The reason for my current user name here at hn was this exact form of racism. It is the first post I made when I created this throwaway. I was assured that my experience was unique and not widespread. I am both sad and happy to see this, sad because it exists, happy because it is getting some attention here at HN.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everyone of us needs to be vigilant about this type of racism. One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese.
One way I solve this is by introducing an independent observer/participant when situations like this emerge. This is costly but it has really worked to not only address this problem but also created an amazing diversity in my teams because it takes care of some of the implicit bias we all have to some degree.
>> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side.
What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.
Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States, but attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.
One of the primary things these stories never truly elaborate properly on in the quest to establish social rank out of a caste-based society is that Black Americans, that were native to the US, and even for black migrants to India and other countries, are some of the most affected by caste politics of this kind in employment and work opportunity.
Often having darker skin, Black Americans are even prone to more discrimination domestically. Any editorial that doesn't recognize that fact as a truth has no legs to stand on in my opinion. The fact that people still hang on to caste ideology in any way, and treat it as a continuing reality should disqualify them from any role concerning equal opportunity. "Gradual change and understanding" is not a reasonable discussion in America, or we're all coddling the same violent and hateful past that America was born from.
I write this as someone who has lots of Pakistani and Indian friends, and has regularly struggled to get them to understand how different each of the dynamics are on this matter, but zero tolerance is essential to get people to understand that the issue is more serious and damaging than they could ever know.
You needn’t be ham handed and stupid about it, just use meaningful internal controls.
Not just for this issue. If everyone hires friends and family, people from the hometown, place of worship, etc you run into other conflicts of interest. It’s always good to have disinterested parties involved in the hiring process.
> What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.
And, as a half-Croat, needed. The ethnic tensions between former Yugoslavian countries have never been resolved, and many emigrants took the unresolved issues with them. The youngest generation is one thing, they grew up without having to live through all that bullshit, but a lot of people 35 and older have lost relatives and friends in one of the wars.
FFS Bosnia is at the moment creeping into the breakout of yet another conflict.
It's called a conflict of interest, and anyone who has a conflict of interest in a given business situation should absolutely be removed from making any decisions around that conflict of interest (and they should be more than forthcoming about those conflicts of interest). Standards of Business Practice 101.
>> What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons
Not going to touch the moral implications here, but _is_ that actually illegal discrimination? Is there any benefit for interviewing a particular candidate than an employee would miss out on? Again, not picking a side here; just curious.
> I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States,
Until relatively recently, the United States has always had a very strong strictly enforced caste system, even written into law, still the case in some Southern states. Some people were even allowed to buy and sell other types of people! As we can see some people are still allowed to kill certain types of other people with no consequences.
It is called a 'conflict of interest'. (in this case it is national interest).
Fifa has often rules for this, where it avoid drawing to teams to play together when they are in constant/active conflict.
So, if there are some national tempers flaring, or a war somewhere, it is a better idea to have some boundaries.
Why we hope most people are good natured, we don't live in a perfect world, and it would be insane, or completely naive to believe that 'biases' do not exist.
The other side of it is 'ethnic nepotism', where people hire and favor people from their own countries, creating this pools of mono-ethnic teams in a company which statistically are not probable. This is actually a very common sight in Tech companies and we all know it.
How would you enforce this? In the US this is completely illegal.
In addition, you would have to ask extremely invasive questions of everyone. So is your proposal that you require that your company ask for the detailed ethnicity of everyone? What happens when people refuse, do you just not allow them to interview or manage?
What about people who were born in the US, do you assume that if they are of Japanese descent they can't interview someone of Chinese descent?
The solution you propose is arguably just as bad and I suspect it might be illegal in the US. If I am a qualified manager or tech lead, and there is an opportunity to lead a new project, I would be furious to learn that I was passed over for the opportunity because someone believed I was ethnically incompatible with one of the people on the team.
Perhaps the law needs to be updated... Maybe the current state of US law reflects a misunderstanding or a lack of context on how important these things can be and Law's dynamic it evolves over time so it's not inconceivable that at some point these kind of considerations would be worked into law and policy somehow. And it's important to note that the legal issue is going to be a large inertial blocker for companies to consider this because of the risk aversiveness on hiring the funny thing is in trying to do the right thing by avoiding discrimination they may actually be enabling the perpetuation of it by not providing processes that are able to address bring attention to an and focus on some things like the article talks about. I'm no expert and we're not going to come up with a solution today I think but it's good to see discussion of this on hacker News I think. As sad as it also is that this is something that so greatly affects many people and it's clearly not the responsibility of a particular company or the tech industry to solve these social and international problems but I don't think that means there's nothing that could be done there to address them.
I'm sorry, but can you please elaborate a bit more on Greeks and Turks?
I happen to be Greek and have worked with 2 Turkish colleagues without any issues. On top of that, during my many travels across Europe, Turks (along with other Balkan nationalities) are by far the most welcoming people I meet once they learn that I come from Greece and I befriended a few of them.
Ottomans (Turks) occupied Greece for 400 years, ending in 1821.
Turkey constantly trying to take over Greek islands, etc.
Turkey dropping off immigrants on rafts just outside Greek shores.
But it doesn't seem to translate to the US much, especially in second generation.
I work in sales and saw a Greek salesperson kick a deal out that cost him thousands because he didnt want to spend another few hours with someone that was Turkish. And this is in California. The easy money didn't matter to him. If someone is willing to lose thousands of dollars to feel good, imagine what little things theyre willing to do that dont really have a cost to them.
Turk here.. no problem working with and being friends with Greek folks. I actually prefer to work with them over Turkish people since we do not need to worry about cultural baggage from Turkey (politics, religion, etc.), and we can focus on finding the best Baklava in town.
I'm Greek as well, and now that you mention it, Turks were indeed the people I tended to have very good relationships at work with. They are especially welcoming, at least the ones I've worked with.
As with many other one-off cases in this & other threads, one instance does not a rule make.
Just because your experience was fairly positive, that does not negate the general trend of such occurrences in hiring decisions among such pairs ( Greek-Turk, Indian-Pakistani, Japanese-Korean, Japanese-Chinese, Russian-Polish, Serb-Bosniak, Serb-Croat French-Algerian and countless other pairs in the Middle East & other parts of the world )
Theres surely some information that can be gleaned from anecdotes & oral histories. But we need data & objective studies to back them up if we are to make any progress on these issues.
There still seem to be some deep-seated resentments from some Greeks towards Turks due to the Greek genocide and exodus a hundred years ago. Turks on the other hand have never heard about that (it's illegal to teach in Turkey), so they are pretty chill. There is some bitterness due to the more recent (and still unresolved) conflict regarding Cyprus.
Your idea is unfair and would be illegal to carry out. Because it's racist, obviously.
Furthermore, I live in the Balkans area (Croatia) and it so happens that companies from this area do employ people of varied ethnicity, and those do work on the same teams.
Exactly, the only way to get people to accept everyone as they are is to see that they're exactly the same as them. If a person can't put this sort of thing aside and work with a basic dose of professionalism then they should frankly be fired. You can't tolerate intolerance.
You'd think that a nation as varied as the US would know that.
You're okay working with people so bigoted that you have to hide them away from certain parts of their job because they might fuck it up with their bigotry? Why are they still employed? How can you be okay with coworkers that can't be expected to treat everyone in the company with a certain level of respect?
Do you believe that's just the way "they" are? Is that the way you are?
Remind me never to apply for a job at your company. JFC.
I think the idea is that people’s biases are often not obvious or detectable. Not saying this idea is a good way to avoid making decisions on such biases, but I don’t think it’s as black and white as you put it.
also as an Indian it's my experience that Pakistanis and Indians in foreign countries tend to hang together rather than separately, at least in the circles I've been a part of.
I think Indians and Pakistanis quickly understand that outside their native countries they are probably the same and almost have similar culture/language/food.
There are multiple distinct ethnic / cultural / religious groups in Bosnia. Serbians (from Serbia or Kosovo) tend to get along well with Bosnian Serbs, but there can be conflicts on occasion with Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims).
As a practical matter within US companies it's not feasible to assign team members based on avoiding those potential conflicts. Nor can we afford to hire independent observers. I can't imagine trying to justify that additional headcount request to Finance and HR, they would laugh me out of the room! Instead employees are expected to act professionally regardless of their personal feelings and if they can't do so then manage them out.
In all of the interviews I've conducted there have been 2 interviewers to 1 interviewee because everyone has biases and people remember things differently according to those biases.
The biases don't even have to involve people to throw off the results. They could be against the usage of a particular API, for example, which I find insane, but I've seen it happen.
Personally, I’ve much more “empire building” type behavior (let’s hire tons people from my background who will probably support my initiatives), than discrimination against “others.”
I’m native Chinese and I don’t hold any opinion against Japanese people… especially in my job, that’s just not professional and seems very childish and immature…
No this is so important. I agree that the reality of international and domestic generational conflict there we are mostly oblivious to in the West, should inform HR policy.
These things are real, and discrimination based on them can be concealed and is often as the very fascinating article says, invisible to outsiders. I'm with you on the way to address this is by bringing more attention to it than with other commenters who suggest that it's actually racist or discriminatory to acknowledge and address this. It's hard to refute the line of the other commenters cuz on the face of it it is racist and discriminatory to provide affordances for these types of issues because you're assuming someone faces them based on their background. But let's remember something important which is that the words racist and discriminatory in their essence are actually neutral... they simply mean discernment based on something, in one case race.
That can be used negatively but it can also be used to try to write the wrongs that were done by the inverse of that. So sometimes to address a specific wrong you have to deal with the same parameters as created the wrong but invert the effect. Otherwise you're basically giving all the power for the use of racial and discriminatory actions to the side that wants to use them for bad. You have to be able to use them for good too but obviously you need to be careful in how you go about this but I don't think that less attention on this issue is the solution, so I like to jump behind the point that this person is making because it seems like a very brave point that they're making but it sounds like a good idea to me.
I mean I have no idea how these observers would work in practice but maybe one way to do this is to sort of have like a pre hiring congress where all parties meet and have a chance to discuss their background and any bias and how they feel about people from another place. But saying it, I don't think that would really work so easily, tho it might. Every group of people is unique to some extent...I think it's a very tricky thing to do... But closing one's eyes and not talking about is probably not the way to get progress on this.
That's all well and good, and the policy might indeed actually work. Unfortunately it's absolutely illegal. Protected classes are not protected from just racism, but discrimination of all forms.
It's weird, the implicit bias is sometimes an advantage--or at least it sheilds us from knee jerk discrimination. Being white and clean cut in America has always afforded me a status that I did not enjoy until I was able to move away from where I grew up. There everyone knew my circumstances and kids who were from "better families" excluded me because I was just other. And school...I had to leave before high school, it was unbearable. Surviving the years up til that point nearly crushed my soul.
This caused a lot of anxiety in me and it still does. I suppressed the anxiety through abject narcism.
Once I was able to leave school and eventually move away I was assumed to be of the same class as my other white peers. Privileged, university educated etc. There was constant paranoia of being asked about my background and having to see the look on peoples faces when they asked where I got my degree from.
Again, I mostly floated through life benefitting from the implicit bias of my peers and others. Luckily I was smart and gravitated to tech at a very young age.
To this day I'm still wracked with anxiety at the possibility of discussing my financial situation, upbringing, or education.
Seeing this described as a denial of basic human rights in the article shocked me. I had never even thought about the anxiety objectively, until recently.
Jesus fucking Christ what a terrible take and highly illegal in most sane countries.
I'm Serb, I've hired and worked with Croatians. I've had colleagues who were Lebanese and worked along side Israelis. I've had a Palestinian coworker report to a Jewish manager. I have seen an adjacent team's Japanese manager rely on their Chinese report as their right hand.
Maybe it's because I live and work in Canada where there is absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of garbage thinking.
> Maybe it's because I live and work in Canada where there is absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of garbage thinking.
You’ll be quite disappointed if you read about your new country’s history. Even the recent one (the last residential school where natives children were forced to attend and where children unmarked graves were found was closed in … 1998). Or about the province that tried to gain independence twice. Or what happened to the Metis people or the French speakers to the east..
Or just what happens when the dogma of multiculturalism takes over [0].
At the organisation where I worked at in the UK, all interviews were panel interviews - it's not ideal in various ways but it does it harder for discrimination (not just racial discrimination) to slip through the net - obviously just because something is illegal doesn't mean that it can't happen and people can't get away with it. I think they also tried to make sure all panels had a woman on them for example - I ended up on more than my share of panels as a result.
I think you might be mistaken with this, even lower class people from these nationalities (the least educated ones) have no problem working with each other. Especially untrue for those with higher education (high school and above).
When I interviewed last time; the only company i did not make through phone screen was by a Japanese interviewer. I gave a three viable solutions to an easy question. Had no idea why I failed but probably because of racism
It's definitely possible that there were other factors in play. I hope you see the danger or irony of automatically assuming that the Japanese interviewer rejected you because of their racial bias.
Can we please stop conflating casteism as racism? While both equally horrible, one is not same as the other. One can possibly hide their caste. But a person cant change their racial phenotypes.
Cisco is a hell hole that attracts a particular type of employee without talent who indulge in this type of discrimination blatantly. Narrow-minded Indians (I'm speaking as an Indian myself) who bring their Indian attitudes abroad. These types of Indians put others to shame. This is another side effect of doling out H1Bs and L1s without consideration for assimilation. I'm not sure if this is endemic to Indians though. I had a North Vietnamese classmate who used to complain that South Vietnamese students did not speak properly with them or respect them. Fundamentally boils down to growing up as human beings.
Telecommunications industry seems to be particularly toxic, I hear there are in Santa Clara, and in Bangalore too, buildings full of 'Automation engineers'. There are like thousands and thousands of people whose whole job is to plugin in some values in a Jenkins job and pull out values, and mail it to the next person up the chain. And yes most of these people are on H1B, and many times are even given GC's in EB1 by cooking up legal documentation.
In a set up where there is such low/non-existent value going around and nothing much to show for, I'd expect toxic politics for every little thing.
There are quite a few places like this in this industry, and it can be very hard to achieve anything of value both personally and professionally at such places. And its all about identity politics, and cartel behaviour at the end.
Every time such articles pop-up, I wonder what rock am I living under. In 22 years of experience (Half in US/UK and rest in India) in eight global organizations, not even a single time I heard or witnessed any cast based biases. What we regularly see is region/lingustic biases.
Cast based discrimination exist in India, but in my experience the issue is overblown in the knowledge industry.
I respect your tenure but that itself does not justify calling the issue as overblown. If workers are experiencing it and it’s being reported in multiple teams, it exists.
A thing to keep in mind is that the Tech industry is very large. Even within organizations culture can be really different; cue Amazon engineers sharing horror stories while others paint it as the best place they’ve ever worked at.
I was in a rating sync once and noticed some very strange crab bucket behavior that only came from more sr Indian managers and engineers with regards to another jr Indian-origin teammate who never even lived in India AFAIK. The fact that the negative detractors were only Indian, and everyone else was positive about the person made me connect the possibility that maybe there was something going on that I couldn't tell culturally.
I never saw this negative behavior out in our day to day, so it surprised me. This might be how the discrimination happens.
I don't think I've seen it in 20+ years in banking, but I don't know the caste of the Indian people I've worked with. For all I know they could have all been the same caste.
Is there a way to tell an Indian's caste? I'm guessing it's impolite to ask.
That's the thing with different types of discrimination - most of the time it's not done out in the open, and it's easy to allow yourself to not see it if you aren't being negatively affected.
You have a choice: you can assume you're correct that this is "overblown" and do nothing, or you can recognize that it clearly does happen (even if it really is rare) and make sure you're actively watching for it and reporting it when you see it.
In a well known big tech company (FAANG), I have seen many many examples of a whole layer of management from the same caste. So like under one director, every senior manager will have been from the same part of India. Sometimes this will extend to another layer of managers below them. Behind the scenes, there is a strong communication network that is often not caught or shown in org charts. This will include high ranking engineers and managers from sister organizations.
It usually doesnt extend beyond that, since HR will be all over it. Often they will even go out of their way not to hire Indians as their directs, so as to deny any discrimination based hiring. But its rampant.
I saw the same at a prominent financial services firm. 50 - 60 Indians in the same dept from the same region. A big number.
I even asked a senior manager if I needed to be Indian to excel at the company. He said the very fact I asked that question is a problem, whether or not it is true.
This is similar to having the first 30 engineers all come from the same school. Helps with speed in the short term but sub-optimal in the long term. This is why forms like Google centralize hiring.
There's a huge language / culture divide in India and yes managers of a certain culture can hire reports of their culture to be their yes-men but it's not exactly based on caste.
It's effectively a French guy hiring another french guy or a German guy stacking their team with other Germans. It's a bit more complicated than that because if you look at things like power distance index (PDI), India measures way higher in the chart than any western country (i.e., culturally Indians are more accepting of hierarchy than their western counterparts, so an Indian subordinate is more deferential to their boss than an American one for example)
Logically this makes sense. In reality, its not what I have seen in my career. I cant recall ever discovering that meetings about high level objectives were taking place where everyone but one group was excluded, where that group was german, italian, french or any group other than Indian. I've just seen it too many times at too many companies.
I think it extends beyond Indian folks. I once worked at a company where, Manufacturing engineers were overwhelmingly Vietnamese. Safety staff was Chinese, Engineering was mostly white, and the machine shop was entirely Hispanic. In each case the manager of the department was of the aforementioned race.
There was also a son of a bitch who was an aggressive baptist. He though I was a baptist because I had dated a baptist once, and knew some of the lingo. I really liked him until I saw him treat a Chinese person like crap for no reason. He treated anyone who wasn't a Christian like garbage.v
> A pat on the shoulder might be a friendly greeting—or a search for a sacred thread that some dominant-caste Hindu men wear beneath their shirts
I'm a non-dalit Indian working in silicon valley. I know that caste based discrimination is still prevalent in India and not surprised that it continues in here in silicon valley as well amongst Indian community but I'm surprised to read this part in the article. I have never heard of someone doing a scan for sacred thread. Also, it's worth noting that most non-dalit people also do not wear this sacred thread so whoever is doing this scan isn't familiar with India or probably this part is made up in the article.
That said, I know that it's much harder for a dalit person to progress in India as the society still tries to pull them behind. Indian govt has reservations in colleges and jobs for dalit community, which I believe has helped the community a lot in last 50 years or so, helping many to bring their families out of poverty. But, still there's a long way to go. Also, a long way to go for non-dalit community to abolish this discrimination.
My heart goes with our dalit brothers & sisters and glad to hear that their issues are being discussed in silicon valley as well now.
Much of what the English speaking elite in India & much of the west consumes as a theory on caste is a handiwork of a colonial-evangelist mission.
So much of it has to be taken with a boatload of salt. Since it is politically incorrect to challenge the established views, one simply has to rely on ones own observation. Especially if they are missing the woods for the trees on these debates.
It is very much in line with the western debates on race inequality, feminism or gender pronouns. Those claiming to fight these inequalities, intentionally or unintentionally create more fissures and distrust.
And unlike the western world where there has been a systemic slavery or persecution of indigenous population, in India there are literally thousands of castes and not always a clear idea of hierarchy. The hierarchy was mostly an academic theory built on flimsy propaganda.
Also the very same people who see privilege among sections of the Hindus are completely blind to the privilege of Christians or Muslims, considering that large parts of India have been under Islamic and Christian colonisation for several centuries. And Hindus have faced the same kind of violence from these two groups as much of the rest of the world.
In a way caste might have been the social glue that allowed the indigenous people to put up a fight and maintain their Hindu identity.
There is a strong correlation between caste and economic mobility & urbanisation. The ones who preserve their caste the most are ones who can gain some privileges in the form of vote banks, social security or class benefits, this easily excludes 90% of the urban educated masses.
In a country of 1.4 billion, sure there are large swathes of population still behest with the caste problem, but also in a country where 1/3 of the people are malnourished and have stunted growth, caste is hardly the biggest problem and might actually be a evolved social survival mechanism.
That’s all very well but it’s pretty obvious that Dalits get a raw deal in India, and if you don’t think so, then you may just be kidding yourself. Equally, if you think of Muslims as “privileged” under the current BJP government, you need a reality check.
I have also never heard of this sort of patting shoulder behavior but I think we have to accept it as a truth if it’s something being reported by many people.
Caste and class divisions run very deep in South Asian culture. I’m disappointed that even in tech where workers are generally highly educated this is something that continues to exist (please: I’m not talking about the necessity of a college education to be a good engineer, that’s another conversation. I’m pointing out that most tech jobs require a college education, in many cases Grad School education).
Why the alleged patting behaviour seems unlikely - even if it worked, it would only tell you if the person is a member of the relatively few castes that wear that.
Actually, Sai Deepak mentions that 15% of those classified as SC/STs also wear the sacred thread. Of course, we know 'Shudras' have run empires in India and have held high status before the age of colonialism.
Unsuprising that the Western press and academia has the nuance of a brick, perhaps because their own history is so grotesquely checkered.
> Unsuprising that the Western press and academia has the nuance of a brick, perhaps because their own history is so grotesquely checkered.
There will always be an element of the intangible in any effort by the Western mind to understand India. The experience is one of irreducible complexity, the subject receding from attempts to form a mental framework that permits nuanced understanding.
This documentary is 50 years old. Nothing has changed.
Indeed the children introducing themselves in US with their caste is a thing to be highlighted from the article. Really feel bad about what we are teaching our kids. I am in India not in US, but did not expect this even in India today.
That part feels fake to me, not only due to all other kids being brahmin (which statistically from my experience as an Indian American feels very off), but most Indian Americans don't really care that much about caste, most know it but they don't know enough to be "proud" of it.
same thing with the children in that kids class all saying they were Brahmin, even in silicon valley where there are a ton of Brahmins, i doubt they make up the majority of Indians.
I am an indian & have been in valley for last couple of decades. anecdotally speaking between me and my friends I have never heard of the caste based discrimination until that cisco case. so much so that people would bring it up at gatherings etc. Also in case anyone is wondering, I do not belong to the upper caste and most of my friends like me are not (not dalits either).
btw in my experience internet dating & marriage sites have done more to break cast barriers in india than any social or affirmative action movement. I do think that it would take another generation for serious damage to happen to the caste system because towns & villages are still very much ingrained in this shit.
"have never heard of the caste based discrimination until that cisco case"
I didn't hear of it either until I noticed large groups of Indian-origin devs and managers (mostly at older companies such as IBM, Oracle, etc), and somehow only the 'upper caste' folks would get promoted and be invited to happy hours and such. How much that can be attributed to inter-personal relationships and professional competence as opposed to outright discrimination, one will never know but a pattern does emerge. It's never in your face discrimination, just subtle favoritism towards one's group.
Mind you, this happens with people from the same Indian state as well. They'll often speak in their regional language during meetings even though not everyone speaks that language, which simply goes on to alienate that team member. (This has happened to friends of mine at T-Mobile and Intel)
"marriage sites have done more to break cast barriers in india"
Not sure if I agree with you there. It has brought to light just how prevalent that kind of thinking is. It's a common trope on Indian matrimonial websites how users have a list of requirements (Looking for fair skinned, Hindu upper caste, etc). Maybe that has helped break cast barriers by bringing it to light, I don't know, but it was really surprising when I came upon it for the first time.
It’s modernity, of which these sites are a part. Only marrying within one’s caste is a way point from only marrying in one’s jati, on the way to caring about socioeconomic status and not much else. In the US marrying within the religion, but outside the ethnic group lasted at most 50 years. Panmictia is coming.
To quote a saying popularized by Donald Rumsfield: "The absence of evidence is not th evidence of absence". I - a male - haven't heard of any stories of sexual harassment or assault in my social circle (or at the office), but that doesn't mean it's not happening.
Thanks for this perspective on sexual harassment. It helped me realize that eventhough I have not seen it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I have never seen sexual harassment but am certain it exists.
I was thinking the problem is limited to India and will not get carried over to US or tech industry in India.
Was not expecting to see caste system in US too and was doubting if it was real. I had heard one story where adults in US were introducing themselves with caste. This story talks about even the kids are introducing with their caste. What are we teaching kids?
Every Indian should read this. It doesn't matter if you discriminate or not, the person suffering is not dealing with just you but lots of people. Even if a small percentage discriminate that is bad enough for that person to feel vulnerable for long time.
yes that is clearly recognized by use of the word 'anecdotally'. the key takeaway from my comment should be the fact that this incident is considered to have enough of a 'signal' to be considered a conversation topic. Also, the fact that it comes as a surprise to everybody I speak to should not be ignored.
> I - a male - haven't heard of any stories of sexual harassment or assault in my social circle (or at the office), but that doesn't mean it's not happening.
Counter-point: many cases of sexual harassment seem to occur over a long time, where the problematic behavior is known or suspected widely -- it's just that nothing is done.
Consider: I don't care for celebrities or Hollywood, I'm not American, but I knew Weinstein for being a pig long before he got cancelled, mostly through offhand jokes from comedians. I didn't really know how big of a deal in his business he was, I just knew that everyone seemed to know that he was a pig. So when he finally got cancelled, what surprised me is that I sort of thought that he already had been.
I've known of few instance of much less prominent harassment (sexual or otherwise for that matter) at the periphery of my social circle, and it was a similar phenomenon. I believe there is a type of people that does that kind of things (narcissists), the problem I suspect is that they tend to also be good at manipulating people so that they can keep doing damage for a long time.
I am from “upper caste”.
My experience might not be commonly heard perspective.
In 10th grade of schooling, my parents changed my lastname to avoid that folks figure out the caste.
Due to affirmative action (aka reservation) on steroids, upper caste were losing opportunities. My parents wanted to avoid that I lose out on selection, promotions.., where subjective discretion was involved.
I do not recall ever seeing casteism at workplace.
So reading these reports have been surprising to me, since these are not subtle, but rampant.
I can only attribute it to my privilege driven echo chamber. Or the fact that I never worked in US. (only briefly in India).
What I read in media disgusts me. I am very motivated to make sure nothing like this happens in my zone of control / influence, at work.
I know casteism is deeply rooted in Indian society. I do not relate with it. Many folks I know, don’t either. On optimistic side, I hope that means with newer generations, casteism will dilute and wither away.
I grew up in urban India and my experience with caste system is the same, never really experienced discrimination personally but I know of it being widely prevalent in the country.
This scene from an Indian movie I saw recently made me realize that the caste system is not just prevalent and absurd but also has a very complicated hierarchy built into it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4N98tQsp64 (<2 min, with subtitles)
> I am from “upper caste”. My experience might not be commonly heard perspective. In 10th grade of schooling, my parents changed my lastname to avoid that folks figure out the caste. Due to affirmative action (aka reservation) on steroids, upper caste were losing opportunities. My parents wanted to avoid that I lose out on selection, promotions.., where subjective discretion was involved.
I'm sorry but this makes no sense to me whatsoever. Reservations in India follow a formal documented process and do not apply to private enterprises. Changing one's surname will make zero difference.
You are right. This anti "affirmative action" rhetoric is quite common among upper caste people in India. Unless OP managed to get faked documents and pretended to be from a lower caste, they absolutely did not gain anything.
Perhaps if something doesn’t make sense, ask for clarity instead of asserting that changing one’s surname makes zero difference.
I am also familiar with many upper-caste people who have changed their surname to something generic (like Kumar) to avoid revealing their caste. This doesn’t just apply to job seeking in private enterprises. They do this to avoid any kind of attention drawn to their surname, and hence caste. This attention can then play out differently in different scenarios.
These posts consistently make it to the front page of HN. I'm not denying that casteism exists, but since the subject draws so much attention, reporters must feel incentivized to write about it.
I wondered about that right away - is any of this just sour grapes from lower caste folks taking it out on higher caste folks now that they're in an environment where the playing field is suddenly level?
I am a non-white citizen of Russia through a rather bizarre family history.
My parents changed my, and their names, and surname to Slavic sounding for reasons you can understand. Out of many, lower risk of being drafted (being non-white, and living in far-east increases likelihood of draft 10x,) ease of getting into a good school, or university for me, and simply lower chances of getting into random troubles with officials.
At the same time, knowing this, I am as much as discomforted by practice of meritless "diversity hire" just for the sake of putting people of colour to pass the diversity checkbox.
Pretending to play a role of "smart south Asian" while yes-manning, and knowing you being a decoration is as bad as discrimination, if not worse.
I'm a white American, but I'm a homosexual female with a disability and I feel the same way as you.
Sometimes, it could be an advantage, but using it that way just feels wrong given I know what it's like to lose out on things due to my sex/sexuality/disability. Why would I ever want anyone to lose to me because they're male/straight/not-disabled?
I do wonder if I'm hampering myself, because those aspects of myself have presented some difficulties, but who's to say a straight white man didn't have difficulties of a similar level that were ignored because they didn't tick the diversity box? (Good luck to impoverished straight white men or straight white men who are autistic or have mental health problems).
And I don't know about your experience, but mine is that a lot of the diversity checkbox people are in this for their personal brand/career and they're just as slimy and backstabby as any white men have ever been. At least the straight white dudes just call me a bitch to my face. I can respect that.
I think it serves as a good reminder that racism is a thing most all races do to other races or subgroups of their own race.
In tech these days there's enough racial groups that you are as likely (or more, in my experience) to end up with blatantly racist behavior from minority groups who either only hire their own or explicitly do not hire specific minorities they dislike.
I remember working at a bank where the portfolio trading team was all racial group X, algo team racial group Y, and OMS racial group Z.. because the managers were...
The white guys were like the generic neutral glue that could sometimes be hired into the X/Y/Z group teams.
My previous fund I recall a friend telling me he started looking for a new job as soon as our new boss started as he was grilling him in their native language trying to figure out which specific racial/caste/regional sub-group he was from..
I'd also add - caste being a good proxy for class generally..
This fits with a saying I've seen thrown around about our modern times, which is basically that "Class is the only remaining non-taboo bias in American polite society".
Living in a very blue city in a very blue state surrounded by highly educated, "social justice warrior" types .. you'd be surprised how quickly the same people who have every type of window decal/bumper sticker/flag, march in every sort of rally you can imagine, and earnestly support every anti-racism/DEI initiative under the sun.. are willing to "punch down" class-wise, as long as the lower class people are white.
I don't think this is that surprising, most Americans - even if they are empirically wealthy or poor - consider themselves "middle class". seems like an implicit bias?
As someone born and raised in India, things like this were a bit "distant" from me when I was in school (it came up but I was never a victim).
But the more I got to know Indians who were more privileged than I have been, the pattern started to clearly emerge. I distinctly remember thinking - "people who are better educated than I am tend to be richer or from an upper caste background, usually both".
I try to not let it get to me - I'm in a more "esoteric" position as I'm neither one of the privileged castes nor the downtrodden. My last name is still a dead giveaway to people who know. And I wonder how many opportunities I've missed because I've never been part of these subgroups (any subgroups really). I'm lucky enough that I have friends and a partner who recognise their historical privilege very well.
It's why diversity is important. I love working with my Dutch, Indian, German, Turkish, Chinese, American, Brazilian etc... colleagues. When I'm in a diverse group, those feelings tend to fade away - because I know there isn't a large group that I might need to be closely aligned with.
Of course, living in another country (not USA), the higher up I look at management, the less diversity I see. Same problem in a different form, I suppose. :)
All of the above is just an individual experience. But data seems to confirm it.
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I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everyone of us needs to be vigilant about this type of racism. One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side. Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese.
One way I solve this is by introducing an independent observer/participant when situations like this emerge. This is costly but it has really worked to not only address this problem but also created an amazing diversity in my teams because it takes care of some of the implicit bias we all have to some degree.
What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.
Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States, but attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.
Often having darker skin, Black Americans are even prone to more discrimination domestically. Any editorial that doesn't recognize that fact as a truth has no legs to stand on in my opinion. The fact that people still hang on to caste ideology in any way, and treat it as a continuing reality should disqualify them from any role concerning equal opportunity. "Gradual change and understanding" is not a reasonable discussion in America, or we're all coddling the same violent and hateful past that America was born from.
I write this as someone who has lots of Pakistani and Indian friends, and has regularly struggled to get them to understand how different each of the dynamics are on this matter, but zero tolerance is essential to get people to understand that the issue is more serious and damaging than they could ever know.
Not just for this issue. If everyone hires friends and family, people from the hometown, place of worship, etc you run into other conflicts of interest. It’s always good to have disinterested parties involved in the hiring process.
And, as a half-Croat, needed. The ethnic tensions between former Yugoslavian countries have never been resolved, and many emigrants took the unresolved issues with them. The youngest generation is one thing, they grew up without having to live through all that bullshit, but a lot of people 35 and older have lost relatives and friends in one of the wars.
FFS Bosnia is at the moment creeping into the breakout of yet another conflict.
It would because it did and it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Steelworkers_v._Weber
Not going to touch the moral implications here, but _is_ that actually illegal discrimination? Is there any benefit for interviewing a particular candidate than an employee would miss out on? Again, not picking a side here; just curious.
Until relatively recently, the United States has always had a very strong strictly enforced caste system, even written into law, still the case in some Southern states. Some people were even allowed to buy and sell other types of people! As we can see some people are still allowed to kill certain types of other people with no consequences.
Fifa has often rules for this, where it avoid drawing to teams to play together when they are in constant/active conflict.
So, if there are some national tempers flaring, or a war somewhere, it is a better idea to have some boundaries.
Why we hope most people are good natured, we don't live in a perfect world, and it would be insane, or completely naive to believe that 'biases' do not exist.
The other side of it is 'ethnic nepotism', where people hire and favor people from their own countries, creating this pools of mono-ethnic teams in a company which statistically are not probable. This is actually a very common sight in Tech companies and we all know it.
In addition, you would have to ask extremely invasive questions of everyone. So is your proposal that you require that your company ask for the detailed ethnicity of everyone? What happens when people refuse, do you just not allow them to interview or manage?
What about people who were born in the US, do you assume that if they are of Japanese descent they can't interview someone of Chinese descent?
I happen to be Greek and have worked with 2 Turkish colleagues without any issues. On top of that, during my many travels across Europe, Turks (along with other Balkan nationalities) are by far the most welcoming people I meet once they learn that I come from Greece and I befriended a few of them.
Do you have any different experiences to share?
Edit: corrected cypress misspelling. Thanks repliers!
Just because your experience was fairly positive, that does not negate the general trend of such occurrences in hiring decisions among such pairs ( Greek-Turk, Indian-Pakistani, Japanese-Korean, Japanese-Chinese, Russian-Polish, Serb-Bosniak, Serb-Croat French-Algerian and countless other pairs in the Middle East & other parts of the world )
Theres surely some information that can be gleaned from anecdotes & oral histories. But we need data & objective studies to back them up if we are to make any progress on these issues.
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Furthermore, I live in the Balkans area (Croatia) and it so happens that companies from this area do employ people of varied ethnicity, and those do work on the same teams.
You'd think that a nation as varied as the US would know that.
Do you believe that's just the way "they" are? Is that the way you are?
Remind me never to apply for a job at your company. JFC.
Great - as a British person, this gets me out of conducting interviews entirely!
As a practical matter within US companies it's not feasible to assign team members based on avoiding those potential conflicts. Nor can we afford to hire independent observers. I can't imagine trying to justify that additional headcount request to Finance and HR, they would laugh me out of the room! Instead employees are expected to act professionally regardless of their personal feelings and if they can't do so then manage them out.
The biases don't even have to involve people to throw off the results. They could be against the usage of a particular API, for example, which I find insane, but I've seen it happen.
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These things are real, and discrimination based on them can be concealed and is often as the very fascinating article says, invisible to outsiders. I'm with you on the way to address this is by bringing more attention to it than with other commenters who suggest that it's actually racist or discriminatory to acknowledge and address this. It's hard to refute the line of the other commenters cuz on the face of it it is racist and discriminatory to provide affordances for these types of issues because you're assuming someone faces them based on their background. But let's remember something important which is that the words racist and discriminatory in their essence are actually neutral... they simply mean discernment based on something, in one case race.
That can be used negatively but it can also be used to try to write the wrongs that were done by the inverse of that. So sometimes to address a specific wrong you have to deal with the same parameters as created the wrong but invert the effect. Otherwise you're basically giving all the power for the use of racial and discriminatory actions to the side that wants to use them for bad. You have to be able to use them for good too but obviously you need to be careful in how you go about this but I don't think that less attention on this issue is the solution, so I like to jump behind the point that this person is making because it seems like a very brave point that they're making but it sounds like a good idea to me.
I mean I have no idea how these observers would work in practice but maybe one way to do this is to sort of have like a pre hiring congress where all parties meet and have a chance to discuss their background and any bias and how they feel about people from another place. But saying it, I don't think that would really work so easily, tho it might. Every group of people is unique to some extent...I think it's a very tricky thing to do... But closing one's eyes and not talking about is probably not the way to get progress on this.
This caused a lot of anxiety in me and it still does. I suppressed the anxiety through abject narcism.
Once I was able to leave school and eventually move away I was assumed to be of the same class as my other white peers. Privileged, university educated etc. There was constant paranoia of being asked about my background and having to see the look on peoples faces when they asked where I got my degree from.
Again, I mostly floated through life benefitting from the implicit bias of my peers and others. Luckily I was smart and gravitated to tech at a very young age.
To this day I'm still wracked with anxiety at the possibility of discussing my financial situation, upbringing, or education.
Seeing this described as a denial of basic human rights in the article shocked me. I had never even thought about the anxiety objectively, until recently.
I'm Serb, I've hired and worked with Croatians. I've had colleagues who were Lebanese and worked along side Israelis. I've had a Palestinian coworker report to a Jewish manager. I have seen an adjacent team's Japanese manager rely on their Chinese report as their right hand.
Maybe it's because I live and work in Canada where there is absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of garbage thinking.
You’ll be quite disappointed if you read about your new country’s history. Even the recent one (the last residential school where natives children were forced to attend and where children unmarked graves were found was closed in … 1998). Or about the province that tried to gain independence twice. Or what happened to the Metis people or the French speakers to the east..
Or just what happens when the dogma of multiculturalism takes over [0].
[0] https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/01/15/as-ndp-leader-j...
What do you do with Bangladeshis. :D
I think you might be mistaken with this, even lower class people from these nationalities (the least educated ones) have no problem working with each other. Especially untrue for those with higher education (high school and above).
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When I interviewed last time; the only company i did not make through phone screen was by a Japanese interviewer. I gave a three viable solutions to an easy question. Had no idea why I failed but probably because of racism
How Big Tech Is Importing India’s Caste Legacy to Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435117 - March 2021 (195 comments)
Caste discrimination in some of Silicon Valley's richest tech companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698 - Oct 2020 (322 comments)
How India's ancient caste system is ruining lives in Silicon Valley - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24555492 - Sept 2020 (47 comments)
Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047 - Sept 2020 (613 comments)
Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065132 - Aug 2020 (14 comments)
California sues Cisco alleging discrimination based on India’s caste system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23798922 - July 2020 (56 comments)
California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083 - July 2020 (592 comments)
In a set up where there is such low/non-existent value going around and nothing much to show for, I'd expect toxic politics for every little thing.
There are quite a few places like this in this industry, and it can be very hard to achieve anything of value both personally and professionally at such places. And its all about identity politics, and cartel behaviour at the end.
I work for Cisco. Best place to work for, best salary in the market, the smartest people I've ever come across. Best work life balance.
I'm not Indian though, so maybe I'm not aware of all the details.
Cast based discrimination exist in India, but in my experience the issue is overblown in the knowledge industry.
A thing to keep in mind is that the Tech industry is very large. Even within organizations culture can be really different; cue Amazon engineers sharing horror stories while others paint it as the best place they’ve ever worked at.
I never saw this negative behavior out in our day to day, so it surprised me. This might be how the discrimination happens.
Is there a way to tell an Indian's caste? I'm guessing it's impolite to ask.
Let me hazard a guess: You're "not lower-caste" (and that's how you can then dismiss your own assertion).
You have a choice: you can assume you're correct that this is "overblown" and do nothing, or you can recognize that it clearly does happen (even if it really is rare) and make sure you're actively watching for it and reporting it when you see it.
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It usually doesnt extend beyond that, since HR will be all over it. Often they will even go out of their way not to hire Indians as their directs, so as to deny any discrimination based hiring. But its rampant.
I even asked a senior manager if I needed to be Indian to excel at the company. He said the very fact I asked that question is a problem, whether or not it is true.
;)
It's effectively a French guy hiring another french guy or a German guy stacking their team with other Germans. It's a bit more complicated than that because if you look at things like power distance index (PDI), India measures way higher in the chart than any western country (i.e., culturally Indians are more accepting of hierarchy than their western counterparts, so an Indian subordinate is more deferential to their boss than an American one for example)
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There was also a son of a bitch who was an aggressive baptist. He though I was a baptist because I had dated a baptist once, and knew some of the lingo. I really liked him until I saw him treat a Chinese person like crap for no reason. He treated anyone who wasn't a Christian like garbage.v
Just because people are from the same part of India doesn't mean they have the same caste.
being from the same part of India does not mean they will be of the same caste.
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I'm a non-dalit Indian working in silicon valley. I know that caste based discrimination is still prevalent in India and not surprised that it continues in here in silicon valley as well amongst Indian community but I'm surprised to read this part in the article. I have never heard of someone doing a scan for sacred thread. Also, it's worth noting that most non-dalit people also do not wear this sacred thread so whoever is doing this scan isn't familiar with India or probably this part is made up in the article.
That said, I know that it's much harder for a dalit person to progress in India as the society still tries to pull them behind. Indian govt has reservations in colleges and jobs for dalit community, which I believe has helped the community a lot in last 50 years or so, helping many to bring their families out of poverty. But, still there's a long way to go. Also, a long way to go for non-dalit community to abolish this discrimination.
My heart goes with our dalit brothers & sisters and glad to hear that their issues are being discussed in silicon valley as well now.
So much of it has to be taken with a boatload of salt. Since it is politically incorrect to challenge the established views, one simply has to rely on ones own observation. Especially if they are missing the woods for the trees on these debates.
It is very much in line with the western debates on race inequality, feminism or gender pronouns. Those claiming to fight these inequalities, intentionally or unintentionally create more fissures and distrust.
And unlike the western world where there has been a systemic slavery or persecution of indigenous population, in India there are literally thousands of castes and not always a clear idea of hierarchy. The hierarchy was mostly an academic theory built on flimsy propaganda.
Also the very same people who see privilege among sections of the Hindus are completely blind to the privilege of Christians or Muslims, considering that large parts of India have been under Islamic and Christian colonisation for several centuries. And Hindus have faced the same kind of violence from these two groups as much of the rest of the world.
In a way caste might have been the social glue that allowed the indigenous people to put up a fight and maintain their Hindu identity.
There is a strong correlation between caste and economic mobility & urbanisation. The ones who preserve their caste the most are ones who can gain some privileges in the form of vote banks, social security or class benefits, this easily excludes 90% of the urban educated masses.
In a country of 1.4 billion, sure there are large swathes of population still behest with the caste problem, but also in a country where 1/3 of the people are malnourished and have stunted growth, caste is hardly the biggest problem and might actually be a evolved social survival mechanism.
Caste and class divisions run very deep in South Asian culture. I’m disappointed that even in tech where workers are generally highly educated this is something that continues to exist (please: I’m not talking about the necessity of a college education to be a good engineer, that’s another conversation. I’m pointing out that most tech jobs require a college education, in many cases Grad School education).
Unsuprising that the Western press and academia has the nuance of a brick, perhaps because their own history is so grotesquely checkered.
I wouldn't trust Sai Deepak with anything, he's a nut job who for some reason sounds eloquent to the upper class Hindus.
There will always be an element of the intangible in any effort by the Western mind to understand India. The experience is one of irreducible complexity, the subject receding from attempts to form a mental framework that permits nuanced understanding.
This documentary is 50 years old. Nothing has changed.
https://youtu.be/XFGO8oL0RLk
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btw in my experience internet dating & marriage sites have done more to break cast barriers in india than any social or affirmative action movement. I do think that it would take another generation for serious damage to happen to the caste system because towns & villages are still very much ingrained in this shit.
I didn't hear of it either until I noticed large groups of Indian-origin devs and managers (mostly at older companies such as IBM, Oracle, etc), and somehow only the 'upper caste' folks would get promoted and be invited to happy hours and such. How much that can be attributed to inter-personal relationships and professional competence as opposed to outright discrimination, one will never know but a pattern does emerge. It's never in your face discrimination, just subtle favoritism towards one's group.
Mind you, this happens with people from the same Indian state as well. They'll often speak in their regional language during meetings even though not everyone speaks that language, which simply goes on to alienate that team member. (This has happened to friends of mine at T-Mobile and Intel)
"marriage sites have done more to break cast barriers in india"
Not sure if I agree with you there. It has brought to light just how prevalent that kind of thinking is. It's a common trope on Indian matrimonial websites how users have a list of requirements (Looking for fair skinned, Hindu upper caste, etc). Maybe that has helped break cast barriers by bringing it to light, I don't know, but it was really surprising when I came upon it for the first time.
I was thinking the problem is limited to India and will not get carried over to US or tech industry in India.
Was not expecting to see caste system in US too and was doubting if it was real. I had heard one story where adults in US were introducing themselves with caste. This story talks about even the kids are introducing with their caste. What are we teaching kids?
Every Indian should read this. It doesn't matter if you discriminate or not, the person suffering is not dealing with just you but lots of people. Even if a small percentage discriminate that is bad enough for that person to feel vulnerable for long time.
Counter-point: many cases of sexual harassment seem to occur over a long time, where the problematic behavior is known or suspected widely -- it's just that nothing is done.
Consider: I don't care for celebrities or Hollywood, I'm not American, but I knew Weinstein for being a pig long before he got cancelled, mostly through offhand jokes from comedians. I didn't really know how big of a deal in his business he was, I just knew that everyone seemed to know that he was a pig. So when he finally got cancelled, what surprised me is that I sort of thought that he already had been.
I've known of few instance of much less prominent harassment (sexual or otherwise for that matter) at the periphery of my social circle, and it was a similar phenomenon. I believe there is a type of people that does that kind of things (narcissists), the problem I suspect is that they tend to also be good at manipulating people so that they can keep doing damage for a long time.
I do not recall ever seeing casteism at workplace. So reading these reports have been surprising to me, since these are not subtle, but rampant. I can only attribute it to my privilege driven echo chamber. Or the fact that I never worked in US. (only briefly in India).
What I read in media disgusts me. I am very motivated to make sure nothing like this happens in my zone of control / influence, at work.
I know casteism is deeply rooted in Indian society. I do not relate with it. Many folks I know, don’t either. On optimistic side, I hope that means with newer generations, casteism will dilute and wither away.
This scene from an Indian movie I saw recently made me realize that the caste system is not just prevalent and absurd but also has a very complicated hierarchy built into it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4N98tQsp64 (<2 min, with subtitles)
I'm sorry but this makes no sense to me whatsoever. Reservations in India follow a formal documented process and do not apply to private enterprises. Changing one's surname will make zero difference.
I am also familiar with many upper-caste people who have changed their surname to something generic (like Kumar) to avoid revealing their caste. This doesn’t just apply to job seeking in private enterprises. They do this to avoid any kind of attention drawn to their surname, and hence caste. This attention can then play out differently in different scenarios.
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The parents feel like their child has been taken over by some weird agenda to make such a big deal out of normal stuff!
Outrage, I would say.
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I wondered about that right away - is any of this just sour grapes from lower caste folks taking it out on higher caste folks now that they're in an environment where the playing field is suddenly level?
<preachy> The challenge is to transition into equal rights mode, rather tribal one. Sooner the better. </preachy>
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My parents changed my, and their names, and surname to Slavic sounding for reasons you can understand. Out of many, lower risk of being drafted (being non-white, and living in far-east increases likelihood of draft 10x,) ease of getting into a good school, or university for me, and simply lower chances of getting into random troubles with officials.
At the same time, knowing this, I am as much as discomforted by practice of meritless "diversity hire" just for the sake of putting people of colour to pass the diversity checkbox.
Pretending to play a role of "smart south Asian" while yes-manning, and knowing you being a decoration is as bad as discrimination, if not worse.
Sometimes, it could be an advantage, but using it that way just feels wrong given I know what it's like to lose out on things due to my sex/sexuality/disability. Why would I ever want anyone to lose to me because they're male/straight/not-disabled?
I do wonder if I'm hampering myself, because those aspects of myself have presented some difficulties, but who's to say a straight white man didn't have difficulties of a similar level that were ignored because they didn't tick the diversity box? (Good luck to impoverished straight white men or straight white men who are autistic or have mental health problems).
And I don't know about your experience, but mine is that a lot of the diversity checkbox people are in this for their personal brand/career and they're just as slimy and backstabby as any white men have ever been. At least the straight white dudes just call me a bitch to my face. I can respect that.
In tech these days there's enough racial groups that you are as likely (or more, in my experience) to end up with blatantly racist behavior from minority groups who either only hire their own or explicitly do not hire specific minorities they dislike.
I remember working at a bank where the portfolio trading team was all racial group X, algo team racial group Y, and OMS racial group Z.. because the managers were...
The white guys were like the generic neutral glue that could sometimes be hired into the X/Y/Z group teams.
My previous fund I recall a friend telling me he started looking for a new job as soon as our new boss started as he was grilling him in their native language trying to figure out which specific racial/caste/regional sub-group he was from..
This fits with a saying I've seen thrown around about our modern times, which is basically that "Class is the only remaining non-taboo bias in American polite society".
Living in a very blue city in a very blue state surrounded by highly educated, "social justice warrior" types .. you'd be surprised how quickly the same people who have every type of window decal/bumper sticker/flag, march in every sort of rally you can imagine, and earnestly support every anti-racism/DEI initiative under the sun.. are willing to "punch down" class-wise, as long as the lower class people are white.
But the more I got to know Indians who were more privileged than I have been, the pattern started to clearly emerge. I distinctly remember thinking - "people who are better educated than I am tend to be richer or from an upper caste background, usually both".
I try to not let it get to me - I'm in a more "esoteric" position as I'm neither one of the privileged castes nor the downtrodden. My last name is still a dead giveaway to people who know. And I wonder how many opportunities I've missed because I've never been part of these subgroups (any subgroups really). I'm lucky enough that I have friends and a partner who recognise their historical privilege very well.
It's why diversity is important. I love working with my Dutch, Indian, German, Turkish, Chinese, American, Brazilian etc... colleagues. When I'm in a diverse group, those feelings tend to fade away - because I know there isn't a large group that I might need to be closely aligned with.
Of course, living in another country (not USA), the higher up I look at management, the less diversity I see. Same problem in a different form, I suppose. :)
All of the above is just an individual experience. But data seems to confirm it.
Can you share this data. I am curious.
I'll edit this with more links later, it's 3am in my TZ atm.