It says in the article that Google (and Microsoft, Dell, Amazon + FB/Meta) aren't (yet?) implementing this, but I didn't see anything about them doing the opposite. Additionally I don't imagine they'd gain much from doing so, as a business. Is there any more info on this?
> Just a few months ago in June, Google, whose CEO Sundar Pichai has Indian roots, cancelled a talk on caste discrimination where Dalit rights activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan was supposed to give a presentation. The talk was organised by Google employee Tanuja Gupta.
It’s not the opposite but probably what GP was referring to.
For those who don't know how to recognise a caste from the name, does anyone have any idea which caste Google's CEO might represent? Can it even be definitely derived just from name?
It's why I used the word "seems". It doesn't prove they're going the opposite direction, but it does give that impression. Hopefully Google is taking this issue more seriously.
Wouldn't lose much either. I'd argue they'd gain face in today's climate. "DEI best practices aren't just for white people anymore" is probably a good look.
Ironically it tends to be high caste Indians who push this stuff (perhaps because of higher education levels). Maybe they’ll be circumspect about dishing it out to white people after some sessions having to confess their “Brahmin privilege.”
>> Wouldn't lose much either. I'd argue they'd gain face in today's climate. "DEI best practices aren't just for white people anymore" is probably a good look.
> Ironically it tends to be high caste Indians who push this stuff (perhaps because of higher education levels).
High caste Indian immigrants or their American children? I have trouble imagining someone raised outside of the American cultural context getting enthusiastic about DEI in that way.
In my experience it’s overwhelmingly the second generation+, but my point is orthogonal to that. The folks socialized into the environments where those trends exist are much more likely to be Brahmin. The Indian side of Kamala Harris’s family is Brahmin, for example. That reflects social roles and culture back in India: social and political studies tends to be the domain of Brahmins.
> What about in the EU? You don't think there are people there enthusiastically discussing DEI?
There probably are but: 1) I understand it's often thought of as an Americanism there, and 2) Europe doesn't have the same history, which would make its ground less fertile for it (white people are aboriginal there, and I understand there's little to no history of domestic radicalized slavery, etc.).
They are light skinned (like many Asians) but they are not “white” in the racial sense. They’re indigenous people that were displaced and extinguished by Germanic tribes.
DEI is just rebranding of the struggle for equality, in which the fight against casteism has been raging for decades. This is a very western centric view.
And intersectional praxis is, overwhelmingly, an ideology of white people. Most people in the individual groups (Muslims, Hispanics, etc.) are advocating for their own interests. It’s white people that subscribe to a theory that ties these completely different groups together.
Shit, all those queer black women who have been telling me that intersectionality is important because they experience unique struggles because they are at the intersection of multiple sets of traits have been doing so because it's popular with white folks?
Intersectionality is the idea that multiple identities intersect, and like the intersection in a Venn diagram, the overlap is a unique zone.
There’s not enough queer Black women to make intersectionality more than an academic topic. White people are who give it prominence. Black people themselves are as conservative as republicans on sexuality: https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-repu.... When you see BLM-style advocacy that ties together Black+queer, that’s primarily for white people. Similarly, folks like Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour have such prominence not because Muslims see themselves as having common cause with queer people (https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/us/lgbt-muslims-pride-progres...) but because white people do.
Put differently, Black people and Muslims may advocate in their own self interest, but otherwise believe whatever they believe. Ordinarily, such advocacy would seek to avoid issues that divide the community within itself. White people, by contrast, are not advocating on their own behalf, but on behalf of a variety of groups that are the object of their sympathy. Intersectionality uniquely reflects how such white people see the world.
What. You realize that much of mainstream culture is drawn from the queer Black community, right? Voguing, house music, slang like "yas queen", "slay", "shade", and "tea", Pride parades, and more.
And that BIPOC cultures have a history of third gender peoples? Two Spirit, fa'afafine, chibados, muxe, sipniq, etc.
To say these things only exist because of white liberal sexuality is patently absurd.
White people are the ones who control “mainstream culture” and decide what gets absorbed into it. That includes things pertaining to minorities. For example, “BIPOC” is a term popularized by white people to refer to a group that’s most pertinent to white people—people other than themselves. Most people who fit the label “BIPOC” don’t identify with some larger agglomeration of “people who aren’t white.” They identify as black, Pakistani, Cuban, etc.
LatinX is a good example that clearly illustrates the power dynamic. Although it was coined by a Puerto Rican, it is unpopular among Spanish-speaking Americans. If Spanish speaking Americans took a vote, they wouldn’t call themselves “LatinX.” The term has become a prominent label because it appeals to white people.
Third genders actually illustrate how “BIPOC cultures” view gender very differently from white people. Bangladesh, where I’m from, recognizes a third gender. But it isn’t associated with ideas of gender and gender roles being fluid, as it is in white societies. It instead functions to separate sexual minorities from everyone else in a society that is intensely gendered and heteronormative.
The Wikipedia article on third genders actually contains a disclaimer reminding white people not to project their own concepts of gender and sexuality onto superficially similar concepts in other cultures.
We don’t need to rely on our subjective experience with our respective “circles.” There is extensive polling and research on this. LatinX is extremely unpopular, and way more Latinos find the term offensive than use it: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latin.... I suspect most Latinos have never even heard of “Latin@“ or “Latinao.” Most just don’t think Spanish needs to be “fixed.”
BIPOC is similar: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/us/terminology-language-p... (“In a national poll conducted by Ipsos for The New York Times, more than twice as many white Democrats said they felt ‘very favorably’ toward ‘BIPOC’ as Americans who identify as any of the nonwhite racial categories it encompasses.”)
It’s important for white people not to confuse their personal experiences with individual “BIPOC” as proxies for “BIPOC” communities: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/us/politics/elizabeth-war.... These folks are often activists who align with white power to overcome the majority opinion within their community.
In a way, atoning for privilege will allow them to signal their privileged status more openly, and try to angle for acceptance into high status white culture, because they're just like them.
This is a great example of the kind of hyper-reactivity that makes conversation on most of the internet absolutely impossible. The parent said they didn't see this in the article, don't imagine they'd gain from it, and asked for more info about it - all totally reasonable thoughts and expressed without negativity. And yet you responded with snide superiority, as though your dialogue with this person was already an argument before it even started.
I get where you're coming from, but you have to consider these comments in context. The article we're commenting on has an entire section (3 paragraphs!) on this specific Google issue, and it was a very widely discussed news story here at the time that it happened. When smcl took issue with mcv claiming that Google was "taking steps backwards", they were implicitly ignoring or disagreeing with the section of the article that outlined how Google was in fact taking steps backwards on the issue. Indeed, if you look at the follow-up response here, smcl very clearly read the section of the article about Google, and just disagrees with the idea that internal harassment and backlash against Dalit activism leading to a planned DEI talk getting canceled constitutes "taking steps backwards", basically on what seems to be trivial semantic grounds (see the follow-up posts by smcl, which basically boil down to either "how can they take steps backwards if they're already bad" or "they're not doing any ACTUAL discrimination, they just had the CEO cancel a planned talk based on complaints from higher caste people"). The argument was already started well before pessimizer did anything, it was just framed implicitly instead of explicitly.
Probably they could have responded more charitably here, sure, but frankly I don't think it's correct to categorize "please Google this and actually read the facts about the case before arguing with someone on the internet about it" as "hyper-reactivity". Sometimes people on the internet (occasionally myself included!) really do just look before they leap.
You guys really need to calm down and assume a bit of good faith. Again, it sounded like there was some broader caste-discrimination backslide going on I was missing. I didn’t realise they meant that talk cancellation.
I know there are weirdos who hide hatred behind “just asking questions” but this case I was legit was asking if I was missing something. Didn’t realise it would cause such a fuss
100%. I found the books “how to have impossible conversations” and “crucial conversations” helpful for me, but in a nutshell they’re basically “say things in a way that protect the other side’s ego”
I would love to see some social networks silently implementing something that rewrites comments in a more diplomatic manner when displayed to everyone else.
That would be an interesting alternative to shadowbanning, especially if it came with a label ("The comment has been autotuned.") I'd like to see them offer the submitter some alternatives or provide some analysis before they post ("Please avoid sealioning").
I think it was a fair question to ask, wasn’t it? Article says Google simply haven’t got an anti-caste-discrimination policy, someone says something implying that they’re actually getting worse re caste discrimination, so I ask for more info because that’s truly surprising.
Correct. But it is evidence someone doesn’t want to talk about this.
That might mean anything from complicity to ignorance to not wanting more workplace drama. In every case, it gives merit to Googlers claiming caste discrimination needs an independent investigation. (Versus relying on the company’s processes.)
> Where is their concern for other violence that is more prevalent?
Isn't this just straightforward whataboutism? If every person that is advocating against a problem in society has to advocate against every problem in society they will never get anything accomplished because there is always another injustice.
Not only is it just straightforward whataboutism, it's also implying, we as a society, can only work on one problem at a time. If we're tackling caste discrimination, we can't also be working to reduce violence. This is an either/or logical fallacy.
