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Comment by yalogin | Hacker News Reader

The talk should have allowed to go through. The post I think said it right, people wanted to shut it down and the only way to do it is to discredit the speaker because they know there is truth to the arguments.

However we should step back and think about how important it in the American context. What purpose is that talk going to serve? I don’t know if it does anything other than satisfying esoteric learning needs of a few. It may be an issue in he US but the problem may be among single digit or double digit individuals at best. Is it worth spending cycles on it?

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Isn't the fact that it got shut down by higher caste Indians proof that the talk is important in some way?

This is just assuming malice without any information. Dangerous to do in any situation

Why are you sure it was not shut down because it could be bogus?

Racism and bigotry are worth addressing at all levels, IMO. But I question your assumed figures: surely there are a lot more than 99 Indians of lower castes that are affected by caste-based bigotry in the US?

Even directly in USA Google (and other companies) employ very many Indians. The stats that I can find about Google say that in their USA offices 42% of them are Asian, and out of those the general tech industry stats tell me that roughly 40% would be from India, so caste might be relevant to something like 15% percent of the workforce; and I have no stats on caste distribution but if I guess that disadvantaged castes might be 1/3 of that i.e. 5% then that is a larger group than African Americans which are 4.4% in Google USA.

I think you may be underestimating the number of people affected in the US.

Google is the largest purveyor of information across the world. Having policies that deal with caste would seem to require making its American employees and managers aware and mindful of it, no?

~70% of eng is Asian within SV. About half are Indian. Other half is Chinese.

It’s a very prevalent problem. A lot of people come from India and keep their cultural values - including caste discrimination.

It’s a small issue in the general US but a huge issue within SV. Same as any Asian topic tbh. Most Asians don’t exist outside the coasts - yet we talk about their issues cause they’re in important cities in significant numbers.

>> discredit the speaker because they know there is truth to the arguments.

Source please.

>> the problem may be among single digit or double digit individuals at best.

Why do you think it's in single or double digit "at best"? This is a huge problem in India and moving to US doesn't make a racist person inclusive automatically.

idk woke people are obsessed with protecting very small minority groups. in fact often the smaller the better in terms of virtue signaling points.

so it just goes to show how hypocritical Google is being when they are mega woke on every other facet. probably because their ceo harbors a like for the caste system

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