Hacker News Reader

Comment by FlyingSnake | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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?

It isn’t necessarily the food itself, it’s just that the food marks somebody as lower class. For example, not knowing how to order sushi or use chopsticks. Maybe a better example is not knowing anything about wine. People will think you’re stupid or have bad taste. What would you think of a coworker bringing bologna and ketchup sandwiches to the office?

I would assume they were frugal and trying to pay off a massive student loan debt.

But I’m also from the Midwest and don’t know how to order sushi.

> I’m also from the Midwest and don’t know how to order sushi.

So was I, and everyone thought I was a barbarian.

I grew up and got a CS degree in the northeast. Then worked in tech in Seattle and the Bay Area

I can tell you that a lot of coastal techies have stereotypically unrefined tastes in food and wine and they're still successful.

Ours is also a trade in which many are stereotyped as lacking various social skills.

Nothing. I would think nothing of it, because I am not a low-classed, stone-aged, rocked-brained imbecile judging people by superficial nonsense instead of the content of their character & quality of their work.

You can have all the money, power, and authority, but it doesn’t change the contents of your character. This type of judgement is indicative of low-class at a soul level — if such an impoverished soul makes judgement, it means absolutely nothing in the cosmic scheme of things.

What does it mean to judge someone on the content of their character? It can be just as easily superficial as choosing to bring in a different kind of sandwhich to work.

Taking food down to a homeless man on the side of a street and filming it, is noble and worthy of praise but has limited practical impact on your ability to judge the person accurately. He could be doing it for the wrong reasons. He could be doing it for reasons that do not reflect his character.

Someone who is willing to change for his/her colleagues and practically improve the work enviroment is easy to judge favourably. Superficially and cosmically valid or not, a well oiled ship runs on aligning a lot of little 'superficial' parts.

You think it is a good thing for people to change for their colleagues? “i see you are offended by my bologna sandwich, forgive me, I will switch to filet mignon in order to make you feel more comfortable.” Ridiculous.

A well oiled ship has not a thing to do with superficial parts. People need to lose this ego & trying to control every little thing about those around them. It is a job, not a church or a dictatorship.

Do the job, be accepting and friendly. And eat your bologna sandwich if you damn well feel like it.

Also, filming yourself doing a good deed like taking food to a homeless person is embarrassing, and completely invalidates the “good deed.” You can easily judge that person. They are exploiting an under-classed human as a tool to further their social status, which anyone with a brain can easily recognize as low-class behavior.

I forgot how pointless online discussions are. My mistake.

'Anyone with a brain' is not the compliment you think it is.

Scrapple.

Spam.

Iceberg lettuce.

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.

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".

Not until you have a US passport and that takes a really long time for Indians.

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.

> a meat eater is unlikely to be a (practising) Brahmin.

It’s not always the case though. The Bengali Brahmins or the Sarasvat Brahmins of Konkan are predominately meat eaters. It’s all mixed up.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com