Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination | Hacker News Reader

Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination

indiatoday.in

601 pointsgunvantsr590 comments

I worked at a company where this was an issue at one point (granted this was one situation among a lot of employees). A manager was pretty much dismissive of everything anyone of a lower caste did / wouldn't communicate with them effectively.

HR absolutely struggled with the issue. The HR folks tasked with dealing with discrimination issues largely had spent their time constructing company wide emails and classes that revolved around white folks discriminating against others / concepts of privilege, absolutely froze when faced with a discrimination issue outside that stereotype.

Long story short legal eventually was the brave one and decided that yes it was discrimination and the manager in question was asked to move on. The folks he refused to work with were compensated and their status in the company (pay scale, etc) was corrected.

As one of my Indian college's observed about the manager in question "If he was white this would have been dealt with sooner."

Credit to my Indian coworkers who really pushed this issue with HR and made legal act in the end. They wanted nothing to do with this kind of behavior.

Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior.

It would have been dealt with sooner if the employee was white because (assuming they meant white as in western white skinned person) culturally there isn't an equivalent of caste that would make sense for a white person to act on, and they could have acted based on the other groups listed in the anti-discrimination language.

I think it's good they found a way to go forward with dealing with the manager and compensated the employees. In a visit to India a few years ago I saw a shopkeeper make someone leave the store because of caste, not sure if there are actual laws/regulations about this in place there to simplify the process of handling discrimination. The issue of discrimination is very easy to find anywhere, though, and most often presents in a subtle form of prejudice because many people feel a certain way toward others in another group. Anywhere there aren't enforced laws with legal language that protects a group there will be difficulty dealing with discriminatory practices against said group, because laws have to be specific in the way they are written to allow for their enforcement being simple/easy.

> culturally there isn't an equivalent of caste that would make sense for a white person to act on

Sure there is. People from English-speaking countries & Western Europeans vs "Eastern Europeans" and Latinos.

Ignoring for a moment that using the term "Eastern Europe" is itself hugely problematic, though usually because of ignorance not racism, I have worked in one and heard of several examples where there were huge discrepancies in salaries (much more than CoL-related), raises, promotions etc. between native English speakers and people from the CEE region.

There's absolutely a "caste" system among white people in tech. North Americans, UK, NZ, and AUS first, western Europe second, everyone else fifth.

I cannot really confirm that within Europe where I live at least. Using Eastern Europe isn't problematic either. It doesn't have negative connotations where I live, it simply refers to the country of origin. Southern Europe perhaps, but that isn't really meant too seriously and more referring to fiscal policies.

Companies pay their workers the lowest wage they can get away with. In some regions the wage level is smaller so people tend to accept lower wages. Unfair of course if they live and work in the same place but also not really discrimination. They have to demand more.

I doubt this is comparable to castes in these cases.

> I cannot really confirm that within Europe where I live at least

Brexit literally happened because of among other reasons too many "Eastern Europeans". Germans have zero qualms about using phrases like "Barely stolen, already in Poland"...

> Using Eastern Europe isn't problematic either. It doesn't have negative connotations where I live, it simply refers to the country of origin

If you can give me a concise definition of "Eastern Europe" that doesn't have a bunch of asterisks and doesn't use effectively colonial groupings (i.e. when the USSR occupied/puppeted countries usually considered EE) I'll concede this one. But I doubt that you can give me such a definition.

> Companies pay their workers the lowest wage they can get away with. In some regions the wage level is smaller so people tend to accept lower wages. Unfair of course if they live and work in the same place but also not really discrimination. They have to demand more.

I know how capitalism works. But when you see someone with 10 years of experience quit because they couldn't get beyond $x regardless of what they did and how much they asked for more get replaced with someone with 3 years of experience making 150% of x for 50% of the same job... The difference being the former was Polish and the latter an American living in Romania (i.e. with an even lower CoL than Poland)...

Does it seem incredible, considering companies should optimize for profit? Absolutely. But I've seen it happen with my own eyes and I've seen the work of both.

At least the north Americans think so.

> Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior.

How? Do you really think their language specified that discrimination could only happen from white people to minorities?

I'm guessing they weren't sure whether caste was a protected class.

Discrimination in law revolves around protected classes (race, religion, national origin, age and sex are the "big five" in the US, and subsequent acts and decisions have added sexual orientation/gender identity, familial status, pregnancy, disability, veteran status, and genetic information). If you act on the basis of that, someone can, well, make a federal case out of it.

On the other hand, if you discriminated on the basis of eye color -- pretending for a moment it wasn't correlated with race -- you might be a shitty manager, but it wouldn't be a legal issue.

I'm not sure why laws about protected classes would be directly relevant in the case described in the top-level comment here, which is a manager who "was pretty much dismissive of everything anyone of a lower caste did / wouldn't communicate with them effectively." That just sounds like an ordinary problem with basic job performance. Surely most company policies would have ways of handling employees who are just blatantly obstinate and hostile towards other employees regardless of why they decide to act that way.

Why is caste not a subset of national origin or race? Do Indians who discriminate on the basis of caste also discriminate against non-Indians of a lower caste, or is it solely confined to other Indians? If not directly a protected class, why would this not clearly be a disparate impact type of case?

It's an open legal question for state and federal courts today, so it makes sense companies are struggling with it. The legal language is ambiguous at best, and corporate lawyers/HR exist to mitigate exposure and not take a moral high ground.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/u-s-civil-r...

My understanding of the situation is that Western countries/companies don't usually have protected class status on basis of caste. Those protections exist for race, gender, age etc.

Ok are there also specific legal protections for Eye color, Hair Color, presence of Freckles, etc? Does every possible way to discriminate need to be clearly spelled out for it to be illegal?

Both the manager and the victim were part of the same minority as far as the law was concerned.

/IANAL

> If he was white this would have been dealt with sooner.

I think that if we more or less accurately map the situation into an analogous one involving the class system among whites in North America, then the "lower caste" white person would not even be working there.

I thought this too. “White” has a lot of gradients in the US

> HR absolutely struggled with the issue. The HR folks tasked with dealing with discrimination issues largely had spent their time constructing company wide emails and classes that revolved around white folks discriminating against others / concepts of privilege, absolutely froze when faced with a discrimination issue outside that stereotype.

Cue the pro DEI (i honestly don’t know what it’s called anymore) people claiming this wasn’t “real DEI”.

Not sure what point you're trying to make here. Are you arguing that companies shouldn't have DEI initiatives because they didn't help sufficiently in this case? Do you interpret this as evidence that DEI is somehow bad?

Maybe "no true Scotsmxn" etc

Lol. I think it'd have to be "Scotsperson" or "Scotshuman" or "Scotsfolk" - the X is usually reserved for a vowel that indicates masculine or feminine, like the super popular "latinx" that's totally used by more than just rich white liberals.

"Scotsmxn" just reads to me as "Scots-mexican".

Fortunately you can just use "Scot" :-)

I don’t think this is some sort of malicious conspiracy or evidence of anti whiteness or whatever. Processes are created for the common case and when there is an uncommon scenario, it is new territory for everyone involved and someone has to be responsible. In most corporate environments, nobody wants to be that person so inaction is generally the norm unless the course of action is straightforward or has precedent.

It’s a blind spot in DEI and intersectionality; the idea that an oppressed class can also be an oppressor class, and that it’s not an attribute of the perpetrator’s class at all, but in fact, situational and individual.

That's... Exactly the opposite of a blind spot in intersectionality. The idea that those in the intersections of marginalized groups suffer more doesn't come from some bizarre belief that those at the top mistreat them twice as much. It comes from recognizing that more people feel comfortable mistreating them.

It's well-documented at this point that black women in the USA during slavery were mistreated just as much by white women as white men, despite the weight of patriarchy causing white women to be mistreated by white men as well: oppressor in one situation, oppressed in another.

Intersectionality is calling out that those differences are present within groups, and that no analysis based on only a single axis can ever explain the full situation.

Agreed. In tech especially, certain minority groups (East and South Asians) are over represented so our processes must evolve to deal with the situations that result from them.

you may be thinking of something different from intersectionality.

this situation is a perfect example of one of the most basic foundational concepts of intersectionality.

- person A is discriminated against because of some trait

- person A may use whatever power they have to diminish another person because of some trait their own group has historically oppressed.

discrimination isn’t a direct straight line. it’s much more complicated, it intersects in many strange ways.

> ... the idea that an oppressed class can also be an oppressor class, and that it’s not an attribute of the perpetrator’s class at all, but in fact, situational and individual.

I think this is a textbook description of intersectionality[1].

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

> It’s a blind spot in DEI and intersectionality; the idea that an oppressed class can also be an oppressor class, and that it’s not an attribute of the perpetrator’s class at all, but in fact, situational and individual.

what's really bleakly funny is that you're right - that's how it's taken, but that's actually a major _point_ of intersectionality.

I'd imagine this type of situation could also be especially tricky since both sides of it have _some_ claim to minority/victim status.

Not that it isn't still fairly clear what needs to happen, but it's not hard to imagine how even doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons could end up spun as if it's a squabble over a prayer room or something, like "clueless white HR department fires productive manager after disrespecting his cultural and religious background. When will they ever learn??"

True. This explains maybe the first 5 minutes of the issue. In practice, HR usually leans on Legal for these types of questions. It likely boiled down to “do we want to be sued by a whole team/department because of a bad manager doing unethical thing? Or do we want to get sued by that one manager?” They had to weigh the risk of each since it probably wasn’t clear either way which was the legal thing to do (much like the debates here). They chose wisely in terms of risk and that’s why it came off as “legal’s” choice.

From what I saw I don't think it was malicious at all either. I think the HR team really just sort of froze for a while and didn't know what to do when faced with something new to them.

The frustrating thing for everyone is that it was an obvious case of discrimination and HR stalled for a long time. I don't want to get into details but it played out more like HR had a playbook that was stupid simple and suddenly the role players weren't what they expected and they didn't act.

Meanwhile everyone knew it was discrimination.

I'm a white dude, and had an incident a number of years ago in which a group of Indian contractors basically didn't want to work with me because I was a white dude. Used a number of slang racist terms in my direction. I didn't make a stink about it because I was a consultant just there on a short-term project, but it was memorable. As another commenter suggested, even the whole "white people" branding that happens in social media is comical, given centuries of one white group looking down on another white group. I'm glad to see this kind of social dialog about racism / classism in all of its forms and think it is very worthwhile to realize that it isn't just about the stereotype of white (males) hating on everyone else as is generally portrayed.

In the UK, class and ethnicity and accent intersect to create some similarly “invisible to HR” discrimination situations between people who would otherwise be lumped together as white.

Could you explain what you mean, a bit more?

Class discrimination is a big thing, and it’s related to accent discrimination and somewhat to ethnicity too. There is no shortage of stereotypes associated with regional accents (apologies, but to illustrate: cockney = untrustworthy; West Country = unsophisticated; Yorkshire = blunt, miserly; RP = haughty). Accent is judged alongside class (which I won’t attempt to define here). Ethnicity comes into the picture with groups such as travellers (who have only recently been recognized as an ethnic group) and showmen (who disclaim being one), and Jewish ethnicity is also often ignored as “just another kind of white” (see David Baddiel’s book Jews Don’t Count). Then there are Scottish and Welsh people and maybe even sub-national groupings like Cornish, where ethnicity and accent and class interact in complex ways.

These groupings have fuzzy edges and can be hard to disentangle as identity markers (and thus hard to make anti-discrimination rules against), which is fertile ground for under-the-radar discrimination.

The UK has multi-dimensional racism!

The UK has racism/tribalism built in. It started there and worked upwards. The founding Anglo-Saxons are the Angles and the Saxons, two competing and merged races. The word England means land of the Angles.

The class system overrides any racism, you are judged on much more than your race. Where you were born, your education (what school and university you went to), your friends, where you live now (by area name and distance to better spots), your family connections, your accent and word choice, your dress and behaviour (manners and mannerisms), your job history, the clubs you belong to, and much more.

If you work with some people or someone really cares about you, they'll do homework on you to find out all this stuff.

The UK has mapped out discrimination far deeper than american style racism. There are many more ways to slice up your image than just tribalism and ethnicity.

We have this in the US as well. People with a southern drawl may be thought of as country bumpkins and whatnot.

Some (most?) of humanity's constant behaviors over our lifetime as a species is pretty sad.

I remember reading an article by someone from the UK who loved that in the US you could move somewhere new an “be someone else”.

I had no idea what he meant until I visited the UK and some locals explained to me the scale of associations / assumptions involved based on many factors.

I don't understand how you can be so dismissive of HR talking about discrimination while at the same time praising legal for firing someone for discrimination, and compensating people for being discriminated against.

What would you like HR to do about caste-based discrimination? Apparently not send emails, or mention it in classes? You just want them to go straight to firing?

A lot of people are frustrated because if you ask anyone who works in HR at a company with DEI policies, they would say that they are "committed to diversity and inclusion and helping the oppressed" and whatever else they were trained to say. But given what seems like a textbook example of oppressive discrimination, they throw their hands up and say "well, we don't know what to do because the law says we don't have to do anything." Are we really still supposed to believe they're "committed" to anything other than getting paid?

From parents comment I understand: the emails and classes were apparently only addressing white people who discriminate and did not address cast-based discrimination. HR did nothing about the cast-based discrimination. And so parent is dismissive of HR. Only legal took any action there.

The commenter was saying that the classes and emails were geared towards evil whites, not caste issues. That is, they had no idea of how to approach the topic because they (probably?) had no idea about what caste is.

Maybe deal with it the same way you would with any other discrimination situation?

"You just want them to go straight to firing?"

Assuming it is clear cut discrimination, yes. Especially when it's a manager doing it.

ironic how discrimination classes kinda discriminated against other minorities by focusing mainly on white people. this has to be a The Office plot line

Curious, why did HR "struggled with the issue", and why it was a brave thing to decide that it was discrimination? I hope it's not the so-called multiculturalism.

Not sure why the question, an honest one, got down voted. My assumption was that discrimination is bad, no matter which culture it comes from. So, the HR should investigate or intervene per my assumption. And then per my experience with the western movement, people hesitate to judge other cultures because of the multiculturalism, hence my hope it's not that.

Out of curiosity, for Indians working in America, how hard is it to hide your caste or pretend to be of another caste altogether?

Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians? Do names tend to correlate to you caste? And if so, do people change them as a way of hiding their family caste?

There are various caste markers that casteist people use to identify the caste of the other person. Some of them include food preferences, accents (yes Indian languages also have different accents). I have seen that people can be casteist on both ends of a spectrum and it’s really hard to tell what marker of yours will be noted by the other party. I’ve seen that most people these days don’t try to pretend about hiding their caste, especially due to the mainstream anti-casteism movements. I personally don’t give a damn about people guessing my caste based on my rural accent and dietary habits.

Edit: I must add that while I’ve seen discussions around caste privileges, but I’ve never been discriminated against based on my caste. The only discrimination I’ve faced is the standard discrimination against non-white peoples.

White americans do this too. Think ozarks. I know plenty of ridiculously smart people from this region, who if they talked about the food they ate or didn't work hard to extinguish their accents would probably not have jobs w/ coastal tech companies.

True enough. Remote workers moving to non-Asheville Appalachia and some related tech companies could have interesting outcomes for the region. I worry about whatever you call Ozarks gentrification though. There’s a lot of cheap land away from the mining/coal environmental issues that the locals have a lock on right now but decent RSU grants more than pay for.

The discrimination based on accent is obvious to me but the food surprises me.. what kind of food from that region is looked down upon on the coasts?

Name is the biggest marker of all. Last name can give away the case pretty accurately. There are certain parts of India that don't use the traditional family name but even in that case, certain first names are more common among certain groups. (I'm pretty sure I have received mild positive discrimination - more like favorable pre-judgement - based on my name.)

In the USA you can, however, change your legal name for any reason to almost anything whenever you want to. I was a colleague of an eastern Asian immigrant who did exactly this, changed their family name to "King".

Food preferences? What if you happen to prefer food from a different caste?

They're referring to being vegetarian, which is a Brahmin marker. To be more precise, while a vegetarian is not necessarily Brahmin, a meat eater is unlikely to be a (practising) Brahmin, similar to pork and Islam/Judaism.

Your accent will probably give you away. Or your last name. Or your physical features. Or they'll just guess you're a different caste and treat you differently anyways.

Names in some regions of India correlate strongly with caste. Physical appearance can also be somewhat suggestive. There are however regions in India that have given up the use of last names are adopted new last names as a counter to casteism. Diet also tends to be somewhat indicative - in regions without high prevalence of vegetarianism, castes with high ritual status tend to be vegetarian.

A barrier to casteism in the diaspora (and in higher class circles in cosmopolitan cities in India) is that an Indian from one region of India is unlikely to know the last names of Indians from other regions of India. Likewise with diet, many Brahmins from a vegetarian background adopt a non-vegetarian diet so it's really not a useful distinguisher.

FWIW, I haven't perceived any casteism in tech companies, or anyone trying to ask my caste, and I have an ambiguous last name and eat a meat-heavy diet. There's a decent chance my experiences would be different if I worked in less elite tech companies (e.g. Cisco) rather than top startups / FAANGs.

> There are however regions in India that have given up the use of last names are adopted new last names as a counter to casteism.

That's not true afaik. It's usually to cover up cousin marriages.

I'm not Indian American my origins are Caribbean but I have some Indian origins and can offer a few answers from my experience.

> Is this something that comes up in conversation among Indians?

It starts casually with "where are you from?" and the questions get more invasive.

> Do names tend to correlate to you caste?

In India, yes it does family name is derived from caste. I had some friends adopt English names to get from under their caste names. So quite a few Johnsons, Smiths, Matthews, Pauls out there.

> I had some friends adopt English names to get from under their caste names. So quite a few Johnsons, Smiths, Matthews, Pauls out there.

There is an interesting history behind this. When Christian missionaries first arrived in India to spread their religion (in the late 1700s/1800s) they were initially unable to make much progress, but then found success among lower caste Indians by promising them a life of equality. So the vast majority of Christian converts in India are from these castes.

The history was more complex. There are Syrian Christians (600AD), Catholics (1500), Anglican Protestants (1800) and more recently, evangelical Christians. Each group is linguistically and culturally distinct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_India

Mangalorean Catholics for instance are mostly Saraswat Brahmins who converted around 1700s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalorean_Catholics

Christian missionaries arrived in India much, much earlier:

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

If I remember correctly, Sikhs are standing outside the caste system as well.

LOL. The first Indian American I met with an English surname I assumed was adopted. Then I met another with the same surname and assumed they were related.

NB: "where are you from?" is a question your HR training should already explicitly tell people not to ask candidates. I'm not in HR or management and I still make sure to mention it to new hires before doing my first interview alongside them. National origin is a protected class. Even within the US , "where are you from?" can proxy for a protected class. Race, mostly, or possibly religion.

It's also a question that's very easy to ask in good faith while making small talk, which makes it noticeably dangerous.

Ugh, this is a classic example of skewed logic going way too far before the underlying truth can catch up.

I am in tech management (also a recovering attorney) who routinely conducts interviews, and it is perfectly acceptable to ask where someone is from in a professional setting.

The unacceptable part, as OP at least hints at, is using the response as a proxy for some other verboten criteria or perhaps to kickoff an overly intrusive line of questioning.

These behaviors are odious on their own and why HR should be explicit in training against antipatterns, not spreading meaningless FUD which miss the point and permit bad habits to foster elsewhere.

It’s really inane that modern software recruiting claims to focus on getting a proper picture of the whole candidate , yet untrained interviewers counterfeit the whole endeavor thinking they’re politically correct because they’re afraid to ask anything but the same broken whiteboard questions.

> It starts casually with "where are you from?" and the questions get more invasive.

Whenever I mention to a team member that I was interviewing somebody for a position on our team, they always ask: "are they in India?" I had never really wondered why before.

> In India, yes it does family name is derived from caste.

That is not always correct (but is true in most cases). There are caste-neutral names in India - especially Tamil Nadu. But that itself is a hint about the person's caste, since it is adopted mostly by people of the unprivileged caste.

In the Sikh way of life, first names are gender-neutral and everyone takes the surname Singh or Kaur (deleting the family last name) to specifically combat caste and gender discrimination. I'm speaking of the ideals of the faith here, I know in practice it's different - caste creeps back in, but the Sikh faith began in the late 1400's as a revolution against caste injustice and discrimination.

But isn’t caste still an issue in Sikhism? The very reason why Congress chose a lower caste Sikh chief ministerial candidate in the recent state elections?

"Singh" means "Lion", doesn't it? Is there any significance to "Kaur"?

Kaur can be roughly translated as 'warrior princess.'

Interestingly, I grew up in India but have no clue what my caste is. I could probably ask my parents and they'd know but it has never come up. Religion and sub ethnicity came up a lot more often while growing up. Funnily enough the only ones who have ever asked me about my caste were white people.

I had always assumed the caste system was a thing of the past but looking at how it's still present even at companies in other countries, I imagine I just grew up in a bubble.

I am guessing that you are upper caste, which is why it didn't really come up. If you were lower caste it would have been a different story.

I don’t think your experience is unique. Most people in my experience that grew up in Indian cities have very little interaction with caste.

Really not surprising considering the size and population of India, but I think the question of real importance is whether you where the one in the bubble or if there are just large bubbles in India were caste is still considered really important.

Paying people to alter historical genealogy records to hide caste origin was a fairly common practice in India, especially by new kings.

I thought people lose their caste when they cross the "black water".

Yeah, going by the Smriti and Purana scriptures (which no one really follows), we're all polluted in America.

Not Indian, but a friend told me that most (if not all) of the names do correlate to caste. No idea if people change them, other than for the normal marriage changes.

>No idea if people change them, other than for the normal marriage changes.

Inter-caste marriages are also extremely rare.

Yeah, but if we're talking about people in the US, it's not that rare to marry outside of your caste, which includes marrying non-Indians. Right?

As a mixed-race individual, I don't face that question by default in the US. There are enough mixed people in the US that I don't get asked "where are you from." But as soon as they realize I'm half-Indian, they will hunt me down and ask me questions. They'll try to ask me my parent's names etc. (names signify caste)

It's sad behavior. If it helps, here's a comment I wrote about my travels in India that might shed some light on the phenomena;

My travels in India have been revealing.

Caste and class are inextricably linked, and a part of their daily vernacular. They're used as descriptors, "s/he's an X" (as if that means something to me!) And there's a huge coded language with inferences going on. It's a bit like saying, "s/he's jewish". Something that just doesn't happen in the US anymore (unless you're around rather unsavory folks)

It's such a deep part of the milieu that I'm not surprised when I hear stories about it being exported.

True story. I met this Indian woman while working out of the local hipster cafe. We had mutual friends. And ended up going out for lunch.

On the way back, she started asking questions about my background. They grew intensely personal. Until she was interrogating me on the sidewalk.

Unsatisfied with my responses, she just gave up & cut to the chase, "What's your mother's caste?"

Last I checked, she moved to the States and is a contractor for a FAANG.

She's hardly unique though. Indian people cannot stop asking questions. Where are you from? Where were you born? Why's your skin so pale? Where are your parents? What do they do? Where did you go to school? Why aren't you married?

What's worse is that the society is insular. Even in a big city, few people socialize outside of, in descending order of proximity, family > friends of the family > classmates from elementary school > people from their high school > college > (perhaps, sometimes) work.

I have met people who have gone through their entire life without ever meeting someone from a lower social class/caste. Casual greetings with people who clean their homes don't count.

There's a lack of je ne sais quoi. A certain lack of creative energy. A kind of absence of the meeting of free radicals that sparks interesting ideas and art. Culturally, it's as if, the society has submerged itself in halon, determined to not let the sparks of creativity and genius spark.

This problem is so acute that every free radical I've met has done their very best to move away as soon as humanly possible.

From what I understand, there's a huge ledger of names that is used to identify castes. I've seen great performers never get any promotion and the useless becoming senior managers because of their caste. Pretty vicious.

Your surname literally gives it away.

Not really. You’ve no way to find out the caste of a Prasad or Kumar or Deshmukh or a Muralidharan

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

Upper caste

But it's relatively simple if it's a Srinivasan.

My dad once told me of how at his work (in the 1980s or early 1990s, I think), they had a team of two Indians assigned to a project. One turned out to be of a much "higher" caste than the other, and refused to work with the other, making him utterly useless to the project.

It's good that Apple, IBM and other tech companies are taking steps to prevent this sort of discrimination. It's a shame that Google seems be going in the opposite direction.

The real shame is that living in Delhi, I’ve seen caste come back very strongly in everyday discourse.

I’ve been here almost 20 years. This city used to be largely caste agnostic.

Now when I meet new people, especially outside the elite tech circles, they will casually mention their upper caste status (“As Brahmins, we don’t do xyz of course!”).

Even cars carrying caste stickers are more common.

Do you know why this happened?

It's nothing that requires much research. The current national government openly supports discrimination on religious and caste based backgrounds. 7 years of this, and people who used to think "Caste is a taboo subject, and we should be working around it", now think "Caste pride is cool".

Religion, especially in public life, has made a big comeback under the current ruling party. This party is also generally considered an upper-caste party. I assume much of it is due to implicit soft support from the ruling establishment.

This gives some background: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva#Upper_casteism

Strictly from a resource allocation standpoint, it makes sense to keep economic flows within a subpopulation rather than diluting them over a broader population. Consider, "buy local" initiatives.

I imagine that hypothetical Republicoin and Demacoin currencies would find strong support among the hard-core true believers of the respective groups for the same reasons.

I have not had to work with the caste system before. In your opinion, are there any benefits for low-to-mid caste in such a system?

I have never even stopped to consider the benefits - real or on paper - of a system of explicit discrimination.

It is morally repugnant and treating it as anything else is perhaps even more morally repugnant.

Traditionally, Brahmins (the priestly caste at the top of the ritual hierarchy) weren't supposed to engage in commerce, landowning, etc. so some of the business-oriented middle castes were much better off economically.

But the very lowest castes which were outside the traditional varna division (i.e. untouchables, known today as Dalits) basically got the short end of the stick with little if any benefit (the only silver lining I can think of is lack of competition for ritually impure jobs that no one else was willing to do).

I remember reading that it’s a big problem at Cisco. In your dad’s example what ended up happening? From your description the guy who refused to work in the higher caste should be fired imo.

I forgot what happened, but knowing my dad, he probably did it himself.

It says in the article that Google (and Microsoft, Dell, Amazon + FB/Meta) aren't (yet?) implementing this, but I didn't see anything about them doing the opposite. Additionally I don't imagine they'd gain much from doing so, as a business. Is there any more info on this?

From the article:

> Just a few months ago in June, Google, whose CEO Sundar Pichai has Indian roots, cancelled a talk on caste discrimination where Dalit rights activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan was supposed to give a presentation. The talk was organised by Google employee Tanuja Gupta.

It’s not the opposite but probably what GP was referring to.

For those who don't know how to recognise a caste from the name, does anyone have any idea which caste Google's CEO might represent? Can it even be definitely derived just from name?

It's why I used the word "seems". It doesn't prove they're going the opposite direction, but it does give that impression. Hopefully Google is taking this issue more seriously.

Wouldn't lose much either. I'd argue they'd gain face in today's climate. "DEI best practices aren't just for white people anymore" is probably a good look.

Ironically it tends to be high caste Indians who push this stuff (perhaps because of higher education levels). Maybe they’ll be circumspect about dishing it out to white people after some sessions having to confess their “Brahmin privilege.”

>> Wouldn't lose much either. I'd argue they'd gain face in today's climate. "DEI best practices aren't just for white people anymore" is probably a good look.

> Ironically it tends to be high caste Indians who push this stuff (perhaps because of higher education levels).

High caste Indian immigrants or their American children? I have trouble imagining someone raised outside of the American cultural context getting enthusiastic about DEI in that way.

Discussing your “privilege” while inflicting the costs to atone for it on others is the humble-brag version of racism:

Wealthy whites are all too happy to brag about their privileges, while discriminating against poor whites to “atone” for that.

I predict they’ll love the opportunity to indulge in theatrical ethnomasochism, just like high status whites do.

I know who I would have fired without hesitation.

Yeah. "Caste", "Color", doesn't matter, all the same shit. If someone sees a problem there, they're unfit for a lot of other stuff.

My good friend's Indian and she loved when I described the caste system as "just racism for people who look alike".

Groups gonna group... it's good to see there's some pushback on the bullshit.

As usual it breaks down to tribalism and fear of "the other". It can cause racism, religious persecution, sexism, etc.

Along with anyone who found this a difficult decision once the facts were clear.

People with these beliefs don't belong anywhere in society where they can oppress others. Just as white people who think blacks are beneath them do not belong in any setting where they can affect a black person.

I'm not surprised some people found it a difficult decision to be honest.

I mean, discovering a new form of discrimination, which only Indians can perform? And none of your fellow managers have ever heard of this stuff? And you don't know WTF a caste is?

And I doubt the accused is telling HR "yeah, I discriminate on caste, got a problem with that?" - they might instead be saying "some of his behaviour towards me has made me uncomfortable, I don't want to complain formally I just think everyone would be happier if we were on different projects"

I can see why a person might decide that's not a minefield they're equipped to navigate, and pass the issue over to HR.

I mean, certainly gather information and follow due process, but once it's clear what occurred, there is no question that a person who refuses to work with coworkers based on lower caste does not belong in any workplace with lower caste workers.

And anyone who resists that principle is a co-conspirator in caste-based oppression and should leave as well.

This is a good step forward but wait until Apple realizes that Indians discriminate on many other factors including but not limited to skin color, state of origin, region of origin (North vs South vs NorthEast), mother tongue, religion (Hindu vs Muslim), Political beliefs (Left vs Right).

Political belief should not be a protected class. It's an opinion- everything else you listed, you're born with/can't change that classification (don't want to get into the weirdness of the religion part, but nearly all religious preference can be predicted by geography).

Both religion and national identity are changeable, they are 'just opinions', but both are key historical examples of protected class.

You can say that both are predicted by geography, but must conflicts happen in situations where populations of different identities are mixed in one geography. Then you can say it can be predicted by parents' opinions, but that is true for many other opinions, including political ones.

In some sense, protection of changeable characteristics is more important than protections of non-changeable characteristics, because bullying based on changeable characteristics can be effective to pressure conversions of victims.

And it is question how political opinion is just an expression of deep personal characteristics that are not much changeable and perhaps even partially given by genetics.

National origin is not changeable. National identity, I suppose.

If push came to shove I'd remove religion from any list of protected classes gladly.

Why should only things you can't change be protected?

A tautology I suppose, but, because you can't change them. You didn't choose it and it's immutable. Not fair to discriminate against someone for something they can't control. This is, of course, personal opinion of mine.

We do discriminate against things people can't control, like intelligence. If you have an IQ of 80, I can almost guarantee you will not be accepted to a college to become an architect, lawyer, or doctor.

But also, discriminating against things people can control is really just one party trying to apply soft power over another, and I am generally against it. You might be able to legally say you can't work at this company if you like to go bowling in your free time, but I don't think it would be a right thing to do.

I get why you shouldn't discriminate against things you can't change, but I am wondering why there shouldn't also be things you can't discriminate based on that you CAN change.

Religion is a good example of one... people can and do change religions, but we still shouldn't discriminate based on it. There are other examples as well of things that people can change that shouldn't be discriminated based on.

Political belief is legally a protected class in California.

Also, political belief is highly predictable based on demographic information such as geography, race, religion, and sex.

political beliefs aren't a protected class

'protected class' is just legal criterion that varies between jurisdictions. For example, political opinion is protected class in EU.

They are, legally, in California

One of these is not like the others.

I think this is a reason why Leetcode style interviews are popular. They remove at least one type of bias of race - the ability to solve coding problems. If you can solve Online Assessment, Phone Assessment and Onsites, you keep moving on to the next round, regardless of your race or ethnicity. It is a way for companies to claim that there is no bias in hiring.

well, no. First companies usually have separate interview for 'cultural fit'. Second, the thing with discriminations, they can be quite hidden. The 'leetcode style tasks' can be performed very differently. If I as interviewer don't like you, I can do a lot to make sure you don't pass it. Starting from making question harder to understand and end with plain 'strong not hire' for vague reasons even if you did well.

Correct. Seen this exact scenario and opposites.

In the end - many companies aren’t super rigorous about whether your code that was written passes a test suite and compiled correctly.

I’ve known a few (token) people who have said that they were able to just “talk their way out of having to do leetcode” when presented with the problems. In my personal experience - there’s no way to do that at FAANG and crew if you’re not part of a special group. You either solve all problems asked optimally while not being part of a group the person hates or you don’t pass.

It’s no coincidence that certain races consistently give me leetcode hards as I’m not in their specific group. It’s also no coincidence they still give me a no when I solve the problem optimally when others give me a yes. ;)

Yeah. “Cultural fit” is de facto discrimination, but you have absolutely no chance to prove it unless they haven’t been told by their lawyers not be stupid enough to put it in writing.

I don't think this is true at all. People who pass the leetcode can still be passed over for "cultural fit" or they may not even make it to the coding portion of the interview at all.

Have you seen the discussion boards of Leetcode? It’s all Indians

That's because we understand how the system works, and are competitive - it's ingrained in us from childhood how important it is to study and compete and understand the system because there are a billion+ of us and so few opportunities.

This just introduces another type of bias, the "did you just graduate from a top 30 CS school or are you able to spend 6-12 months teaching yourself DS/Algorithms while working full time" bias.

Lots of "Stockholm syndrome" surrounding Leetcode style interviewing practices.

Which bias would you prefer? Immutable characteristics or those that can be build with hard work and intelligence?

So there is no possible way that people with intelligence and high work ethic aren't able to graduate from a top 30 cs school or spend a year outside work hours teaching themselves obscure algorithm trivia to pass an interview? I'm afraid you are a 22 year old recent graduate with little grasp on life outside School or Silicon Valley.

I don’t follow tbh. If you need a top 30 school or a year of prep then you’re doing it wrong or are not good enough sorry. But that’s okay there is a sliding scale of employers out there.

If you think I’m a 22 yo or in SV then you need to update your heuristics, cuz you’re incorrect.

Or are you smart enough to teach yourself DS/Algorithms in a couple weeks.

From what I hear from my Indian friends, this behaviour is quite ingrained. Like other racism, it will be challenging to prove.

I work predominately with Indian coworkers. You are exactly correct in my view.

Racism has technically been banned in the United States wholesale since the Civil Rights act, yet we struggle with the effects still today.

This is a step in a right direction, but it should be seen as only as the beginning.

Casteism, while bad, is not racism. Saying casteism is ingrained in Indians on the other hand is racism.

>>Saying casteism is ingrained in Indians on the other hand is racism.

This is always fascinating to me. I would call it "culturalism", though I'll agree it does depend hugely on how the author meant it, and thus is open to interpretations. (I live in Canada now, and though I consider myself 99% "a Canadian" culturally, and very intentionally so, I'm still amused seeing people get Up in the arms when somebody makes a generalist comment about culture or societal norms of my country of birth, while I chuckle and say Yup. That is indeed the general culture and societal norm of that region.:)

I cannot change my race, or ethnicity, or country of birth (and "Indian" may refer to these immutable qualities) . But I can change my values and moral framework, my culture (and I have; consciously and determinedly so), and sometimes "Indian" or "Bosnian" or whatever is meant to refer to culture and dominant societal framework of that country. I don't believe I don't have right to judge other people's value framework, i.e. their culture. It is within each of our purview and ability and mandate to consider and evaluate and choose and as needed change our own value frameworks. If somebody's cultural values and habits say "it's ok to throw acid in girls eyes", or "people in this randomly selected immutable group are bad" I will judge that value framework or moral axiom or culture/society negatively and strive to change it and convince them otherwise.

> Casteism, while bad, is not racism

Open to this argument. But every definition of race I’ve seen constructed to exclude caste seems contrived. The system has imprinted itself as far down as hair shaft diameter [1].

> Saying casteism is ingrained in Indians on the other hand is racism

Sympathetic to this. It’s like saying all white people are racist. It’s ingrained in the Indian culture, and I think anyone coming from India should be sensitive to the issue, but e.g. their kids born and raised here are obviously less susceptible. (This is true of all immigrants and their biases, though.)

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/29542824

There are some correlations between phenotypes and caste (and there is a lot of genetic stratification when you look at ancestry), but caste really cuts across race - there are lower caste groups in North India that look more "white" than upper caste groups in South India.

> Casteism, while bad, is not racism.

This relies on a fairly narrow view of what constitutes "race" or "racism".

The caste of a person is fundamentally based on their ancestry. Thus, discriminating based on caste is discriminating based on a person's ancestry. I think a lot of reasonable people would consider that to fall under the definition of "racism".

Yes, it's true that there is a lot of diversity of ethnic groups and e.g. skin color within castes in different regions of India. But just because people discriminate on certain aspects of race (ancestry) and not others (skin color) doesn't make it not racism.

> Casteism, while bad, is not racism. Saying casteism is ingrained in Indians on the other hand is racism.

Doesn't caste have some deep origins with race? I'm under the impression that thousands of years ago Indo-Europeans invaded an India populated by darker-skinned natives, and formed an elite that now finds some expression in caste. I could be wrong, though.

No that's mostly wrong. A group of Indo-Europeans did enter India, but North Indians were likely relatively lighter-skinned at that point already. It's true that Brahmins (the priestly caste which had the most privileged status in the ritual hierarchy, though they lacked the economic wealth of business-oriented castes) have the most Indo-European steppe ancestry (controlling for region, as North Indian lower castes have more steppe ancestry than South Indian Brahmins), but beyond that the correlation is much more complex. Many tribals and untouchables in North India have more Indo-European ancestry than the wealthy business castes for example.

The Caste system is as old as India itself, from ancient India: the varna, and the joti. The Indian Government itself recognizes how deep it goes, and based their Affirmative Action program upon it. To say it's not ingrained is simply choosing to ignore the problem is there. It's not saying "all Indians are casteist" but recognizing, much like the American South pre-Jim Crow, it was ingrained in society.

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

> Casteism, while bad, is not racism. Saying casteism is ingrained in Indians on the other hand is racism.

There is literally no difference. They are both arbitrary categories of people based on ancestry that are used for discrimination.

This doesn't sound right.

Weren't castes based on race and conquering populations initially?

How would you describe casteism's status among expatriated Indian populations at a population level? Or is the fact one refers to a population at all to be help in contempt as "racism"?

I have this impression that casteism can commonly exist in people that are otherwise progressive and non-racist, is that true? I once had a pen-pal that worked for the UN that at some point told me that she viewed the caste system as a "useful way to organize society". I was rather taken aback since that viewpoint didn't seem to comport with my other impressions of her.

The same people at the forefront of social justice nowadays would likely be considered unforgivably bigoted had they been raised centuries ago. People end up believing a net sum of their cultural and social influences, even if those influences contradict. It's so easy to imbibe nicely packaged cultural trends that people rarely scrutinize the actual moral makeup of their worldview. This pen-pal likely gathered a progressive and non-racist attitude from the UN's human-rights centered hegemony, and a belief in caste systems from the cultural inertia those old practices still have on Indian society, but never put in the effort to ascertain how those two worldviews contradicted.

I find it endlessly impressive how people can hold two perfectly opposing viewpoints and never even notice any contradiction. Good reminder to do an occasional review of ideas one considers obvious.

non-racist

There is a fair chance that even low caste members will be brought into a team ahead of non-Indians for managers so-disposed.

I'm sure it happens all the time. I think people have blind spots based on their upbringing or ideology that can make them unaware of their own racism/sexism/casteism/whatever. Being progressive doesn't magically make you immune to this.

I'm not surprised. Even M.K. Gandhi said the same thing about caste. That without casteism the Indian society would crumble.

Gandhi also slept with his underage niece to test whether he can control his sexual desires after adopting celibacy.

California treats ancestry as a protected class, and discrimination by ancestry is illegal. Not being a Desi, I struggle to see how this is not already covered.

>> California treats ancestry as a protected class, and discrimination by ancestry is illegal. Not being a Desi, I struggle to see how this is not already covered.

It is covered, but not enforced because evidence is difficult. Caste discrimination in Silicon Valley is usually about putting someone from a lower caste into an impossible project that is destined to fail, and boom...now you've got your PIP quota ready for the coming season.

The insane cases you hear are the egregious cases that are court-worthy.

> It is covered, but not enforced because evidence is difficult. Caste discrimination in Silicon Valley is usually about putting someone from a lower caste into an impossible project that is destined to fail, and boom...now you've got your PIP quota ready for the coming season.

When I hear about insidious things like this it boggles my mind how some people can be so clever in order to be so hurtful. Thanks for educating me.

PIP quota? Really?

Yeah, search on "hire to fire", for more info on this. If your team is big enough, at a big enough company, you've probably got a target for attrition. If you don't have enough people with poor performance naturally, then you've got to do something to hit your numbers...

Not too different from "stack ranking". I'd believe it.

Existing laws don't make Apple execs look good

Here in europe, we have a large minority called Romany (derogatorily known as Gypsy). An indian people that apparently was a caste in india, migrated to europe some 400 years ago, later on ending up as slaves and then finally getting freed (to a certain extent). Sadly this group of indians is heavily misunderstood and massively discriminated against, and there is little to no effort in understanding their culture or helping them. A shame for a would be “fair” continent that unapologetically continues to discriminate against people based on ethnicity and other petty criteria.

Sources: https://m.timesofindia.com/where-do-gypsies-come-from/articl...

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/twin-researches-...

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/genetic-se...

Pretty sure the Romani were never slaves. Didn’t they always just live on the fringes of society?

This is good. I don't know how effective it will be in practice however since all forms of outlawed discrimination largely end up in the "culture fit" bucket.

"Culture fit" is really insidious. Like many forms of discrimination I don't think it's even necessarily a conscious bias but this absolutely still exists (eg [1]). "Culture fit" is an umbrella for de facto racism, sexism, ageism and classism.

[1]: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/08/18/name-discriminati...

To Apple they are all Indian.

Underrated comment. Not sure if roschdal@ intended it this way, but I interpreted it in a dark way.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant that way. But it is important that Indians who place so much importance and pride on caste understand this. To a non-Indian, you and that supposedly 'lower' caste guy you won't eat together at the same table with are both the same.

In my opinion, companies should produce "challenges" for leading personal, from a sort of internal investigations team, and among them should be corruption challenges, security challenges, nepotism challenges and discrimination challenges.

If you fail them, you get demoted or otherwise restructured.

Of course, this creates a atmosphere of distrust, but some things, like Meritocratic atmosphere, are worth it.

Do you mean audits? The problem is the incentive to do these things and be honest about them, and not skew metrics to keep the company looking good. Lets say they do these audits will full honesty and find that 50% of the management deserves to be demoted. Do you think that will actually happen and how does this make the company look from a PR perspective?

Third party audits would be the only way to make this work, and again what are the incentives? Security audits are common because the risk is high. Lots of money lost in a lawsuit on behalf of billions/millions of customers. The others not so much, because you would only expect a lawsuit from an individual employee, which your army of corporate lawyers can easily crush.

Hm. I doubt this would produce meritocracy, more likely the result would be highly political atmosphere where everyone would be covering their actions instead of working.

Reminds me of a passage from the great Jack Vance.

Paraphrasing:

"To construct a society based on caste distinctions, a minimum of two persons is both necessary and sufficient." - Baron Bodissey

Every tech company should do this. Civil Rights Act Title 7 should cover this. Lawsuits winning should happen to reinforce it.

I have mixed feelings on this.

There are of course things that aren't explicitly prohibited by workplace policies but are no doubt unacceptable - e.g. discriminating against left-handed employees. But it's still useful to have explicit policies against caste discrimination to make clear that it's unacceptable.

On the other hand, as an Indian in a top tech company we're more likely to experience racism than casteism (though both are relatively rare), and this policy is likely to increase racism and result in Indians (and other South Asians) getting singled-out and scrutinized for casteism.

Edit: as if to prove my point about racism, in this very thread there is already a comment talking about Indian nepotism.

> we're more likely to experience racism than casteism (though both are relatively rare)

I have seen zero evidence for this. The relative or absolute frequency claims.

> this policy is likely to increase racism and result in Indians (and other South Asians) getting singled-out and scrutinized for casteism

Strongly disagree. I have Indian heritage. I have no problem with such policy, and am increasingly convinced—in part by comments like this—that it needs the force of statute. (It’s almost certainly already law.)

Also, non-Indians can discriminate based on caste, albeit indirectly, if their information flows through biased channels. The same way someone not racist can further racism if a bigot runs on of their teams.

If I lived in India I'd be OBC. No Indian coworker (some of whom have had Brahmin last names) has ever asked my caste (white people have on occasion, but only out of harmless curiosity), or showed any signs of discriminating against me over it. I have encountered occasional racism in my career on the other hand. Nobody I know in real life has any experiences of casteism in top tech companies to report, but some do report experiences of racism.

>(It’s almost certainly already law.)

Is it? I suppose this will vary depending on which country we're talking about, but as far as i know there's nothing in the US that makes it illegal to discriminate based on caste unless the determination of caste overlaps with another -ism, like race.

>Edit: as if to prove my point about racism, in this very thread there is already a comment talking about Indian nepotism.

I was wondering if you could clarify this. Why is the caste system fair game to criticize but nepotism isn't?

I didn't say either was fair game to criticize. Criticism of both tends to provide cover to or be motivated by racism. Especially when there isn't equal emphasis on WASP or Jewish nepotism, when most early tech companies tended to have mostly WASP or Jewish leadership.

Because it's a negative trait being generally applied to a people group based upon their race. And it comes more from a cultural stereotype than from any basis in observable evidence.

Why is it racist to discuss Indian nepotism? Racism can often take the form of an individual giving preferred status to others who share their own race over others, and examples are frequently, rightfully, pointed out when white people give preferred status over non-whites. But if white people are capable of doing this, is it really that unbelievable that non-white individuals and groups are also capable of this? If not, then how is pointing out racism perpetrated by Indian individuals, itself, a racist act?

This is kinda a dumb argument, but if we have to constantly be reminded not to be racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic, etc we might as well throw casteist into the mix. I'm actually feeling a little schadenfreude now that there's finally an -ism where i'm not part of the demographic that's the "bad guy".

Are you in a caste that's likely to experience discrimination? Or is this widely accepted among people who'd be vulnerable to caste discrimination?

I'm from a middle-caste - one that currently qualifies for affirmative action quotas in my ancestral state in India, but is reasonably well off economically. Most Indian tech workers with caste names I can recognize are either Brahmin (priestly caste - highest in the ritual hierarchy, though often poor), or Agarwal (middle-caste but extremely wealthy). I eat meat. Most of the upper castes traditionally don't, but a lot of Brahmins for example eat vegetables.

If I went to an orthodox village or town in India, I would likely face discrimination from Brahmins. On the other hand, in educated circles in cosmopolitan cities in India, caste is unlikely to really come up. The one thing that could come up is diet though - in some regions of India, many or even most landlords (including "lower" caste ones) would deny me housing because I cook meat at home and bring non-vegetarian food home. In America, most landlords won't care, but many vegetarian students / residents do insist on vegetarian roommates (likely more because they don't like the smell of meat than due to the religious vegetarian fanaticism that's seen in some parts of India).

Is it possible that dalits (historically untouchables, who constitute something like 2% of Indian-Americans from surveys I've seen) could be discriminated against in top tech companies in America, unlike me? Yeah it's possible. But I'm skeptical, if only because few Indians could tell apart a dalit from someone like me, given the amount of diversity you see in top tech companies - someone from one region of India won't recognize dalit surnames from another region of India. I could, however, see it coming up in some of the less competitive tech companies, where you tend to see more clustering of people from individual regions of India. I have also heard reports (some from friends of friends) of heavy discrimination by more tight-knit ethnic / caste groups in the diaspora that don't tend to work as engineers in tech - e.g. Jatts in the Central Valley or Patels.

> and this policy is likely to increase racism and result in Indians (and other South Asians) getting singled-out and scrutinized for casteism.

Is it? Do Whites get singled out and scrutinized for anti-black racism? Maybe they do, but if it is I doubt it's a significant phenomenon.

I can’t speak to what whites experience on a personal level, but I can say that my company paid Robin deAngelo to give a talk on “white fragility”, which I found rather offensive, and I’m not even white.

How is talking about Indian nepotism inherently racist?

HN can never has a coherent discussion about casteism in modern India OR in NRI populations because they lack the nuance and lived experience required to understand how jati system works. Indians are more likely to be affected by racism than casteism in the west.

> Indians are more likely to be affected by racism than casteism in the west

Should we ignore sexism faced by black women because they’re more likely to be racially discriminated against?

Did we avoid explicitly banning racial discrimination because there might be a backlash against non-whites? Nope.

I wonder is it really necessary to explicitly ban every sort of discrimination? Shouldn't it be simple 'discrimination is not allowed'? Otherwise we will be listing every type of discrimination and revisiting this list every now and then. And it leads to questions like 'is it acceptable to discriminate by boldness if it is not in the list?'

While I agree that such not-so-well-known discriminations should be publically discussed, I feel like 'banning' them one by one is the wrong direction to take.

Discrimination is allowed, it’s not even necessarily a negative thing - a company may discriminate against employees who are late, for example. What is not permitted are certain types of discrimination. Those either need to be enumerated or we need to all guess what they are.

Banning is the way to discourage it, and make people aware of the discrimination. How else do you propose we educate, spread awareness and discourage the act? Would you take something seriously if it wasn't banned and had consequences if you indulged in it? I don't think banning is wrong. But the punishment for it should be ideally mediation and education (with something like 3 or 4 strike rules because unfortunately some people are shit).

Cue the ambulance-chasers bringing discrimination lawsuits on behalf of paraplegics alleging discrimination in the field of carrying boxes up and down stairs.

But did they explicitly ban slavery?

I guess https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Comb...

Kudos to Apple - I wonder how does this work in practice. Policing discrimination is difficult period, however for better or worse racial and gender discrimination have a visual impact which makes it somewhat easier to identify. From what I've learned there are a lot of niche aspects to caste discrimination and I wonder what sort of guidelines Apple has built internally to monitor this. Does Apple know which caste their employees traditionally belong to?

There are nice short videos which talks about racism and tries to make people less racist. Similarly in India it would be good to develop such short videos so that people can become sensitive on this topic of caste and become a better society.

Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDPTVEqkGa4

Curious, does this include Apple enforcing the policy with contractors, partners, etc — basically any business relationship Apple has a significant leverage over?

Ask because Apple directly and indirectly consumes vast amounts of human labor in India.

If not, has any company of significant size ever successfully made this a policy in India?

Casteism is generally a smaller problem in urban areas and in South India, so technically casteism is a smaller problem in places like Bengaluru where the IT tech companies are based. A major reason for the issue might be based on the fact that there was a major immigration of upper caste Indians to the US around the time of the Cold War who kept to their old ways.

How hard is it to fake being of a higher caste like Brahmin or Kshatriya?

Since it’s not skin color but your heritage, can’t you falsify this information? Especially if you claim to be from some rural or remote location?

Just how involved would someone try to investigate your background?

It’s about as hard as someone from Alabama trying to pass as someone that grew up in New York. It’s not super hard but people will probably eventually find out.

For the vast majority of Indians, their last name gives away their caste. If not their last name, their way of speech, their place of birth, what they eat. Caste-ism is so ingrained amongst a lot of Indians, that it is the first thing they try to figure out upon meeting another Indian. It's pretty hard to hide, unless you belong to the small minority of people whose habits and name don't give away their caste.

I'm not Indian but my understanding is that you can typically tell someone's caste by their last name. I'd also imagine there'd be a host of cultural information that would be hard to fake, like knowing certain prayers or rituals. Brahmin's are vegetarian, so you'd have to only eat vegetarian at the office to pretend to be one. I even had a friend who told me his sub-caste had their own secret language they spoke.

I could have misread or maybe it was some sort of propaganda but I thought I read somewhere that Silicon Valley's caste discrimination is the inverse of what used to be in India? i.e. the lower castes discriminating against the higher castes.

Speaking as a person with zero knowledge of SV and caste discrimination I will make the observation that 'accusations' of discrimination can and are made by people in almost every conceivable group.

So yes you could very easily have read something like that. And more reading would be required for background and context to figure out who's telling the truth in different situations

Slightly off topic I am anticipating discussions and media reports in the next few years where the antipathy between two groups manifests as clear discrimination by both groups towards the other. But if neither group is clearly in a stronger socio-economic then how will we describe and talk about that problem. To be clear I think these situations exist already but I don't think they are being reported in.

Lol no. Brahmins (the highest caste) are wildly overrepresented in IT, in and outside India.

In the US, you often see claims of "reverse racism", e.g. around affirmative action or just from general vibes. This is the equivalent - high caste people interpreting attempts at leveling the playing field as if they are being discriminated against.

Inverseish caste discrimination does happen in some places in India, where demographically large "lower" castes seize political power and take the spoils and boss around everyone else (both upper castes who're easy to oppress in the name of equality, as well as other lower castes).

But I can't see that happening in Silicon Valley. There's too many Brahmins for other castes to be able to discriminate against them.

I would love to have the opportunity to see caste discrimination myself, I swear by god I will get the discriminator fired on the spot, right after making him feel very little. Caste/race discrimination is the dumbest/sickest thing I have ever seen.

Does employment law in India prohibit caste discrimination? If Apple's policy is more stringent than Indian law it presents interesting challenges in a pan-national workforce, especially with employees and contractors located in India.

I don’t understand how this isn’t already illegal

Just curious how this can be enforced when there are conflicts. In the US, how can it be proven someone belongs to specific caste.

Most likely apple has nothing to lose by doing this.

Where they do have something to lose: Taiwan v China politics - they side with China so they don't lose, going completely against any principled stand.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/07/apple-ask...

This is a good first step.

Anti racism/casteism is a cat and mouse game though. The only thing Im certain of is the rabid caste discriminators will develop some sort of coded language to keep discriminating without being caught.

My point is that we can never call this process done. Unfortunately the situation will evolve and so will our strategies to deal with it.

Ultimately we must uphold our commitment to liberal principles (I mean liberal in the sense of classical, not American liberalism). The rights of individuals must be protected.

It's kind of wild that it took so long, but this is great news and I hope others follow suit.

A lot of companies try to make policies against things that ought to be dealt with by law enforcement.

"Did inappropriate things to someone at the Christmas party" being the classic... That sort of thing should be dealt with by the legal system where the accused has the right to a fair trial etc.

Obviously the legal system might need some streamlining to take on the extra workload

The policies are more symbolic than anything, they would signify that the company doesn't condone such behavior. However, I think such policies should, by law, kick in after conviction and appeal processes have finished, when incidents are criminal in nature. If a person is not convicted, these policies should not apply. Too often, they apply upon arrest.

There are plenty of things that are not illegal that would also not be acceptable in many workplaces. For example: drinking on the job, coming to work without a shirt on, giving everyone a nickname (e.g. "beardy") and exclusively referring to them by such, etc. You don't have a right to a job, so companies can fire you for any of these reasons. It would be weird if committing a misdemeanour or felony on the job meant you would get to keep working until your trial is over, but you could be fired on the spot for having a beer.

Why isn’t caste discrimination already covered by race discrimination laws?

Probably because the perpetrator and victim often belong to the same race. Besides, it's hard even to prove that discrimination occurred. The usual strategy is to put lower caste people in no-win situations and blame them for the failure.

Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32464756 - Aug 2022 (95 comments)

Google’s caste-bias problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32425308 - Aug 2022 (249 comments)

Google cancelled a talk on caste bias - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593799 - June 2022 (946 comments)

Trapped in Silicon Valley’s hidden caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515099 - March 2022 (543 comments)

India’s tech sector reinforces old caste divides - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994226 - Jan 2022 (5 comments)

The Casteism I See in America and American Tech Companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29133517 - Nov 2021 (5 comments)

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)

India’s engineers have thrived in the tech industry. So has its caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24923338 - Oct 2020 (6 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)

Ask HN: There is caste system in the Silicon Valley? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13704504 - Feb 2017 (6 comments)

out of curiosity, how does casteism even work? Is it like racism in that you can look at somebody and usually figure out what caste they are visually?

I know one of the identifiers is one's surname, for more detail:

https://www.quora.com/In-India-how-do-you-tell-what-caste-so...

Skin color is not a good predictor. You can make a guess by last name,

Nope, best indicator is the last name.

How hard is it to fake being of a higher caste?

Really hard. There are so many caste markers. Surnames are the least of it. Speaking accent, diet, clothing and several other habits can some among them. Even worse, people who believe in castes are part-time detectives who often do background checks on others. At least, that's the case in India. I don't know how bad it is in the US - but I'm sure there will be some.

Surnames are often used for determining caste apparently so as hard as changing your surname

Any tech company would be foolish to let caste discrimination go unchecked as a duty to their shareholders, with H1b and India IT outsourcing being dominant.

Great! Now Apple can move on to discriminating against Indians based on their adherence to the current progressive meta, just like at HQ!

seems like an odd decision for a company that is pro-slave-labor https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...

I love and hate this.

I like it because it is an objectively good thing. Caste is still a major issue in non-urban lower-middle class communities in India. While you're unlikely to see people from that economic starta at FANG companies (privilege leads to more privilege), you do see these problems arise in tier-2 companies who hire large numbers of vendors and temporary Infosys/IBM consultancy hires.

I hate it because it seems completely mistargetted an almost purposely malicious. I have spent my entire life among tech communities in India and the US, and caste simply never comes up. The type of people who get a job at Apple (FANG-companies) are usually from the far-far upper crust of Indian society that has usually moved past caste as a marker for class. I'm supposed to come from a lower-caste community, and I have NEVER been asked my caste and I have never felt excluded because of it in any Indian community in the US.

The loudest voices in this movement seem to be grifters who have no handle over the nature of discrimination faced by various Indian minority communities in the US or in India. They do not understand the intersectionality of various Indian identities an last and most importantly, they completely ignore new 'caste' systems developing among ethnic-Indian tech communities. The studies they publish are of a pathetic technical quality and the liberal pre-dispositions of the tech community mean that their claims are accepted with very little scrutiny.

I'll try my best to outline some types of discrimination / tribalism / culture-fit preferences and the emerging new caste/class system that I do actually see. (These are anecdotes, and not always 100% true)

1. 2nd vs 1st gen Indians

This is a prominent cultural gap. Survivalist-middle-class systems take a while to shed old perceptions. If your parents fled 'low class India' to give you a first world life, then the new immigrants land on a lower rung in your perceived class hierarchy. Indians are also deeply resentful/insecure about how they're perceived in media, and I suspect 2nd generation 'integrated' Indians feel some shame towards the perpetual faux-pas' of the fresh-off-the-boat immigrants. I have often found it easier to form connections with random white-people than 2nd gen Indians. Took me a while to even figure out what that weird sense of discomfort even was.

2. IIT-ians+ vs local-universities

This is a rising and prominent 1st gen Indian caste system. The ruthless meritocratic mentality of survivalist middle-class systems is directly to blame for this. After 20 years of being told that the IITs are the be-all-end-all of life, it leads to the natural formation of upper tier of Indians in the US. It doesn't help that certain universities like UC Berkeley or UMich are known to reject almost every non-IITian applicant. I personally know non-IITians at FANG companies who felt bullied (whether intentionally or not) as the only person from a small university in India in their group/team.

3. Reservations and the caste systems 2nd wind

This is the most prominent form of REAL caste discrimination that I've seen in the US. India has explicit affirmative action. Being completely blunt, it gives a massive advantage to lower-castes to get into premier Indian universities like IITs (to offset a very real socio-economic handicap). The brutal meritocracy rears it ugly head again as groups who missed out on a big opportunity feel resentful when someone with a significantly lower score gets in. This leads to an inherent bias where groups without affirmative action will not respect someone with a respectable profile on paper because they suspect that the person got in "unfairly". (I am merely commenting on how these perceptions develop. Not making a value judgement 1 way or another.)

Then there are other types of tribalism that are rampant in all communities. Linguistic & regional Nepotism; cultural integration = fluency in English, lack of a thick accent (I'd say even a southern drawl is looked down upon); preference towards in-groups (highly liberal, dress/present a certain way, hiring from alma matter). All of these signal that you come from privilege and have spent long enough among the cultural elites to have adopted their mannerisms.

One caveat is that 'capital-C-Caste' is very much very much an issue within certain parts of India and the nature of it in those situations is horrifying. None of my comments are meant to minimize their experience. Also, the affirmative-action candidates that I met in my time at a decent-indian-university were all incredibly hard working and came from some of most difficult socio-economic conditions that I know of. Massive respect to them and the meritocratic-resentment-driven-discrimination they face is pretty underserved.

Razib Khan (2nd gen American) goes into fantastic detail [1] [2] about the nature of the caste system (or lack thereof) both in the US and India. I would highly recommend that people check out his work/twitter.

[1] https://unherd.com/2022/06/americas-fake-caste-war/

[2] https://unherd.com/2020/09/how-brahmins-lead-the-fight-again...

[3] more here - https://www.razib.com/wordpress/category/caste/

”Recently, talking about the incident to the New Yorker, Tanuja said, "A number of e-mails got sent to my VP, to the head of HR, to our chief diversity officer, to our CEO directly, claiming that the talk was creating a hostile workplace, that people felt unsafe, that the speaker was not qualified to speak on the topic and several other allegations." She also claimed that in tech companies, including Google, discrimination based on caste was rife and that tech company needed to talk about it.”

Congratulations America. Now the ”felt unsafe”, ”hostile environment” etc. woke newspeak is used to protect the asses of the people who want to discriminate while victims get smoked out by these useless clowns that are called ”diversity officers”.

> ”felt unsafe”, ”hostile environment” etc. woke newspeak

Were these terms not in use 40 years ago? I'd think these two terms don't fall under whatever "woke newspeak" is understood to mean these days.

who's the victim here?

I wonder if we should coin the term "Brahmin fragility" - I assume this same behavior, if demonstrated by white people, would be labeled as "white fragility".

Just to spread awareness on how evil and ingrained this system is (this is from yesterday) - https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/jaipur/rajasthan-we...

Teacher beats their son to death and then offers them three grand. Jesus christ.

looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him

It’s all lip service. Nepotism is rampant at FAANG

Having done many interviews around silicon valley, the demographics of companies definitely seem very ... themed. Not necessarily monochromatic for a particular ethnic group, but a small set of ethic groups usually overwhelmingly represented.

And at that, this wasn't a thing that seemed particularly biased towards one theme.

At a large semiconductor company, the same could be said for many groups: Chinese hiring other Chinese, one group hiring native Americans mostly, others with Hispanic origin…

I love when there is a position that sounds awesome but then says something like: "Hispanic or other underprivileged groups are encouraged to apply".

It's legal to say that out loud?

>looks the other way when Indian director has all Indian SDMs reporting to him

I've seen it happen so many times now that I can call it ahead of time. Critical mass is when you get a VP. From there, you go from representational levels to >50% Indian in a matter of months.

To be fair: nepotism is rampant everywhere, and has been throughout history. How many groups have you worked in or seen where everyone got recruited from the same set of schools? Where everyone used to work together at some other company?

The difference with what you're seeing is all down to who is allowed to be nepotistic. When south asian engineers were predominantly junior immigrants, you didn't notice anything wrong. Now the casteists are doing the hiring too. But the effect is the same.

Since we're sharing anecdotes and that's good enough for this thread, here's my own:

I'm a white guy - pretty much a typical one. My manager is a white guy - possibly even more typical, follow along North American Dude Stereotypes for both of us.

For most of the last 2 years, he had 8 reports - 3 managers, 3 product managers, and 2 principal engineers (me being one of them).

I was the only white guys out of 8 - the rest were all Indian.

Why?

Because the other 6 were the best people for the job. They applied for it (some external, some internal), and we hired them, cuz they were rad (and still are).

Demographically, that just happens sometimes, including all-Indian reports

If it is, is kept very secret between Indian employees, most American engineers (at least I would) will raise the issue. I don't care how high the is Director, I would just tell him that he is being racist , at his face, if he gets me fired, I would sue the company in a second. I have never seen this non-sense at FAANG in the 7 years I have worked here (Amazon first, then Google).

its cause indian managers can have fiefdoms with other indians under them. total power.

I don't know if it's nepotism, but Changi Business Park [1], a tech hub in Singapore, is nicknamed Chennai Business Park [2], for much of the same reason outlined in this thread.

[1] http://www.changibusinesspark.com/

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=chennai+business+park

Have white progressives kicked high caste Indians (which includes most Indian Americans) out of “people of color?”

Is this an article about white progressivism?

Casteism is an elaborated form of Classism, which the West will not ban because the whole society depends on that discrimination to decide who’s “smart”

Casteism is much more worse.

You or your children or your grandchildren atleast have a chance on moving up in class in a capitalistic society like West.

In Casteist society you neither your descendants can ever leave your caste and will always face discrimination does not matter how much money you have.

> lawsuit about alleged casteism

Why is it just not called racism? Introducing new terms kind of derails the problem.

India (and Africa, China, Asia...) has a system where people with lighter skin are consider as "better". People with fair (whiter) skin are considered aristocracy, that never had to work outside on fields.

And castes could not intermarry for couple of thousands of years, it is legitimate to consider them as a race.

> Why is it just not called racism? Introducing new terms kind of derails the problem.

Casteism is the correct term for this. This isn't a different race of people, it's the same race of people in a different class. I agree with you that there are many similarities between Casteism and Racism, but I think it's good to separate it out.

From what I've learned on the topic, with Racism someone sees the color of your skin and can make assumptions from there. With casteism thought it's more about your family name, as someone from the lowest caste can look like someone from an upper caste.

> Why is it just not called racism?

You have a point. But Apple doesn’t want to continuously debate caste vs. race (they’re both social constructs). For statute, it should suffice to incorporate caste as an aspect of race.

Just because you don't understand a term, doesn't mean you can just swap it for a term that you do understand.

Go read up on what the caste system is, its history and how it effects life within India. It seems you'll learn something new.

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