Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies
npr.org
npr.org
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 (358 points/4 months ago/606 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 (84 points/3 months ago/58 comments)
I'm not endorsing the idea of "isolated incidents" in general! But you can look at data to show that disparities in how certain groups are treated--e.g. employers being less willing to call back candidates with "Black" names on their resume. But extrapolating from the Cisco lawsuit to a narrative about a larger problem in Silicon Valley can have ugly consequences. It can be flipped around to broadly paint Indians who are in leadership positions in Silicon Valley in a bad light.
>In 2016, Equality Labs conducted the first survey on caste discrimination in the United States, helmed by Dr. Maari Zwick Maitreyi and myself. Surveying more than 1,500 respondents, we uncovered a problem that was much larger than we expected: One in four Dalits surveyed reported facing physical and verbal assault, one in three faced educational discrimination, and two in three workplace discrimination.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58347d04bebafbb1e66df...
Could be the same here. Say that in 1/100 of interactions between a upper and lower caste there is some form of discrimination, regardless the intensity. I'm too tired to do the math, but it seems reasonable that would lead to a high percentage of people ending up answering yes to a "have you ever been discriminated" question.
That’s the kind of pictures I have in the books I mentioned in the earlier comment. The British census takers would go village to village..they were obsessed with the angle of the nose and how flat it was up the face. To them these aboriginal features and skin colour were the basis of caste division.
And this wasn’t at all true. The Vedas divided people on the basis of their nature and their dharma or work or duty to society was based on their temperament. A weak vegetarian Brahmin who was keen to learn numbers and had the aptitude for math isn’t going to be riding horses and wield weapons to fight and die for the country. That was the job of the Kshatriyas. The divisions were there so there is a corps of people who did the best acc to their abilities. Was it perfect? No. Did they inter marry and also strive to live the best life exploiting the resources they had as well as their positions. Yes. But like a goat on a leash..they had a radius of free movement but were tethered by social restriction. A Vaishya could never be a king and a shudra could never become a priest. But neither could the king live without the Indian equivalent of democeles sword over his head nor could the Brahmin enjoy creature comforts. The system had nothing to do with the British understanding of caste which was racial.
Then they super imposed their understanding of race over the caste system. And this was patently ridiculous. The world’s understanding of caste system as promulgated by the British doesn’t resemble what is in the texts or what was in practice before they came along. Guess what happened to the all the ‘lower classes’? They converted to Christianity because the missionaries were always standing..waiting in the wings.
This is not to say that there weren’t terrible things that happened in India. We don’t crucify all black people because of a few criminals. We don’t crucify all whites people for the racism of a few. Not all homeless people are drug addicts. We don’t call all men rapists because of Harvey Weinstein. All Germans are not Nazis. Caste discrimination is not a Hindu blot. In all of the above cases, it was ‘humans behaving badly’.
I am blown away every time by how the uneducated untraveled masses are willing to believe second hand accounts of a colonizing power that reluctantly left a country that single handedly overfilled the coffers and granaries of The Empire.
Why is the victim being shamed and the rapist account being taken as gospel? Because the sick fucks went around villages and measured peoples noses like they are cattle and published their understanding of what it means to them first before Indians could master English ..you know in the past 70 years after freedom...to protest all the lies?
The evidence for this happening is poor. I have dozens of Indian friends who have been in the US for three decades, and they've never heard of it either. It could still be happening, of course, but the case for it would be more real if there was one actual case of a company or government censuring someone for it.
To be clear, this story got legs specifically because California is bringing a case against Cisco for caste-related discrimination. So the government is certainly trying to censure someone for it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24953219
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24953346
But what can you do.
The main thing I think the article got wrong is this:
> they're often clever attempts to find out something very specific
I don't think they are "clever" attempts. People aren't that clever, in general. It's very possible that people are just used to asking these very normal questions out of habit (e.g. "are you vegetarian" is a perfectly normal question to ask before going to lunch with someone, to factor that in your suggestions of places to eat). It's just that they may be subconsciously deriving further biases based on the answers instead of taking the answers at face value. If, for example, someone not being vegetarian was originally just a benign question to go out to lunch together, but later subconsciously causes the manager to not give them that promotion, that would be discrimination, and I can't say for sure that that doesn't happen.
This sounds like a white male talking to other white males assumes that racism is not seen anywhere
It doesn't prove anything one way or the other, but it is the exact same rhetorical strategy.
She tells an anecdote about visiting a conference in India on caste and even though the reason everyone was there was to discuss ways to undo the effects of the caste system, she was able to see effects of the system right there in the conference by how various participants interacted with each other. It was so ingrained to the participants that they didn’t realize they were doing it. It was small things like how one person would yield to another during conversation.
Interesting listen.
https://www.vox.com/2020/8/25/21399479/caste-the-warmth-of-o...
Caste is the way of life in the Indian society. Segregation and discrimination is so normalized that it needs an outsider to point that out.
Sadly Muslims were not much better in this regard and created their own caste system of sorts, with descendants of foreign invaders given more status than descendants of local converts (Afghan good, Middle Eastern better), who were assumed to be low-caste fleeing oppression for that specific reason. I've heard the same from a Christian Indian from Mangalore. Perhaps that's why Dr. Ambedkar opted for Buddhism rather than Islam or Christianity as his recommended path forward for the Dalits (former untouchables).
I know you're saying this in a bit of an off the cuff manner, but there is a lot more to the history of Bangladesh than you were letting on, and even in a joking manner it kinda contributes to this idea that Islam was this great emancipatory force in Bangladesh, which is...a bit reductionist. The idea that Bengal is historically a nation of low-caste Indians is 100% not the case. Bengal's distinct identity goes back to the Vedic period of 1500BC - 500BC.
Its historic wealth predates Mughal era Bengal when Islam was introduced, and relates back to its historically rich breadbasket/river delta land and strategic placement as a thalossocracy very well placed along the maritime section of the Silk Road. Secondly, caste has always been somewhat complicated, and has a long history of systematically resistance in the Dharmic tradition in Bengal. That pertains to the historical development of Buddhism in the Maurya and Pala empires. To say it was "low-caste Indians" who converted to Islam to get out of the caste system that created the identity of "Bangladeshi" rather than competing ideological traditions (pro-Brahminical Old Vedic religion vs anti-Brahminical Buddhism) is really white-washing things. Islam's interaction with greater South Asian religion and philosophy was a lot more syncretic than that. By the time it had gotten there, there were already existing religios traditions that had begun to explore an idea of a religion without caste against religion through caste.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/untouchability-high-...
I asked you how often you get asked for your caste, which you did not answer. I have a few very visibly brahmin colleagues. When we work together, they don't discriminate against any of my colleagues or me. When we go for team outings, they don't go to restaurant kitchens and ask the cooks and waiters for their caste, and more often than not, the restaurant serves meat.
You have been so internalized into the caste system that you count only explicit and physically hurting ones as forms of discrimination. You are either incredibly privileged possibly a Brahmin or you're ignorant so much that you deny the suffering of more than a billion people as outright false!!
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9873/w9873...
So we don’t really have a standard for perceiving an issue, only acknowledging an area ripe for abuse and aiming to mitigate it.
I don't know enough about the issue in the article to determine how widespread it is - but I don't think it is fair to compare them.
> "To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone."
> The Court supported this conclusion with citations—in a footnote, not the main text of the opinion—to a number of psychological studies that purported to show that segregating black children made them feel inferior and interfered with their learning.
I think that in general if a bunch of people say they're experiencing a problem than that's enough evidence that there is really a problem. But the Civil Rights movement did have objective factual support from the beginning.
Also caste determines my job, education, wealth, where I live, where I pray, who I marry and many more.
There are ways to find it from the ornaments and things, clothes you wear. It would be simply called 'tradition'. Caste segregation is the way of life here in India and there are so many different and easy ways to figure out another Indian's caste.
To my knowledge there is no correlation to place of birth. While there may be statistical differences in the distribution of characteristics such as say skin colour among communities which I am unaware of, you will find a reasonable representation of all physiognomies? in each community.
(Speaking of, do all Sikhs count as Kshatriyas? Even the farmers in Punjab and Haryana? So confusing...)
Nobody seems to ask this question about the apparently rampant racism in the US.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not, but in case you're not from the US and genuinely confused about this... there are mountains of data on systemic racism precisely because it's one of the biggest questions. Academic journals are full of answers, not to mention endless books.
For example, if key individuals in certain positions hold the prejudices, it can have a systematic effect, since they have a lot of influence on the design of the systems in place and can easily create an unfair distribution of other people in charge/not in charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#During_B...
(edit: why not read the Wikipedia article, it's a matter of fact)
It definitely is. They made it rigid (and potentially even made up parts of it - it's hard to tell exactly since the brits kept the records...) and enforced it in law as a part of their usual divide and conquer/put a a selected minority on top so they're loyal to you strategy (like [edit: Belgians] likely did in Rwanda). And now you've got a ton of Indians parroting stuff about caste that's not even obviously a an original pre-colonial part of Indian culture in any obvious way.
Even the section in the vedas about castes/varnas coming from different parts of the body doesn't have 100% scholarly consensus of being original[0]. It's a mess.
There were indeed lots of kingdoms, a whole continent's worth, but for the most part I didn't think the political units much influenced the rules of these things, aside from sometimes incentivising conversion to islam. I don't think there was anything like the european squabbles over who gets to be pope, or whether your country's church follows him, because there's no idea of centralised doctrinal command like that.
ETA: my book collection is in my indian library but I do have one here. It’s called ‘The Village Gods of South India’. By “The Right Reverend Henry Whitehead”, Bishop of Madras. Printed 1921. And I have no words to actually articulate to give a book review. Printed by YMCA, Calcutta. The secondary agenda of latter British Raj was to completely dismantle the Hindu society and introduce Christianity in a nation of millions. I paid stupid money to buy this copy..it was the last one I actually bought and that’s why I have it with me here. The money would have been better spent on porn..at least, it would have supported a good publication that was created for social benefit. this particular book is admirably restrained and relatively polite.. Altho still offensive and laughable at the same time.. but I am sure various versions of other British abominations are available online or on scribd for free. How the British saw India and how they portrayed it. And then it’s like lighting a match after pouring petrol over an entire nation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48619734 : even auntie beeb continues with the lies. The varna system is never mentioned in the vedas and Brahma is NOT from where the castes came and Manu did not write about it.
The four divisions of man came from a poem called Purusha Suktam that explains the beginning of the universe. Purusha ..the cosmic begin before any creation began sacrificed itself to create the universe, the four kinds of man, birds, animals, plants, mountains and even himself again.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purusha_Sukta
Further..the same concept and imagery appears elsewhere in far away Persia in Zoroastrian texts about a similar cosmic being that became other life forms and the universe itself
[...] The Purusha Sukta is mirrored directly in the ancient Zoroastrian texts, found in the Avesta Yasna and the Pahlavi Denkard. There, it is said that the body of man is in the likeness of the four estates, with priesthood at the head, warriorship in the hands, husbandry in the belly, and artisanship at the foot. Nevertheless, it remains to be established that the Indian and Pahlavi texts reflect inherited common beliefs, rather than independent developments. Hence, making a later insertion unlikely.[..]
The Cow’s Lament can be read in the Avesta and Gathic texts. The Sacrifice is primary and this can be seen in other religious myth too. In Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac. That’s when the covenant of the Israelites to G_d is created and why they were ‘chosen’. The sacrifice required was of the idols and the gods..one was in the shape of the bull..of canan and Ur.. Even in Egyptian myth. It is central to ALL religious mythology. Syncretism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavaevodata
[..] The primordial beast is killed in the creation myth, but from its marrow, organs and cithra[a] the world is repopulated with animal life. The soul of the primordial bovine – geush urvan – returned to the world as the soul of livestock. Although geush urvan is an aspect of the primordial bovine in Zoroastrian tradition, and may also be that in the Younger Avesta, the relationship between the two is unclear in the oldest texts.[..]
And FTR Uganda was a 'Protectorate' not a colony, though I'm not sure what difference it makes.
Dead british are to blame for setting it in motion, and everyone who reinforces today is also to blame, for keeping it alive. There's plenty of blame to spread around for something as messed up as caste discrimination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Commonwea...
But ultimately you are correct. India's problem isn't with dead british people, it's ultimately with their traitorous elites who sold out and rejoined the british empire rather than fostering a bit of nationalism and progress in their own country. How can any nation succeed when their elites would rather be subjects of another state than independent leaders of their own people. It's not just political leaders, it's their business/cultural/academic leaders as well. It's insane that india, a country with 1.4 billion people and a civilization stretching back millenia, is still part of the british empire. You think the chinese would let hong kong back into the british empire let alone join wholesale?
India should have done what south korea did after ww2. Completely separate from their former colonial masters and demand reparations and used that money to develop. But I guess it's kind of hard to demand reparations when you willingly rejoin your colonial master. They could have followed japan's example. They could have even followed china's example. Anything would have probably led to better outcomes.
Instead, they just wasted the past 75 years doing what? Playing "commonwealth" games? While hundreds of millions of indians have no electricity. No toilets.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-01-24/living-in...
By any logic, india should be a permanent member in the security council as india represents 20% of humanity. It should be a major economic power. It should be a major world player. Instead it's a lowly member of the british empire. You would think india of all nations should be working to dismantle it, not perpetuate it. How can india be part of the security council ( a leading nation ) when it is part of the "commonwealth"? Would anyone take france, russia or china ( other security council members ) seriously if they were part of the british empire?
Is there any nation that has failed to reach its potential more than india? And by doing so caused so much human misery just by the sheer size of its population? Not only was it shocking to learn that the "british empire" still exists, it was even more shocking to learn that india was still part of it. I just don't get it.
The more efficiently we allocate resources, the more we lift people out of poverty around the globe. Increasing marketplace efficiency is the headline story of the last 100 years of human history.
Billions of people are now living indoors with electricity, have running water, reliable food supply chains, and are killing each other less due to marketplace efficiency.
You won’t hear that story on the news of course.
But it wasn't Russia. It was China. And China did it by privatizing and opening up its markets to capitalism (and by capturing the subsequent efficiency gains). Not by command-and-control allocation of resources by a central body.
China lifted roughly 850 million out of extreme poverty over the past 30 years according to the World Bank...more than the 6X the population of Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China
Yes, the main objective of business is wealth maximization. But to create wealth (without stealing it), you must create value for other people. Theft is a zero sum game. Value creation is not. The search to create value by millions of different individual actors is how resources are so much more efficiently allocated in free market economies.
Russia has still reduced poverty by roughly 10-20% since the fall of the USSR via more open markets. The reason this number isn't even larger, is because of widespread theft (see the above paragraph) by a corrupt oligarch class. This is super common in any country with lots of oil and no democracy (ask Venezuela for more info).
We’ve burned through millions of years worth of stored solar energy in the last 100 years, and not yet paid the full price for that.
That’s essentially a massive injection of capital into our system. Of course that would raise the standard of living.
Does the market have any sense of what needs to be done to preserve our goals as a species. (What are those exactly, anyway?)
Attribution of moral goodness to something that has circumstantially caused some good but lacks any moral compass doesn’t seem to be a solid rock to found your religion on.
And there are certain things that we disallow (and in fact revile) that strictly speaking would be more efficient market wise. (Buying and selling people, child labor, stuff like that).
Although capitalism deserves its due (which is a fair bit), attributing all of recent human progress to it seems a bit much.
You could also say the same thing about humanity itself.
In any case, we're not talking about religion. We're simply talking about outcomes, and which are more favorable. In a majority of cases, the outcome of an efficient market is superior from a moral perspective than the outcome of individual humans running things.
As to the problem of fossil fuels, the market will inevitably solve for this too. If polluting the earth with fossil fuels ends up killing humanity--that wasn't a very efficient use of resources was it?
A large parts of population in South Indian states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala no longer have surnames that are tied to the caste. Mostly because of the people deciding to do that by themselves. But the issue is very very bad in Northern states which is where the majority of the population lives.
I have very complicated feeling about black parents in the US giving their kids "black" names. On one hand, they're expressing themselves and honoring their culture. On the other, if society in 2040 looks anything like society in 2020, they're hurting their kid's future.
The parents are doing nothing but naming their child how they want to name them. Discriminatory people reacting badly to the name are the ones hurting the children, not the parents.
The reality, naturally, is likely even more complicated: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-study-suggests-resea...
To me it's just a name. My wife kept her last name and and it seems the past generations simply can't accept that. My extended family still mails her letters using my last name.
It's okay if you want to speak for yourself, but if you want to apply such a statement globally then I think that's a little ethnocentric. The whole idea of last names and who has to take whose in marriage is steeped in a lot of history that plenty of folks had issue with even back then not to mention today.
Your identity and heritage is more than your name, and your identity is more than your heritage. By advocating for keeping last names for all societies, you may be unintentionally advocating for keeping an oppressive caste stratified authoritarian regime going which has been alive for over three thousand years which affects others even if it doesn't affect you personally. Is that really what you want to do? Why not accept that the cultural utilization of last names varies from society to society?
I am a descendant of holocaust survivors so please read the following with that in mind:
The caste system is part of a culture. It is also (IMHO) thoroughly odious, and it should be eliminated, along with patriarchy, theocracy, and a whole host of other human cultural norms with long and (some would say) venerable histories. There is no moral equivalence between a constructive suggestion for how to eliminate the caste system -- notwithstanding that it is in fact an effort to erase part of a culture -- and actual genocide. So please don't bandy that word about lightly.
They also have a very strong language bias with strong racism against non Tamil speakers. (Although People from Kerala and Andra Pradesh are much better than Tamil Nadu)
- South india overall had a Dravidian movement denouncing “Brahmanism” in the mid 1950s
- Specific to Tamil Nadu, Indian government’s connivance in Ceylon’s Tamil movement invited the wrath of a large sect of Tamils against New Delhi
My "surname" is actually my dad's given name, and my dad's "surname" is his dad's given name. So it changes every generation, unlike most of the rest of the world, where a single surname lasts through generations.
The point about caste differentiability by surname is still valid, though in a different sense, because the given names also have caste bias.
IMO the easiest way to break this cycle would be a widespread campaign to de-stigmatize inter-marriage between castes; that would solve the problem of correlation between name and caste within a generation or two.
In both of those countries, a particular grammatical ending is added to the name, whereas in Tamil culture the bare name is used.
In Russia, people also have family surnames, in addition to patronymics. For example: “Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev”, whose father was presumably named “Anatoliy [something] Medvedev”.
Or: “Katrín Jakobsdóttir”, whose father was presumably named “Jakob [something]”.
As someone very ignorant of that whole issue, if it's that simple, why doesn't the lower caste(s) always do that? Why "nowadays" only "many" do?
But that's not what was said. YetAnotherNick said many of all castes are doing this.
The comment I replied to implies "why didn't the lower castes just always change their surnames", I pointed out why.
My question was, why assign a lower-caste name to one's child if they have the option not to? But I suppose even then not all people with these lower-caste names see their surname as bad or harmful to their children, if I understood you correctly.
Is this not currently the case?
> The way they are indoctrinated in these colleges creates a superior mentality in students and if your classmate scored less than you and got into college, you would also extend that superior mentality to him/her as well.
That's just a sign of our poor education system. I don't think anyone who is well educated would have superior mentality over someone else. So we should work on improving our education system.
This is not even remotely popular. That essentially guarantees that the party will not get voted to power again. People, regardless of their caste, always have the option to drop/change their surname.
If they do, I haven't seen evidence of it. Stories claim that lower-caste employees have had their Indian upper caste managers discriminate, hurt their careers and even sexually harrass them, but HR departments say they can't do anything because caste is not a protected category.
I work in Silicon Valley, and have a hard time with this picture of the culture and HR departments in the area.
For instance, when there was a major rape in India, the media was scrutinizing Indian attitudes towards sexual violence. As evidence of such attitudes, they mentioned a BJP politician who said that "rape is sometimes right, sometimes wrong"
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-india-rape/mp-minister-ba...
In the actual video where he says it, (in Hindi), he says that the "rape allegations are sometimes correct, sometimes wrong". I don't agree with the assessment (I think all allegations should be taken seriously), but it COMPLETELY different fromwhat is reported by Reuters (and other news sources). There are many instances of this. This is why I typically don't trust Western media coverage of other countries. Best source would be a local English language newspaper.
I've actually heard the oven story before. Its an absurd (and very racist) aphorism, but I think calling it a "lesson" from a textbook would be a stretch. What likely happened was that the school selected anthologies that kids could read to develop their reading skills. It probably included that absurd story.
I think the American equivalent would be if a 2nd grade reading book included an old fairy tale with some outdated racist undertones (ie Zwarte Piet), and then the media ran with "American textbooks claim a black elf will kidnap children if they misbehave".
PS. I'll need to check of the textbook story.
But it's probably accurate. It's not a history textbook but a literature textbook for primary school students. It was probably meant to be used in Hindi classes. So this kind of bullshit would fly under the guise of "it's just a story". [2]
[1]: hxxps://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/lamps-of-inspiration-set-of-4-volumes-NZE671/ The "Look Inside the Book" section. The first few pages are just a preface talking about how the book has collected tales to bolster moral values and duties in the reader. Then there are a bunch of contents pages.
The third contents page does match the two short scenes from the video that show the titles of the stories - "8. Nirlobh adarsh jivan" and "17. Parishram ka koi vikalp nahin" (though the latter in the video is titled "Parishram ka vikalp...", no "koi").
So presumably this is the contents page for Prernadeep 3. I can't tell just from the contents page which story might be the one in question, though. The video says it's on page 22 but the contents page doesn't have page numbers. It might be #36 - "Bahin, ham bhaaratiya hain" "Sister, we are Indian" - or #53 perhaps - "Kya aapne ishvar ko dekha hai?" "Have you ever laid eyes on God" ?
The last page has one story and the start of another one (listed in the very first contents page, so preumably from Prernadeep 1 rather than 3), but they're pretty innocuous.
[2]: The larger context around that story is even more amusing, because it's being "told" by Dr Radhakrishnan (President in the 50s and well-known for liking teachers; his birthday is celebrated as "Teacher's Day") to a white person who claims to be very "close to God".
The whole idea of "protected categories" just sounds wrong to me. The current system makes it seem like it's always OK to discriminate, but only these reasons are not OK. It sets the default to "we're all considered unequal before the law except under these circumstances where we are considered to be equal".
That's working with a blacklist in world where the number of reasons for discrimination is infinite. It would make much more sense IMO to use a whitelist instead: you may only legally discriminate in these cases otherwise it's illegal = "we're all considered equal except in these cases where we have to be allowed to differentiate".
Issues like the current one would be prosecutable without adding another protected category.
That is a cop-out. Most HR policies have a somewhat broad use case where if someone is creating a hostile work environment, that is not OK, whether the reason for it is protected or not. Maybe HR cannot fire them in some jurisdictions, but they absolutely can step in in other ways to fix the problem.
With that surname you will not experience it either in your lifetime, mate.
We are living in a brave new post-Truth world.
Indians go against the narrative of systemic racism in the US , so it is only time that the left came after them.
Once again, instead of attacking me or downvoting, ask yourself logically: where is the evidence for this?
I am not saying it does not exist. All I am asking for is some data of large scale caste discrimination not anecdotes.
We can find anecdotes for discrimination by every permutation of labels.
On the one hand, the caste system is one of those things that many non-Indian people seem to be willing to come out and condemn. Frankly, it seems awful to me, and fundamentally at odds with a lot of human and civic rights norms in America.
At the same time, however, it's a tradition from a society that is very different from the one in which I was raised. I don't feel like I'm educated enough to judge it thoroughly. See also: France, and the ongoing Dialogue with Muslim communities regarding headscarves.
The caste system is a disgrace to India and I fully condemn it as an Indian. I hope this kind of shit can be abolished not only in Silicon Valley but in India as well.
I do, however, want to be sensitive to the fact that it may have some secondary effects that I'm not aware of, having never experienced firsthand.
Not all morality is relative to culture, some things are bad/wrong independent of cultural context.
I wrote about this in more depth here (specifically 'on the ethics of burning children'): https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
I'm all for respecting cultures and traditions, right until it gets in conflict with the above. We live in a global world and it is a good thing that some basic fundamental values should be expected from everyone.
I would cite Japan's "tradition" of cutting kids from one of their parents after a divorce, thus not respecting the UN's Child Rights Convention, as an sallient case in point that it's not OK to just let circumventions go on the basis of "it's their culture".
I think she's right that caste is a better way to view the issue in the US.
It's extremely rare to find a Manhattan family where the child would be disowned and completely cut out of the family for marrying someone from the Ozarks. You can't say the same for a "pro-caste" Brahmin family in India.
A plumber might make a lot more money than an associate professor, but it's crystal clear who's in the higher social class.
There’s a famous LBJ quote about this:
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.“
I advocate we draw the line where people are harmed. In other cases it may not be as clear, but in this one it is. There is no real question whether a caste system harms people, and as a concept it is not compatible with humanist values.
US and state law (for the most part) prohibits this type of discrimination. That reflects the view of most--but not all--Americans that such discrimination is not tolerable.
I'm an upper caste male from India (now in Silicon Valley), and there is absolutely no redeeming quality to caste. It's abhorrent and barbarous. Thankfully, it's nowhere near as widespread as it used to be in India, and I can see it becoming a non-issue in the coming decades.
The line is drawn exactly where the law is. If a culture or tradition doesn't adhere to it, then it shouldn't be allowed. Either you live in a country and respect the law or you have to deal with the consequences - no exceptions. We should all be equal before the law and there shouldn't be any exceptions for voluntary actions of a group.
Culture and traditions do not supersede law. They are impediments to all kinds of progress, scientific, educational, social or otherwise, and that shouldn't be acceptable.
If it's been long-standing, of course it is. A tradition need not be wise, or good, or beyond criticizing.
There is also a rich double standard in the US. Crazy practices from non-white countries are tolerated by “woke” liberals.
Yet if you are from a white country you are expected to follow every American cultural norm and etiquette to the letter.
I see this in international cooperation. E.g work happening across many countries. Americans will often insist on making American sensibilities universal disregarding the that what may be regarded as rude in America is not necessarily rude or inappropriate elsewhere.
I see the same with American companies operating in my native Norway often insisting on practices that run counter to local culture and sensitivities. But somehow because we are white we are supposed to have the same values as Americans because Americans have racialized culture.
In a very literal way: https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa...
You can pretend like you gifted me this but in reality you didn't. I took it through my hard work. And you can try to stop me but I'll beat you, even though you have the advantage of having been born here. Because I'm better.
People "born into it" had a whole lot to say about policy, and provided you the opportunities to be here. You seized them. It should be a good deal for both sides, but to the extent that each tries to make it adversarial and zero-sum, the benefits of the deal evaporate for everyone.
People think they are gifting you, because they don't realize how irrelevant they are and how little control have in their lives, let alone the lives of others.
P.s. if we wanna talk about integration, Americans, for example, should watch themselves abroad.
They are absolutely the less capable of understanding what "this is not the way we do things" means.
I think expats anywhere should integrate. That doesn't mean to give up everything from your home culture, but it doesn't mean to form a walled enclave with little cultural interaction, either.
Travelers/tourists/etc, is different. I don't expect any integration-- just a basic effort at courtesy.
Should they not be allowed to cook their own food? Speak their own language? Practice their own faith? Hold their own values?
This is xenophobic bullshit and has no place on a forum like this.
The more you watch it, the more it's people shooting each other over a bar fight or people killing themselves to get a promotion at work or competing in general over things that have no real connection with happiness.
That's why many don't care about it and spend their time with people more like them that share a common background.
Understanding each other is more important that following every single rule to "integrate" in a culture that have basically no historical background other than avoiding taxes in their homeland.
Mexicans, on the other hand, have been there for millennia.
EDIT: I'm sensing a lot of guilty conscience from the downvotes (always appreciated when it's about exposing atrocious ways of thinking) but this time it was simply explaining what the natural consequence of that sentence woul be: US would not exist.
And maybe all of us would be better off, who knows...
Although I find it abominable that even one person has carried their discrimination with them, I'm also surprised that this is a pattern. I've been in North America for about 4 years now and the only times caste has come up as a topic is westerners being curious about it.
Also not all Brahmins wear the thread on their shoulders and not everybody who wears it is a Brahmin, so it's a poor test.
Is it based on race (skin color), lineage (surnames) or some geographical criteria (article mentioned "do you swim" like maybe being near the ocean means you're better off or something)?!
Seriously, what are the hierarchical structures and how deep does it go.
The only counter to this is cultural integration; however, some people will see that as cultural imperialism, or whatever other name is current.
The same issue is seen in Africa when new populations move into non traditional areas and bring their customs. If they are dispersed and don’t clump ala enclaves, they adopt local culture, but if they form enclaves and only hang out with others from their origin they just continue what they knew.
In the US so long as immigration was “stretched out” it allowed for slow integration. The speed of growth though allows for the culture migrate along with the population. That’s just how it works. An additional “phenomenon” is usually the transplanted population changes more slowly than the home population.
That can be generally done by checking what traditions one follows. For example, Brahmins are supposed to be involved with all priestly work and a strict Brahmin does not eat meat and wears Janeu[1].
They check for who you are related to and know knows you who belongs to X caste.
https://www.forwardpress.in/2020/02/165-years-ago-first-fema...
From the article:
The Mang and Mahar children never dare lodge a complaint even if the Brahman children throw stones at them and injure them seriously. They suffer silently because they know they have to go to the Brahmans’ houses to beg for the leftover food. Alas! O God! What agony this! I will burst into tears if I write more about this injustice. Because of such oppression, the merciful God has bestowed on us, this benevolent British government. Let us see how our pain has been mitigated under this government.
Earlier, Gokhale, Apate, Trimkaji, Andhala, Pansara, Kale, Behre, etc [all Brahman surnames], who showed their bravery by killing rats in their homes, persecuted us, not sparing even pregnant women, without any rhyme or reason. This has stopped now. Harassment and torture of Mahars and Mangs, common during the rule of Peshwas in Pune, have stopped. Now, human sacrifice for the foundation of forts and mansions has stopped – now, nobody buries us alive. Now, our population is growing in numbers. Earlier, if any Mahar or Mang wore fine clothes, they would say that only Brahmans should wear such clothes. Seen in fine clothes, we were earlier accused of stealing such clothes. Their religion was in danger of being polluted when Untouchables put clothes around their bodies; they would tie them to a tree and punish them. But, under British rule, anybody with money can buy and wear clothes. Earlier, punishment for any wrongdoing against the upper castes was to behead the guilty Untouchable— now, it has stopped. Excessive and exploitative tax has stopped. The practice of untouchability has stopped in some places. Killing has stopped on the playground. Now, we can even visit the marketplace.
Yeah, no. You can't really claim that the treatment of the Dalits in India and the Irish travellers Ireland is somehow equivalent, that's simply a lie. The racism of the Caste system in India and its violence has absolutely no equivalent in the West today. Even Roma in Europe are treated better all things considered and it a low standard.
(But not an expert, and don't have data to hand.)
If the government is going to make a discrimination case, shouldn't it be higher up the equal outcome ladder than caste?
These things are rampant in India at the time of marriages. Some parents in India emotionally blackmail their children into marrying into their own caste. Sometimes people have to marry into their own subcast.
(I am talking about people being forced to marry against their will and give up on love)
What do they expect to see?
WARNER: They patted his shoulders to see if he was wearing a white thread that only Brahmins wear.
CORNELIUS: So with you not even knowing, they will try to pat your shoulder and try to see - the finding this thread.
WARNER: Was he a Brahmin like them?
CORNELIUS: In other ways, they will call you for a swim, you know? Hey. Let's go for a swim - because everybody takes their shirt off. And all they know who are wearing threads, who are not.
Hinduism is divided into four societies, Brahmins- the highest, Kshatriya- The nobles and warriors, Vaishyas- The traders, Shudras- Traditionally artisans and labourers also untouchables. The first three Varnas (as were called) had the rights to pursue Veda, where as the forth were considered very low and weren’t even allowed to enter temple.
I forget know the details I’m sure someone can correct me.
Wearing that thread means the person upholds certain rituals and dietary restrictions. They fast on certain days and have to offer prayers to their ancestors. They change it once a year. It is religiously required to change it with other men of your faith and sub-sect(like a Jewish minyan). All Hindus and even women wore sacred thread at one time because it was necessary for rituals and for performing death austerities. But Brahmins had more duties towards it. They have to pray thrice a day touching it. They have to fast and follow ritual purity because the thread is what connects them and their families to their ancestors. If you see it..it will be knotted sometimes or have stuff tied to it. It is code for whether one is married or not. How many children they have..if their parents are deceased or not etc.
And that’s why there is so much secrecy and protectiveness around who has ownership and scholarship over which books. Don’t you see? Vedic Hinduism was the woke liberal version and an experiment of an ancient people who wanted to bring the immigrants and the invaders and the local population, but membership means adherence to a closed group. The rituals were perimeter security. There are four main books of faith for Hindu Brahmins. They are called Vedas. Three of which are commonly followed. Parts of the fourth one is lost.
Vedas are canon. It doesn’t change. A Brahmin belongs to a group that follows one of the three books. You can’t follow more than one and the belief is that all those who follow that particular book share the same pool ancestral souls.
Even prayers differ between them. Their way of life too. If you read the vedas, it’s about the way of life. There is no mention of god. But there are some puranas(stories derived from commentaries based on the vedas), you would find stuff like tax codes. How to eat, how you farm, how to create weapons..where the borders are ..when will the eclipses occur etc. these are not for public consumption and to share. This had to stay within the insiders only. It was memorized by the Brahmin priests and they knew how to decide the ciphers because their duty was towards the kingly caste. In the olden days, if anyone can read it..it’s like allowing anyone to read classified files.
Ancient India was super codified. There was a place for everyone in terms of what dharma or job they have to do. It’s rigidity also gave it stability. But also made it brittle. Anything that influences from the outside thus structure would weaken it. That was the reason behind the closed looo socio economic system.
Clearly it lost its usefulness. With the British abolishing princely states, an entire class of Kshatriyas disappeared. It’s like a table standing on three legs. Brahmins who were supposed to be in service of Kshatriyas became redundant too.
The balance used to be that Brahmin priests had knowledge but must take a vow of poverty..Kshatriya Kings must rule the country and be ready to die for their people..Vaishyas were wealthy but must fund the kingdom by paying taxes and bearing all the costs while the labourer Shudra class did manual work and contributed nothing else. Dalits were outside this system. They were the outsiders who didn’t subscribe to this social order.
The Vedas say that a Brahmin ceases to be a Brahmin when he crosses the oceans. Everything we do here as immigrants are either religious or nostalgia. The mathematician Srinivasan Ramanujam refused to set sail to England because he was a Brahmin and crossing the oceans meant that he has abandoned the religion of his forefathers. SV Brahmins still consider themselves Brahmins...but when they step away from their practices (a lot of it defined by the sacred thread), they are Mlecchas themselves within each other. A Brahmin not wearing the thread won’t be invited to the annual thread changing ceremonies. Why? It has nothing to do with him. Just like a Dalit or a white person has nothing to do with a brahmin’s religious activities.
Women have identifying jewelery too. At least in the south, look at the marriage chain they wear (because we don’t have wedding rings), you can find out what kind of family she is married to and even within Brahmins, you can figure out which region they hail from and which broad subsect they belong to.
Why? Because women had rules too. For example, there is a Brahmin sub sect where they have marks on their shoulders. Like a quick branding of a religious symbol. If a woman has these ritual marks on her body, she will not eat in anyone’s house. She will not allow anyone into her kitchen..her domain. Except other women who have that branding too. Because now only those who follow the kitchen code have access to it.
I am a Brahmin but I was not allowed kitchen access into many of my friends home kitchens after a certain age.(children are exempt from these rules) I had my own set of utensils when the mom of the house invited me to join me for family lunches. It was beautiful sterling silver and expensive, but it was meant for guests. We just laughed about it because we knew why. Even my mother was given the special ‘separate tableware’ treatment despite being a Brahmin who also followed religious and ritual purity. Because she was not from that family.
I can tell within 30 minutes where another indian is from ..language, food, clothes, jewelery. Even the dot we wear between our brows. Men have less distinguishers in their western office wear. And yes, it’s important for me to connect to people just like me. Why? Because I am human. I seek comfort with my kin. Doesn’t mean I am a casteist.
There is meta to this too...for example, there are many subjects I won’t speak to men that I would with other women easily. Why? Because as opposite gendered individuals, we don’t have shared experiences and sometimes one just wants to feel comfortable with someone who understands. I don’t have the time and energy or money to seek a $250/hour therapist to ‘talk about things’. I want community. If I want to talk about my mom, I will call my cousin. Not my co worker.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/27/indian-...
The classification of higher and lower caste itself is an oversimplification.
Wearing the thread implies that you are from a Brahmin community. Brahmin is just one of the many communities that exist in India based on geography, language (including numerous dialects), wealth and religion (including different sects). Each of these communities think they are better than some subset of indian ethnicities.
Some groups (Dalits being one of the prominent examples) are unfortunately at the receiving end of biases from almost everyone else.
It’s nothing new. It’s just not the western culture’s version.
I literally don’t know even one culture or country that doesn’t follow its own version of caste system. To understand it and get rid of it, we have to ask why it is able to survive.
I am from the sub continent. We are a billion plus people beating the same name. We have hundreds of languages. I am certainly going to ask anyone who calls themselves an Indian to figure out if they are my kin. Why? Because as an immigrant in a foreign land, I want to be friends with someone like me. I can’t be friendly to the millions of Indian immigrants.
I want to hang around with someone with whom I share more things Indian because I miss home sometimes. I miss the language, the food, the smells of a Hindu Brahmin kitchen and all the things that reminds me of my community. That’s not castesim. To equate this to casteism makes a mockery of the horrors and injustices of caste system.
No. There is no caste system amongst Indians in the Bay Area. We should ALL be grateful to be living during these times. It’s infinitely better than how our ancestors were living. It can get even better.
Mockery. This lawsuit makes a mockery of the ancestors of CA Dalits who have had the opportunity to step outside of the system and still engaging in this sort of manufactured divisiveness.
Dalits were not part of the varna system in India. The texts say that there were four castes and everyone else was considered an ‘outsider’. The word ‘Mleccha’ means outsider and that included anyone who didn’t follow the structure of society with the four castes. People with unfamiliar behaviour and different food habits. The Greeks for example were Mlecchas. The Dalits and possibly the local tribes were Mleccha too. They were excluded and when the people who formed the Hindu society became dominant, the local population were at the fringes of society but now dependent on a domainant society that rejects them.
India has thousands and thousands of years of history and so many migrations and invasions. It is insane to look at caste system from that framework.
1. Is the social structure in India problematic? Yes. 2. Is something being done to rectify it in India? Yes. 3. Does it have anything to do with indian immigrants in Silicon Valley? No.
The very term ‘tam-bram’ pat is offensive. Not all non Dalits are Brahmins and not all Brahmins are tamilian.
The state of CA is suing Cisco. That by itself goes to show that this lawsuit is politically energized and has no legs to stand on. For shame!
Caste Confusion and Census Enumeration in Colonial India, 1871-1921
Pretty illuminating..about the British understanding of caste and how they conducted their census.
[..] Caste data also failed to meet the goals of uniformity and comparability. Most Muslims listed their caste even though they were assumed not to have one. Part of this confusion was due to enumerators not following instructions: “the enumerators must understand that they have nothing whatsoever to do with Caste Classification, this will be done afterwards by the Compilers, and, in this column, they are to enter the Caste or Class as it is given to them by, or for, each individual.”41 Another problem with knowledge of India that emerged through this process was that local colonial officials patterned their own cate- gorization on pre-existing understandings of caste, which were not nationally consistent. From these data, Waterfield could only conclude that the “caste system is perhaps as prevalent among the Mahomedans as among those pro- fessing the Hindoo religion.”42 Even Christians listed their caste, Waterfield lamented, which led him to explain that those who did list their caste must be Hindoo converts. In addition to people’s skill at manipulating the caste lists were the highly dis- 43 44 no sides in these feuds. Waterfield concluded that the main problems with caste calculations were “due partly to the intrinsic difficulties on the subject, and partly to the absence of a uniform plan of classification.”46 Commenting on the 1871 census effort, C. Elliot, Secretary to Government for the Northwestern Provinces, wrote: [T]he caste statistics are the most unsatisfactory part of the return. Greater accu- racy than before has been aimed at, and probably obtained, but still there is much error and confusion in the figures. A really scientific and sound classification is hardly possible in the face of the general ignorance of this subject which prevails among the people themselves, the frequency with which the same caste is called by different names in different places, and the tendency to confuse caste with occupa- 47 Frustrations in the first set of censuses stemmed from procedural problems compounded by the lack of suitable conceptualization. The grand expectation that colonial census commissioners would need only to collate caste data was thwarted by widespread uncertainty in India about what caste was.[..]
[..] There was also growing unrest concerning caste categories among India scholars and activists. By the time of India’s third national census in 1891, “many Indian political activists had become extremely census-savvy and were beginning to debate the definitions of the terms being used to describe them.”63 The fact that the census introduced new labels for various groups did not automatically transform Indian reality. There is evidence, however, to suggest that people were subscribing to census definitions and that they attached impor- tance to how they were classified. Quite often, to the irritation of enumerators, respondents would “describe themselves as anything but what they are.”64 This was the opposite of the sort of self-identification for which census planners had hoped. On this note, J. A. Baines argued in 1899 census correspondence that “I am inclined to advise the omission of caste from the Imperial schedule, and to make use of the returns of 1891 as a standard until 1911.”65 There still remained a great deal of confusion among all involved in the census project about how to classify caste. In his report on the 1891 census of India, E. Maclagan wrote, “The instructions I issued are in many parts word for word the same as those issued in 1881 . . . they were not, however, free from faults . . . the terminology was in many cases different from that of the translation issued to enumerators, and many of the superior officials were much puzzled at the inconsistencies of the two sets of orders.”66 Inefficient enumeration and lack of consensus on a definition of caste fostered more confusion. The tension between the pragmat- ics of administration on the ground and the imperial objectives of accumulating knowledge for the governance of populations led commissioners Plowden and Baines to suggest removing caste from the census.[..]
At your company people with lighter skins are more valued than others? Because that's what we're talking here in regard to Indian castes. Please name your company.
There is discrimination on sex. You can also see that there are very few people of different ethnic backgrounds in positions of leadership. I've had other people with more tenure than me state that if you have specific qualities, you are likely to go farther (white/Irish decent, male, catholic).
Also, what we are talking about is the discriminatory stratification of a group (company or country).
(Especially the vegetarian question and asking if “that was out of choice or cultural”. I figured this was dog whistling to religious affiliation and felt uncomfortable about it but regrettably just stayed out of it.)
I want to apologize to my Indian coworkers and especially directs, that I was so naive to this. You absolutely do not deserve this kind of treatment anywhere but especially the US and immigration status really compounds this and makes this oppressive.
I am absolutely going to be more aware and diligent about this and raise flags when I see it going forward. Not okay. I am so sorry.
You saw people asking for opinions from a senior member and your first thought was casteism? How does one even make that leap?
That question has nothing to do with Caste specifically. It is more of a thing between North and South Indians where North Indians are usually more of a meat eater than South but again it depends on the region. Plenty of North Indians are hardcore Vegetarian. It has nothing to do with caste or religious affiliation. Being a vegetarian in general is looked down upon even in America, isn't it ? Go watch the movie "escape plan" where schwarzenegger says "You hit like a vegetarian". Also the vegetarian question comes up with Indians because it is difficult to go to a non Indian Restaurant with hardcore vegetarians as they may not find many options. So when a group of Indian coworkers go out to eat, they have to know who are hardcore vegetarians and choose a restaurant accordingly.
>That question has nothing to do with Caste specifically.
It has everything to do with Caste specifically. This is the question we often get when upper caste folk are not able to figure out our caste from the names.
>So when a group of Indian coworkers go out to eat, they have to know who are hardcore vegetarians and choose a restaurant accordingly.
Do you know why this happens? The vegetarians consider non-vegetarians as 'impure'. They want to follow their tradition of not eating in an 'impure' place. This is one of the main forms of discrimination that lower castes face.
pls read this to understand that not so hidden meaning behind the word 'non-vegetarian'
https://www.dailyo.in/variety/non-veg-food-iit-bombay-vegeta...
But it's wrong to assume that by default every pure vegetarian extends this concept of "impure" to the non-vegetarian person, let alone discriminates against non-vegetarians. I don't doubt that some people do it, but it is by no means universal. To ascribe this ulterior motive to every Indian that asks another Indian about their vegetarianism is just silly. It's just a conversation-starter, an ice-breaker, because pure-vegetarianism is so common in India in the first place. And is useful when choosing restaurants for group lunches.
Especially if we're talking about Indians living in the US, treating non-vegetarians like untouchables is going to be a very hard task for them, unless they don't interact with anyone who isn't Indian either. Is it possible? Sure. Is it the norm? Absolutely not.
They are getting uncomfortable because the white people are learning about it.