It's absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by something like caste, or social status. It's like if your lead said she was trying to determine if they were an inferior race.

Caste no, social status? Absolutely, happens all the time. It’s very easy to proxy social status based on interests, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Those that don’t pass the sniff test, are deemed “bad culture fits”.

I don't ask about these in interviews, and don't use them to make decisions. You like My Little Pony or have a massive collection of guns? Or both? I literally could not care any less, it's none of my business.

> mannerisms

I'm not really sure what you'd see here in a regular interview beyond being literate and maybe nervous. The signal here is murky at best -- other than red flags, you shouldn't be measuring here.

So, to reiterate: it is absolutely not okay to discriminate candidates by social status.

I’m not saying it’s okay to discriminate candidates by it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Go to any finance firm on Wall Street and tell me how many people employed there grew up on food stamps.

Those are all qualitative things that tell me about the person's intelligence, social acumen, experience, worldliness, etc. Those things usually matter for hiring. Has nothing to do with caste or race or gender or identity or age or sexual orientation any other protected status.

You could say they're smarter because they're doing what's needed to game the system... but that's only needed because people are judging them on those aspects. Chicken or egg?

Does a thick German or Scandinavian accent count against them? What about Mexican/Spanish? What about Ebonics/Black English? That has well understood rules for how it's used, even though many people don't realize it.

Presumably what you actually care about when hiring is their ability to work well with their peers and managers, and how well they accomplish the work they are given. If so, you are using mannerisms to help inform about these attributes you actually care about because you think those mannerisms correlate in some way. But what do you have to go by to actually support this evidence? If it's from personal experience, how rigorous have you been in making sure you note the data, and didn't subconsciously discount or ignore instances counter to your expectations?

> Caste no, social status? Absolutely, happens all the time. It’s very easy to proxy social status based on interests, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Those that don’t pass the sniff test, are deemed “bad culture fits”.

Isn't that pretty much the definition of caste-based discrimination?

I don’t think it’s great that this happens, it insulates elites from those with working class backgrounds and accelerates inequality.

This also has to do with the fact that, in consulting and finance, it is the perception of intelligence by the customer that is much more important than the actual intelligence. Managers would rather hire the team of consultants from the Ivy League and rich people would rather pay the management fees for the Ivy League team to manage their money.

In industries that are more directly merit based and less "customer perception" based, you don't have as large of an over-representation.

I don't think GP was trying to justify the practice, but noting that this exists in domains like finance because the product is an image, not actual performance.

If racial discrimination doesn't exist why Blacks are economically poor across in west?

1. Ongoing discrimination 2. Different starting points + law of large numbers.

If you start one racial group off in a country with property and let them acquire wealth for a few hundred years, then free another racial group from slavery with absolutely nothing - even after a long while those wealth differences will persist.

IMHO trying to find cultural fit is a form of ongoing discrimination[1] and it strengthens the effect of different starting points[2].

India is countering [2] by enforcing a 50% quota in education, Jobs, and politics. AFAIK West on the other hand is wishing it to vanish without doing anything concrete.

India is taking right steps in the right direction and I am hopeful this will vanish as generation born with caste concepts die off slowly.

I was recently talking with someone in China who claimed that the Uighurs could not be oppressed because they are given advantages in hiring/education, and that America would never do the same for black people.

Suffice to say, the US does engage in extensive aff action in education and hiring (although neither are directly legally mandated).

Yes there is discrimination but India is fighting it on policy and social level. Reserving 50% in education and jobs is one such big step. India's constitution was written by a a Dalit. Many people from the held high offices. Current prime minister and president are from the same community.

> Suffice to say, the US does engage in extensive aff action in education and hiring (although neither are directly legally mandated).

Is it measured? If not than how you know?

Absolutely, not my intention by my comment - more just recounting a similar phenomenon in a different discussion.

> India is fighting it on policy and social level

I'm not contesting that either! But of course there is still more work to be done.

> Is it measured? If not than how you know?

Affirmative action is quite well known in the United States. You can see the documents from the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit, for instance, to see how the SAT score cutoff differs by race & ethnicity.

Thanks I didn't knew that. Having said that Harvard and Stanford is last rung. Those who are able to reach those places are already prevailed I would argue. Is there similar affirmitive action in place on lower levels as well?

India has it across the board which help more IMHO. Some communities have used it so much that now debate within the lower sections have started that reservation should be taken away after 3 generations.[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/spm5k5IrRDw

Given that 90% of people from India in SWE seem to be from higher caste (I don't really know the exact statistic but it is something like that), then it seems like the reservation is still needed.

Yes Reservation is still needed. India is big and people who got oppressed under colonial rule would take a few generations more to come up.

Bigger issue is exploitation of caste lines for politics.

Yes, it is.

It makes me angry now even reading it. Why would this have any impact on the work the candidate would be able to perform?

Indians have a deeply engrained culture of noticing caste. This is true whether they are ok with discriminating on that basis, or staunchly against it, caste permeates the culture.

So either she was only interested in hiring Brahmins, and realized that she shouldn't have tipped her hand... or she was curious about it, and then realized that was a shitty thing to say during an interview, and decided not to make it worse by explaining that of course it wouldn't make a difference in her judgement.

She's right, though; she shouldn't have said that.

The fact that it would be top of mind at all

Could be curiosity or it could be a status play. Are there castes she would/would not hire from, would it be a problem to getting work done?

Edit: I’ve worked with indians my whole career and only recently learned via HN that caste system “carried over” to the US

I'm flawed, but I used to be more so. A big part of that improvement is thanks to the people that judged my actions and not every aberrant thought that entered my head.

[1] responsibility is there of course, and I work to reduce their future frequency. But that change takes time, and until then the best remedy to unwanted ingrained patterns is to not act on them.

Unless your concern rises to whistle-blower levels with external agencies, that sounds like a quick way to be fired.

Was the interviewee of Indian origin? Unless you are of Indian origin, it's not applicable to you.

If the interviewee was of Indian origin, and she didn't already know the interviewee's last name, I would probably give her the benefit of doubt, and ask to clarify what she meant.

We here in India hear the "caste as abhorrent discrimination" side from a very early age (and that's certainly important), but it's taken me years of experience to learn that in practice it's more than that. People think of caste as a form of extended family, or as shared culture, or of understanding someone's roots. That person might have said that just as someone might say "I can't figure out if their accent is from New York or New Jersey": that might be an intent to discriminate, but might also well be idle curiosity about the person.

I don't mean to say it's hateful to say you want social castes out on the table for identifying who you share connections with, but that obviously comes with the fact that you identify those who don't share that connection. It's a justification for extending social problems.

Caste itself isn't explicitly protected (axes of discrimination that weren't widely recognized as actual things people cared about in the US when the law was written don't tend to be) but there are arguments that caste discrimination runs afoul of existing US protection regarding color, ethnicity, national origin, and religion, among others, and some of these are currently being actively litigated in federal court, IIRC by both private plaintiffs and state fair-employment authorities.

So “might be fine”, but very much might not. And HR is usually about avoiding risk of exposure, not steering the company into “might be fine” waters.

Perhaps not explicitly, but I could easily see courts ruling that it is. To me, it seems covered by the ethnicity portion, although I get they are not the exact same concept.

Although, the OP's case, the person did quickly realize her mistake, but bias might still be present.

I was born in India and moved here when I was in school. It was shocking to me as well when I heard stuff like this.

> Are there terms in English I should look out for?

Not really. But you have more of contexts and where the questioning is going whether it's in a professional or personal setting - the line of inquiry.

If the person is taking a very shallow interest (or a misplaced interest) in knowing where your roots are, who your ancestors were and possibly specifically asking names of your parents or grand parents (maybe profession as well) then you might want to treat it as at least suspicious on these lines.

And in the region, your last name (sorry, it's just a knowledge I picked up while growing up) is endemic to, it's called "jaayat" or "jaait".

> In Hindi I think

I assumed you are either not Indian or not from that region in the North.

Also, what I meant by saying there are not really terms one should look out for is in professional setups, at least these days, caste is not asked openly but indirectly.

I'm not Indian, but have heard these used in a derogatory setting. It's hard to disentangle from casual conversation, but if these questions arise suddenly and unprompted (like the first thing you're asked) it's a flag. Another is being asked a question in a specific dialect to see how you respond.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACaste%2FArchive_1#Forei...

there is the quote: "if memory serves, Westerners (particularly English) are held to be Brahmin, "

To be honest.. I can see it working as a scam of some sort. As long as the “white man” has money you might as well be of the highest caste right?

Here we’re trying to eliminate caste, but some geniuses want to give a caste to all sorts. You might as well give gold a caste...

again as I understand it strictly speaking a foreigner should be casteless, and hence untouchable.

But that discussion implies that the actual behavior towards foreigners does not match that, which would seem reasonable to me. Indians will need to interact with foreigners, if they are without caste that would be a problem, so how to fit the foreign into the social system.

Caste system, on the surface, seems like hereditary fixing of labor roles. If applied universally, it should be easy to accept a member of a strong foreign army, or any army as a Kshatriya. So it makes no sense for every Englishman to assume a high caste, irrespective of profession.

But then, many “castes” are also, basically regional/ethnicities. In short, the rules which apply caste, are not uniform in any way and I would rather ridicule such an exercise than aid it.

A foreigner doesn’t need to have a caste, even if they wish to convert to Hinduism, when our argument is that we need to abolish caste in India in the first place.

And I don’t know who are the “we” trying to eliminate caste oppression. Some claiming to do so are clearly demagogues using it to divide people and seize control. Like communists claiming to speak for the working class when in fact they just want all the power for themselves.

The existing laws don’t eliminate caste, instead they make some of them more desirable.

Discrimination has many forms.

Some are codified in law (age, race, religion, sex, etc.) and some are informally observed.

When in doubt, I prefer to address perceived discrimination directly with the person thought to be engaging in such nonconfrontationally and in the presence of at least one other coworker. If you choose to do same, document the encounter when it happens along with whom was present and be prepared to escalate to management.

It's not universal though, or even a majority - a lot of people still are mononymous, and many are confused when Facebook and the ilk ask for "Last name" (and sometimes fill in hilarious things).

Many odd dutch surnames date back to dutchies, who had previously been using patronymics, having fun with the first census, taken under Napoleon in 1811.

Is actor Vijay's first name Joseph, Vijay or Joseph Vijay? Just asking.. :)

I think you did the right thing in this situation. She did not express anything malicious and she corrected herself (at least partially).

It sounds like your colleague was doing something anyone would do (assessing someone by the social strictures they are familiar with) and did something wrong (devoted effort to it in a hiring context, said something aloud.) Yes, everyone does this sort of thing -- in American society overall we don't have good names for the subtle side of our class system, so we can't express the puzzle as clearly as some other societies, but we do see the world (consciously or unconsciously) along these lines.

When I hear people say inappropriate things -- usually less fraught ones like marital status -- I point out that they cannot say such things. It serves as a reminder of proper procedure. I do not escalate the situation if they seem to be acting without malice and, like the person in your story, seem to desire to do better.

(Full disclosure, I am a white-presenting man.)

I believe she did the exact opposite. (You could argue she meant "shouldn't have done that" - I guess you'd have to be there to know) Acknowledged that she wanted to do this, so it was conscious, not just a bad habit. And acknowledged that she shouldn't talk about it - not that she shouldn't have done it.

If you were an Indian, this would immediately raise a red flag. The intent of bringing up caste in a professional setting is clear - to discriminate. There is no other practical use for it. And the system is a hideous one with the potential to seriously damage professional environment. Signs of its practice like this should be considered threatening.

Yes, it's illegal to discriminate based on religion, but in many parts of the country it's a big curiosity about other people (is he presbyterian?) and so many people may not be able to help privately trying to suss it out.

The difference is that cast is a rigid hierarchy, based on society-accepted discrimination, and there is no reason to try and figure it out other than to decide where they are in the pecking order.

Well, imagine that you, a white-presenting man (what does _that_ mean) were on a phone interview with someone you couldn't see, and afterwards, you said something like, "I was trying to determine if they were Black."

I'm not going to make judgement on whether that's a fair statement or not - what I am curious about is whether you think that you'd get the same kind of defense - would there be someone saying that you weren't malicious?

If you met most of my family members, you would not think they were white, but if you met me personally, you probably would.

Only once in a long while does someone seem to read me as 'not white' (and unless I'm speaking my heritage language they usually guess wrong about what flavor.)

> were on a phone interview with someone you couldn't see, and afterwards, you said something like, "I was trying to determine if they were Black."

If I'm on the phone with someone, I am sure I am trying to figure that out. Folks who claim otherwise are most likely incorrect about what they are doing.

I would certainly know better than to say that aloud, since I grew up in a society where I know how it would be perceived, and have intuition around it. I don't have to think much to realize the implications.