India's engineers have thrived in Silicon Valley. So has its caste system.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Whenever Benjamin Kaila, a database administrator who immigrated from India to the United States in 1999, applies for a job at a U.S. tech company, he prays that there are no other Indians during the in-person interview. That’s because Kaila is a Dalit, or member of the lowest-ranked castes within India’s system of social hierarchy, formerly referred to as “untouchables.”

Silicon Valley’s diversity issues are well documented: It’s still dominated by White and Asian men, and Black and Latino workers remain underrepresented. But for years, as debates about meritocracy raged on, the tech industry’s reliance on Indian engineers allowed another type of discrimination to fester. And Dalit engineers like Kaila say U.S. employers aren’t equipped to address it.

In more than 100 job interviews for contract work over the past 20 years, Kaila said he got only one job offer when another Indian interviewed him in person. When members of the interview panel have been Indian, Kaila says, he has faced personal questions that seem to be used to suss out whether he’s a member of an upper caste, like most of the Indians working in the tech industry.

“They don’t bring up caste, but they can easily identify us,” Kaila says, rattling off all of the ways he can be outed as potentially being Dalit, including the fact that he has darker skin.

The legacy of discrimination from the Indian caste system is rarely discussed as a factor in Silicon Valley’s persistent diversity problems. Decades of tech industry labor practices, such as recruiting candidates from a small cohort of top schools or relying on the H-1B visa system for highly skilled workers, have shaped the racial demographics of its technical workforce. Despite that fact, Dalit engineers and advocates say that tech companies don’t understand caste bias and have not explicitly prohibited caste-based discrimination.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/27/indian-caste-bias-silicon-valley/

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I read an article about this a couple of months ago.

The Silicon Valley companies should stomp down hard on that stuff.

[Klaralven]

8. There have been a few articles about this since the summer

Apparently, caste discrimination is not illegal, since it is neither religious nor racial discrimination, strictly speaking.

Assembling a project team with Asians is a minefield of caste, racial, linguistic, class, religious and historical antagonisms that the typical US manager is oblivious of.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. Clearly the US managers need some

education on this topic.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. "U.S. employers aren't equipped to address it"????

THE FEDERAL CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

Calling The Equal Opportunity Act!

This BS can come to a screeching halt tomorrow.

[ck4829]

3. Just the discrimination against Dalits by itself sounds like a litany of civil rights violations

"aren't equipped", that sounds like someone is making excuses to me.

[Hekate]

4. KnR

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. I mean, Silicon Valley isn't great with race and gender of anyone who isn't a white man, so this is

no surprise.

[HipChick]

6. It's not just against their own...

I have seen this targeted at any women of color too in the tech field..

[ornotna]

7. NPR did a story on this not too long ago

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/14/923736245/caste-arrives-in-silicon-valley

Sam Cornelius is from India, and works in the U.S. tech sector. Sometimes when he meets another Indian at his company, they ask him questions that seem innocent enough on the surface, like, "Where is your family from?" Or, "Are you vegetarian?" Sometimes they might even suggest going for a swim. But, Sam says, these questions can feel like a dangerous trap. Coming from a fellow Indian, they're often clever attempts to find out something very specific: his caste.

[Amishman]

9. This goes several ways

I've also seen Indian managers also pressure against hiring anyone outside the acceptable caste structure - including discrimination against non-Indians.

[hvn_nbr_2]

10. I saw a little of that in my years in Silicon Valley

Nothing as blatant as that but what I saw was between the highest caste and the second highest.