[throwaway_dcnt]

The reason for my current user name here at hn was this exact form of racism. It is the first post I made when I created this throwaway. I was assured that my experience was unique and not widespread. I am both sad and happy to see this, sad because it exists, happy because it is getting some attention here at HN.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everyone of us needs to be vigilant about this type of racism. One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese.

One way I solve this is by introducing an independent observer/participant when situations like this emerge. This is costly but it has really worked to not only address this problem but also created an amazing diversity in my teams because it takes care of some of the implicit bias we all have to some degree.

[icelancer]

>> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side.

What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.

Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States, but attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.

[winternett]

One of the primary things these stories never truly elaborate properly on in the quest to establish social rank out of a caste-based society is that Black Americans, that were native to the US, and even for black migrants to India and other countries, are some of the most affected by caste politics of this kind in employment and work opportunity.

Often having darker skin, Black Americans are even prone to more discrimination domestically. Any editorial that doesn't recognize that fact as a truth has no legs to stand on in my opinion. The fact that people still hang on to caste ideology in any way, and treat it as a continuing reality should disqualify them from any role concerning equal opportunity. "Gradual change and understanding" is not a reasonable discussion in America, or we're all coddling the same violent and hateful past that America was born from.

I write this as someone who has lots of Pakistani and Indian friends, and has regularly struggled to get them to understand how different each of the dynamics are on this matter, but zero tolerance is essential to get people to understand that the issue is more serious and damaging than they could ever know.

[Spooky23]

You needn’t be ham handed and stupid about it, just use meaningful internal controls.

Not just for this issue. If everyone hires friends and family, people from the hometown, place of worship, etc you run into other conflicts of interest. It’s always good to have disinterested parties involved in the hiring process.

[mschuster91]

> What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.

And, as a half-Croat, needed. The ethnic tensions between former Yugoslavian countries have never been resolved, and many emigrants took the unresolved issues with them. The youngest generation is one thing, they grew up without having to live through all that bullshit, but a lot of people 35 and older have lost relatives and friends in one of the wars.

FFS Bosnia is at the moment creeping into the breakout of yet another conflict.

[mushyhammer]

> attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.

It would because it did and it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Steelworkers_v._Weber

[beebmam]

It's called a conflict of interest, and anyone who has a conflict of interest in a given business situation should absolutely be removed from making any decisions around that conflict of interest (and they should be more than forthcoming about those conflicts of interest). Standards of Business Practice 101.

[inlined]

>> What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons

Not going to touch the moral implications here, but _is_ that actually illegal discrimination? Is there any benefit for interviewing a particular candidate than an employee would miss out on? Again, not picking a side here; just curious.

[robinsoh]

> I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States,

Until relatively recently, the United States has always had a very strong strictly enforced caste system, even written into law, still the case in some Southern states. Some people were even allowed to buy and sell other types of people! As we can see some people are still allowed to kill certain types of other people with no consequences.

[ardit33]

It is called a 'conflict of interest'. (in this case it is national interest).

Fifa has often rules for this, where it avoid drawing to teams to play together when they are in constant/active conflict.

So, if there are some national tempers flaring, or a war somewhere, it is a better idea to have some boundaries.

Why we hope most people are good natured, we don't live in a perfect world, and it would be insane, or completely naive to believe that 'biases' do not exist.

The other side of it is 'ethnic nepotism', where people hire and favor people from their own countries, creating this pools of mono-ethnic teams in a company which statistically are not probable. This is actually a very common sight in Tech companies and we all know it.

[bleah1000]

How would you enforce this? In the US this is completely illegal.

In addition, you would have to ask extremely invasive questions of everyone. So is your proposal that you require that your company ask for the detailed ethnicity of everyone? What happens when people refuse, do you just not allow them to interview or manage?

What about people who were born in the US, do you assume that if they are of Japanese descent they can't interview someone of Chinese descent?

[peter303]

In India the surname might indicate caste. Then easy to tell in States.

[avalys]

The solution you propose is arguably just as bad and I suspect it might be illegal in the US. If I am a qualified manager or tech lead, and there is an opportunity to lead a new project, I would be furious to learn that I was passed over for the opportunity because someone believed I was ethnically incompatible with one of the people on the team.

[rednerrus]

The comment was about not allowing them in the interviewing process.

[graderjs]

Perhaps the law needs to be updated... Maybe the current state of US law reflects a misunderstanding or a lack of context on how important these things can be and Law's dynamic it evolves over time so it's not inconceivable that at some point these kind of considerations would be worked into law and policy somehow. And it's important to note that the legal issue is going to be a large inertial blocker for companies to consider this because of the risk aversiveness on hiring the funny thing is in trying to do the right thing by avoiding discrimination they may actually be enabling the perpetuation of it by not providing processes that are able to address bring attention to an and focus on some things like the article talks about. I'm no expert and we're not going to come up with a solution today I think but it's good to see discussion of this on hacker News I think. As sad as it also is that this is something that so greatly affects many people and it's clearly not the responsibility of a particular company or the tech industry to solve these social and international problems but I don't think that means there's nothing that could be done there to address them.

[newsclues]

Affirmative action does that!

[aletzo]

I'm sorry, but can you please elaborate a bit more on Greeks and Turks?

I happen to be Greek and have worked with 2 Turkish colleagues without any issues. On top of that, during my many travels across Europe, Turks (along with other Balkan nationalities) are by far the most welcoming people I meet once they learn that I come from Greece and I befriended a few of them.

Do you have any different experiences to share?

[jimmydddd]

Ottomans (Turks) occupied Greece for 400 years, ending in 1821. Turkey constantly trying to take over Greek islands, etc. Turkey dropping off immigrants on rafts just outside Greek shores. But it doesn't seem to translate to the US much, especially in second generation.

[namecheapTA]

I work in sales and saw a Greek salesperson kick a deal out that cost him thousands because he didnt want to spend another few hours with someone that was Turkish. And this is in California. The easy money didn't matter to him. If someone is willing to lose thousands of dollars to feel good, imagine what little things theyre willing to do that dont really have a cost to them.

[tradertef]

Turk here.. no problem working with and being friends with Greek folks. I actually prefer to work with them over Turkish people since we do not need to worry about cultural baggage from Turkey (politics, religion, etc.), and we can focus on finding the best Baklava in town.

[stavros]

I'm Greek as well, and now that you mention it, Turks were indeed the people I tended to have very good relationships at work with. They are especially welcoming, at least the ones I've worked with.

[wiseowise]

NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzL_MXgc24E

[User23]

I’m under the impression some people are still upset over Cyprus.

Edit: corrected cypress misspelling. Thanks repliers!

[wozniacki]

As with many other one-off cases in this & other threads, one instance does not a rule make.

Just because your experience was fairly positive, that does not negate the general trend of such occurrences in hiring decisions among such pairs ( Greek-Turk, Indian-Pakistani, Japanese-Korean, Japanese-Chinese, Russian-Polish, Serb-Bosniak, Serb-Croat French-Algerian and countless other pairs in the Middle East & other parts of the world )

Theres surely some information that can be gleaned from anecdotes & oral histories. But we need data & objective studies to back them up if we are to make any progress on these issues.

[goto11]

There still seem to be some deep-seated resentments from some Greeks towards Turks due to the Greek genocide and exodus a hundred years ago. Turks on the other hand have never heard about that (it's illegal to teach in Turkey), so they are pretty chill. There is some bitterness due to the more recent (and still unresolved) conflict regarding Cyprus.

[nsajko]

Your idea is unfair and would be illegal to carry out. Because it's racist, obviously.

Furthermore, I live in the Balkans area (Croatia) and it so happens that companies from this area do employ people of varied ethnicity, and those do work on the same teams.

[moffkalast]

Exactly, the only way to get people to accept everyone as they are is to see that they're exactly the same as them. If a person can't put this sort of thing aside and work with a basic dose of professionalism then they should frankly be fired. You can't tolerate intolerance.

You'd think that a nation as varied as the US would know that.

[wozniacki]

I understand your overall argument but one anecdote does not a rule make, whether in this scenario or any other scenario.

[coffeeisyummy]

You're okay working with people so bigoted that you have to hide them away from certain parts of their job because they might fuck it up with their bigotry? Why are they still employed? How can you be okay with coworkers that can't be expected to treat everyone in the company with a certain level of respect?

Do you believe that's just the way "they" are? Is that the way you are?

Remind me never to apply for a job at your company. JFC.

[presentation]

I think the idea is that people’s biases are often not obvious or detectable. Not saying this idea is a good way to avoid making decisions on such biases, but I don’t think it’s as black and white as you put it.

[twic]

> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side.

Great - as a British person, this gets me out of conducting interviews entirely!

[selimthegrim]

I'm a Pakistani American and I've worked well with many Indians. This is overcompensating.

[zem]

also as an Indian it's my experience that Pakistanis and Indians in foreign countries tend to hang together rather than separately, at least in the circles I've been a part of.

[sumedh]

I think Indians and Pakistanis quickly understand that outside their native countries they are probably the same and almost have similar culture/language/food.

[nradov]

There are multiple distinct ethnic / cultural / religious groups in Bosnia. Serbians (from Serbia or Kosovo) tend to get along well with Bosnian Serbs, but there can be conflicts on occasion with Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims).

As a practical matter within US companies it's not feasible to assign team members based on avoiding those potential conflicts. Nor can we afford to hire independent observers. I can't imagine trying to justify that additional headcount request to Finance and HR, they would laugh me out of the room! Instead employees are expected to act professionally regardless of their personal feelings and if they can't do so then manage them out.

[conradev]

In all of the interviews I've conducted there have been 2 interviewers to 1 interviewee because everyone has biases and people remember things differently according to those biases.

The biases don't even have to involve people to throw off the results. They could be against the usage of a particular API, for example, which I find insane, but I've seen it happen.

[pyuser583]

Personally, I’ve much more “empire building” type behavior (let’s hire tons people from my background who will probably support my initiatives), than discrimination against “others.”

[powerslacker]

I've also seen this far more often, especially when there is a major change in a C-level position.

[datavirtue]

GE, is that you?

[livinglist]

I’m native Chinese and I don’t hold any opinion against Japanese people… especially in my job, that’s just not professional and seems very childish and immature…

[jhatemyjob]

It's the other way around. Japanese look down on Chinese.

[graderjs]

No this is so important. I agree that the reality of international and domestic generational conflict there we are mostly oblivious to in the West, should inform HR policy.

These things are real, and discrimination based on them can be concealed and is often as the very fascinating article says, invisible to outsiders. I'm with you on the way to address this is by bringing more attention to it than with other commenters who suggest that it's actually racist or discriminatory to acknowledge and address this. It's hard to refute the line of the other commenters cuz on the face of it it is racist and discriminatory to provide affordances for these types of issues because you're assuming someone faces them based on their background. But let's remember something important which is that the words racist and discriminatory in their essence are actually neutral... they simply mean discernment based on something, in one case race.

That can be used negatively but it can also be used to try to write the wrongs that were done by the inverse of that. So sometimes to address a specific wrong you have to deal with the same parameters as created the wrong but invert the effect. Otherwise you're basically giving all the power for the use of racial and discriminatory actions to the side that wants to use them for bad. You have to be able to use them for good too but obviously you need to be careful in how you go about this but I don't think that less attention on this issue is the solution, so I like to jump behind the point that this person is making because it seems like a very brave point that they're making but it sounds like a good idea to me.

I mean I have no idea how these observers would work in practice but maybe one way to do this is to sort of have like a pre hiring congress where all parties meet and have a chance to discuss their background and any bias and how they feel about people from another place. But saying it, I don't think that would really work so easily, tho it might. Every group of people is unique to some extent...I think it's a very tricky thing to do... But closing one's eyes and not talking about is probably not the way to get progress on this.

[icelancer]

That's all well and good, and the policy might indeed actually work. Unfortunately it's absolutely illegal. Protected classes are not protected from just racism, but discrimination of all forms.

[datavirtue]

It's weird, the implicit bias is sometimes an advantage--or at least it sheilds us from knee jerk discrimination. Being white and clean cut in America has always afforded me a status that I did not enjoy until I was able to move away from where I grew up. There everyone knew my circumstances and kids who were from "better families" excluded me because I was just other. And school...I had to leave before high school, it was unbearable. Surviving the years up til that point nearly crushed my soul.

This caused a lot of anxiety in me and it still does. I suppressed the anxiety through abject narcism.

Once I was able to leave school and eventually move away I was assumed to be of the same class as my other white peers. Privileged, university educated etc. There was constant paranoia of being asked about my background and having to see the look on peoples faces when they asked where I got my degree from.

Again, I mostly floated through life benefitting from the implicit bias of my peers and others. Luckily I was smart and gravitated to tech at a very young age.

To this day I'm still wracked with anxiety at the possibility of discussing my financial situation, upbringing, or education.

Seeing this described as a denial of basic human rights in the article shocked me. I had never even thought about the anxiety objectively, until recently.

[Tsarbomb]

Jesus fucking Christ what a terrible take and highly illegal in most sane countries.

I'm Serb, I've hired and worked with Croatians. I've had colleagues who were Lebanese and worked along side Israelis. I've had a Palestinian coworker report to a Jewish manager. I have seen an adjacent team's Japanese manager rely on their Chinese report as their right hand.

Maybe it's because I live and work in Canada where there is absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of garbage thinking.

[908B64B197]

> Maybe it's because I live and work in Canada where there is absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of garbage thinking.

You’ll be quite disappointed if you read about your new country’s history. Even the recent one (the last residential school where natives children were forced to attend and where children unmarked graves were found was closed in … 1998). Or about the province that tried to gain independence twice. Or what happened to the Metis people or the French speakers to the east..

Or just what happens when the dogma of multiculturalism takes over [0].

[0] https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/01/15/as-ndp-leader-j...

[rayiner]

> Indians and Pakistanis

What do you do with Bangladeshis. :D

[jvvw]

At the organisation where I worked at in the UK, all interviews were panel interviews - it's not ideal in various ways but it does it harder for discrimination (not just racial discrimination) to slip through the net - obviously just because something is illegal doesn't mean that it can't happen and people can't get away with it. I think they also tried to make sure all panels had a woman on them for example - I ended up on more than my share of panels as a result.

[DeWilde]

>Serbians and Bosnians

I think you might be mistaken with this, even lower class people from these nationalities (the least educated ones) have no problem working with each other. Especially untrue for those with higher education (high school and above).

[deeteecee]

How did your hiring managers respond? That sounds terrible and racist in itself.

[winterplace]

Is there a way to privately message you?

[franklampard]

> Chinese and Japanese

When I interviewed last time; the only company i did not make through phone screen was by a Japanese interviewer. I gave a three viable solutions to an easy question. Had no idea why I failed but probably because of racism

[simmanian]

It's definitely possible that there were other factors in play. I hope you see the danger or irony of automatically assuming that the Japanese interviewer rejected you because of their racial bias.

[nirav72]

Can we please stop conflating casteism as racism? While both equally horrible, one is not same as the other. One can possibly hide their caste. But a person cant change their racial phenotypes.

[bradleyjg]

This is not so cut and dry. The US has a long history of people “passing”.

[thowaway_2mar]

How can I hide me caste without changing my last name?