of his children. I work in a company where I see this caste behaviour among Indians very clearly, but I also see something else. Privilege gives you a comfort with privilege, an understanding of it's language and perspective, an expectation to be able to command others. My co-workers from wealthy Brahmin backgrounds communicate more naturally with Australians from similar backgrounds than I do. I communicate more naturally with Indians from more modest backgrounds, and the company falls organically into a certain hierarchy as a result of our behaviour.

DesiLurker2• 4 years ago

I am an indian & have been in valley for last couple of decades. anecdotally speaking between me and my friends I have never heard of the caste based discrimination until that cisco case. so much so that people would bring it up at gatherings etc. Also in case anyone is wondering, I do not belong to the upper caste and most of my friends like me are not (not dalits either).

btw in my experience internet dating & marriage sites have done more to break cast barriers in india than any social or affirmative action movement. I do think that it would take another generation for serious damage to happen to the caste system because towns & villages are still very much ingrained in this shit.

sangnoir• 4 years ago

To quote a saying popularized by Donald Rumsfield: "The absence of evidence is not th evidence of absence". I - a male - haven't heard of any stories of sexual harassment or assault in my social circle (or at the office), but that doesn't mean it's not happening.

DesiLurker2• 4 years ago

yes that is clearly recognized by use of the word 'anecdotally'. the key takeaway from my comment should be the fact that this incident is considered to have enough of a 'signal' to be considered a conversation topic. Also, the fact that it comes as a surprise to everybody I speak to should not be ignored.

ThinkingAgain2• 4 years ago

Thanks for this perspective on sexual harassment. It helped me realize that eventhough I have not seen it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I have never seen sexual harassment but am certain it exists.

I was thinking the problem is limited to India and will not get carried over to US or tech industry in India.

Was not expecting to see caste system in US too and was doubting if it was real. I had heard one story where adults in US were introducing themselves with caste. This story talks about even the kids are introducing with their caste. What are we teaching kids?

Every Indian should read this. It doesn't matter if you discriminate or not, the person suffering is not dealing with just you but lots of people. Even if a small percentage discriminate that is bad enough for that person to feel vulnerable for long time.

himinlomax• 4 years ago

I - a male - haven't heard of any stories of sexual harassment or assault in my social circle (or at the office), but that doesn't mean it's not happening.

Counter-point: many cases of sexual harassment seem to occur over a long time, where the problematic behavior is known or suspected widely -- it's just that nothing is done.

Consider: I don't care for celebrities or Hollywood, I'm not American, but I knew Weinstein for being a pig long before he got cancelled, mostly through offhand jokes from comedians. I didn't really know how big of a deal in his business he was, I just knew that everyone seemed to know that he was a pig. So when he finally got cancelled, what surprised me is that I sort of thought that he already had been.

I've known of few instance of much less prominent harassment (sexual or otherwise for that matter) at the periphery of my social circle, and it was a similar phenomenon. I believe there is a type of people that does that kind of things (narcissists), the problem I suspect is that they tend to also be good at manipulating people so that they can keep doing damage for a long time.

flat-pluto3• 4 years ago

"have never heard of the caste based discrimination until that cisco case"

I didn't hear of it either until I noticed large groups of Indian-origin devs and managers (mostly at older companies such as IBM, Oracle, etc), and somehow only the 'upper caste' folks would get promoted and be invited to happy hours and such. How much that can be attributed to inter-personal relationships and professional competence as opposed to outright discrimination, one will never know but a pattern does emerge. It's never in your face discrimination, just subtle favoritism towards one's group.

Mind you, this happens with people from the same Indian state as well. They'll often speak in their regional language during meetings even though not everyone speaks that language, which simply goes on to alienate that team member. (This has happened to friends of mine at T-Mobile and Intel)

"marriage sites have done more to break cast barriers in india"

Not sure if I agree with you there. It has brought to light just how prevalent that kind of thinking is. It's a common trope on Indian matrimonial websites how users have a list of requirements (Looking for fair skinned, Hindu upper caste, etc). Maybe that has helped break cast barriers by bringing it to light, I don't know, but it was really surprising when I came upon it for the first time.

barry-cotter4• 4 years ago

It’s modernity, of which these sites are a part. Only marrying within one’s caste is a way point from only marrying in one’s jati, on the way to caring about socioeconomic status and not much else. In the US marrying within the religion, but outside the ethnic group lasted at most 50 years. Panmictia is coming.

stretchwithme• 4 years ago

Yeah, but does that stop someone from starting their own company and hiring talented people in the same boat, as countless groups have done before?

pklausler• 4 years ago

I'm not Indian, but I'd like to know how to be more sensitive to this kind of discrimination. What should I be looking out for?

pempem• 4 years ago

Its real and yet it feels like 'fun' to write about the 'exotic' caste system rather than the very real visa hierarchy, hb1 strategies etc. that are in play

manish_gill4• 4 years ago

Care to elaborate?

user-2• 4 years ago

My parents are from India, im from Canada. Luckily ive never really seen any caste discrimination, but we are from a religion that specifically outlawed this hundreds of years ago (sikhism), even though it didn't exactly dissappear.

I know its something that exists though, its mind boggling that people still adhere to it. Hopefully it goes away though.

Here is an interesting interview type video on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g9EraoHbWw

screye3• 4 years ago

Caste among Sikh[1] and Muslim[2] communities is as deeply rooted as caste in Hindus.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BSN-3nmMyM

[2] https://theprint.in/opinion/indias-muslim-community-under-a-...

withinboredom• 4 years ago

Did you just man-splain someone’s own religion/community?

tsol6• 4 years ago

This is overstating the case. While it exists in both communities, it's very uncommon. Still I don't doubt that some people still hold on to those views among the billions in India

user-2• 4 years ago

Thanks for these, dissapointing to hear but the more I know the better

hasmanean• 4 years ago

Among Indian and Pakistani Muslims, even though the caste system as a system no longer exists any more for them—neither in law nor custom—the old patterns still exist. Certain professions are more respected, as are certain families and certain skin colours.

It takes time for any historical pattern to be reversed. Centuries, maybe even millennia. Even among people who actively reject the caste system it won’t be so easy for it to go away. Maybe technology can help.

manish_gill4• 4 years ago

Yeah, as a Sikh from Delhi, I can confirm that you've read the fairy tale version. Caste is ever present in Sikhism.

lifeisstillgood• 4 years ago

Ok, so we have decades of US company policies trying (to less or more effect) to combat the black/white discrimination - quotas, tribunals, edication, Hollywood movies etc.

What, besides Bollywood, should a US (tech) company do? Remove the surname field on the internal company address book? Prevent Indian nationals hiring / interviewing /managing other Indian nationals?

I do ask seriously - my utterly uninformed instinct says that we are close to the equivalent of 1950s US - southern blacks left the USA to fight and came back with tales of drinking warm beer in British pubs and people being amazed by their accents not their skin colour. India is seeing a second generation leaving to work in global markets and there will be an effect.

So - how do we get on the right side of history?

exdsq• 4 years ago

I think this is probably true of all people, no? Academically, socially, family wealth, etc... I may very well misunderstand this because I am not Indian and I appreciate it'll be more nuanced but in its most raw form is it not similar to the British class system, Ivy League vs non-Ivy League schools, etc?

To me this is one of those things people really care about when they're involved and slightly better off - so someone in the upper-middle class, someone from a good school, etc - but the majority of people don't really care. The only people who care about what school they went to or what class they identify as are those slightly above average without other notable accomplishments yet. Professors at Harvard care less about their school prestige than the fresh undergrad entering the job market. So, to take this as an example, I'd assume the only people who care about the Indian caste system are young, in a caste slightly above average whatever that means, and yet to really progress in their career to have more notable accomplishments to base their identities around.

flashgordon• 4 years ago

When you are discriminated on the basis of age, caste, race and sex - how can I really pinpoint which discrimination is the most prominent?

pansinghkoder2• 4 years ago

If my fellow Indians are fostering this sort of hatred even after coming to US then we definitely haven't changed (and also, I am not shocked like others here).

sumedh3• 4 years ago

If my fellow Indians are fostering this sort of hatred even after coming to US

Caste is like religion if you are brainwashed when you are kid, its almost impossible to let go even if you change countries. Hopefully the kids of these immigrants who grow up in the host country will not have the same hatred.

thowaway_2mar14• 4 years ago

Also, this is the reason students in their board exams (+2 / Twelfth-grade tests) were forbidden from writing their last name in the answer sheets. Teachers in India openly discriminated against students from other castes/jatis/varnas by giving them lower marks.

Not just caste but discrimination based on the state-of-origin/language are often committed by identifying your group based on your last name.

There are often groups in offices from some states that will ensure that folks that are not from their states don't succeed and are coerced into resigning.

Folks from relatively developed states in India don't want to admit students from underdeveloped or poor states, which breeds another form of caste-language-based discrimination in India.

Does caste-based discrimination exist? Yes, it does. But it depends on where you live. In rural India, it is more prevalent than in California.

Is the Indian government doing anything about this menace? Yes, India has a positive discrimination system for these oppressed castes in all government universities and all governmental jobs. Today 65-75% of all seats in top Indian universities are for oppressed, underprivileged, and poor people.

Is it better than now compared to when we got independence? Yes, but many want their kids not to marry into other castes, mainly lower caste.

techie128• 4 years ago

This is BS. You don't write your name at all, just your student id number.

thowaway_2mar14• 4 years ago

^ This is BS. You don't write your name at all, just your student id number.

  Also, this is the reason students in their board exams (+2 / Twelfth-grade 
  tests) were forbidden from writing their last name in the answer sheets. 
  Teachers in India openly discriminated against students from other 
  castes/jatis/varnas by giving them lower marks.

Didn't you notice the past tense? Also, this defensiveness without properly reading what I wrote is part of the problem. This maybe BS today, but it wasn't 25-30 years ago.

rbolla• 4 years ago

"Teachers in India openly discriminated against students from other castes/jatis/varnas by giving them lower marks." This is a very bold statement and also looks like you are generalizing the whole Teachers strata. I have not seen or experienced a single such incident during my school/college years.

kumarvvr5• 4 years ago

You are speaking as if all teachers belong to one caste. There is affirmative action in teaching staff too.

https://theprint.in/india/governance/57-of-indias-teaching-f...

screye3• 4 years ago

I am an Indian who is from an OBC category. 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.

I will preemptively apologize for my directness. Euphemisms dilute.

I have written about it in some capacity on HN before. [1] But, I'll give you the 1 pager:

1. There are Indians and then there are Indians. The average undergrad at a UC is one of highly privileged 1st gen immigrant or 2nd gen Indian-American, both of who have no clue what caste even is. It is like trying to solve malnutrition in India, by feeding burgers to your fellow FANG engineer. In my 27 years surrounded by Indians, I have never been asked my caste, nor have my upper-caste peers made questionable comments in confidence.

2. Caste issues persist among those who pursue the hardest paths to success (eg: L1 sweat shop route) in the US. However, over the years, I have seen it develop into a 'crabs in a bucket' style circular firing squad. The more they believe in the 'zero sum nature' of an engagement, the more willing people are to stifle someone from the outgroup in an effort to get ahead. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there.

3. In truly poor communities in non-urban India, caste is a reality of life. India is a shit-hole nation (as a famous man once said). Desperate times in shit-hole places nudge good people into vile behaviors. Even past the explicit discrimination, generational poverty is crippling. On the bright side, things are getting less worse as a fast pace. But, to paint any rosier picture about this would amount to lying.

4. Sloppy affirmative action breeds resentment. (America, take notes) It hurts me to say this, but the proof is in the pudding. At my moderately-prestigious-Indian-university, I saw liberal 'general'(upper-ish caste) students turn resentfully anti-affirmative-action as they saw the bar be dropped so lower every year, in the Indian zero-sum career market. People are not judged for their caste. They are judged because their caste reveals that they got an easier path within a narrow academic structure. (This ofc, ignores the crippling poverty and social barriers these people also have to overcome. But, sociology 101 is not in our gen-eds).

5. Caste is dead, long live caste - Caste is so 1990s. The entire societal hierarchy shifted under the feet of sub-par social commenters and they never even noticed. A decent portion of 2nd generation American-Indians don't fraternize with 1st generation Indians. IITians stick to IItians. Masters H1b-OPT candidates look down on those who came through the L1 consultancy sweat-shop grind. I could write an entire book on this. It is a brutally merit status system, where merit is defined within a narrow academic context. (Indians are not unique in this phenomenon. I frequently see this among urban american communities too. Sorting into groups based on internal perceptions of status happens whenever a community reaches size threshold. If anything, it is a rather familiar social stratification)

Shoe-horning the caste issue into hyper-polarized and shallow american power struggles is worsening the issue. India has been making rapid progress in terms of helping lower-caste communities. From representation in every local + national body to economic assistance to educational assistance to a harsh anti-discrimination law. In 70 years of independence, we have come a long way. The progress may be on a low base, but the delta is huge. UCs and California Liberals (with all connotations it carries) are wielding caste as a weapon for political means. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30059449

ngc2482• 4 years ago

Exactly .... Another issue is, if there is an advantage to be gained by saying that there is caste discrimination, people will use that.

Let's take an example of an upper caste manager and a lower caste IC reporting to him. If the manager rates the IC poorly because of genuine performance reasons, the IC may still feel it is because of caste, instead of his poor performance

Let's take an example of a Lower caste manager and an upper caste IC reporting to him. If the IC disagrees with the manager about something, the manager again may think it is because of caste.

In this way it becomes hopeless.

joncp• 4 years ago

An offer package of $450k?! Dang.

Demonsult• 4 years ago

It was in the early 2000s outside of the valley. A coworker was basically held in indentured servitude by a family of a higher caste. They dropped him off at work every day, berating him the whole way there. We hired a lawyer, got all of his contracts thrown out, and hired him directly.

qwertyuiop_• 4 years ago

I am from an upper caste in India but always despised my extended relatives treating people from lower castes like crap. Fortunately my parents moved to a cosmopolitan town where they converted to Christianity. Life changed for us from that point onwards. Relatives shunning us and blaming us for adopting the religion of lower castes and untouchables. Living on gov enterprise housing protected us from the discrimination of town folk I thought I would never have to face discrimination for simply being an upper caste Christian. Little did I know moving to USA made it worse. Almost all of transplants from India are upper castes and are of Hindu background. Most of them (not all) immediately categorized me as a "3rd tier Indian". I worked at the Indian Consulting Companies and when the colleagues realized I was a practicing Christian they "outed" me to their managers and I could see discrimination immediately. Not being invited to important meetings, passed for promotions and bad scores on employee reviews on and on. I even switched companies and would "accidentally" fall under Indian managers and they immediately probe where am I from etc etc. Followed by bad relationships and eventual souring.

Most Indians who claim racism here in US usually come from upper/mid caste and lived decent lives in India and have seen their families and neighbors treat lower caste people like dirt.

anon0192837465• 4 years ago

Recent articles about casteism in US prompt me to think if there is some coordinated effort behind these articles? Have been living in US for 20+ years and never even once had any Indian mention caste. In fact, only time I was asked about my caste is by a white American lady, who thought I was of a specific caste due to my vocabulary! This happened only recently (in 20 years), which made me ponder if there is ongoing effort to malign India/Hinduism in US.

random31415• 4 years ago

Ambedkar was an intellectual giant who wrote the Indian constitution. Glad to see him profiled here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._R._Ambedkar

Jurist economist academic politician social reformer anthropologist writer

perfecthjrjth• 4 years ago

The reality is otherwise. It was drafted by a bureaucrat called BN Rau. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._N._Rau

random31415• 4 years ago

This really goes to the heart of what casteism is all about in a modern urban "casteless" setting. Any time a lower caste does anything of significance, upper caste detractors show up to tell everyone that the good stuff was actually the work of someone else of upper castes. The lower caste made his mark only through affirmative action or other kinds of "trickery". The constitution was obviously written by several people and the team was led by Ambedkar. You can use the same website- wikipedia- to inform yourself of Ambedkars contributions to society in general and the constitution in particular. Go and pick up a book written by him too if you have the time.

One of the nastier pieces of "information " about Ambedkar that an upper caste kid shared with me as a child was that Ambedkar was actually the bastard child of a Brahmin with a lower caste woman. This explains why he was so smart as all lower castes have very low IQ.

thowaway_2mar14• 4 years ago

Why can't the SV tech firms not provide affirmative action for the underprivileged lower-caste Dalits in hiring?

sandeeps_• 4 years ago

For hiring in the US?

nirav726• 4 years ago

Affirmative action is already very controversial in the United States and is probably couple of supreme court cases away from being gutted. At least in academia. There isn't going be any action for a group of people that represents less than 2% of the total U.S population. If anything, this is probably an issue for states to decide. You'd need a sizable lobby to influence such an action.

giantg22• 4 years ago

"with an offer package that totaled almost $450,000."

Sounds like he went from the bottom 1% to the top 1%. That's impressive.

bin_bash4• 4 years ago

It’s unclear if that’s annual compensation or how much of it vests over 4 years.

giantg22• 4 years ago

True. Either way, that's still a huge change, and more than most people earn over 8 years.

fastball2• 4 years ago

So it's not really Silicon Valley's caste system, it's India's caste system, which rears its ugly head in SV because there are so many 1st gen Indian workers.

ryanqian• 4 years ago

Can't image this is 21st centry currently.

manish_gill4• 4 years ago

As someone born and raised in India, things like this were a bit "distant" from me when I was in school (it came up but I was never a victim).

But the more I got to know Indians who were more privileged than I have been, the pattern started to clearly emerge. I distinctly remember thinking - "people who are better educated than I am tend to be richer or from an upper caste background, usually both".

I try to not let it get to me - I'm in a more "esoteric" position as I'm neither one of the privileged castes nor the downtrodden. My last name is still a dead giveaway to people who know. And I wonder how many opportunities I've missed because I've never been part of these subgroups (any subgroups really). I'm lucky enough that I have friends and a partner who recognise their historical privilege very well.

It's why diversity is important. I love working with my Dutch, Indian, German, Turkish, Chinese, American, Brazilian etc... colleagues. When I'm in a diverse group, those feelings tend to fade away - because I know there isn't a large group that I might need to be closely aligned with.

Of course, living in another country (not USA), the higher up I look at management, the less diversity I see. Same problem in a different form, I suppose. :)

All of the above is just an individual experience. But data seems to confirm it.

kumarvvr5• 4 years ago

But data seems to confirm it.

Can you share this data. I am curious.

manish_gill4• 4 years ago

https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When...

I'll edit this with more links later, it's 3am in my TZ atm.

kumarvvr5• 4 years ago

Affirmative action in India is multi-fold. One, there is punishment for insult/discrimination based on caste (in public view, as per law). The law is very powerful, feared and sometimes misused. Two, there is a quota system in education and jobs, for some castes in the society. Three, once in a job that comes under affirmative action category, there is further affirmative action to move the person up through the ranks.

Now, the resentments on this affirmative action (Ambedkar, who is highlighted in the passage, originally wrote that the AA will be for a period of 5 years, but has since been used as a vote bank tool) are plenty and some, IMV, are justified.

One is that the current and previous generations, have seen very limited caste discriminations. Sure, events happen in a country as big and varied as India, but generally, caste based discriminations have been subdued, and mostly pushed back to silent and invisible forms (social interactions, marriages, friendships, etc). The current and previous generation kids, have hardly seen any caste based discrimination due to various reasons. It also helps that a section of political leaders are from the backward and other castes.

What this brings about is the feeling of unfair punishment. A kid who is in high school now, who has friends from all walks of life, of many castes and religions (In my schooling, with high school ending in 2003, I never once bothered about caste and religion, as it was never a point of discussion) will write an exam for bagging a seat in a good college or university. Then he will discover, that the same friend who has been with him for all these years, has a similar lifestyle as him, goes everywhere he goes, does everything he does, is eligible for a seat with a lower cut-off score, buoyed by additional mandatory allotment of seats.

From the perspective of the kid, he works hard and sincerely, only to be snubbed because his forefathers have insulted some castes in their days.

What would you tell him?

Two, the benefits of AA have not percolated throughout the society. Those who have benefitted from the initial steps, have risen to wealth and power, and continue to get the benefits, while those who really need help, often do not get it.

Also, after 200 years of British occupation, India was left penniless. Couple that with decades of socialist policies, wealth generation was low and slow. This results in a huge section of population being poor. And this includes all castes and creeds.

I often see negative and insulting remarks on Brahmins (considered the "highest" caste), and often they are blamed for all evils of caste discrimination (whereas, discrimination has been in the society from all sections and even within castes). However, presently, a majority of brahmins are poor or middle class.

In this scenario, the only escape those who do not belong to the AA castes, is to move abroad in search of better opportunities.

All this caste based drama in SV and elsewhere is the result of that feeling of unfair punishment.

steveBK1232• 4 years ago

I think it serves as a good reminder that racism is a thing most all races do to other races or subgroups of their own race.

In tech these days there's enough racial groups that you are as likely (or more, in my experience) to end up with blatantly racist behavior from minority groups who either only hire their own or explicitly do not hire specific minorities they dislike.

I remember working at a bank where the portfolio trading team was all racial group X, algo team racial group Y, and OMS racial group Z.. because the managers were...

The white guys were like the generic neutral glue that could sometimes be hired into the X/Y/Z group teams.

My previous fund I recall a friend telling me he started looking for a new job as soon as our new boss started as he was grilling him in their native language trying to figure out which specific racial/caste/regional sub-group he was from..

steveBK1232• 4 years ago

I'd also add - caste being a good proxy for class generally..

This fits with a saying I've seen thrown around about our modern times, which is basically that "Class is the only remaining non-taboo bias in American polite society".

Living in a very blue city in a very blue state surrounded by highly educated, "social justice warrior" types .. you'd be surprised how quickly the same people who have every type of window decal/bumper sticker/flag, march in every sort of rally you can imagine, and earnestly support every anti-racism/DEI initiative under the sun.. are willing to "punch down" class-wise, as long as the lower class people are white.

ausbah• 4 years ago

I don't think this is that surprising, most Americans - even if they are empirically wealthy or poor - consider themselves "middle class". seems like an implicit bias?

jart• 4 years ago

One thing I've always wondered is how much if any awareness expats have of western last names. For instance, not to imply names matter, but the most famous person who shares my last name was a boxer. Great man, but he wasn't famous for being an Isaac Newton. So I'd hope no one would look at my name and think, oh she must be the kind of person who's really good at using her body rather than her brain. My experience with American culture is we only really focus on the positive aspects of names. Like if you're having a conversation with a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild it's hard to not notice that, but there's really not much awareness in terms of negative associations with names, since everyone deserves a shot, and since everyone's looking for their shot, it's the folks with prolific names who'd be more likely to conceal them.

reactspa• 4 years ago

A lot of upper caste indians will tell you there's no caste system any more.

I'm an upper caste indian and here's my experience looking for an apartment to rent in Chennai, India, in around the year 2000. I was repeatedly asked by potential-landlords if I was a brahmin (I'm not), and told they couldn't rent to me if I wasn't. It was my first trip to Chennai (I'm from the north), and I am pretty sure it's illegal to openly ask a potential tenant if they're a brahmin. But there was simply nothing I could do about it.

ralphc• 4 years ago

This is Hacker News, I think about workarounds and ways to hack "the system". The article talks about a pat on the shoulder to stealthily check for the Brahmin white thread. What's to prevent someone from wearing a thread under their clothes? If you have a religious problem with it, wear a color other than white, people aren't seeing it.

crossroadsguy• 4 years ago

Living here in Bangalore (India’s so called Silicon Valley) you might miss the caste lines during your early years. It’s very easy to miss all that in the brouhaha of youth in a so called cosmopolitan city. But as you grow older you start seeing it everywhere, in everything.

I see people directly referring to a candidate who didn’t do well in an interview “must have gotten admission to IIT/NIT via reservation” (reservation is something of American affirmative action; but I’m not really sure). Passing remarks behind the back of other colleagues. And then saying things like, apparently being generous, “wow, doesn’t seem like you’re from that community!” (implying as if that community is inherently weak and dumb and the individual is an exception).

My name is as caste neutral as it gets. They still somehow figure it out - thousands of miles from my native place.

When you tell them you never used reservation even though you were eligible - you become kinda of like them, a little. But the moment you say you didn’t use it because you didn’t need it and you wanted to leave the college seat for someone more needy and that you support reservation system - you’re thrown back away from being somewhat like them.

Yes, the them and us are clear distinctions here.

It comes in many shapes and forms. Landlords asking “we’d prefer vegetarians” that’s asking “we’re Brahmins and prefer Brahmin or upper caste tenants”. My friend just lied as he really liked a flat overlooking a lake and trees next to the balcony in a quiet area, he said “well, even though I’m a Brahmin I eat meat once in a while” (he wasn’t a Brahmin) and the landlord was soon saying, “of course, of course, food is a personal choice”. He left soon as the landlord politely but slyly kept trying to glean the confirmation out of his visitors including me, also tried setting him up with his niece assuming his caste.

This will end up being a poorly written extremely long essay if I keep giving examples.

It was very early in my pre teens that I was made aware of my caste and place in the social hierarchy. I was fully aware that I sit somewhere in the middle of the caste hierarchy and there are people above me and also below me.

The power imbalance is so staggering and oppression is so deep rooted in such pervasive manner that all things might get consumed by the simmering anger and hatred one day. People who have lived mostly in cities easily fail to see this. They brush it aside saying we have jobs, we are moving on, we are getting educated.

This is so ignorant and blinding that they not only miss that a far greater number that lives in villages and towns and smaller cities are unseen by them, they are not seeing what’s right in front of them in the same larger cities as well. And yes, a lot of them deliberately do not acknowledge such divides and inequalities - some with a desire to fit in, others with vested interests of historical social power.

PS. Also, it’s so so different from the western notion of racism. So different.

WheelsAtLarge• 4 years ago

This is very interesting. Here's a discrimination system that's completely invisible and in people's minds only. I'm sure that the highest caste has all the incentives to continue it. But I also feel that the lower caste continue it by their actions. They too feel that they are less because of the caste they were born into.

Hiding is not the answer. By hiding, people signal that there is something to hide. I would even say that hiding makes it worse. It tells everyone that there is something to hide even the people uninterested in the situation. But when viewed objectively we can all see that there is nothing to hide. That it's just a bad idea that persists.

How do you fix it? I suspect that by uniting and fighting against the very idea that it's a valid system is the way to fix it. In time, the whole system would eventually collapse. Bad ideas can disappear over time but people have to fight to make them go away. Specially the oppressed set. You don't fight the idea that it's an unfair system. You fight the idea that it should even exist. I know. It's easier said than done. But by fighting the very idea of its existence. It will eventually make the whole idea go away.

The best example, I can think of, that is winning against a bad idea is the use of Queer in the LGBTQ community. 20 yrs ago "queer" was a horrible thing to say to an individual. The community has fought hard to change the word's meaning and now it has become a word that people like to hear. A word of pride. The whole idea has been turned on its head. Sure there are still people that use it as an insult but it's going away. 20 years from now it will just be a bad memory. Queer is and will be a point of pride. It was a genius idea in its simplicity and its effectiveness.

saagarjha3• 4 years ago

I'm sure that the highest caste has all the incentives to continue it. But I also feel that the lower caste continue it by their actions. They too feel that they are less because of the caste they were born into.

Well…not exactly. There's plenty of situations where being of a certain caste, whether it's high or low, can confer you no benefit and sometimes even a disadvantage. So besides the general thing of people generally trying to move away from discrimination, it's not necessarily a thing everyone wants to perpetuate.

dominotw2• 4 years ago

For Siddhant, who now lives in the South Bay in a $2 million home, wearing his father’s Ambedkar watch reminds him of where he comes from—and where he still wants to go. Even now, whenever the stakes seem especially high, he’ll put on the watch and double-check that his shirt sleeves are long enough to conceal it.

comon this is a bit over the top. Is this for real??

rdelfin• 4 years ago

Do you mean the home or the watch thing? Either way, it doesn't sound as far fetched. People will still judge you no matter how well you do for shit like this if they see you as inferior. It's very easy for them to explain away your success, be it affirmative action, hiding your past, or even calling it pure dumb luck. Hiding a watch with a clear symbol of the caste you belong to does seem plausible

dominotw2• 4 years ago

maybe wearing an symbol of your caste to work on purpose puts people on the edge? also i have no idea what 'ambedkar watch' is, not sure if most people even know about this symbol of caste.

mtalantikite2• 4 years ago

I think everyone should go read Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, particularly Brahmins. It’s important for people of privilege to read his work, in the same way that it’s important for white people in the US to read Malcolm X’s autobiography. It will probably make you uncomfortable, but personal growth is often uncomfortable.

The Indian Ministry of the Exterior has his work up for free [1], but I’d suggest the printed US edition of Annihilation of Caste with Arundhati Roy‘s introductory essay.

[1] https://www.mea.gov.in/ambedkar.htm

unmole8• 4 years ago

I have no trouble believing that people carry their casteist prejudices to Silicon Valley or that they act out their casteism in vile ways.

But when I read stuff that is so clearly nonsensical, I start questioning what embellishment factor I should I account for.

Questions about a person’s last name or home village can be seen as invasive attempts to identify caste. A pat on the shoulder might be a friendly greeting—or a search for a sacred thread that some dominant-caste Hindu men wear beneath their shirts.

There is simply no way to figure out someone's caste by their home village. The overwhelming majority of Hindu men from dominant castes do not wear a sacred thread. If someone believes that a pat on the shoulder might be checking for a caste marker, it's very likely that they'll be seeing caste discrimination where none exists.

barry-cotter4• 4 years ago

There is simply no way to figure out someone's caste by their home village.

Most Indian villages will have multiple jatis (sub-caste groups) and it’s perfectly normal for endogamy to be so complete that people’s families speak exactly the same language and the genetic distance between them is on the order of that between Swedes and Sicilians. Indian genetics is fascinating.

MisterSandman• 4 years ago

Your home village might not be all you need, but it's part of the overall investigation that some Indians do to "figure out" someone's caste. I've seen it happen to my dad all the time when we're in another city or country.

Stop pretending like you don't know what I'm talking about. You're either lying to yourself or being ignorant. I'm sure many things in the article are embellished, but stop reducing other people's experiences.

unmole8• 4 years ago

but it's part of the overall investigation that some Indians do to "figure out"

A village is next to useless in terms of identifying one's caste.

I've seen it happen to my dad all the time when we're in another city or country.

How? There are more than six million villages in India. Do these people maintain a distributed database of some sort?

I'm sure many things in the article are embellished

How much of it is embellishment is exactly what I'm wondering.

but stop reducing other people's experiences.

Maybe come up with a convincing argument rather than ask people to take your word for it.

intrasight3• 4 years ago

I don't "hide" the fact that I am Italian (couldn't if I had my mom's maiden name) but nor do I tell anyone - because a) they don't need to know and b) it's of no relevance. Honest question: why is it different with caste? Rather than "hide" it, why not have it a non-thing?

fay59• 4 years ago

You could just as well ask a racist why they don’t like black people.

mtalantikite2• 4 years ago

Because it could cause violence towards or the destruction of that Dalit person’s life: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste-related_violence_in_In...

Caste is a very complex topic that spans back thousands of years — including the exploitation of the Manusmriti [1] by British colonists to wield their own power while colonizing South Asia — and is really not at all comparable to, say, being an “ethnic” white person like an Italian in early 20th century America (half-Irish here myself).

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manusmriti

flat-pluto3• 4 years ago

This is a false equivalence though. Ideally it would be a non-thing.

It has been a part of Indian society for a very long time, going back millennia, but it was codified in its modern form by the British. For instance:

"Nicholas Dirks has argued that Indian caste as we know it today is a modern phenomenon as caste was fundamentally transformed by British colonial rule. According to Dirks, before colonial rule caste affiliation was quite loose and fluid, but colonial rule enforced caste affiliation rigorously, and constructed a much more strict hierarchy than existed previously, with some castes being criminalized and others being given preferential treatment." [1]

Preferential treatment in this case means educational opportunity, administrative jobs, etc - essentially avenues of upward socio-economic mobility. Since then, it has almost become ingrained in Indian culture. So much so, that people think that one caste is "better" than the other, marrying into another caste would bring disgrace to the family and community, and so forth.

Another factor to consider is affirmative action. There are few good public universities and jobs in India, and a certain percentage of them are reserved for groups who have been historically discriminated against. This kinda rubs upper-caste people the wrong way since some of them believe casteism no longer exists and that even if reservations are required, they should be based on the socio-economic status as opposed to one's caste.

Overall, as you can tell by now, it's a pretty tense matter. Things are improving but by no means is it a non-thing.

intrasight3• 4 years ago

This is all in the context of the USA.

My question is why would you be asked or, if asked, tell your caste?

commandlinefan4• 4 years ago

My grandfather changed his German name in the 30's to something very non-German sounding. He never went into much detail as to why, but I have a pretty good guess.

noipv4• 4 years ago

I am surprised that India has managed to hide its caste system from the rest of the world so well; the ridiculous caste system which assigns a person's worth based on birth circumstances and cannot be changed during her/his lifetime.

alphabettsy• 4 years ago

Hide it?

We learned about it in middle school. Maybe that’s not common elsewhere in the US?

throwaway420118• 4 years ago

Father's name as last name and has studied in a top government college - backward caste. got it via reservation.

Brown skin + studied in a top government college. backward caste. got in via reservation

Fair skin + College(non-goverment quota) - probably from upper caste

All these can be known from an interview by looking at the person and resume.

dilliwal• 4 years ago

I am also Indian and I mostly worked in EU. And for me, it came as a surprise, probably in EU, I am surrounded by less Indians!?

thumbsup-_-3• 4 years ago

A pat on the shoulder might be a friendly greeting—or a search for a sacred thread that some dominant-caste Hindu men wear beneath their shirts

I'm a non-dalit Indian working in silicon valley. I know that caste based discrimination is still prevalent in India and not surprised that it continues in here in silicon valley as well amongst Indian community but I'm surprised to read this part in the article. I have never heard of someone doing a scan for sacred thread. Also, it's worth noting that most non-dalit people also do not wear this sacred thread so whoever is doing this scan isn't familiar with India or probably this part is made up in the article.

That said, I know that it's much harder for a dalit person to progress in India as the society still tries to pull them behind. Indian govt has reservations in colleges and jobs for dalit community, which I believe has helped the community a lot in last 50 years or so, helping many to bring their families out of poverty. But, still there's a long way to go. Also, a long way to go for non-dalit community to abolish this discrimination.

My heart goes with our dalit brothers & sisters and glad to hear that their issues are being discussed in silicon valley as well now.

thweori234234• 4 years ago

Actually, Sai Deepak mentions that 15% of those classified as SC/STs also wear the sacred thread. Of course, we know 'Shudras' have run empires in India and have held high status before the age of colonialism.

Unsuprising that the Western press and academia has the nuance of a brick, perhaps because their own history is so grotesquely checkered.

ir1232• 4 years ago

This is extremely misleading and a copout to suggest that even SC/STs wear the thread. Reality is that 99.99% of them don't.

I wouldn't trust Sai Deepak with anything, he's a nut job who for some reason sounds eloquent to the upper class Hindus.

RichardCA• 4 years ago

Unsuprising that the Western press and academia has the nuance of a brick, perhaps because their own history is so grotesquely checkered.

There will always be an element of the intangible in any effort by the Western mind to understand India. The experience is one of irreducible complexity, the subject receding from attempts to form a mental framework that permits nuanced understanding.

This documentary is 50 years old. Nothing has changed.

https://youtu.be/XFGO8oL0RLk

pm906• 4 years ago

I have also never heard of this sort of patting shoulder behavior but I think we have to accept it as a truth if it’s something being reported by many people.

Caste and class divisions run very deep in South Asian culture. I’m disappointed that even in tech where workers are generally highly educated this is something that continues to exist (please: I’m not talking about the necessity of a college education to be a good engineer, that’s another conversation. I’m pointing out that most tech jobs require a college education, in many cases Grad School education).

nindalf• 4 years ago

Why the alleged patting behaviour seems unlikely - even if it worked, it would only tell you if the person is a member of the relatively few castes that wear that.

ThinkingAgain2• 4 years ago

Indeed the children introducing themselves in US with their caste is a thing to be highlighted from the article. Really feel bad about what we are teaching our kids. I am in India not in US, but did not expect this even in India today.

strikelaserclaw2• 4 years ago

That part feels fake to me, not only due to all other kids being brahmin (which statistically from my experience as an Indian American feels very off), but most Indian Americans don't really care that much about caste, most know it but they don't know enough to be "proud" of it.

mama12311• 4 years ago

Much of what the English speaking elite in India & much of the west consumes as a theory on caste is a handiwork of a colonial-evangelist mission.

So much of it has to be taken with a boatload of salt. Since it is politically incorrect to challenge the established views, one simply has to rely on ones own observation. Especially if they are missing the woods for the trees on these debates.

It is very much in line with the western debates on race inequality, feminism or gender pronouns. Those claiming to fight these inequalities, intentionally or unintentionally create more fissures and distrust.

And unlike the western world where there has been a systemic slavery or persecution of indigenous population, in India there are literally thousands of castes and not always a clear idea of hierarchy. The hierarchy was mostly an academic theory built on flimsy propaganda.

Also the very same people who see privilege among sections of the Hindus are completely blind to the privilege of Christians or Muslims, considering that large parts of India have been under Islamic and Christian colonisation for several centuries. And Hindus have faced the same kind of violence from these two groups as much of the rest of the world.

In a way caste might have been the social glue that allowed the indigenous people to put up a fight and maintain their Hindu identity.

There is a strong correlation between caste and economic mobility & urbanisation. The ones who preserve their caste the most are ones who can gain some privileges in the form of vote banks, social security or class benefits, this easily excludes 90% of the urban educated masses.

In a country of 1.4 billion, sure there are large swathes of population still behest with the caste problem, but also in a country where 1/3 of the people are malnourished and have stunted growth, caste is hardly the biggest problem and might actually be a evolved social survival mechanism.

dash22• 4 years ago

That’s all very well but it’s pretty obvious that Dalits get a raw deal in India, and if you don’t think so, then you may just be kidding yourself. Equally, if you think of Muslims as “privileged” under the current BJP government, you need a reality check.

strikelaserclaw2• 4 years ago

same thing with the children in that kids class all saying they were Brahmin, even in silicon valley where there are a ton of Brahmins, i doubt they make up the majority of Indians.

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

I would like non-Indian people to know that the caste problem is not uniformly distributed throughout India.

In cities like Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai- the problem is non-existent.

The problem is much more rampant in Northern parts of India. This region is the American south without the good parts.

This region ranks the highest in the country for foeticide of girl children. Because the society is deeply patriarchal.

Honor killing, i.e. killing your own daughter or sibling for marrying outside caste is rampant.

This region also votes in high numbers for divisive-policy holders.

In other regions of India, the problem is much less visible.

In Bengal, where I come from, I have never seen casteism. Inter-caste marriage is rampant. Yes, castiest assholes exist everywhere. But many don't care- or care only when it comes to marriage.

I belong neither to a so-called "upper caste" nor I am a Dalit.

Caste-based discrimination is minimal in here.

Ambedkar is a venerable intellectual even if you completely disregard his caste identity and fights for Dalits. As a non-Dalit, I have deep respects for him- just as an intellectual, a nerd.

What did away with caste mostly is colonialism. Colonialism attacks your way of living, and casteism is an Indian way of living. The places where British rule was consolidated, you will see much less casteism in those places.

Casteism is not a new problem. Buddha faught against it two millenias ago.

Do NOT listen to Hindus who say that casteism has nothing to do with Hinduism. Hindu scriptures such as Manu Smriti, Parashara Smriti, Yajnabalka Smriti are ripe with casteism.

Even in the Mahabharata, it is said that capital punishment or holding is not apt for a Brahmin criminal. The most that can be done is banishing them.

In Magadha Empire of the Mauryas, Kautilya suggests death penalty for Dalits who go to bed with a Brahmin woman. The opposite carries little punishment.

And many foreigners are wondering whether asking about one's village is risky. I will say that it depends.

In colonial strongholds, the villages are less segregated. And history takes place.

Bengal was a stronghold of Buddhism during the Pala Empire. The staunch Brahmin Sen kingdom brought Brahmins from other Indian places and sent them to each village to "save" the masses.

So, in a Bengali village, there are Brahmins as well as other people.

And also local identity. Suppose, there is a village called "Mohanpur" or "Krishnagunj"- nobcaste identity here. But if there's a village called "Mahargaon", you know that it consists of Mahar sub-caste. That gives the identity away.

It is also not true as many claim that most Brahmins do not wear threads. Only modern-minded, reformist kind of people give up thread. I have at least three Brahmin friends who gave up the thread. One of them is a Communist. So you get the picture!

There is also a modern form of casteism due to the affirmative action policy.

An SC person, no matter how rich or privileged, gets lucrative benefits. That draws hatred towards them. For example, to get in a Chemistry major course of a very prestigious college, an Unreserved caste person needed 94 in chemistry. But an SC person needed only 59 (out of hundred). That college is very expensive though. Frustrated mediocres of Unreserved caste hate on the reserved people for this. (The very good ones get in despite the reservation).

In government employment or higher education, an SC person gets five fold advantage-

1. Age relaxation for five or more years. Say, 25 is the ceiling for others, but 30 for SC.

2. Cutoff marks in qualifying test is much lower.

3. Eligibility is marked off at 60% in college/HS for others, but 45% for SC.

4. Number of attempts is uncapped or much higher.

5. Even if you get through reservation, your reservation again applies when promotion is sought.

All this, no matter how rich you are.

This irks people. I had no such issues since I never suffered from reservation personally. But I know people who have. E.g.- a friend could not qualify for medical school despite getting 500+/720 in the entrance, but a much richer SC person got in a very good one at 400+/720. The former would need 650+/720 to get in the same school.

This fuels modern casteism that I see in Bengal.

I absolutely abhor the idea of caste. And just like the person in the article, I am no longer a Hindu. I despise all systems where you are marked off at your birth. Became an athiest at 16, and gave up Hinduism at 19.

Many households do not care about casteism now.

Many are hopeful, that with younger generations, casteism will automatically die out. But I am not so hopeful. I regularly meet young casteists.

You should know that the Hindu Nationalistic BJP/RSS cabal has been trying very hard to get Dalit votes by calling them Hindus and forming a pseudo-unity against Muslims.

Mass converting out of Hinduism to Christianity, Buddhism, and even Islam is common to irk the Brahmin overlords of society.

You should also know that casteism is common in SC people and OBC (Other Backward Classes- a government term to classify people who are higher than Dalits in Hindu hierarchy but "lower" than upper castes). They do not like people marrying outside of their caste.

You should also know that casteism is designed rather than natural.

And these people in the SV are lucky. Their counterparts in North Indian villages suffer a much worse fate.

I will monitor this thread, and ask me questions if you want.

throwabcd1232• 4 years ago

what would you say if we keep reservation as such and make caste self declared?

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

That would be impractical. And the results of this cannot be perceived now.

But I believe that more communities will seek to be the "lower castes" because there will be benefits.

And, as more and more people will be in the SCs, the benefits will not mean anything anymore becasue everyone will get equal opportunities.

And I am not talking purely speculatively. There were mass movements of certain communities for them to be in the OBCs. They were Unreserved before. Like the Patels in Gujarata, and Jats in Haryana. So, people actually wanted to go from "General" to "Other Backwards Class" to get benefits in employment and higher ed.

Before state elections, incumbent governments promise to communities that they will be included in the OBCs if they win.

In this way, the benefits do get diluted. When a lot of people get same benefits, they are not much of benefits anymore.

This has happened with OBCs.

If the same happens with SCs, then that will be interesting to watch.

And Dalit is not merely caste anymore. It is also people's identity. I would think that many would be opposed to leaving it behind.

I think the people from upper castes other than Brahmins will be quite eager to call themselves Brahmin. Although, not more than few. The race will be towards the bottom.

The people who actually need the help will suffer.

zozbot2345• 4 years ago

It seems misleading to call Smriti "scripture" in the sense that's understood in the West. They're texts/literature connected to religion in some loose sense but encompass all sorts of subjects, are full of contradictory claims, and were never seen as exempt from criticism and revision, particularly over long spans of time and changing social customs. Nobody here is denying that some Hindus have historically endorsed and practiced caste discrimination; the meaningful debate is whether these things are representative of Hinduism itself, as in the religion and belief system.

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

No it is not.

Then Ramayana and Mahabharata aren't scriptures, too.

Smritis are definitely scripture.

And yes, there were dissenters.

And no, not of only some Hindus, the casteism was systematic.

I have reletives in a small town, and my uncle remembers that in every wedding receptions and funerals brahmins ate first and no one else was allowed to eat together with them.

Only after brahmins had finished, people from other castes could begin eating.

This is Bengal, and only 50 years ago and less.

aatharuv• 4 years ago

One comment -- in India, there is theoretically the concept of the "creamy layer", sufficiently rich individuals cannot benefit from reservations, though in practice I don't know how well that is implemented.

Another thing is that casteism is _not_ limited to Hinduism in India. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Look at the matrimonial sections of Indian newspapers -- there are Christians who explicitly look for a Nadar (a caste from Tamil Nadu which has become prosperous in the past century), a Christian Saraswat Brahmin (a caste from Western India including Goa, where the Portuguese only allowed native Christians of Brahmin origin to be Roman Catholic priests).

Sikhs have castes mirroring Hindu castes, even though their religion is explicitly against the caste system.

Indian Muslims have a different caste system, with people claiming an Arab, Persian and Turkish ancestor (and sometimes people of high-caste Hindu origin), at the top, and people of Dalit origin at the bottom.

throwaway_2819• 4 years ago

"Creamy layer" only applies to OBCs and not SCs.

SCs have no ceiling of income to qualify for benefits.

I know about casteism in other religions. But the scale is nowhere near to that of Hinduism.

And yes, even for the OBCs, it is very badly implemented.

Only people on salary (government or private) face restriction since they can't fake income. I know plenty business owners and farmer who are well above the ceiling but continue to take benefits.

OBC benefits are not much anyway. Because there are too many people in that class.

I am very happy for how it ended for Siddhant and pretty sure that he deserves all the best in this world. However to me a package of 450K as an individual contributor seems completely out of reality. I really don't get it. The fact that the same engineering skillset can be paid 450K in USA and peanuts in India (or any other country for what matters) seems to me a huge market distortion. Would like to understand more about why this is happening and how this can be sustainable.

skynetv2• 4 years ago

I have been working in SV for over 25 years now. I have never once seen anyone discriminating on caste. Having said that, I know of a couple of a people who have either completely avoided using their last names or took up new last names. I haven't seen it happening personally but people are still taking precautions to not get persecuted.

rhuru• 4 years ago

Most of the time you look deeply these stories are coming from Hinduphobic think tanks eventually funded by Islamist and/or evangelists. SONIA PAUL the writer is probably funded by the same Bangladeshi group that funded the fake Cisco caste lawsuite.

TulliusCicero3• 4 years ago

He agonized, immensely, that other members of the Indian diaspora might turn on him for promoting “anti-Hindu hatred,” a term whose critics argue is a form of doublespeak—a way to use racial and religious protections to deflect scrutiny from caste.

Wow, the article really called it when it comes to deflections like this.

pl0x• 4 years ago

Indians and Asians are some of the most racist people I have worked with as a trans. They are more concerned about what your genitals are than the work you can do. They are especially racist to those who identify as black, latinx, and womxn.

rando827• 4 years ago

This seems to indicate discrimination is done by upper castes only. The reality is that everyone discriminates might be same for other religions in India. I am from what they call other backward caste. If you speak my relatives/community they don't like brahmins thinking as if they are superior to us. But they in turn think they are superior to other castes below them!. You don't hear much about other castes since its easy to abuse brahmins they don't have much legal power to fight back. While criticizing other castes can put you in jail.

rramadass• 4 years ago

Jeez, this thread is a dumpster fire!

The article is more Paranoia than Fact in today's context.

What may have been true is earlier generations has largely disappeared in Urban areas and in particular; in the IT industry. Everybody just wants a good paying job and a decent life, nobody bothers much about Caste.

techzerd• 4 years ago

The Pat on the shoulder to feel something sounded as ridiculous as it was written and I quite couldn't get myself to read the entire article. Never seen this in any place in the tech community in North America. I don't disagree that some bias may exist but the example borders on disillusional.

foolinaround• 4 years ago

It is interesting that most here say they have not noticed this, when the caste system is pervasive in the US.I guess this is because it is not as egregious as it used to be, and this makes everyone feel better.

Any Indian that comes to mind, and you could bet that he/she is from an upper caste. It is hidden only because it is sort of accepted, and thats not a good thing.

xtat• 4 years ago

Fully expected this to be about SV's shitty deal /ponziesque living/vc situation but I guess Wired does Wired. (Not saying they are remotely wrong about any of this.)

Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system

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