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Comment by rramadass | Hacker News Reader

Not everything in life is simple and in particular; nuances matter very much when it comes to understanding other Cultures/Social Structures.

Anecdotes like yours really bother me because they sound so outlandish that their veracity cannot be taken on faith. Having spent a considerable part of my working life in the US, i can state that never once has the subject of Caste ever been a topic of relevance with my Indian colleagues i.e. it has never ever come up in any discussions, implicit or otherwise. None of my American colleagues knew much about it; and i have worked across a bunch of companies so the sample space is quite spread out.

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So you have no evidence, he has evidence, and your argument is simply "I don't believe you." These are the same forum discussion strategies of white nationalists, and this has been a fascinating thread to read!

I wrote;

>their veracity cannot be taken on faith

If you think what he "claims" is evidence, i have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

I will place my decade and a half of working experience across half a dozen companies in the US over any anonymous person's "evidence".

You'll do whatever you can to maintain the fragile worldview that you haven't been the beneficiary of a class-based system that discriminates and gives you an unfair advantage.

The interesting thing here is the isomoprhism between your reaction and those of other privileged groups forced to examine their ill-gotten gains, but on the other hand maybe it's not surprising, we're just chimpanzees with tools after all

You seem to be under the misapprehension that this thread is about "The Indian Caste System" as a whole; it is not. That is a different discussion altogether. For some authentic sources on this topic see my other comments in this thread.

This thread is about "Caste based Discrimination" amongst the Indian IT Community in the USA. My contention is that it is not all the issue that it is made out to be by some vested interests who may have their own agenda in raking this up. Hence American companies need to be cautious before giving them a megaphone and a platform.

> You'll do whatever you can to maintain the fragile worldview that you haven't been the beneficiary of a class-based system that discriminates and gives you an unfair advantage.

I find this POV extremely fascinating outside India. Here's the thing in case you are unaware: in India, roughly 50-60% of jobs in the government sector, seats in government funded colleges and private colleges (and soon probably even in private companies) are set aside for the "lower" castes and tribes[1]. I use scare quotes here, because there is a whole other discussion of how many "lower" castes actually need this kind of affirmative action since they are extremely well off that I won't get into here. I come from an "upper" caste family (scare quotes here because I find the terminology stupid and divisive, I definitely don't consider myself "upper" in any way) where my grandfather was a dirt-poor farmer who moved from the village to the city, died dirt poor as well (think Slumdog Millionaire level poverty). My father worked hard, educated himself and got himself a job in the government sector despite having nothing "reserved" for him. I did the same too with nobody handing me anything. This is the same story across millions of families across India. So tell me, what unfair advantage or privilege did this system really afford me? And then I see this enlightened person on the Internet who has probably heard/read about caste in the last couple of days have a fully formed opinion on all things caste, with no real intention of really understanding the issue. A superficial understanding is only going to get you so far without descending into all out stereotypes and bigotry, like another commenter on here who equated wearing the sacred thread with a Klan hood. But then I guess you are right in a way: we're all just different groups of chimpanzees with tools.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India

Or it can be is as simple as saying a caste system is dumb, Americans and I assume other nationalities find it fascinatingly backward. The idea that there are “upper” and “lower” castes is inherently discriminatory that seem abundantly obvious and there’s no real nuance to it.

> Or it can be is as simple as saying a caste system is dumb

Agreed.

And this ironically is the crux of the problem: most Indians find it dumb, don’t care for it and hope it dies out soon. But some groups would like to keep using it as yet another way to divide for myriad reasons: vote bank politics being the biggest if you follow any Indian politics at all. Preventing base bigoted discrimination is a reason too, but a very small reason.

This group equality labs is less of the latter and more of the former.

I’ve worked in the technology departments of major American investment banks you’ve heard of. I’ve seen Indian colleagues openly discuss caste and speculate someone’s caste based on their name and regional background openly in the company cafe

The claim you're debating - "does caste-based discrimination exist" is more likely to be true with an anecdote "I've seen it" than with an anecdote "I haven't encountered it."

Those two anecdotes can both truthfully coexist, but the first one proves the statement while the second doesn't disprove it. The evidence needed to disprove such a statement is pretty large; an individual's work history is not enough to say confidently that discrimination isn't happening.

How many companies have you worked at, 6? How many companies are there with significant indian representation? At Google alone there are far more than six TEAMS with majority indian representation. How could you claim that your experience invalidates someone else's?

Meanwhile, if there are a handful of anecdotes that folks have experienced or witnessed caste-based discrimination, we should be pretty confident that it's a problem.

This is a classic example of wrong Critical Thinking. Let me write out the "proof" for you;

1) You have one anecdata from a person who IS NOT hiding behind anonymity. You have another anecdata from a person who IS hiding behind anonymity. Therefore Person 2's claims cannot be taken on faith.

2) The topic under discussion is part of Person 1's culture and hence he is familiar with all its nuances. Person 2 has no knowledge of the subject or at best a cursory knowledge from tabloids and not from any authentic sources. Therefore Person 2 cannot claim equal relevance with Person 1's knowledge.

3) Person 1 has lived and worked across both his and Person 2's cultures for a significant period of time. Thus he is familiar with thought processes of both sides w.r.t. the topic under discussion. Person 2 does not have any such experience. Thus Person 2's "claims" do not have the same weight as Person 1's.

QED.

I was just saying their perspective would "prove it" assuming you and the other person's personal experiences are both valid. But you are making the assumption that it's invalid and your own experience is the only one you can trust as valid. I'm not saying this particularly commenter's experience is hard proof of anything, but it's not hard to find enough perspectives from other people to convince yourself that caste discrimination is likely to be a real problem. The rest of the comment probably bears re-reading on your part. P(N people with perspectives different from your experience are all liars) < P(perspectives different from your experience can be true)

Also writing qed at the end of your comment doesn't make it a rigorous proof, lol. Like, you've already failed to understand the basic concept of sampling bias.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31607927

What caste are you personally in?

The GP's profile indicates he's comfortably upper caste.

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