Comment by pringles_red | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pringles_red | Hacker News Reader

I don't get why is everyone who is saying this a result of the reservation system is getting downvoted.

I am an Indian and clearly reservation system is a spectacular failure. The reservation system actively creates a divide among castes. I will not be surprised if some these upper caste people who are fed up of reservation in India discriminate when they go to USA. These upper caste people are not discriminating due to fact that they believe that one caste is superior to another, they are doing it because they are able to sympathise with the plight of other unreserved Indians in India.

How it is to be unreserved in India: Any unreserved Indian who wants to stay in India is basically agreeing to working two to three times as hard as a reserved Indian to get into any government jobs/colleges while at the same time their tax money is being used to fund these. Also complaining about caste system or reservation can land you in jail (for offending minorities) and the politicians use reserved people as their vote-banks providing them even more privileges for votes. This system is only going to get worse for upper castes. So even your future generations have to work two - three times as hard because of their caste. Sounds like a good deal?

Also reservation benefits only rich reserved people not the poor ones who actually need help because everyone of the caste regardless of their economic circumstances can take advantage of reservation. My grandparents were literally rag pickers at one point in their life and now they are in the middle class I'm not sure how this is due to their caste and not their hard-work. The system is utterly disrespectful to anyone in the upper class. Thus, the higher amount of immigration is of the upper class anyways.

P.S. - By upper caste I mean the "General" unreserved people and "SC ST OBC" etc are the reserved quotas.

This. I think US people see caste system as something like skin color based racism in west. Actually it is much more complicated than that.

I know people from upper castes who were actually middle class farmers, and those from lower castes that got benefit from quotas even if they were rich[0].

Affirmative action is always bad. Because the people getting benefit of it are likely to be privileged. In this particular lawsuit, the discriminated was mentioned to be an IIT alumnus. It is basically hard to get into an IIT without decent investment in study materials / training to pass entrance exams these days. But still most of the seats are reserved for SC/ST/OBC and availed by people who are rich.

After reading this, some so called Indian liberals jump in to defend this is never the case. Go to an IIT and check the list of students who got in due to affirmative action (called reservation here). You will find most of them having wealthy parents because most students who write IIT entrance exams take coaching[1], and that's quite expensive.

Some media likes to highlight this or this may even give impression that upper caste Indians are casteist. They are not. But they are likely fed up with the abomination that reservations (affirmative actions) are.

Apart from that, there is likely chances of nepotism in bureaucratic organizations like Cisco.

Also, as for as I know, the caste system alone doesn't explain why South Indian upper caste people are more successful than North Indian upper castes (Brahmins / Baniyas) who outnumber them easily, and also appear more in IITs/NITs.

> "Affirmative action is always bad. Because the people getting benefit of it are likely to be privileged."

But this is not what affirmative action is. The purpose of affirmative action is to help under-privileged people. If the help is going to privileged people instead, it's not affirmative action, it's corruption.

If it's really true, as you suggest, that some Dalit are rich and some Brahmin are poor, that some Dalit are privileged and some upper castes are not, then what does the caste system even mean? And why do people care enough that it's still a thing?

Consider the case of race in the US. Some of the benefit of affirmative action goes to children from well off black families. That doesn't mean it's corrupt, it just means that if you are doing something on the basis of race and not wealth then you're sometimes going to give a benefit to people who are rich.

If you took your last paragraph, and substituted racial groups for castes, I think it would be clear that it doesn't make sense?

The big question is: are they privileged, or are they discriminated against? I've heard of rich black people in the US getting stopped and investigated by the police for driving a fancy car that they bought with their own money.

There's different kinds of privilege of course. You can be rich but still discriminated, you can be white but poor. And the way you need to help people who are poor is different from the way you help people who suffer from discrimination.

If poor people have a hard time getting access to something because it's too expensive, and you want to help them, then that money shouldn't end up with rich people. If a demographic group is kept out of universities or other opportunities because of their caste or the colour of their skin, then you correct that by giving them better access, maybe through a quota or some other form of preferential treatment that compensates for the effects of discrimination. And that shouldn't apply to people who don't suffer from that discrimination.

You need to address the thing that's going wrong, and not something completely different. Rich black people don't need money, they need to not get arrested over nothing by the police.

Affirmative action is not generally about giving people money, it's about giving people opportunities. The idea is something like, you set a lower bar for people from groups that have been historically discriminated against.

When we have programs that are specifically designed to help people monetarily, such as financial aid at colleges or welfare, they consider people's economic situation but not their race.

> If the help is going to privileged people instead, it's not affirmative action

While I might agree about this being a bad outcome, I also don't think a "no true Scotsman" argument is helpful. What is described here is still affirmative action - just a bad implementation of it. Instead of trying to define them away, we should admit that such bad implementations can exist, and push for good implementations instead.

The upper castes are hardly 20% of the population. But they take up 80% or more of the higher education and jobs already.

The affirmative action in India is to reduce this gap so that their representation is comparable to their population.

> Affirmative action is always bad.

I disagree. I grew up poor and white, I was the "victim" of AA once, I come from exactly the demographic that racist demagogues play to, and I still disagree. Just as the original systemic discrimination has uneven effect (on both sides), so does AA. The beneficiaries of AA as it has existed in the US are not particularly likely to be privileged. In fact it really is a bit of the opposite, because it's much easier to skirt AA in professions requiring high levels of education and specialization. It mostly has its effect at the lower end of the economic spectrum, in jobs that even those who have been shortchanged by the educational system can do.

Do some rich minorities benefit from AA? Do some poor white people get the shaft as a result? Oh, I do know about that, and it sucks mightily. From what I can tell it's quite possible that India's reservation system is even worse. But that doesn't mean AA must fail. Flaws in a specific implementation of an idea do not necessarily refute the idea itself. The US version of AA, for all its many and great flaws, still seems net positive and a valid part of addressing systemic discrimination.

Yeah, I read that another commenter on this forum mentioned that in one family, at most one person should be able to get benefit of affirmative action. That will spread the benefits much more evenly.

Indian reservation system is in bad state, and especially in the context of IITs/NITs it is worse due to the reasons I mentioned.

Its a good thing you didn't grow up poor and asian - then you would have had to work even harder with even less privelege

That's exactly the problem affirmative action is supposed to address. That's exactly why I support it, even though it wasn't in my own interest back then. So what's your point here? Do you support AA, or oppose it? The "point" that discrimination already exists was not in dispute.

> This. I think US people see caste system as something like skin color based racism in west. Actually it is much more complicated than that.

Honestly from the arguments I'm seeing in here, it really really isn't. From the perspective of a white guy with almost no understanding whatsoever of the caste system and its politics, I'm seeing exactly the same kinds of arguments here that I find being made by racists.

The only difference being that India has had reservation system for more than half century now and it doesn't work as well. Yes, I know examples where it has actually helped people in need but by vast margin it helps already well off people from underrepresented minorities not the ones in need. This is one of the main reasons why India's medical facilities are sub par and one can't get anything done in govt offices. Also reservation system was meant to be a temporary until we had representation from minorities. We already have achieved that for many minorities yet they still benefit from this.

As someone from fairly higher cast but economically poor family, coming to US felt liberating where I could define & own my success irrespective of my cast, religion. Yes we have problems in US and I've faced discrimination too but it doesn't limit me from succeeding.

We should take this as a learning in US if we were to implement a reservation like system. Have it backed by data on who really needs it not driven by political climate.

No, it really is not more complicated. The US has its own implicit systems of discrimination. The white racist from Tennessee is going to be looked down upon by the white racist from Connecticut who will be looked down upon by the white racist with a Central Park apartment.

Affirmative action is not "always bad." There are multiple purposes of affirmative action, some of which have NOTHING to do with the individual student.

About 60% of NFL alumni in the US are of African-American origin, and that number climbs every year. Most coaches in the NFL are either former players or coaches at some other level of football. The VAAAAST majority of coaches at the NFL level at ALL levels are white. Of the 32 head coaching positions in the league, only 3 are held by black coaches, and black coaches are more likely to get fired quicker than their white counterparts.

You know why? Because the owners are white. People hire who they relate to, and a white guy is going to relate to another white guy more than they will to most black guys. It's simple.

Same thing applies to affirmative action. A lower caste person who gets a chance and succeeds is more likely to hire lower caste employees. So even though those lower caste employees may not have been direct beneficiaries of affirmative action, they can still benefit from the network effect.

There is no reason to identify as "upper caste" unless one is interested in maintaining that hierarchy.

Isn't it racist when lower cast employee hires another lower cast employee. Arent we trying to stop that very same thing with AA?

Not remotely, no. The entire purpose of AA is to try to bring normalization to a system that is heavily and unfairly biased. AA has an understanding of the network effect and peoples' bias built in. Lower caste people favoring lower caste associates is a feature, not a bug. You want them to hire more people like them to help bring the group up. This doesn't always work, of course, but that's not the point. You want to increase the probability that it will happen

No high achievers are truly worried about being in a system with AA with regards to their personal employment and advancement. They're going to succeed regardless. The high caste people who are waiting for their (or are waiting for their kids') handout simply because they had good grades as a child are the ones who are the complainers.

It's not perfect, but it's not resource intensive and it's vastly better than the alternative.

> You know why? Because the owners are white.

Actually it’s because being black isn’t an advantage in coaching the way it is on the field. White guys tend to suck at a lot of positions, but they’re perfectly capable of coaching. So you have a reasonable proportion of black coaches.

> I am an Indian and clearly reservation system is a spectacular failure. The reservation system actively creates a divide among castes. I will not be surprised if some these upper caste people who are fed up of reservation in India discriminate when they go to USA. These upper caste people are not discriminating due to fact that they believe that one caste is superior to another, they are doing it because they are able to sympathise with the plight of other unreserved Indians in India.

Replace:

- reservation system -> affirmative action

- upper caste -> middle class "true" Americans / white Americans / people born well-off / etc

and this reads exactly like rich white conservatism in America, and falls into the exact same pitfalls of "well I worked hard so obviously I deserve it". Systemic oppression is not erased by hard and honest work of the descendants of oppressors, it must be actively fixed.

I don't mean to say this as a way to call out India specifically as the US obviously has done quite badly here. The point is that it's quite wild to see the direct parallels of systemic classist oppression and the same story playing out here.

When you have unjust power and things are equalized, psychologically it feels like you are losing something. It's not an illogical response to dig in your heels into "but I earned it" and "but reverse discrimination", but people must fight that basic instinct to understand beyond their own perspective.

Preemptively, I want to state this: the more mild form of this argument goes "yes there's discrimination we need to solve, but let's not let the pendulum swing past the point of equilibrium and hurt us in any way". This is effectively stating that you value never facing actual oppression over the solving of a long faced oppression of others in a timely manner. It's an inherent devaluing of the oppressed while acknowledging they are, indeed, oppressed.

For what it's worth, among many times asking for this, I have yet to encounter a historical example of a time the "pendulum" actually swung too far. This is more or less the story of civil rights in America over the centuries. Every time is a step towards equilibrium, stunted and delayed by many sympathetic oppressors cutting actions short.

> Systemic oppression is not erased by hard and honest work of the descendants of oppressors, it must be actively fixed.

But it looks like these measures do not solve where the systemic oppression exists. Systemic oppression exists mostly in wealth inequalities, and somewhat in society that restricts access to education for those who are oppressed. Given that is the problem, the solution should be to provide high quality universal primary and secondary education. Taking number of STEM engineers by race/caste and trying to force universities to discriminate in admissions does not solve the poor quality of public school education

I'm all for better restorative justice, but that's not required to, you know, not discriminate against people in the US, as the person I responded to argued for by sympathizing/rationalizing the discrimination. I'm frankly immediately suspicious of the good faith of any comment/post that focuses on rationalizing the oppressor versus fixing an obvious injustice as the post did.

Fair enough. I read that post again, and it clearly is indefensible. I was trying to address a different point.

>and this reads exactly like rich white conservatism in America

You are interpreting the parent comment as a moral defense of caste discrimination. I guess it is, but I think it says something valid about the causal roots of the situation, which needs to be understood even assuming you think it's bad and needs to be changed. How can it be changed otherwise?

If certain castes are subject to affirmative action in India, and not elsewhere, then they are inevitably going to go where things are relatively easier.

The justice of that affirmative action doesn't change the incentives. Anywhere you try to squeeze people, they will respond, creating a new "problem". What is the ultimate solution going to be?

I don't believe in free markets uber alles but I do believe in regulatory failure.

Talking about people "digging in their heels" makes for a picture of a world where everyone would "just be reasonable" that's tantalizingly close to reality.

But people are never going to just give up on choosing the best available opportunity they have, at least on average.

You're right, affirmative action here seems to fail in this way since high caste Indian citizens can simply move to America, and I'm not going to pretend I have an answer there off the cuff. Admittedly this is not a problem I think about specifically often.

What is 100% not okay and fixable even without changing anything about the reservation system is the treatment of those abroad that are in lower castes, which is directly argued against by the OP here:

> These upper caste people are not discriminating due to fact that they believe that one caste is superior to another, they are doing it because they are able to sympathise with the plight of other unreserved Indians in India.

Describing the reservation system as a "plight" on upper castes while not sympathizing with the issues the lower castes deal with is literal classism at work within US tech companies that is clear by reading links to and direct comments containing many first hand accounts.

Affirmative is far from perfect when it comes to restorative justice approaches, but an imperfection does not mean all other ethical statements and stances need not apply. Let the upper castes run from India to avoid dealing with the reservation system, sure, that can't be avoided. However, we as a society should absolutely stop the caste system from continuing here.

I don't think this is the best idea, but theoretically US/world tech could also take an affirmative action type stance when it comes to castes and H1B visas in the US. That'd be an interesting theoretical patch solution, but then that just means more Indians would focus somewhere that didn't take this stance. And the end of the day, this needs to be a cultural change within Indians abroad and in India. But this issue being brought to a larger stage in the US is a great start.

> and this reads exactly like rich white conservatism in America

In India, caste doesn't really map well to wealth.

Read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24552608&goto=item%3Fi...

reservation system is not the issue. It's politicized heavily. For people who for generations have been fucked with and been given no opportunity to do better cannot suddenly do good for themselves and their family without help. This is not a problem.

Well, my classmates became army soldiers instead of class teachers because they belong to 'upper castes'. Even though they got better marks in second grade teachers' recruitment, than those from many reserved categories, they couldn't get a teacher job.

From rationality and morality perspective, see this piece on reservations: https://www.hipkapi.com/2015/09/10/indian-view-from-outside-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com