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Comment by hirako2000 | Hacker News Reader

hirako2000

It's rather you to work on the explaining there. Pichai isn't claiming to be unaware of how caste politics may work. I think it's not only OK but desirable for companies to stop ruining the workplace with societal politics. There is a law and public debates for castes and how to address the (no doubt existing even outside India) problem.

Prompting an employee of a tech company, even its CEO, reminding the audience of its ethnical background is what i find suspect.

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> There is a law and public debates for castes and how to address the (no doubt existing even outside India) problem.

That's kinda part of the problem. In India there are laws dealing with caste based oppression and discrimination (how well they are enforced is another story). But in most other countries such laws do not exist. And caste-based discrimination is exceptionally easily and silently accomplished because for a vast majority of Indians, your last name gives away your caste.

That's right, in the West at wide they roll up to anti discrimination laws, agreed they probably don't tackle the very specific problem castes pose, I would much rather have anti discrimination encompass them in a more generic form to tackle all forms of discrimination based on "classes" than making it an indian caste problem. I fail to see how the unambiguous distinction in names makes the problem solving any easier, it isn't only about identification, and if that identification is used to implement quotas or whatnot, since that's how companies then read the law, it will 1/ create a new problem, 2/ suddenly see a lot of people change their name for "business" purposes.

While I am in favor of generic anti-discrimination laws, I don't think they can be generic and target caste based discrimination. Let me give you an example:

A hiring manager, gets two resumes. Both are equally qualified. He glances at one, see's the last name and decides on the spot to not hire him. Because of caste.

If he's slightly clever, he'll atleast schedule an initial call with the candidate before inventing a reason to reject him. How does a generic anti-discrimination law identify this as an instance of caste-based discrimination?

Exactly as it would "just" solve the use case without getting into the castes system specific worry. E.g: Candidate selection should be based on the skillset and fitness of individuals for the scope of work/description, without discrimination attriuted to personal affiliation, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual orientation, difference, + "group identity", . The employer would thus commit infringement if when faced with two somewhat equals in fitness candidates he folds some individual based on gender or whatever else that falls into personal, group identity factor or affiliation to a certain group. I think it covers the caste system issue we see at the workplace without having to talk about castes in the legislation, and the benefit is that it allows the text to cover other group identifications.

Btw we have other avenues, anti discrimination is one that covers shutting down labelled candidates. Nepotism is described as favoring relatives or friends, just add "or group identified with" to it and boom that covers the caste system issue (and beyond). I'm no legalist so of course I'm not drafting a clear definition of group identity but you get the idea, i hope. I suspect we are stuck on this because on some side we have identity politics and quotas advocates wanting the legislation to accommodate their wishes, hence forbidding group identified favoritism in the law. This avenue is being at best ignored as a potential simple solution, at worst battled against with teeth and nails for other unrelated motives.

I don't think workplaces should operate outside of and without influence from society. They're just a group of people in a building (metaphorical or otherwise).

> stop ruining the workplace with societal politics

Isn't the failure to do so the subject of the talk?

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