I saw the same at a prominent financial services firm. 50 - 60 Indians in the same dept from the same region. A big number.

I even asked a senior manager if I needed to be Indian to excel at the company. He said the very fact I asked that question is a problem, whether or not it is true.

Was the problem your asking the question, or was the problem the apparent pattern of rampant casteism?

I am not Indian. Hope that helps explain.

It doesn't.

His answer could mean two things, and which one it is depends more on his race than yours.

He was also not Indian but many of the senior managers were.

Was he an Indian sr manager too?

He was also not Indian but many of the senior managers were

I heard a very similar story about a department in a higher education institution.

This is similar to having the first 30 engineers all come from the same school. Helps with speed in the short term but sub-optimal in the long term. This is why forms like Google centralize hiring.

Perhaps the manager was critiquing your absolutist use of the word 'need' here.

;)

There's a huge language / culture divide in India and yes managers of a certain culture can hire reports of their culture to be their yes-men but it's not exactly based on caste.

It's effectively a French guy hiring another french guy or a German guy stacking their team with other Germans. It's a bit more complicated than that because if you look at things like power distance index (PDI), India measures way higher in the chart than any western country (i.e., culturally Indians are more accepting of hierarchy than their western counterparts, so an Indian subordinate is more deferential to their boss than an American one for example)

Logically this makes sense. In reality, its not what I have seen in my career. I cant recall ever discovering that meetings about high level objectives were taking place where everyone but one group was excluded, where that group was german, italian, french or any group other than Indian. I've just seen it too many times at too many companies.

Or almost like a white man hiring another white man?

No, because there are many foreign white people in America and they don’t consider white Americans to be their ethnic group any more than a Somali or Jamaican considers themselves to be African-American. Even if you exclusively talk about born in America white people there are at least four quite distinct ethnic groups there so there’s limited fellow feeling. And then there are children of immigrants who feel a strong identification with their parents’ ethnic group too. White Americans have as little fellow feeling as Asian Americans, if for different reasons. Asian American identification is a sign of assimilation. Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese people are proud of their own heritage. Anyone who feels that being Asian is an important part of their identity probably speaks the language of their ancestors badly or not at all.

This in itself is an incredibly racist statement.

It is like saying "an asian hiring another asian" while completely ignoring any sub-groups. "White men" are more diverse than you think and have only in modern times put things like hibernophobia behind us.

Although I agree with your comment that you need to not ignore the nuance behind subgroups, I disagree with you calling your parent comment racist.

These are hard questions and the nuance is not obvious to everyone. For example some people think my group (Arabs) all share common culture even though this is not true.

I think to be able to genuinely change things, we have to be careful about calling other racist. I will be the first to admit I am an ignorant. I think we're all ignorant about something.

> "White men" are more diverse than you think and have only in modern times put things like hibernophobia behind us.

While this may be factually correct, that’s not exactly what racism here refers to, and to dismiss it as such is ignoring legitimate concerns.

Yea, there might be diversity among white men. However. White Men weren’t enslaved in large numbers. White men weren’t excluded by redlining. American society did not systematically deny the same opportunities to white men that it denied to other races and genders.

So when talking about racism, it’s not really helpful to point out that by definition not all white men are the same.

#midrop

Misnomer. "White" isn't a culture.

https://www.tiktok.com/@tizzyent/video/6881703506558848262?l...

I don't understand this perspective. Aren't European Americans similarly stripped of there European heritage as time goes on in the new world? Thus the word white in america means "of european origin living in america" the same way black means "of african origin living in america". I think it is really schizophrenic to say that black culture exists but white culture does not seeing as both terms represent a new world phenomenon of classifying cultures and groups by where they originated.

> I don't understand this perspective.

The first few seconds of the linked video cover this. I encourage you to watch it.

Effectively, there is not a strong equivalence between the categorization of white vs. black in terms of origin. Whites typically weren't forced to move to North America and have their home cultures stripped from them through generations of slavery. This is why you find things like German Heritage celebrations or St. Patrick's Day, etc. You don't see Yoruba Heritage celebrations, etc. Further, the definition of "white" has grown over time to incorporate Irish, Italian, Slavic, etc. African heritage has persisted as a secondary class of citizens or worse in US history.

That is what is meant by stripped heritage. It really isn't schizophrenic. A white person could use the census and other tools to trace their roots successfully, further. A black person can and often does hit a dead end much quicker. We all come from somewhere -- knowing one's history can be helpful medically and for personal worldview.

Should a person be solely where their ancestors originated? I don't think so. But it does matter, in the same way the OP article on caste matters, in hundreds to thousands of small interactions over the course of every day life. I highly recommend Dr. Painter's The History of White People. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_White_People

I thank you for your reply and I would like to address your points.

As someone who is a first generation immigrant to the new world who went back to the old country I disagree with the idea that whites in the new world have specific regional/cultural European roots. They are far detached and most of the examples you mention are merely imitations or money grab celebrations. With genetic testing it is possible to locate where they originate from approximately, same with African originators, but I really don't see how this origin point means anything after hundreds of years across the Atlantic. A white American calling themselves 1/8 irish, 3/8 italian, and 4/8 french, is as ridiculous in my mind as an African American calling themselves 1/8 kenyan, 3/8 angolan, and 4/8 congolese. I agree with you that the African Americans are treated as lesser in the American society, but in many ways they have way more in common with the average white American then they do with the very diverse and foreign "black cultures". And likewise for the white Americans with the diverse and foreign "white cultures". My point is that if you believe in the existence of one, then the existence of the other comes as well, alternatively we could do away with the separation between black and white in America altogether and consider the people there to just be Americans, as people who left the old world for opportunity in the new world, which imo is where American society is trending towards overall (But will still take a long time and a lot of effort to achieve).

Neither is “Asian”.

White men don't do this anymore.

what is a #FFFFFF man?

I think it extends beyond Indian folks. I once worked at a company where, Manufacturing engineers were overwhelmingly Vietnamese. Safety staff was Chinese, Engineering was mostly white, and the machine shop was entirely Hispanic. In each case the manager of the department was of the aforementioned race.

There was also a son of a bitch who was an aggressive baptist. He though I was a baptist because I had dated a baptist once, and knew some of the lingo. I really liked him until I saw him treat a Chinese person like crap for no reason. He treated anyone who wasn't a Christian like garbage.v

It really doesnt to the same degree. People claiming otherwise are trying to hide a very real problem

Thank you for your useless comment. Nobody is trying to "hide a very real problem."

> So like under one director, every senior manager will have been from the same part of India.

Just because people are from the same part of India doesn't mean they have the same caste.

And people who emigrated 20-30 years ago would all be from the same part of India for Socio-economic reasons of that time.

Let me guess, its Amazon?

>>> from the same part of India

being from the same part of India does not mean they will be of the same caste.