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.

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.

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.

Nigerian immigrants outperform most domestic US groups. So clearly "skin color" isn't the main factor (if at all).

Would your retort be "but Jamaicans who've won multiple gold medals in sprinting are wealthier than most Americans?"

People who smoke are more likely to get lung cancer.

Would your retort be "13 year olds who smoke have less incidents of lung cancer than the non-smoking population?"

If you subsample enough, you'll find outliers. That doesn't invalidate general trends/statistics.

E.g. age is important for lung cancer as well as smoking. Only when controlling for age do you get correct estimate about the danger of smoking.

What other variables does "Nigerian immigrants" introduce besides skin color and culture? The latter is eliminated by most US sociologists that keep screaming "it's not about culture!" so only race remains...

When you say "outperform most domestic US groups", are you normalising for the same skillset and education levels?

Perhaps a source to accompany your statement will help shed some light.

- Wealth upon entry (If all Nigerian immigrants come from millionaire families, then it doesn't matter if they're underpaid; they'll be far wealthier than most Americans)

- Location (If all Nigerian immigrants live in New York City, then the effect size of being underpaid can be masked by the higher income (and cost of living) in New York City)

- Profession/Job Title (if all Nigerian immigrants are neurosurgeons, then it doesn't matter if they're underpaid; they'll be way above average income)

- Age (if all Nigerian immigrants are older, then they'll have had more time to generate skills/wealth, which could mask the effect of being underpaid)

- Health (if all Nigerian immigrants are healthy, then the effect of being underpaid could be masked by the fact that many Americans are less productive due to health issues)

There are obviously more confounders, but doing an analysis using these would be a good place to start to actually answer the question.

I read it as the types of hardships and barriers that, say, a US descendant of slaves faces can be very different from a Nigerian immigrant, and that's one problem with lumping everyone with the same skin color together as "Black" when calculating diversity metrics.

This is very true. Most of the time when people think they're talking about race, they're actually talking about culture, which happens to be a much trickier concept. The Nigeria example, for instance, is an inconvenient truth that doesn't mesh well with the dominant race-essentialist narrative right now, so it typically gets ignored or outright dismissed.

I don't understand how this is still such a difficult concept for people.

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.

Make a policy with respect to nepotism and discrimination, include a representative from other organizational groups in the interview process and be attentive to following policy.

You also have to be aware of culture issues and manage them without being a jerk. If you hire managers with background/experience whose norms are not inline with your culture you need to manage that. A McKinsey alum, a former outsourcing manager, and a web agency manager are going to have different positive and negative biases.

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.

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

“Conflict of interest” is when someone has a clearly defined interest, usually in something of value, that opposes the interests of someone they have a duty towards.

In ethnic prejudice, there’s no clearly defined interest.

I know this sounds pedantic. But when a conflict of interest arises, the next questions are “when did it begin?”, “when will it end?”, “how big was it?”, and “can we mitigate it somehow?”

You can’t do any of those things with ethnic bias.

Ethnic bias is bad, but it’s not a conflict of interests.

> Ethnic bias is bad, but it’s not a conflict of interests.

Okay, so - for sure, if you're from an opposite "frictioned background" and you can interview someone neutrally, you should be able to.

But if you have an ethnic prejudice, you literally have an interest against the person you are interviewing.

> But when a conflict of interest arises, the next questions are “when did it begin?”, “when will it end?”, “how big was it?”, and “can we mitigate it somehow?”

(one example) > when did it begin?

hundreds of years ago

> when will it end?

not soon

> how big was it?

the US literally fought an entire war over it

> can we mitigate it somehow

Yes, by having a variety of people from different backgrounds interview the candidate.

That wasn't that hard, was it?

The original comment by throwaway_dcnt -- "Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese." -- doesn't make any qualifications. I read it the same way that icelancer seems to: they make the determination themselves, assuming it's going to be a problem without actually establishing that it will be. If that is the case, that is literally racism.

For example, employees are required to declare a conflict of interest. Declaring ethnic bias is a firable offense.

Imagine a mostly white business in rural Georgia where all the employees have declares they have racial bias against Black people.

As a result, they avoid hiring Black people because they don’t trust they can fairly evaluate their skills.

Realistically if you applied normal conflict of interest rules, it would be very hard to make a company more diverse.

It seems absurd to declare a-priori that “no Indian shall be the unsupervised leader of a Pakistani (nor vice-versa) because that’s a conflict of interest”.

> 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 is the strawman?

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.

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.

I disagree. The phrasing you used implied that you believed the United States did not already have a caste system and that foreigners were bringing it to the US. This is factually incorrect since the US always had a very strict caste system pretty much from the inception of the nation only repealed recently, and even then still functionally present.

Not sure what you want done there? Aren't you implying that the US is a caste-free system with the there?

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.

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?

I know plenty of tech companies that make sure female applicants get interviewed by at least one female engineer during the hiring process. They have a good faith belief this reduces discrimination rather than increasing it.

Of course, it could stray into discriminatory territory if you're doing something dumb - like sending all minority applicants to a hardass interviewer who rejects everyone; or giving certain employees a burdensome number of interviews on the basis of their race, at the cost of their other duties. But you should already be on top of issues like that anyway.

Usually once I join the one other woman leaves and the cycle repeats.

Yes, we have done this in the past with minorities...

Maybe a more generous interpretation is that people are flawed, and they're making an effort as imperfect as it is. I I feel the alternative is a catch-22, and everybody be damned regardless of the motive, effort, our outcome - nothing will be good enough.

Maybe it's not bad; but it's sexist. Just as it would be racist if the criteria was making sure one of the interviewers was of specific race or nationality.

"We must never substitute a doctrine of Black supremacy for white supremacy"

That's fair, but we're talking about ensuring that the interview process is not discriminatory. I.e. having some extra safeguards for marginalized people (safeguards which are not needed for those in power), a special process that you could maybe define akin to "positive discrimination" vs negative discrimination...

And MLK was totally in favour of that:

"society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro."

Most normal Americans, if asked to rank the statements "Black people are disgusting pigs", and "White people are disgusting pigs", would rank them as equally racist, regardless of whether white or black people have "power" in America.

It's not uncommon for words to have a technical meaning and a colloquial one. I don't see HN getting upset that "theory" is used differently by those awful academics compared to the common man.

This is an idiotic way to define racism that makes it completely subjective to give the wielding accuser of racism to be highly discriminatory while claiming not to be bad.

And some would argue that there are fairly objective ways to define "power"

Personally I'm on the fence about these definitions but it annoys me to see people dismiss them as "idiotic" without engaging with the level of serious thought that has been put into them by sincere people.

Disagree once you've spent a day or two surveying the subject. Or even an hour or two.

> And some would argue that there are fairly objective ways to define "power"

Funny how elusive these “objective ways” are when it comes to actually defining them.

Even if there were an objective way to define that power, it still doesn’t change how dumb and divisive the whole approach is of making asymmetric the criteria for being “racist”. It has enabled blatantly bigoted behavior by tons of people against downtrodden “majorities” and has done more to divide society than the segregation in the 60s.

> it's widespread in academia.

This is very damming to sociology and to associate it with “academia” is a disservice to people who practice the objective discovery of science.

“Yeah we know Pat’s a racist a-hole, but we fixed it by just not letting Pat interview people he’s racist against. It’s an elegant solution.”

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?

If that's your criteria, who can interview Germans without bias?

Though, yes, all the food is Greek and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Edit: corrected cypress misspelling. Thanks repliers!

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.

if you do the exhaustive listing probably no one can interview/manage anyone.

and this is before taking into account more finer grained ethnic/religious/cultural/social clashing differences.

  a) since such a cumbersome effort to weed out highly
  probable biases, that go unnoticed or unchecked, would
  likely be too prohibitively expensive for employers to
  undertake and hence any such lofty expectations should be
  done away with or 
  b) are you denying the possibility that such biases can
  exist in huge numbers in hiring & career growth decisions?

But the latter surely is wrong. It's just that no one wants to be the first to open that can of worms. Thats all.

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.

You'd think that a nation as varied as the US would know that.

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.

In this case, though, the biases are so apparent that these employees can't be expected to interact with other potential employees. If an employee's behavior is so abhorrent you have to work around them, they should be replaced.

Another way to think of it - I'm sure the company has language in it's employee handbook around non-discrimination. These employees are overtly violating this language. By letting them stay on and accommodating their behavior, a clear message is sent that they're not serious about non-discrimination.

Great - as a British person, this gets me out of conducting interviews entirely!

I was happy to move to the US in part because I was pretty tired if my home country.

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.

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.

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.

edit: actually I realized I'm not sure what you're saying..also I'm not sure I understand how you see what I describe as illegal, if you care to share more about how you feel about that, that might be cool :) :p xxx ;p

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.

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.

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...

What do you do with Bangladeshis. :D

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).

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

An excellent book on this subject.

Also passable isn't a think most people do these days. At least not since the 1960s where racial barriers were much higher. These days people of mixed heritage will most likely identify with the minority side of their heritage. (For many reasons).

As a Brazilian friend of mine once told me - Racial classification and categorization in the United States is just weird.

What exactly is the difference between the old concept of “passing” and the new concept of “identifying as white” other than nomenclature?

By the way I'm a person of Indian ancestry born and raised in the U.S. According to my grandparents, we're of lower caste as well. But no one has ever asked me what my caste is simply based on my last name. I'm not denying that casteism isn't a problem within the Indian diaspora. But it is entirely different societal problem within the United States compared to racism. In India , it might be similar to racism. But not the same in the U.S.

Let me put it this way - a person who hates all minorities or specific ethnic groups, isn't going to care what caste you belong into. He's going to hate you and the higher caste Indian person equally.

It's a bad argument.

Lots of people do do this. Aren't you aware of skin creams to whiten the skin, hair straightening products, eye lid surgeries, etc. The list goes on and on.

> then millions would be doing it and we wouldn't have all these problems

But those alone aren't enough. You need massive amounts of plastic surgery.

Financial cost is one but also the cost to one's identity.

But more importantly, millions of people wouldn't just throw away their identity. For this same reason, telling someone they can just change their last name is makes no sense.

> Race is immutable in most parts of the world.

Identity is just as immutable. You can tell someone to change their last name but that is about as effective as wearing different clothes. You cannot change a person's upbringing, how they were socialized, their memories, how they view the world. All of that is more or less set in stone from childhood.

You're better off getting plastic surgery. At least that will be effective.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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

It’s also why I’ve had to cut off contact with most if not all of my family who are of Indian origin. They play strange political games that I have no interest in participating. At the end of the day humans are tribal and it is this aspect which makes me hate a lot of people.

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

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

I am not denying the discrimination in the industry. It is the magnitude that I have my doubts on.

Caste issues are much more complex in my view. Feel free to disagree.

Imagine having two friends, one dirt poor and another fairly rich (but comes from a lower caste). Both appears in an entrance exams for the engineering degree. The poor score 99% but fails to make it but the rich dude who score 70% makes it to the college. He gets caste reservation.

One may say that reservation is is off topic but is it really? It is a lifelong reminder of who you are, to both the friends.

The poor friend who somehow makes it to the Silicon Valley, is often reminded of his caste privileges.

The rich lower caste friend, gets discriminated for his caste and economic privileges that others find undeserving.

There was a reddit thread that went super viral right after the SuperBowl (with zero data) about "demographics of people in the tv ads vs US demographics", and everyone was obsessing over how black people were vastly overrepresented versus their demographics... and STILL white people were also over-represented.

Don't kid yourself that just because you hear (or even experience) anecdotes of people belonging to the dominant group being "discriminated" against that it's the norm.

Simple - go try applying for jobs with a white-sounding versus a black-sounding name and see what happens.

And btw, this is literally what CRT is, and actual experts and academics have shown over and over and over again that the political systems are tilted against the non-dominant groups, even with the boogeyman of affirmative action.

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.

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.

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.

Their life is certainly far better than the muslims in Pakistan, so much so that many parts of Pakistan are revolting and claiming to want to reunite with India.

Whatever your claims of muslim persecution is mostly manufactured. In may ways the more radical elements are testing the limits of the patience of the citizens. I wish India would follow the west and start De-Arabising the muslim population, after all each community has their unique dress and culture.

I am a big admirer of Ali Anwar, founder of Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz. The hindu-muslim binary of the Indian poltics is the biggest issue lower caste muslims are facing today. Every issue is about Hindu and Muslim or Upper and Lower caste Hindus but None talks about the plight of the Dalit and Pasmanda lower caste Muslims.

I know I will get downvoted by upper caste ashrafs and sayeed muslims but this it the trusth. Cast matters, even if you are a muslim in India.

Lower caste pasmanda Muslims are not even allowed to bury their dead bodies with those of upper caste pure blood Muslims, who claim to be descendants of the prophet Mohammed.

Ali Anwar despite being a Muslim was in the JD(U)-BJP alliance in Bihar. BJP is a Hindu-nationalist party that also bought some progressive changes in the Muslim community. I don't like BJP but sometimes even the devil does the right thing, banning triple-talaq was one of such positive things done to uplift oppressed Muslim women.

The only ones who hate BJP are also the Ashraf ones, who are worried about loosing their privileges.

BJP is literally diametrically opposed to Muslims. There may be a lot of shit Mullahs, but at least some care.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/06/india-hate-cr...

“ In December, Uttar Pradesh police arbitrarily arrested 10 Muslim men under a law introduced by the Uttar Pradesh Government that targets consensual interfaith marriages, and allegedly tortured them. The legislation, which has been termed the “love jihad” law by right-wing nationalists and leading politicians, had not been approved by the Indian Parliament or the state legislature.”

“ The government accused members of the Muslim Tablighi Jamaat minority of spreading COVID-19, and as a result, health care facilities denied access to Muslims. Instances of hospitals refusing Muslim pregnant women and cancer patients surfaced in April 2020. In the months following the nationwide lockdown of March, social media and WhatsApp groups were flooded with calls for social and economic boycotts of Muslims, alongside fake news stories and other misinformation.”

https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/sou...

And more. But why multiply examples?

Many countries in "liberal" Europe have banned the hijab.

Amnesty is not a reliable source of anything.

When India bans namaz on the streets and hijab which I think it should, perhaps you can come back and make these complaints.

Islamists fear of BJP & Hindus might very well be true, since they are incapable of feeling guilt having killed or ethnically cleansed millions of Hindus from their homeland in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Kashmir, at least fear will keep them in check.

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).

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

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

This is incorrect. I can vouch this is a relatively common practice in Maharashtra.

> Deepak mentions that 15% of those classified as SC/STs also wear the sacred thread

My point is that this is incorrect.

edit: asking this question to clarify since the other reply(ies) take this as a given.

This is true for any demagogues btw. It’s why Jordan Peterson appeals so much to upper class White Americans.

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

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.

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.

His answer could mean two things, and which one it is depends more on his race than yours.

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)

It is like saying "an asian hiring another asian" while completely ignoring any sub-groups. "White men" are more diverse than you think and have only in modern times put things like hibernophobia behind us.

These are hard questions and the nuance is not obvious to everyone. For example some people think my group (Arabs) all share common culture even though this is not true.

I think to be able to genuinely change things, we have to be careful about calling other racist. I will be the first to admit I am an ignorant. I think we're all ignorant about something.

https://www.tiktok.com/@tizzyent/video/6881703506558848262?l...

The first few seconds of the linked video cover this. I encourage you to watch it.

Effectively, there is not a strong equivalence between the categorization of white vs. black in terms of origin. Whites typically weren't forced to move to North America and have their home cultures stripped from them through generations of slavery. This is why you find things like German Heritage celebrations or St. Patrick's Day, etc. You don't see Yoruba Heritage celebrations, etc. Further, the definition of "white" has grown over time to incorporate Irish, Italian, Slavic, etc. African heritage has persisted as a secondary class of citizens or worse in US history.

That is what is meant by stripped heritage. It really isn't schizophrenic. A white person could use the census and other tools to trace their roots successfully, further. A black person can and often does hit a dead end much quicker. We all come from somewhere -- knowing one's history can be helpful medically and for personal worldview.

Should a person be solely where their ancestors originated? I don't think so. But it does matter, in the same way the OP article on caste matters, in hundreds to thousands of small interactions over the course of every day life. I highly recommend Dr. Painter's The History of White People. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_White_People

As someone who is a first generation immigrant to the new world who went back to the old country I disagree with the idea that whites in the new world have specific regional/cultural European roots. They are far detached and most of the examples you mention are merely imitations or money grab celebrations. With genetic testing it is possible to locate where they originate from approximately, same with African originators, but I really don't see how this origin point means anything after hundreds of years across the Atlantic. A white American calling themselves 1/8 irish, 3/8 italian, and 4/8 french, is as ridiculous in my mind as an African American calling themselves 1/8 kenyan, 3/8 angolan, and 4/8 congolese. I agree with you that the African Americans are treated as lesser in the American society, but in many ways they have way more in common with the average white American then they do with the very diverse and foreign "black cultures". And likewise for the white Americans with the diverse and foreign "white cultures". My point is that if you believe in the existence of one, then the existence of the other comes as well, alternatively we could do away with the separation between black and white in America altogether and consider the people there to just be Americans, as people who left the old world for opportunity in the new world, which imo is where American society is trending towards overall (But will still take a long time and a lot of effort to achieve).

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

Surname change was to avoid revealing caste. No appropriation of "lower caste" to get favorable quota.

I have no evidentiary way to conclude if change ended up helping me or not. I just never had to face caste based discrimination.

I shared the experience, so folks on this forums come out knowing more than what is typically seen in media.

No rhetoric. There is no denying, that problem is real.

The problem of people from dominant castes facing discrimination on the basis of their surnames is wholly imaginary.

Is just the first step. Bribing the right authorities is next.

> Otherwise millions of people would be turning into lower castes

How do you know they aren't already?

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

Outrage, I would say.

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?

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