I have worked in the Seattle tech scene since 1997 and sex and caste discrimination is rampant in the Indian tech community. I only know this 2nd and third hand as I am the stereotypical cis male white guy.
The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities.
Even Indian men that I respected on multiple levels, when they get on an interview with a women they are overly harsh in ways they were not with men. So much so that I stopped interviewing all together. I reported to HR and they of course didn't know how to handle it. It really makes me sad.
I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. I applaud this action. This shit has to stop, leave it in India, America is better than this.
Discrimination is fractal. All interview should be truly double-blind.
> I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons.
I notice this too. It's like someone brings up caste discrimination online (somewhere like teamblind) and a bunch of people come out of nowhere and say "that isn't real". Isn't very convincing to say the least
Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S. [2]
The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.
Caste System exists in India but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues". I am an Indian-American and I hate the caste system. I love that America is multi-cultural and allows people of all cultures/races to come here and make something for themselves. If you are going to assume by default that I believe in caste system, you are mistaken. But I am not interested in explaining too much. So yea, I will probably be tight lipped in front of you because you don't understand the complexity and roots of this practice.
Just be careful about generalizing a country of 1.4 billion people. Someone more ignorant will automatically assume that all Indians are the same and they all believe in caste system.
So I work at Microsoft and I live in Redmond (Seattle suburb). I live in a large neighborhood that is 95% Indian families. My family is white and my daughter is the only white girl on the playground. It's a weird change from growing up in a place that was 95% white people for most of my life. Everyone is friendly but it hasn't been easy for us to integrate hyper-locally. I sometimes feel like our family is intruding in this neighborhood with our non-Indian-ness.
I've noticed that there are lots of teams that are primarily Indian folks and this is true not just of the contractors and India based teams. I really don't know about the dynamics of the caste system and whether not they are at play within MSFT, AMZN or other Seattle/tech companies, but just like most (all?) ethnicities there is certainly a tendency to stick together and live in the same areas / work on the same teams from what I've seen.
On a mostly unrelated note, Seattle proper (as I mentioned, I live in a suburb which is an affluent one) has really gone downhill in the last 10 years. The homeless/drug problem is very bad and the local government seems so entirely incompetent to do anything other than woke signaling.
> On a mostly unrelated note, Seattle proper (as I mentioned, I live in a suburb which is an affluent one) has really gone downhill in the last 10 years. The homeless/drug problem is very bad and the local government seems so entirely incompetent to do anything other than woke signaling.
I don't mean to be unduly harsh (yet probably will come across that way anyway) but did we have to drag that into this conversation? I have lived in Seattle my entire life, was born in Ballard, and raised two kids here. It's getting kind of frustrating that every time my hometown comes up, someone inevitably mentions this without bringing up any of the complexities as to why. (For one, it would be nice if your suburb, nominally one of Seattle's regional partners in the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, would actually do their part and construct some social services for various groups.)
Our mayor, who lives half-time in Bellevue I hasten to point out, is busy saying it's all the Council's fault and the Council passes budget items and ordinances that the mayor simply ignores. Meanwhile, every city in the region is busy shoving everyone who looks like they earn less than $75,000 per year over to Seattle and then crying about how Seattle is "doing nothing".
The Council is attempting to do something good, so sure, let's bring up the massive social services crisis that's by no means unique to Seattle or Puget Sound, but probably looks like a Seattle-specific problem from a perch on the Eastside.
Why wouldn't the caste system be in play? If you imagine a company in a foreign country that hired a lot of Americans, would you not expect the same problems with racial discrimination that happen in the US to arise among these American employees?
Yeah this is very true. I'm Indian born in the Bay Area and oddly enough there's entire apartment communities that end up being 95% indian families because of costs/school districts. This translates to housing too (Mountain House, San Ramon) though it typically has nothing to do with caste, just circumstance.
I just came back from attending a conference in the US. I stopped by san francisco to visit a friend before going to DC for the conference. I hadn't been in DC before but visited California 10 years ago. I was surprised by how pervasive homelessness and drug use was in both places too, especially San Francisco where it definitely felt like things took a turn for the worse. Even in DC there were guys just collapsed on the sidewalk, not sure from drug use or whatever (there were people there who called an ambulance). People also just didn't seem very happy in general, although I could be imagining that since I was only there for a few days. In any case it was very surprising and not quite what I expected.
I've lived in Seattle for almost 40 years. The homeless issue is not really unique to our city, and there's a hugely complex systemic set of issues causing it. (Not least of which is the incredibly high median income driving up home prices, due in part to tech immigration).
The city council has been trying to fix the issue, but had been stalled by the mayor, stalled by other cities in the region, and stalled in how they can build systemic fixes.
The irony in Seattle being Kashma Sawant the socialist city council member for Capitol Hill being partially responsible for a lot of the chaos. I guess it just goes to show you can’t really generalize based on ethnicity.
I want to share a personal anecdote here. It may be tangential, but I think it’s worth sharing anyway.
I live in a cosmopolitan city in India. I am an “upper caste” Hindu. I have been brought up in a relatively liberal environment and have not experienced much first hand caste-based discrimination (because of my sheltered upbringing no doubt). I have always thought of my family as liberal.
A few years ago, I wanted to marry a girl who was out of my caste. My family did not accept her immediately. They never uttered the word “caste”, but made snide remarks about “her community”, and about how “our community” is full of “ambitious intellectuals” and hers is not (implying moral superiority to ambition and intellect). They had not even met her. They just knew her surname and had seen pictures. Made me wonder where all of these assumptions came from.
She was not privy to these conversations but she realised that something was not right, and asked me if caste was being an issue.
And that’s when it struck me that maybe it was caste that was being the issue. My mind swirled with nasty thoughts for a few weeks. “Should I marry this girl who is outside of my caste?”, “What if no one accepts me? I’ll be alone”, etc. For someone who is fairly liberal, well educated, and well travelled, I was shocked at the kind of thoughts appearing in my mind. They were more powerful than I ever thought they could be.
Thankfully, due to my meditation practices, I had developed the ability to “witness” my thoughts without simply giving in to them. That way, I could let my thoughts flow, and wait for my fear to pass. After the fear had passed, my mind would settle down and I’d think rationally again.
What’s the point of this anecdote? I had an important realisation. It is quite possible that the things we call “casteism” is nothing but a flavour of the fear of abandonment, or the fear of being expelled from society by not conforming to societal standards. I realised that the standards can be absolutely absurd, but it is the mere fear of being abandoned by society that can make a human being conform and commit the most ridiculous actions. All out of fear.
Take whatever conclusion you may from this. It is an insight into the mind of someone who never thought would discriminate on the basis of caste, and yet my mind veered into that abyss, if only for a short duration. I escaped and lived to tell the tale. Thanks for reading.
Thanks for sharing this! Those who are not exposed to the caste based discrimination or even the concept of caste can't begin to appreciate how insidious it is. Your comment brings forward perfectly how caste acts at multiple levels and is pervasive in the Indian society.
My favourite example about this is from a (for the lack of better word) sub-religion named "Lingayats". It traces origins to a philosopher named Basavanna. He wanted a community sans discrimination so that every one from regardless of caste would be treated equally. And yet here we are, after hundreds of years, where there are 50+ castes/sub-castes in Lingayats too.
Well yes, tribalism was a survival trait why is why conformity is so deeply ingrained in human minds and social organization.
That said, in India caste (varna and jati) correlate with genetic clusters that have maintained for millennia by higher levels of endogamy than, say, Ashkenazi Jews:
“What the data were showing us was that the genetic distinctions among jati groups within India were in many cases real, thanks to the long-standing history of endogamy in the subcontinent. People tend to think of India, with its more than 1.3 billion people, as having a tremendously large population, and indeed many Indians as well as foreigners see it this way. But genetically, this is an incorrect way to view the situation. The Han Chinese are truly a large population. They have been mixing freely for thousands of years. In contrast, there are few if any Indian groups that are demographically very large, and the degree of genetic differentiation among Indian jati groups living side by side in the same village is typically two to three times higher than the genetic differentiation between northern and southern Europeans. The truth is that India is composed of a large number of small populations.”
Excerpt From
Who We Are and How We Got Here, Chapter 6, “The Collision That Formed India”
by David Reich
Ostracism is a well known punishment in the western world. Greeks used to practice it. So are the recent woke cancellation standards. It is not unique to India.
hey i just wanted to say thank you for writing this - it gives a really interesting insight into a set of complicated social/cultural practices. It's so easy to proclaim "i am above this" or "i would never", but I appreciate the vulnerability and honest self-reflection here.
It’s pretty common everywhere to avoid socializing or marrying someone from a place doesn’t share values. For instance you’d almost never see a woman from a well to do family marry a tradesman even if he’s a good man who would provide and is handsome.
My experience has been that even beyond caste, huge tech companies get these weird race/ethnicity based fiefdoms embedded within them. The company might be “improving diversity” but there are whole teams from director down that are 90% Indian immigrants and the Indian team members are promoted from within, same for East Asian, haven’t seen Slavic type yet but probably out there. Had some strange experiences where 7/8 coworkers were Chinese and routinely spent the entire day talking together in Chinese and excluding me from like regular work convos high impact projects and general progress early in my career.
> My experience has been that even beyond caste, huge tech companies get these weird race/ethnicity based fiefdoms embedded within them.
I've had the same experience. It's very weird when you realize you've been hired into such an ethnic enclave in which you aren't that ethnicity, and then learning that your boss's boss is looking for a way to trade you to another team without ever meeting you, mere days after you joined. Thankfully that trade went through and I ended up on a less racist team..
>...and routinely spent the entire day talking together in Chinese and excluding me from like regular work convos high impact projects and general progress early in my career.
Outside the US, I've seen companies with a diverse work force implement "english only" policies in the office.
Take it for whatever it’s worth but I have an Indian-American friend who worked at Google and said the Indian immigrant managers there form a clique that discriminates against US-born Indian-Americans as well.
> The 39-year-old immigrant from India, who works in Seattle on a H-1B visa, said as soon as he heard the question “Do you eat meat?” from his Indian manager he knew he was in trouble.
> By admitting to eating meat, the tech worker had exposed himself as a member of an oppressed caste, or a Dalit, formerly known as an “untouchable,” in the social hierarchy that is pervasive in South Asian countries.
(EDIT: if the article and allegations are true)
I say the following as an outsider, an
American, and with the utmost respect for other cultures and their right to dignity and the integrity of their traditions within our society:
Jesus Christ. What the fuck is wrong with this person.
This is an unacceptable behavior, and it should be banned as a condition of entry to the country. This supposedly enlightened and woke country. Although this is a cultural tradition -- and it's not our place to judge what may or may not go on in India -- all humans are equal here, and this tradition should not be allowed in the United States.
(EDIT: Maybe this story is a false flag, maybe this is all fake, to justify layoffs, purges, etc... but if not, the above is my opinion as an anon.)
I live in SF, and I've had co-workers here open "brag" about being able to tell whether someone is a brahmin or a kshatriya (sp?).
I had one co-worker who would brag that he isn't discriminative to anyone, except other Indians. We (non-Indians) would kind of have a response of "ah ha ha ha yea... you could do that we can't".
Because of course as team members who aren't minorities we can't be found to do any of that stuff, but there's plenty of minorities who have taken over in discriminating against others based on their own cultural criteria and seem to get a pass.
This may sound crude, but I think is pretty close to reality. This is Indian activists trying to muscle in on the massive DEI industry in the US, from which they are currently excluded.
There is zero evidence that caste is a causal factor in the US, in the sense that those of lower castes can have signigicant discrimination imposed on them by upper castes. Of course there will be many casteist Indians in the US. There are many in India, so moving to the US will not make their numbers zero. But their ability to impose casteist discrimination in the US is pretty close to zero.
I moved to the US 40 years ago, have dozens of Indian friends, but have never heard of even a single significant case. There is a grand total of one case (the Cisco one) in court, and that's still to be decided.
I used to work in a FAANG and witnessed caste discrimination firsthand. It’s one of those things that most don’t notice at all unless one is either directly involved or a direct witness to it in America. Since the concept is so culturally foreign to a lot of people it simply goes unnoticed in the workplace to a lot of people who are not privy to the possibility of it happening.
There is no possible positive justification for the existence of castes: It's plainly just a softer version of slavery. It should be of the utmost importance to not only prevent the spread of castes, but to utterly destroy them as a concept.
Another thing I've noticed aside from caste discrimination (as a white guy) is how much Indians talk about marriage (and the way it's talked about)
I saw this post on blind a couple months ago where a woman engineer reported her manager to hr because he asked her if she was married point blank. Most of the top voted comments were really nasty towards her, calling her mentally ill etc. I have other examples on top of this from work or uni but this was the most poignant one
Then I saw this* article like a week later, good read
I wish the article had pointed out the Hindu American Foundation's long history of support for Hindu-supremacist nationalist causes, in addition to its denial of the impact of caste discrimination.
It is good to see Seattle stand up for what is right here.
- How is this implemented?
- How is caste defined under American law?
- Is there an enumerated list of all castes?
- How does one demonstrate under American law that person A is of caste X and person B is of caste Y?
- How is caste "assigned"?
- Can one switch castes? Is ones caste immutable?
- Does one register a caste like a political party?
This feels like a massive green field of legal questions under Western law.
Does this include people with disabilities? The normal interview process is setup to weed out people with neurological disorders, since it requires you to be personable and make a "good impression".
I'm a very senior person (20+ years) industry experience in India in companies like Msft, Goog etc.
In all these kinds of Multinational companies and even more so in startups (new or old) never see any 'caste' aspect being played out.
If it is there it may be happening in more bottom of the rung companies where meritocracy is not really thing during hiring and then when planning for growth of the employees. In these places one would also typically see 'company veterans' who have minimal tech skills but hold power positions.
Also, the article is not factually correct - being non-vegetarian does not indicate that one is from lower caste. Infact in eastern part of India people from 'higher caste' eat meat and fish.
Casteism is something which you cannot comprehend unless you are a lower caste person yourself.
Imagine how so many things are designed for right handed person and most of us never see that issue which left-handed people face on day-to-day basis.
That is why when you have discussion on caste-discrimination, you have so many upper caste indians defending with sort of "It does not exist anymore"
Its a legit vice in Indian community and I understand most liberal indians dont practice it. But by denying its existence, you are doing a greatest disservice to the community.
Whereas in India caste based discrimination is written in the law. Yes the so called "upper caste" are discriminated against at every step of their life. Be it college admissions or government jobs or getting elected, almost 50% seats are reserved for the "lower caste".
This was written in the law at the time of the formation of republic, as a temporary measure to uplift the lower castes. But no party in power has even talked about removing these even 75 years later, because you know.... Votes!!! It would be a political suicide for a party to undo these reservations.
Now I'm not against giving reservations to weaker sections of the society. But these must be based on economic status, not caste. There are many cases where even the third generation is taking benefits. I personally know a few where the be grand father retired from a plush govt. job that he got under reservation, the father is currently in a top bureaucratic job and the kids are getting reservation seats in medical college admissions. This makes 0 sense. This is only giving rise to more division among caste lines as the upper caste feel like being discriminated against.
There's a striking scene in Naipaul's "An Area of Darkness" where he describes a team "cleaning" a staircase, and really all they're doing is sloshing dirty water around and making it as bad or worse than when they started -- but no matter, it is "clean" because persons of the right caste performed each step of the work.
For what it's worth, caste has fortunately ceased to have meaning in a tiny number of social and geographic circles.
But upper castes are in denial about how caste plays out in the rest of India.
They will claim it was something in the past. Wrong. Upper castes still often whisper about so and so being a *** (impolite way of referring to someone of a lower caste), or about such and such work (e.g. cleaning dishes) being the work of a *** and not a Brahmin like themselves.
Some now claim that caste was created by the British.
Wrong. Al Biruni (traveler from Persia) in 1020 wrote in Tarikh Al-Hind (History of India) about how when there was a communal meal in the village, a barrier needed to be put up between people of lower castes and people of upper castes.
I am an upper caste (meat eating) American Indian.
This stigma attached to caste, eating meat, is real among upper class Indians, especially Brahmins (me), and this needs to be put up as an issue, to hold a mirror to this community.
Many many Indians of these upper castes, especially if they're not meat-eating, tend to be conservative in their cultural and religious values. They disapprove of American culture. They consider meat eating a sin. Some, or many of this upper caste group will support the current Indian government's policy against meat eating. These people live in a bubble.
About caste in India, my upper caste has been discriminating
over the lower castes for more than a thousand years. And growing up we never once had these conversations, either at school or around the dinner table. These traits are ingrained in me, and one way I handle it is by embracing Americanism, and minimizing contact with Indian cultural groups (i'd be an oddball politically anyway). 70% of India is not upper caste. Only now are Dalits (lower castes) waking up in India . And I had to remind my vegetarian wife, 70% of India is meat eating (which she was reluctant to accept) - so you want to judge 70% of Indian people?. She grew up in a Brahmin area of Bangalore where most of her school mates were Brahmins, I grew up in a catholic school where most of my classmates were meat eating Christians. Such factors can dictate cultural attitudes. (I've managed to tutor her well, and bring her around). Many ancient religious texts mention our gods feasting on meat, beef, etc. Yet we act as if we are some holy sacred shit. I've debated disowning my caste (brahmin) but that would offend my SO. Thankfully my 2 kids are a healthy mix of American questioning of such bullshit, and non-religious.
The only defense I can offer is that Indians operate with a mob-mentality - too timid to standup and take a bold stance, and secondly it takes a generation to wear down this kind of ingrained thinking. Critical thinkers we are are not, especially in our personal lives, we tow the line, the existing lines. We're not trailblazers. Our excellence is within the straitjackets of corporate structure, within already established frameworks. The desensitized, one-dimensional corporate American culture is fertile ground for our achievements.
We lead our lives inside the elite tech bubbles, where all that matters is academics, tech elite jobs, and toxic out-dated traditions. We politely smile, but in private within our upper caste living rooms, our families look down on 'other' cultures for their meat consumption, for sexual openness , for the lack of 'spiritual enlightenment' etc.
I welcome this naming and shaming of my community. This flaw in our community should be brought out and talked about. That's healthy.
Always makes me wondering - why do these people work in Indian-managed companies? Outside of Indian expats, no one knows or gives a damn about castes. And this is probably the most toxic environment to work in, anyway - Indian companies are known for their power games and nepotism. Why choose them?
[+] [-] sitkack|3 years ago|reply
The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities.
Even Indian men that I respected on multiple levels, when they get on an interview with a women they are overly harsh in ways they were not with men. So much so that I stopped interviewing all together. I reported to HR and they of course didn't know how to handle it. It really makes me sad.
I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. I applaud this action. This shit has to stop, leave it in India, America is better than this.
Discrimination is fractal. All interview should be truly double-blind.
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-term...
[+] [-] trieste92|3 years ago|reply
I notice this too. It's like someone brings up caste discrimination online (somewhere like teamblind) and a bunch of people come out of nowhere and say "that isn't real". Isn't very convincing to say the least
[+] [-] petilon|3 years ago|reply
Let's review the facts.
Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S. [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2...
[2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-...
What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/
https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-sk...
The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.
[+] [-] brailsafe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codegeek|3 years ago|reply
Just be careful about generalizing a country of 1.4 billion people. Someone more ignorant will automatically assume that all Indians are the same and they all believe in caste system.
[+] [-] chollida1|3 years ago|reply
What does it mean for something to be fractal in this sense?
[+] [-] Consultant32452|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] locusofself|3 years ago|reply
I've noticed that there are lots of teams that are primarily Indian folks and this is true not just of the contractors and India based teams. I really don't know about the dynamics of the caste system and whether not they are at play within MSFT, AMZN or other Seattle/tech companies, but just like most (all?) ethnicities there is certainly a tendency to stick together and live in the same areas / work on the same teams from what I've seen.
On a mostly unrelated note, Seattle proper (as I mentioned, I live in a suburb which is an affluent one) has really gone downhill in the last 10 years. The homeless/drug problem is very bad and the local government seems so entirely incompetent to do anything other than woke signaling.
[+] [-] techsupporter|3 years ago|reply
I don't mean to be unduly harsh (yet probably will come across that way anyway) but did we have to drag that into this conversation? I have lived in Seattle my entire life, was born in Ballard, and raised two kids here. It's getting kind of frustrating that every time my hometown comes up, someone inevitably mentions this without bringing up any of the complexities as to why. (For one, it would be nice if your suburb, nominally one of Seattle's regional partners in the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, would actually do their part and construct some social services for various groups.)
Our mayor, who lives half-time in Bellevue I hasten to point out, is busy saying it's all the Council's fault and the Council passes budget items and ordinances that the mayor simply ignores. Meanwhile, every city in the region is busy shoving everyone who looks like they earn less than $75,000 per year over to Seattle and then crying about how Seattle is "doing nothing".
The Council is attempting to do something good, so sure, let's bring up the massive social services crisis that's by no means unique to Seattle or Puget Sound, but probably looks like a Seattle-specific problem from a perch on the Eastside.
[+] [-] emodendroket|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ackbar03|3 years ago|reply
I just came back from attending a conference in the US. I stopped by san francisco to visit a friend before going to DC for the conference. I hadn't been in DC before but visited California 10 years ago. I was surprised by how pervasive homelessness and drug use was in both places too, especially San Francisco where it definitely felt like things took a turn for the worse. Even in DC there were guys just collapsed on the sidewalk, not sure from drug use or whatever (there were people there who called an ambulance). People also just didn't seem very happy in general, although I could be imagining that since I was only there for a few days. In any case it was very surprising and not quite what I expected.
[+] [-] yeahbutiguess|3 years ago|reply
The city council has been trying to fix the issue, but had been stalled by the mayor, stalled by other cities in the region, and stalled in how they can build systemic fixes.
[+] [-] drewrv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whateveracct|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flangola7|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] russelldjimmy|3 years ago|reply
I live in a cosmopolitan city in India. I am an “upper caste” Hindu. I have been brought up in a relatively liberal environment and have not experienced much first hand caste-based discrimination (because of my sheltered upbringing no doubt). I have always thought of my family as liberal.
A few years ago, I wanted to marry a girl who was out of my caste. My family did not accept her immediately. They never uttered the word “caste”, but made snide remarks about “her community”, and about how “our community” is full of “ambitious intellectuals” and hers is not (implying moral superiority to ambition and intellect). They had not even met her. They just knew her surname and had seen pictures. Made me wonder where all of these assumptions came from.
She was not privy to these conversations but she realised that something was not right, and asked me if caste was being an issue.
And that’s when it struck me that maybe it was caste that was being the issue. My mind swirled with nasty thoughts for a few weeks. “Should I marry this girl who is outside of my caste?”, “What if no one accepts me? I’ll be alone”, etc. For someone who is fairly liberal, well educated, and well travelled, I was shocked at the kind of thoughts appearing in my mind. They were more powerful than I ever thought they could be.
Thankfully, due to my meditation practices, I had developed the ability to “witness” my thoughts without simply giving in to them. That way, I could let my thoughts flow, and wait for my fear to pass. After the fear had passed, my mind would settle down and I’d think rationally again.
What’s the point of this anecdote? I had an important realisation. It is quite possible that the things we call “casteism” is nothing but a flavour of the fear of abandonment, or the fear of being expelled from society by not conforming to societal standards. I realised that the standards can be absolutely absurd, but it is the mere fear of being abandoned by society that can make a human being conform and commit the most ridiculous actions. All out of fear.
Take whatever conclusion you may from this. It is an insight into the mind of someone who never thought would discriminate on the basis of caste, and yet my mind veered into that abyss, if only for a short duration. I escaped and lived to tell the tale. Thanks for reading.
[+] [-] vishnugupta|3 years ago|reply
My favourite example about this is from a (for the lack of better word) sub-religion named "Lingayats". It traces origins to a philosopher named Basavanna. He wanted a community sans discrimination so that every one from regardless of caste would be treated equally. And yet here we are, after hundreds of years, where there are 50+ castes/sub-castes in Lingayats too.
[+] [-] fmajid|3 years ago|reply
That said, in India caste (varna and jati) correlate with genetic clusters that have maintained for millennia by higher levels of endogamy than, say, Ashkenazi Jews:
“What the data were showing us was that the genetic distinctions among jati groups within India were in many cases real, thanks to the long-standing history of endogamy in the subcontinent. People tend to think of India, with its more than 1.3 billion people, as having a tremendously large population, and indeed many Indians as well as foreigners see it this way. But genetically, this is an incorrect way to view the situation. The Han Chinese are truly a large population. They have been mixing freely for thousands of years. In contrast, there are few if any Indian groups that are demographically very large, and the degree of genetic differentiation among Indian jati groups living side by side in the same village is typically two to three times higher than the genetic differentiation between northern and southern Europeans. The truth is that India is composed of a large number of small populations.”
Excerpt From Who We Are and How We Got Here, Chapter 6, “The Collision That Formed India” by David Reich
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[+] [-] triyambakam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xB31B1B|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cld8483|3 years ago|reply
I've had the same experience. It's very weird when you realize you've been hired into such an ethnic enclave in which you aren't that ethnicity, and then learning that your boss's boss is looking for a way to trade you to another team without ever meeting you, mere days after you joined. Thankfully that trade went through and I ended up on a less racist team..
[+] [-] c_o_n_v_e_x|3 years ago|reply
Outside the US, I've seen companies with a diverse work force implement "english only" policies in the office.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] fmajid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PKop|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] password11|3 years ago|reply
> By admitting to eating meat, the tech worker had exposed himself as a member of an oppressed caste, or a Dalit, formerly known as an “untouchable,” in the social hierarchy that is pervasive in South Asian countries.
(EDIT: if the article and allegations are true)
I say the following as an outsider, an American, and with the utmost respect for other cultures and their right to dignity and the integrity of their traditions within our society:
Jesus Christ. What the fuck is wrong with this person.
This is an unacceptable behavior, and it should be banned as a condition of entry to the country. This supposedly enlightened and woke country. Although this is a cultural tradition -- and it's not our place to judge what may or may not go on in India -- all humans are equal here, and this tradition should not be allowed in the United States.
(EDIT: Maybe this story is a false flag, maybe this is all fake, to justify layoffs, purges, etc... but if not, the above is my opinion as an anon.)
[+] [-] no_butterscotch|3 years ago|reply
I had one co-worker who would brag that he isn't discriminative to anyone, except other Indians. We (non-Indians) would kind of have a response of "ah ha ha ha yea... you could do that we can't".
Because of course as team members who aren't minorities we can't be found to do any of that stuff, but there's plenty of minorities who have taken over in discriminating against others based on their own cultural criteria and seem to get a pass.
[+] [-] chanakya|3 years ago|reply
There is zero evidence that caste is a causal factor in the US, in the sense that those of lower castes can have signigicant discrimination imposed on them by upper castes. Of course there will be many casteist Indians in the US. There are many in India, so moving to the US will not make their numbers zero. But their ability to impose casteist discrimination in the US is pretty close to zero.
I moved to the US 40 years ago, have dozens of Indian friends, but have never heard of even a single significant case. There is a grand total of one case (the Cisco one) in court, and that's still to be decided.
[+] [-] SOLAR_FIELDS|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x-complexity|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trieste92|3 years ago|reply
I saw this post on blind a couple months ago where a woman engineer reported her manager to hr because he asked her if she was married point blank. Most of the top voted comments were really nasty towards her, calling her mentally ill etc. I have other examples on top of this from work or uni but this was the most poignant one
Then I saw this* article like a week later, good read
* https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/world/asia/india-single-w...
[+] [-] roguecoder|3 years ago|reply
It is good to see Seattle stand up for what is right here.
[+] [-] testfoobar|3 years ago|reply
- How is this implemented? - How is caste defined under American law? - Is there an enumerated list of all castes? - How does one demonstrate under American law that person A is of caste X and person B is of caste Y? - How is caste "assigned"? - Can one switch castes? Is ones caste immutable? - Does one register a caste like a political party?
This feels like a massive green field of legal questions under Western law.
[+] [-] Reptur|3 years ago|reply
85% of college grads with autism are unemployed. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-college-grads-with-au...
[+] [-] hackerthrow|3 years ago|reply
In all these kinds of Multinational companies and even more so in startups (new or old) never see any 'caste' aspect being played out.
If it is there it may be happening in more bottom of the rung companies where meritocracy is not really thing during hiring and then when planning for growth of the employees. In these places one would also typically see 'company veterans' who have minimal tech skills but hold power positions.
Also, the article is not factually correct - being non-vegetarian does not indicate that one is from lower caste. Infact in eastern part of India people from 'higher caste' eat meat and fish.
India also has substantial population of non-vegetarian, only 19% are vegetarian https://twitter.com/Stats_of_India/status/158333113506020556...
[+] [-] hobabaObama|3 years ago|reply
Imagine how so many things are designed for right handed person and most of us never see that issue which left-handed people face on day-to-day basis.
That is why when you have discussion on caste-discrimination, you have so many upper caste indians defending with sort of "It does not exist anymore"
Its a legit vice in Indian community and I understand most liberal indians dont practice it. But by denying its existence, you are doing a greatest disservice to the community.
[+] [-] zapdrive|3 years ago|reply
This was written in the law at the time of the formation of republic, as a temporary measure to uplift the lower castes. But no party in power has even talked about removing these even 75 years later, because you know.... Votes!!! It would be a political suicide for a party to undo these reservations.
Now I'm not against giving reservations to weaker sections of the society. But these must be based on economic status, not caste. There are many cases where even the third generation is taking benefits. I personally know a few where the be grand father retired from a plush govt. job that he got under reservation, the father is currently in a top bureaucratic job and the kids are getting reservation seats in medical college admissions. This makes 0 sense. This is only giving rise to more division among caste lines as the upper caste feel like being discriminated against.
[+] [-] emodendroket|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reactspa|3 years ago|reply
But upper castes are in denial about how caste plays out in the rest of India.
They will claim it was something in the past. Wrong. Upper castes still often whisper about so and so being a *** (impolite way of referring to someone of a lower caste), or about such and such work (e.g. cleaning dishes) being the work of a *** and not a Brahmin like themselves.
Some now claim that caste was created by the British.
Wrong. Al Biruni (traveler from Persia) in 1020 wrote in Tarikh Al-Hind (History of India) about how when there was a communal meal in the village, a barrier needed to be put up between people of lower castes and people of upper castes.
My own personal experiences with caste (as someone exposed to it very late in life) were described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31035615
[+] [-] vjust|3 years ago|reply
This stigma attached to caste, eating meat, is real among upper class Indians, especially Brahmins (me), and this needs to be put up as an issue, to hold a mirror to this community.
Many many Indians of these upper castes, especially if they're not meat-eating, tend to be conservative in their cultural and religious values. They disapprove of American culture. They consider meat eating a sin. Some, or many of this upper caste group will support the current Indian government's policy against meat eating. These people live in a bubble.
About caste in India, my upper caste has been discriminating over the lower castes for more than a thousand years. And growing up we never once had these conversations, either at school or around the dinner table. These traits are ingrained in me, and one way I handle it is by embracing Americanism, and minimizing contact with Indian cultural groups (i'd be an oddball politically anyway). 70% of India is not upper caste. Only now are Dalits (lower castes) waking up in India . And I had to remind my vegetarian wife, 70% of India is meat eating (which she was reluctant to accept) - so you want to judge 70% of Indian people?. She grew up in a Brahmin area of Bangalore where most of her school mates were Brahmins, I grew up in a catholic school where most of my classmates were meat eating Christians. Such factors can dictate cultural attitudes. (I've managed to tutor her well, and bring her around). Many ancient religious texts mention our gods feasting on meat, beef, etc. Yet we act as if we are some holy sacred shit. I've debated disowning my caste (brahmin) but that would offend my SO. Thankfully my 2 kids are a healthy mix of American questioning of such bullshit, and non-religious.
The only defense I can offer is that Indians operate with a mob-mentality - too timid to standup and take a bold stance, and secondly it takes a generation to wear down this kind of ingrained thinking. Critical thinkers we are are not, especially in our personal lives, we tow the line, the existing lines. We're not trailblazers. Our excellence is within the straitjackets of corporate structure, within already established frameworks. The desensitized, one-dimensional corporate American culture is fertile ground for our achievements.
We lead our lives inside the elite tech bubbles, where all that matters is academics, tech elite jobs, and toxic out-dated traditions. We politely smile, but in private within our upper caste living rooms, our families look down on 'other' cultures for their meat consumption, for sexual openness , for the lack of 'spiritual enlightenment' etc.
I welcome this naming and shaming of my community. This flaw in our community should be brought out and talked about. That's healthy.
[+] [-] anovikov|3 years ago|reply