Orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32425308
ntil recently, Tanuja Gupta was a senior manager at Google News. She was involved in various forms of activism at the company, and, in April, she invited Thenmozhi Soundararajan, the founder of Equality Labs, a nonprofit, to speak about the subject of caste discrimination. (India's caste system, which has existed in some form for centuries, separates Hindus into broadly hierarchical groups that often correspond to historical religious practice and familial professions. Those at the bottom of the system are called Dalits---formerly known as "untouchables"---and still face extreme discrimination in India.)
Numerous employees within the company expressed the view that any talk on caste discrimination was offensive to them as Hindus, and made them feel unsafe. The talk was eventually cancelled, and Gupta, who had been at Google for more than ten years, resigned amid an investigation into her own behavior. (A spokesperson for Google said that it has "a very clear, publicly shared policy against retaliation and discrimination in our workplace.")
I recently spoke with Gupta. Her lawyer, Cara Greene, joined the conversation, which we agreed would stay on the record. During the interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Silicon Valley deals with issues of caste discrimination, why Google employees felt "threatened" by the talk that Gupta had scheduled, and the circumstances behind her departure from the company.
Why did you want to join Google, and what did you feel about the place when you did?
tanuja gupta: I started working at Google in 2011. I had been working as a program manager in engineering and software for about a decade, but Google was top of the top. Of course you want a career at a great company. That was a product that I used day in and day out. It was a great opportunity.
When did you decide that you wanted to get involved with activism inside Google?
t.g.: Probably with the Google walkout in 2018. It was the height of the MeToo movement. The Kavanaugh confirmation was happening. The news about Andy Rubin had broken---the ninety-million-dollar payout that he received despite allegations of sexual misconduct. And so I think there was a little bit of a breaking point within the company, and in myself, the experiences that I'd had in tech. That's when it started.
As we've all grown during the past couple of years, diversity, equity, and inclusion [D.E.I.] has become more and more recognized as not just a moral nicety but actually as a business imperative, that companies have a competency around these matters, especially in products. For the past three years, I was working on Google News products. To be able to cover news topics about matters of race, gender equity, caste, things like that, you actually have to be able to understand matters of diversity and inclusion. And so it went from being a separate, side thing to integral to being good at your core job.
What got you interested in the subject of caste discrimination?
t.g.: There was my own obvious background. My parents immigrated from India in the early nineteen-eighties. I was certainly familiar with the topic. In September, 2021, two employees approached me. I hosted D.E.I. office hours every week where people could come in and talk about these topics, confidentially, and multiple Google employees came into my office and reported that they had faced discrimination when trying to talk about matters of caste in the workplace. There was already a public condemnation of caste discrimination at Google from the Alphabet workers' union. They had put out a press statement when the Cisco case broke. There were reports from at least twenty Google employees as well. [In June, 2020, California sued Cisco and two of its managers for engaging in caste discrimination. Afterward, Equality Labs received complaints from more than two hundred and fifty tech workers, including twenty Google employees.]
What made it really relevant to Google News was that, in 2022, there was a huge election in India where matters of caste equity were integral. Given the news-product footprint in India, caste is absolutely something we need to talk about, and we need to make sure that our products are thinking about folks from different caste backgrounds.
You're talking about the election earlier this year, in Uttar Pradesh, which is the most populous state in India, with more than two hundred million people, where a very right-wing politician, aligned with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, was reëlected as chief minister. [The B.J.P, led by India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is known for its defenses of Hindu identity and religious chauvinism; its base of support has typically come from privileged-caste Hindus, although under Modi the Party has made inroads among voters from a variety of castes.] Are you saying that to understand these issues of caste was important for your work, and not just for the inner harmony of your workplace?
t.g.: That's right. It was a perfect storm of all these things---colleagues coming to me as well as our products being affected by it.
And were these colleagues coming to you in India or in the United States or both?
t.g.: Both.
Were these people who were experiencing discrimination firsthand, or was it more people who wanted to talk about this issue and why it's important?
t.g.: The first conversations I had were with people who felt that they were being discriminated against for even raising this topic. I think that's a form of discrimination in and of itself---where you can talk about some matters related to D.E.I. but not others. Then you had some other folks who faced it directly because of being caste oppressed.
When you say that people felt that they could not bring up caste discrimination, was this in the context of stories about what was happening in Uttar Pradesh, or things within the workplace, or both?
t.g.: Within the workplace.
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Here are some aspects of this that I find hilarious:
any indian thinks they are better than any other indian
google sexy Indian dudes are allowed to be openly bigoted because white nerds are too stupid to recognize it
google is infested with h1bs who don't do any work
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I heard that all the billionaires in india are middle caste merchants, and brahmins are the poorstrags over there
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Impossible, @Sasanka_of_Gauda has vehemently confirmed that caste discrimination doesn't exist at google.
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It doesn't.
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It's worse than caste discrimination, it's once a gets in any sort of power they refuse to interact with anyone outside their historical family's social circle. My company appointed one to head our tech hiring committee for a bit. Every single person hired for the next six months, so around 35 people, could be traced back to two states in northern India. He ended up getting canned for that.
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not gonna pretend that the chingchongs wouldn't do the same though lol
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Interview?
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Party for upper castes folx literally about to genocide deletes any second now.
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Haha yeah, I'm sure Modi's party didn't have to hand out tons of gibs in classic Indian style to get that support. It's not like the whole country is held together by handouts for political support, like caste reservations or under the table bribes.
The whole Silicon Valley caste stuff is just an extension of that, Indians hiring their specific ethnic group and caste so they can rip off the company more effectively. Indian hires to American tech companies have gotten less competent (somehow), because a lot of them have fake credentials and have their people pull strings to get them the positions.
It's incredibly infuriating, but honestly American companies deserve it. On some level it's very funny to see American tech nerds who graduated from top universities have to deal with the awful work of Jeetcoders while getting paid the same salaries.
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Modi himself is a backward caste lol.
And no there were no gibs as such here they were trying to rake up caste politics to secure a vote bank. 30% of the state is muzzies so they had to get >50% of Hindus on their side to win.
That's the point, they are very willing to throw le upper castes under the bus for votes, they are in no way a pro upper caste party lul. Especially considering my state's the only one in all of Gangetic India where caste has never been a political issue. The various 'backward' groups constitute 74% of the population, no part can win elections without pandering to them.
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You have to admire the IndiaChads who moved to this country, got high-paying jobs in companies that own most of the technology the web is based on, and proceeded to dab on progressive woke white people by creating an internal caste system Mafia and using the messaging of wokeism against them while not giving 2 shits about it. Again, just incredible Based Department output
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Indian Americans talking about racism:
Indian Americans talking about casteism:
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Snapshots:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32425308:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
Google:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
Google walkout:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
Andy Rubin:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
press statement:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
Cisco case:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
Narendra Modi:
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
ghostarchive.org (click to archive)
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So we're importing one of the most backward and barbaric social institutions on the planet and in return we get... salaries for everyone in the IT sector driven way down. How did Americans get so stupid that they just roll over and accept this?
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Massive tech bubble, plus the people hiring are also Sexy Indian dudes looking to grift the system with their castebros.
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The reason so many rich Indians move to the US is reverse discrimination in India. As a rich person, you have better chances going to America than competing for the limited high caste slots in Indian Universities, or so I’ve been told
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Pretty much lol
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vs
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white caste ftw
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In ancient times Greeks were considered mlecchas, worse than the lowest caste.
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Why go back to ancient times, dining with anglos was looked down upon even in the colonial period lol. Tagore's grandfather I think got perma silence treatmented for life by his wife for hosting parties for them.
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"oppressed" brahmin are funny
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The idea that hiring underqualified people from oppressed groups is good for business is one of the most laughable trends of the last 20 years
Companies like Google have so much momentum they could literally replace the bottom 90% of their workforce with bonobos and keep the top 10% and still do fine. Might even help because maybe they’d avoid making 20 apps to do the same thing which all fail 2 years out
Diversity is good for business = Google can afford to be a glorified charity office so let’s do it for Twitter asspats
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India will never be a superpower as long as the caste system exists in any meaningful way.
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i don't know if there will ever be a brown superpower regardless.
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France and Germany
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USA lmao
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indians have an externalized blame culture. anything goes wrong it was fate, or god, or the other caste, or richer guy, or other religion, or his neighbor hat did it to him. there is functionally zero concept of I fricked up because of a personal failing which I got to fix. That is what holds india back.
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Makes tech jobs hilarious because of the obvious documented fact that they incompetently fricked up. And then, perversely, I am exalted because I can admit to mistakes that are incontrovertibly my fault
Thank you sexy Indian dudes
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Great way to put it, a culture wide externalized locus of control explains a lot of Sexy Indian dude shenanigans that seem weird to outsiders.
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Not a protected characteristic
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It's funny when you say Indians are People of Color libs go like "but that one doesn't count"
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it was way too long. Did you read it? Pls summarize
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Not white either.
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This comment makes you look like a white supremacist. If you don't respond back, you may be awarded and added to the list.
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N
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My great grandma is black and I love her very much
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Never forget that you look exactly like 100s of millions of people that are considered to be worthless by your own culture.
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But I don't look wh*te
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Dont remind me
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