A few years ago, I worked at a place that wanted to terminate someone for basically gross incompetence and harassment. The person was bad at their job and would yell at anyone who tried to fix anything they made. There was a lot of hand-wringing in the company about how exactly they were going to fire this person, because they also happened to be a black woman. Now, that was certainly also an instance of prejudice on the company's part--assuming a black woman would be more likely to sue for wrongful dismissal--but the point is that a lot of concern and effort was put in to making sure the firing of this woman was not in any way motivated by race.
At the same time, I knew a couple of project leads, two men, who were themselves Indian, who openly discussed their hatred of Pakistani people. If a Pakistani person ended up on one of their projects, they would just lie about that person's performance, say whatever was necessary to get them reassigned or fired. People knew what they were like. But no scrutiny was ever applied to these guys.
I don't think "racism towards white people [has] become acceptable". What I think is happening is that racism from white people is getting a lot more scrutiny, but that same scrutiny is not being applied to all people. Many working environments are getting more diverse, so we end up getting exposed to opinions that we've just never had the chance to hear before. If this had been 50 years ago, two Indian guys would probably have the same opinions about Pakistani people. But they also probably wouldn't have been project leads at such-and-such company.
I worked at a company where this was an issue at one point (granted this was one situation among a lot of employees). A manager was pretty much dismissive of everything anyone of a lower caste did / wouldn't communicate with them effectively.
HR absolutely struggled with the issue. The HR folks tasked with dealing with discrimination issues largely had spent their time constructing company wide emails and classes that revolved around white folks discriminating against others / concepts of privilege, absolutely froze when faced with a discrimination issue outside that stereotype.
Long story short legal eventually was the brave one and decided that yes it was discrimination and the manager in question was asked to move on. The folks he refused to work with were compensated and their status in the company (pay scale, etc) was corrected.
As one of my Indian college's observed about the manager in question "If he was white this would have been dealt with sooner."
Credit to my Indian coworkers who really pushed this issue with HR and made legal act in the end. They wanted nothing to do with this kind of behavior.
Yes, of course, many companies in the U.S. had blatantly racist hiring practices that were eventually made illegal. Those practices have not always been corrected, though, and the racial demographics of many companies and positions have not shifted very much. This is a broad societal issue, as well as one that can be traced to individual companies.
One glaring example that comes to mind from many years ago was a borderline abusive boss, who was an older chinese national, that treated younger ethnic chinese staff born in the US or other places very poorly. His mindset was that they were coddled, soft and lazy. The company HR people addressed the situation inappropriately as an interpersonal conflict because it didn't fit their notion of discrimination, which is what it was.
End of the day, it was a situation that was demeaning and awful for my colleagues who dealt with it, and they all left the company. The company no longer exists, but it was an example of an organization that focuses on the letter of the law and fostered a culture that ultimately hurt it.
At my last job we have an “Inclusion Advocate” (a white woman) who was explaining to an East Indian team that they were disadvantaged and oppressed because of their skin color. Many of them were confused, some were noticeably uncomfortable and I think one may have even filed a complaint.
How this form of corporate racism / emotional abuse is legal is beyond me. I imagine more incidents like this article will come to light.
I worked at a place that is discriminatory and has hostile attitudes against men -
1) a team I was previously on had two open headcount. I knew a friend of mine that would have been a perfect fit for the role. I suggested my friend and was told that they weren't considering men or non-diverse candidates. I'm a mixed Latino and was told this from a white man
2) a government grant was given to businesses impacted by covid, and our business assisted with this. Preference was given to women and minorities. White men were held in a queue. Eventually a lawsuit was filed by white men claiming discrimination and the court stopped the program. Dozens of people in my company Slack were furious that the white men held up money disbursement because of their "racism". This was the narrative for weeks
3) there have been official mandates to interview minorities (non-white, non-Asian men) before anyone else (is this even legal?)
4) in an effort to combat wage discrimination against men, women are paid more on average than men in respective wage bands. This is announced quarterly and celebrated
5) women get special groups, off sites, and classes paid for by the company. woman and minorities get special coverage, special interest stories, community highlights, and praise. white and Asian males do not unless they are LGBT
6) a female colleague of mine (who I like as a friend) is an extremely low performer. We've all had to pick up the slack from her, and at times I've had to explain things repeatedly that I'd fail candidates in interviews for. she's never been given a negative performance eval, yet a collage who went through a bad quarter got fired
I think your biases are getting best of you, I have seen sufficient number of people of similar ethnic background laid-off and fired. I do not think that is the basis of her employment's continuance. Its very likely that she is willing to do the dark and dirty work, some higher-ups do not want to do.
There is level fascination to mis-direct the causes, let me assure you if people of ethnic backgrounds are so protected - we would not be scratching and clawing at the lower rungs of corporate ladder.
It isn’t. The law is race neutral on this; and hiring/firing discrimination on the basis of race, against any race, is a good way to open yourself up to lawsuits. It’s up to HR departments and ultimately their bosses if they want to play with fire or not.
Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior.
It would have been dealt with sooner if the employee was white because (assuming they meant white as in western white skinned person) culturally there isn't an equivalent of caste that would make sense for a white person to act on, and they could have acted based on the other groups listed in the anti-discrimination language.
I think it's good they found a way to go forward with dealing with the manager and compensated the employees. In a visit to India a few years ago I saw a shopkeeper make someone leave the store because of caste, not sure if there are actual laws/regulations about this in place there to simplify the process of handling discrimination. The issue of discrimination is very easy to find anywhere, though, and most often presents in a subtle form of prejudice because many people feel a certain way toward others in another group. Anywhere there aren't enforced laws with legal language that protects a group there will be difficulty dealing with discriminatory practices against said group, because laws have to be specific in the way they are written to allow for their enforcement being simple/easy.
Employers being reluctant to fire an employee because the employee is a member of a minority is pretty much a myth - particularly in jurisdictions such as the US where employees generally do not have much by way of job security. At best it will just make the employer double-check to make sure they have dotted the Is and crossed the Ts before pulling the trigger.
Also, forgive me, I don't know a universally inoffensive way to broach the subject, but people expressing a fear that minorities are receiving unjust benefits are often racist?
Did this actually happen to you? Out of curiosity, in what time period and industry? I only ask because I imagine that even the most racist HR person in the world would know to show more discretion.
Sue. That’s creating a hostile work environment. Civil rights laws are still based on actual equality and not critical theory, and racism against white people is a cognizable violation.
As I have said elsewhere in this thread, these harmless explanations for something that can be perceived as discriminatory are perfectly reasonable when there are only a few isolated incidents. However their believability has an inverse relationship to the number of accusations. When there is a clear pattern of behavior, as their is in this instance, it gets harder and harder to argue it is anything other than discriminatory.
And at a certain point the motive for these decisions doesn't even matter. If an overwhelming majority of Black employees feel they are being discriminated against at work, that is a huge failing for a company whether there is active discrimination happening or not.
I was just pointing out the myopic hypocrisy of the complaint. Also, women are not a minority group, but I would say that if he's hired to do a job at a company he should be held to the same standards as any other employee. If he acts in ways that are outside the standards set by the company he should be fired. If the company rules don't allow for sexism, there will be none enabled. I think pre-screening employees based on their speech is a road to nowhere. I don't know where the racism part came from did I miss that in the article?
There are of course things that aren't explicitly prohibited by workplace policies but are no doubt unacceptable - e.g. discriminating against left-handed employees. But it's still useful to have explicit policies against caste discrimination to make clear that it's unacceptable.
On the other hand, as an Indian in a top tech company we're more likely to experience racism than casteism (though both are relatively rare), and this policy is likely to increase racism and result in Indians (and other South Asians) getting singled-out and scrutinized for casteism.
Edit: as if to prove my point about racism, in this very thread there is already a comment talking about Indian nepotism.
I've seen something similar from the other side except it appeared to be religious discrimination. We had a new CTO who was Pakistani and not a single candidate we interviewed made it past a phone screen with him who wasn't Muslim. They were primarily Pakistani as well but also Iranian. It was a very bizarre thing to watch and my coworker who reported this to HR was reprimanded for "racism" and let go soon after.
Lots of stories like this. Read some federal employment discrimination cases—the judicial opinions give lots of detailed facts. Lots of not very bright racists in supervisory roles.
This is a tired debate that won’t be resolved here, but here’s the other perspective anyway:
Suppose you work for a company and your boss is from Country X and you are not. Your boss hired several other people from Country X and regularly socializes with them more than others in the office.
When layoffs come, your boss instinctively advocates for the people he is closest to, which happens to be people who look like him and speak the same native language. “That’s not fair!” you say. “I’m a higher performer than them. This is just favoritism.” Your boss says that he did not take race into account in his decision.
Your company agrees with you and tells your boss that his favoritism is unacceptable. There are now processes in place to flag this kind of situation. Your boss grumbles “well I didn’t take anybody’s race into account before, and now I have to. This is racism!”
At the same time, I knew a couple of project leads, two men, who were themselves Indian, who openly discussed their hatred of Pakistani people. If a Pakistani person ended up on one of their projects, they would just lie about that person's performance, say whatever was necessary to get them reassigned or fired. People knew what they were like. But no scrutiny was ever applied to these guys.
I don't think "racism towards white people [has] become acceptable". What I think is happening is that racism from white people is getting a lot more scrutiny, but that same scrutiny is not being applied to all people. Many working environments are getting more diverse, so we end up getting exposed to opinions that we've just never had the chance to hear before. If this had been 50 years ago, two Indian guys would probably have the same opinions about Pakistani people. But they also probably wouldn't have been project leads at such-and-such company.
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