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Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>> I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons.

> but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues" ... I will probably be tight lipped in front of you

All OP said is their Indian colleagues are tight-lipped about caste, which it sounds like you would be too. I'm not sure why you feel that's unfair generalization. OP isn't claiming they all support it, just that they're silent about it.

I can't speak for others but I may be tight lipped personally because it is a very complex issue that a non Indian cannot just understand. I see this tendency that people of non Indian origin throw the keyword "caste" without really knowing what it is.

OP is making sweeping generalizations. Another example: All women in QA. So what ? May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.

> I see this tendency that people of non Indian origin throw the keyword "caste" without really knowing what it is.

Shouldn't we be talking about it then? Openly? Educating others.

> I hate the caste system

This is where being tight lipped doesn't make sense. It falls under the "it's our problem so you can't talk about it". If it's a bad system then let it be just that, why defend it by not talking about it?

A similar analogy would be police doing brutal/illegal things and defending each other. If you're a cop and you hate that, then being tight lipped about the "internal problems and complexities" only keeps the problems going.

> All women in QA. So what ?... Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.

There should be equal ratios of women in Dev vs QA for all races. Sure maybe saying casteism is the root cause is too much, but denying it is also wrong. It's like saying racism is never a factor. It's not 100% the factor, but it's definitely a portion of a problem.

I guess... we should talk about it and learn - and not be afraid.

> Sure maybe saying casteism is the root cause is too much, but denying it is also wrong.

I agree with everything you said, but just a note that OP was talking about sex and caste discrimination as separate things, not conflating them as your parent implies.

From OP:

> The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa

This is fair and my response to that was:

> There should be equal ratios of women in Dev vs QA for all races

But it is flawed - it could be easily argued that this group of people are way more sexist than others which could account for that ratios being off vs inherently Caste.

> May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work.

OP is talking not just about casteism but also about sexism, and in the US this would be considered a badly sexist remark. Why do you assume that women seek jobs with a lower barrier to entry and less demanding work?

I didn't say All women seek jobs with lower barrier to entry. I am talking about QA and why it tends to attract mostly women in India. Plenty of women go into other fields including Engineering.

QA has ALL women is not same as All Women do QA.

> I am talking about QA and why it tends to attract mostly women in India

Disclaimer: I'm speaking as a Scandinavian with no knowledge of this situation in India. I can only share what we have learned here, as I think it could help explain some of the reason why it ended up this way.

This could be an example of gender inequality. We had the same issue in our countries where the women chose jobs with lower barrier to entry with more dependability and stable work hours. The reason was that they had (and some still do) a lot of responsibilities outside work to take care of their family.

There was also a cultural thing where men didn't feel "manly" enough when they took time off work to take care of the children. The government provides a long maternal/paternal leave, and made an equal part of it reserved to men and women. That quickly changed the culture where it became more acceptable for men to take time off work to raise children.

It turned out that women actually wanted the same careers as men :-) The expectations from society made it hard for them, and when those expectations changed the pattern also changed.

Sure, we still have some types of work that are dominated by women, but it is increasingly their own choice. We are not finished yet, and there is still work to do, but the gap is closing.

From my experience, it seems that female developers in my country go through a different path. Instead of going to a lower entry job, they frequently start as regular developers and often end up as managers and other positions of influence.

How complex is it to understand that the higher supposed castes treat the lower castes poorly. It is as clear as black and white.

"very complex issue that a non Indian cannot just understand"

So, every race other than Indians can't understand basic sentences.

"OP is making sweeping generalizations."

Wait.. didn't you just do that.

>OP is making sweeping generalizations. Another example: All women in QA. So what ? May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.

It isn't a generalization to point out that there's something strange when the distribution is skewed that strongly considering that men and women are generally equal. Some slight bias is understandable, but the larger the deviation gets, the more unrealistic it is. There is nothing inherent about being a woman that would lead to them unanimously choosing to go with a lower barrier to entry and similarly there is nothing inherent about being a man that would lead to them not choosing said lower barrier and easier work.

As an Aristotelean the thought that I need to understand the Platonean idea of a caste system seems vain.

I think it is distracting.

What we should talk about, and what we can talk about, is the inacceptable behavior of (some) people, in this case (some) Indians in the US work place.

There's nothing complex about caste-based discrimination. It's a laugh and a half that Indians like you try to defend it like this. This shit has no place in the West.

Caste discrimination is strong in male Indian immigrants to the USA. The higher the caste, the stronger the discrimination. Just as you ["...you don't understand the complexity and roots of this practice."], most will defend their Indian society's attitudes. They certainly won't accept lower castes as equals.

I have no experience regarding Indian womens' attitudes.

I don’t think he generalized in a way that makes assumptions about you or all Indians. It was across his Indian colleagues, maybe he only had 2 Indian colleagues

The ones that hate the caste system are often from the lower castes, who are the ones that see the unfavorable side of the system.

The ones from the higher castes (which are the most likely to be wealthy enough to come here) are the ones favored by the system and are more likely to approve of it.

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