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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

I'm torn between thinking it's dumb to give talks on caste at work and thinking Google is weak for giving in to people who were complaining about this talk for whatever reason. I suppose I hold both opinions.

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While caste systems might seem far off and irrelevant in the modern world there is actually a rather extreme amount of caste based discrimination in work places. It's an issue we need to talk about and resolve.

I can't talk to this particular activist's positions, but Dalit Activism is a very relevant and worthy cause - it causes pretty significant discrimination even in the US.

How do you come to know someone's caste?

Often, the surname is enough.

Surnames are a direct indication and to a lesser extent place of birth I believe.

India is far too large for place of birth to be a reliable indicator of caste seeing as all cases are everywhere in Hindu majority areas and many areas they’re a minority. Surname, yes.

An Indian lecturing white people about discrimination is almost certainly a Brahmin.

Surnames.

Brahmins will tell you a talk about caste discrimination is anti-hindu.

I don’t want to pile on or anything, because it seems like you’re engaging in good faith, but I don’t understand the quickness to say “I don’t think this should be discussed at work” if you don’t even know the basics. Why is the default position not to be curious to learn more?

You don't know anything about religion X. Does that mean work is a good place to discuss religion X?

Social, political, religious, or just generally ideas that are likely to make people uncomfortable are, generally, not good things to talk about at work. I shouldn't have to worry about my well meaning coworker wanting to save my soul, win my vote, or whatever. My coworker and I need to work together to solve the problems of our business - those other topics don't help us coordinate and might hurt our ability to coordinate by sowing dissension.

Until very recently it was well understood that certain topics are better off not discussed at work. This is not a dearth of curiosity but a surfeit of common sense.

Christianity gets shoved into people's face all the time at work, on the road, at sports games, at the state and local legislature, at the school board, at the fxxxing presidential inauguration. Why don't we throw Hinduism in there for good measure? What's more fuel on the fire?

Personally I'd rather less fuel in the religious fire

there used to be a lot of interesting, thought-provoking (?) talks at Google.

Yes it is a workplace, but also a community of curious and open-minded people

Or at least used to be

the same way that i can tell within a relatively short time and with decent accuracy whether or not someone was raised in my class.

regarding caste, toss in skin tones, name, accents, etc…

is it only in the US or do Indian employees face same challenges in other parts of the world too?

To my knowledge it's a global issue but the US brings a lot of skilled immigrants from India and is a lot more proactive in addressing workplace discrimination. I'm only aware of the US and Canadian issues with Dalit caste discrimination - maybe someone else can help shed light on other areas? I'm sure that the UK has enough ethnic Indian residents that it's had to deal with it as well?

Caste is apparently as much a reason for discrimination as sex, sexual orientation, race or religion. Those topics need to be addressed at workplaces. Refusing to so is actually part of the problem.

I am so tired of talking about race and gender in the workplace. I am there to do work.

I really do not respect people who obsess about race and gender in the workplace.

Not trying to make it ad-hominem, but are you from a race/gender that is the majority in your workplace?

I think many people feel like you...the problem is that some races / gender receive discrimination that the majority might not see.

If we take it to gender, a male might have never received any sexual harassment in his entire life and so might think it's a waste of time to talk about this in the workplace (spoiler: it's not). If a minority of the people in the office are women, maybe a majority of people will feel talking about sexual harassment is a waste of time.

We get talks about discrimination based off race and gender at work. Caste discrimination is even more deserving because it's much less obvious to non-indians.

Seems like a very fraught topic to me. If I'm part of an interview loop for an Indian person, and one more or of my peers are Indian, how am I supposed to know if my peers are being caste-prejudiced? I would not be able to tell if the candidate was the good caste or the bad caste and asking "What caste is this guy?" seems highly inappropriate. If my peers support the candidate - is that because they like his caste? If they oppose the candidate - do they dislike it?

how does it work with gender/race? If your white co-worker likes a candidate, it is because of his gender, race or actual competence?

I have been a part of something like 150 interview loops. In that time I think I've interviewed exactly 1 white woman. In her case, everyone but a single person was in favor of hiring, and that one holdout was adamantly opposed (and eventually won). The person against hiring never said "I hate her because she's a white woman" but instead had reasonable sounding issues.

Given that "white woman" is such a rare category to interview, and, I assume, Dalit is pretty rare as well, AND I don't even regularly interview with the same set of people - how could I possibly tell when another interviewer is motivated by prejudice? Unless the interviewer says they are motivated by prejudice I'm either going to have to give them the benefit of the doubt or make a heckuva leap to accuse them of something.

I think in part because there is direct legislature that makes certain hiring practices illegal and cause for retaliation (obviously this is fraught with problems in proving intent like everything, but if I'm from a particular ethnicity and I have a track record of dismissing candidates that are able to be isolated down to a protected trait rather than ability to do the job, then I can see that as being relatively obvious.) but Like i said it's fraught with external factors, but as far as I know a caste isn't considered a protected class (probably because it doesn't have strict parallels in the West).

I'm familiar with the broader social context of gender and race in the US. So when I see, for example, a coworker who consistently argues that female candidates are too aggressive, I can gently prod the discussion towards focusing on his technical feedback and deferring to the other interviewers for soft skills. With caste discrimination, I have absolutely no idea what the equivalent would be, and it'd surely be inappropriate to corner one of my Indian coworkers in the break room and ask her to teach me all the common Dalit stereotypes.

That's exactlty why suxh a talk would have been a good idea...

If that is what the subject of the talk was then I completely agree it would have been appropriate and rescind whatever negative thought I expressed in the parent. (And by "that" I mean "A practical guide to detecting caste-based prejudice and what to do about it.")

all of your questions are precisely why this needs to be discussed—interviewers clearly need a better grasp on the subject.

This was a talk to be given to the Google News team vis a vis their editorial choices w.r.t caste in India.

Can’t think of a more important talk to be given to them tbh.

Why would you think it's dumb?

It makes as much sense as a talk on racial discrimination or gender identity discrimination to me, so I'm curious what's perceptively different about it to others.

Google often gets bogged down with culture wars. The internal discussion threads are sometimes productive, but often rife with this stuff and it’s a massive time sink for many googlers.

Caste discrimination is more relevant than most other forms of discrimination we quabble about here in the US.

For those it affects, that is.

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