How to fight back when you see this happening at line management level, but not yet proliferated to upper management?
Indian product owner taking mostly to Indian peer developers, bypassing normal communication channels. Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest.
Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all?
All these culture things (except for the first regarding PO which is spit-in-the-face level of unprofessionalism) add up, and then you find yourself in a corporation described in other messages of this thread.
I had to offboard from multiple projects throughout my career because development was hijacked by Indian cronyism.
> Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all?
Are you seriously asking how to "fight back" on Indians going to restaurants and joking with each other?
As an Indian in a flyover state who has been routinely excluded from golfing events, and had my dietary needs totally ignored while organizing things like steakhouse lunches, this is sort of darkly funny to read.
I think that's an unfairly dismissive take and the "going to restaurants" bit is a mischaracterization at best.
There massive difference is WHERE the discrimination is taking place. Most would not move to India or any other place and impose their culture and exclude locals in a fair and just world. I'm not saying it doesn't take place, and yes colonialism happened and was far worse, but we're talking about what SHOULD be.
> Most would not move to India or any other place and impose their culture and exclude locals in a fair and just world.
I'm trying to say that going to restaurants as a group of people and having in-jokes does not qualify as "imposing your culture" in any way. These things routinely happen at companies that have few to no Indians, they just take a different form.
Also, are you really claiming that if you moved to Bangalore, and had 2-3 coworkers from your hometown that you knew and shared cultural ties with; that you wouldn't tend to hang out together at lunch?
Sure, but Americans have been doing this for hundreds of years through exclusionary hobbies like golf, fantasy football, and a hundred other things. That's just how social groups work. They are often cliquey and exclusionary.
That's why I think it's weird to only target Indians in this regard. They are building an in-group just like everyone else; the difference is that OP seems to have little experience not being part of the in-group.
We should be working to decrease it in all exclusionary groups by working to make them more inclusionary. That means intentionally rotating comfort zones.
And it is a historically seductive siren call that once an immigrant community in any country attains some power, they use it to ramp up exclusion and cronyism.
In all fairness, to protect their tenuous grasp on that power from external racism, but it also succumbs to use for less noble, more human ends. E.g. getting ones friend hired.
Other groups doing this too doesn't make it okay. Nobody should be forming exclusionary groups where all the shots are called and business decisions are made.
The better question is: if you had a Bangalore company founded by Indians, then a management hire from the US or Britain started hiring immigrants from there too, and they excluded or sidelined Indians, especially ones who didn't speak English - you'd be annoyed too right?
Actually you'll find that this happens a lot. Search up expat communities, for example. They don't necessarily "impose their culture and exclude locals", but they are for and by the expats from a certain country.
Seeking "your" people when living/working abroad, or when working in a diverse workspace, is pretty normal and happens everywhere. It's usually harmless though.
i’m not sure that’s the point though. i think the point is lost in op layering restaurants and jokes and such into their narrative. i think the actual point and concern is how being “out-group” affects their employment due to what they perceive as deliberate exclusion.
Brits living anywhere outside of Britain is a classic example - exemplified by the clubs and societies formed around the world when the sun didn't set in/on their empire.
You seem to be fixating on the term "fight back," when the commenter you're replying to is asking for ways to not feel excluded at his/her job, where s/he spends a majority of his/her waking hours.
As someone who has experienced this, I encourage you to draw on that experience and have empathy, even if that experience is expressed in ways that don't immediately resonate with you. You have more in common with the commenter you're replying to than you appreciate.
> [looking] for ways to not feel excluded at his/her job, where s/he spends a majority of his/her waking hours.
And the people GP is talking about are trying to do the exact same thing, though obviously in highly detrimental ways. Part of professionalism entails not making your job into an identity that overwhelms every other aspect of your life. If you just focus on delivering good results to the best of your ability, there's no need to be dependent on constant social approval from 'insider' peers.
this is fascinating to me because it’s how i have handled my career and it’s had unexpected positive and negative effects. all-in-all i’m more satisfied than my friend group with my day to day work existence but am steps behind them in the traditional career path milestones. though i lack the titles they have, i’m squarely median when it comes to annual base income, which is comfortable and provides very well for my family. however, i’m beginning to age and realize that potential employers are beginning to balk at my title/“informal” leadership (read “experience”) with my age and salary and duration in the workforce.
And quadrifoliate (this comment's grandparent) showed that exclusionism against Indians similarly exists and is harmful. Very much on topic in my opinion.
I would hope any sensible person would look at two comments by two people saying that they are being excluded by each others groups and think "the issue is people being excluded because they are not part of the 'in' group in their workplace, and people should work to be more inclusive" rather than concluding that the problem lies with Indian or non-Indian people specifically
One is likely the majority, the other the minority.
It doesn’t negate any behaviour based on bias but would require an honest reflection on the unconscious biases existing in the workplace prior to this.
One way to look at it is minority groups who can’t turn off being visible minorities can be different than people who may be minorities in a a few areas of life but still have access to benefit from privilege in others.
I'm hopeful that some light will be shed on how ridiculously dystopian it is to force D.I.E. mandates with posters like "United Colours of Benetton" as if "All Men/Women/Etc Are Created In Test Tubes Equivalent And Interchangeable" and we Voters of American Progressive Enlightenment must lobby to crush out every aspect of culture that suggests otherwise.
Yeah, and I'd expect that treatment as a white person working/living in India, and I would adapt to fit in with local customs / culture or else leave. But they are in the US, working for a US company - why is it somehow acceptable when you are a foreigner to create these isolated professional enclaves that exclude the "native" population?
(A group of people casually getting together is totally different to someone's work environment where they have to attend to bring a paycheck home - I'm talking exclusively about professional/work environments)
> Yeah, and I'd expect that treatment as a white person working/living in India, and I would adapt to fit in with local customs / culture. But they are in the US, working for a US company - why is it somehow acceptable when you are a foreigner to create these isolated professional enclaves that exclude the "native" population?
Non-Hispanic white Americans are not native to the US, and I don't see a reasonable basis for concluding that non-Hispanic white culture should be the "native" or "default" culture in the US.
Sure, it might be the dominant culture — but there are other subcultures like Black or Hispanic cultures that are pretty strong here. Would you feel comfortable asking how to stop a group of Black coworkers from going to a restaurant that serves Black cuisine, or Hispanic coworkers from going to the local taqueria? If not, then why are you singling out Indians?
Hence the quotation marks: "native" - you're just derailing a legitimate line of reasoning.
> I don't see a reasonable basis for concluding that European-American culture should be the "native" or "default" culture in the US
Like it or not, it is the dominant culture especially in professional environments. If you want to have a conversation about why that is the case, what else it could be, etc. thats fine! But it's not the kind of conversation I'm looking to have here.
> Would you feel comfortable asking how to stop a group of Black coworkers from going to a restaurant that serves Black cuisine, or Hispanic coworkers from going to the local taqueria?
If they are doing it to the detriment of the overall business yes! - the line of reasoning follows for a predominantly Black business that is having a White enclave forming. Or a Hispanic cultured business with a Slavic enclave forming. Even more importantly a multicultural environment which is having 1 group overtake it. It's fundamentally a job of business leaders to set the tone and direction of company culture - and this is one aspect of it.
> Like it or not, it is the dominant culture especially in professional environments.
At least sometimes it's not, which is why the OP feels so excluded and is asking for tips on how to navigate the clearly unfamiliar feeling of not being able to just "fit in" as part of the dominant culture.
The reality is that the US is a melting pot with a lot of subcultures, and you should learn to navigate those subcultures instead of demanding that they conform to some mythical default.
Maybe next time the OP should show some curiosity about what their coworkers are joking about, and shyly ask for a seat at the table. I have done it plenty of times.
Shouldn't the members of the enclave proactively reach out themselves, then? As the host country has tried to make things more comfortable for them to start with.
That seem to be the major difference between Western and non-Western countries; we're more cognisant of things like racism/being excluded and have taken steps to try to resolve it - you do not get the same in many other countries at all.
It seems it's much more acceptable to be exclusionary and racist if you're non-white, sometimes.
> Maybe next time the OP should show some curiosity about what their coworkers are joking about, and shyly ask for a seat at the table. I have done it plenty of times.
Yep 100% this is the only decent solution OP has barring leaving the company. It leads to really interesting conversations and you get to learn a lot about a huge portion of the planet's population. Some people go out of their way for these experiences. But it also shouldn't be forced on someone who just wants to collect a paycheck.
A lot of arguments here are getting caught on the wrong details.
It's good to experience new cultures and stretch out of ones comfort zone!
But cultural similarity is also the strongest form of bias in office dynamics.
So, it's great if people go to Indian restaurants. It's not great if people only go to Indian restaurants. It's not great if people only go to steakhouses.
And it's especially not great if colleagues don't make efforts to include less culturally similar colleagues in events, whatever the cultures in question.
When an ethnic group makes a tacit decision to form an enclave and exclude others, there is no "learning to navigate the subculture". Either you are pushed out or you find the leverage to make them stop doing that.
I am aware of Hispania, etc. The thing you're perhaps missing is that 'minignape began their comment with "as a white person...".
That is usually a characterization used by non-Hispanic white people; hence my reply referenced non-Hispanic whites. I also wanted to highlight that they would probably be tolerant of an unfamiliar Hispanic white in-group at their company, but weren't tolerant of a South Asian one.
Hispanic was initially just a way to tag the white non-protestant. Currently is a loose box to include a mix of Mediterranean, African and American natives. Some of this people definitely have American natives on their family lines and other are not even related with Europeans or not much.
When Hispanic mix with Irish, or English, or French or North European, they are simply called "white". A lot of Spaniards are as much "white" in their aspect as one could ask for. They are just labeled as "non white" for outdated reasons but people always chuckle about it. Is just silly.
Actually Whites have as much if not more claims to North America than any other group; there’s multiple times that they came to NA, including the Solutreans of about 12000 years ago: https://insider.si.edu/2012/03/ice-age-mariners-from-europe-... ; plus the Viking settlement of 1021; plus the more recent fact of the USA being settled and turning wildernesses into the agricultural and technological powerhouse of today.
The dominant culture of Google and Microsoft when they were founded was [...]. Now they have Indian CEOs and companies like Cognizant bring in H1B visas from India.
There is nothing organic about that.
Personally I have no experience with Indian co-workers, but I do know that Black and Hispanic people do not exclude whites at all. I have only great experiences with them.
>> non-Hispanic white Americans are not native to the US
Then to where is it native? Don't deny a culture its existence just because it isn't the first culture to arise within a particular area. Example: Mormon culture and religion is "native" the US despite certainly not being the first culture in the area.
I am not the one throwing around the word "native" casually. To cite your example, Salt Lake City was founded less than 200 years ago whereas Puebloans have been living in the area for several thousands of years.
You can certainly make a claim that Mormon culture is "native" to Utah, but I think at 200 v/s 5000+ you can expect that claim to be contested.
Funny enough, the definition has nothing to do with ancestry. "Native: a person born in a specified place or associated with a place by birth, whether subsequently resident there or not."
Yeah, this is the exact sense in which I wrote it originally - but I sensed the screams of 1000 idiots and wrote "native" to try avoid that entire line of conversation. It seems though that my efforts went unnoticed - oh well!
People born in the US are native to the US -or are you arguing for de sanguinis citizenship? Chinese and Indians do follow de sanguinis, so maybe you’re making the case?
I am saying that neither is a problem. We all have to break into social groups at work and even before that (ever watch "Mean Girls"?). This is not a problem specific to any group of people; and OP's fixation is unnecessary in my opinion.
That's a good question. I suppose my point is that this is not something you have "fight back" against. Lots of people get excluded from social groups in professional settings due to some silly link that their coworkers have with each other.
Learning to overcome your lack of cultural commonality with coworkers and and breaking into social groups is something that all of us need to do at some point. In my case — I sucked it up, refused to learn golf but bonded with coworkers over board games; and ate the appetizers at the steakhouse.
A tip for OP would be to try doing the equivalent thing in their context. Go up to your Indian coworkers and ask if you can accompany them to the restaurant. I promise you it will be fine.
I can’t seem to say no to a bit of gulab jamun. And saag, with or without paneer. How healthy is saag? I tell myself it’s mostly spinach but I know there is milk and milk fat in there usually I think and maybe butter?
as a foreign/outsider working in a company, the expectation lies on the outsider to adapt to local/company culture.
it is interesting to observe how people react to being in such a position when they are in a foreign work culture in their own soil. neither parties are completely at the right, but the fact that it is completely fine in one side but unacceptable for the other is so fascinating to me.
i’m sorry for your experience(s) and how frustrating that must be. what you’ve experienced isn’t “right” and while it’s valid that you bring it up as a general concern and experience, it comes across as though you’re justifying how OP experiences their own work environment. as someone who has essentially experienced the same treatment, but from the opposite side, this is an opportunity you had to validate and confirm the presence of such behavior while expanding the scope of its presence. now we’re hung up on restaurants and golf courses and choosing sides instead of discussing the core problem
I am just using a signature American phrase[1]. If anything, this is a mark of how assimilated I am!
I mean no contempt; I am happy to live in a flyover state. Also, the state did not "allow me" to live here, the Federal Government did; as anyone with an elementary knowledge of American government principles should be able to discern.
Your response though, seems to show some anti-immigrant anger. I am sorry you feel that way, and hope you find happiness!
What do you think the word "Flyover" means? You live in it now, they let you in so you're not flying over it. It's obviously derogatory, and even your link says it's derogatory. That'd be like me going to India, and then complaining "As an American living next to untouchables..."
Here's the relevant quote from the wikipedia that you're misusing:
> The origins of the phrases and the attitudes of their supposed users are a source of debate in American culture; the terms are often regarded as pejoratives, but are sometimes "reclaimed" and used defensively.[1]
So no, it is not "obviously derogatory", and the link does not say that.
I'd identify it as self deprecation as a form of social ingratiation, just have to be careful with that as self deprecation can go beyond the boundary of self.
That's a possibility. Here are other possibilities - the US resident who originally commented may have been:
- unaware of the phrase's derogatory meaning
- aware, but relishing it, as they resent the state and don't like living there
- aware, but they think the word has a useful non-derogatory use
- aware, and has no strong opinion either way
All things which in reality would be legitimate in various circumstances. Speculating in the first place seems silly to me, and only started because one commenter apparently didn't like the idea of a non-US native having a negative opinion about the US so much that they are (pardon my bluntness) a bit overly sensitive on the issue.
American States have their own culture and identity. The ideals of America was never being an economic zone to house the entire third world, who think the only utility of a state should be to fly over it.
The founding of the American colonies was very much a gutter for economic classes. Warren Buffet wouldn’t exist today without European trash being indentured.
Are you aware that the US ranks below Romania, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba and Thailand on the UN's sustainable development report from 2024?
It might be appropriate to update your picture of the place to reflect the reality. Your views here seem to be predicated on some notion of the US as a place the entire "third world" wants to move to - perhaps you should consider the fact that it's not really top of everyone's list anymore?
With some notable exceptions where it may well be top of the list - the obvious example being some third-level institutions there who have prestige and networking opportunities which are hard to beat, if you can afford it.
> Are you aware that the US ranks below Romania, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba and Thailand on the UN's sustainable development report from 2024?
Are you aware of how shit of a metric that is? It's literally the %age of GDP spent on sustainable energy, so the US could still be spending more than all those countries combined and still have a lower %age.
Let's also not forget who gives out the loans for sustainable development, and who sets up the economic incentives.
This is also the equivalent of saying "You're much less likely to get robbed in Africa, they have a faster declining crime rate than Europe." As a baseline Europe is safer and it's therefore harder to decrease the crime rate further[0]. Going from 100 murders a day to 89 is not better than going from 10 to 9.
As an Indian immigrant I had noticed this very early on too. It made me very uncomfortable when some of us would crack jokes in non-English language while there were others around who didn't understand the language. After first few years I stopped working for companies that had mostly Indians in IT. I must say I have been lucky since then to always find a good mix of diverse backgrounds in my team that it has not been a problem.
As a fellow Indian immigrant, I actually share your discomfort, and always try to be inclusive and diverse in my social groups. Most of my Indian coworkers and friends behave this way — we came to the US to be a part of a mixed culture, so our social groups should be diverse.
What makes me uncomfortable is that this inclusivity is increasingly being taken for granted to the point where not having it starts conversations about how to "fight back".
Even though it's not my preference I don't think there is anything wrong with Indians cracking jokes in a non-English language, or going to a restaurant by themselves. You will find that Americans will mysteriously be far more tolerant of, say, a group of French people talking among themselves in French; and going to a French restaurant as a group.
In public, yeah people probably wouldn't care about french speakers, but in a shared environment I definitely would prefer they speak English. My brother use to have to tell his Dutch-Canadian in-laws to speak English when we were at his house. I'd feel the same way at work.
I am from slavic lands, and found out that I prefer not to work within mostly slavic teams, as any other teams with high genetic and cultural cohesions.
I’ve actually had a very different experience — including in my interactions with Cognizant as a vendor. Indian managers acting utterly cruel and abusive to Indian line workers (especially remote or H1B), while being generally kind and accommodating to non-Indian team members. Maybe there was a class/caste thing at play that was totally opaque to me. It was an extremely uncomfortable environment to work in.
Even as an Indian, I don't know how that could be tackled, it seems to be kind of systemic.
I'd always been around people from all sorts of places, and many of the schools I went to would intentionally keep kids of similar origins apart to force them to mingle with others, so I grew up to prefer being around people from different places over just sticking with other Indians. I've had several experiences of running into people who seem to take pride in being the way you describe. My interpretation has been that they have a chip on their shoulder about not being "westerners" and view anyone who is better integrated as being some sort of traitor.
For now, I've only had to experience it in school and university. It's been awful every time. Yours is also a sentiment many people have expressed to me about other Indians once they've opened up to me and realized I won't care if they say something that could be racist.
Cultural bonding is natural, but it's critical that it doesn't undermine team spirit or create divisions. Is there any possibility to escalate the issue with your immediate manager?
>All these culture things (except for the first regarding PO which is spit-in-the-face level of unprofessionalism) add up,
you said it yourself, the first one was unprofessional and should be avoided and may be cause for action. The other things, learn to live as the minority in a group and accept what the group values.
I mean maybe your colleagues follow suit about eating Indian food because Indian food is delicious? "Hey you guys know a good Indian food place around here - that's great!" would be my response.
I’m gonna dip into politics a bit for my assertion that “fight racism with racism” isn’t a great move, either for the societal long term or the personal/legal short term.
You could perhaps assume idealism in 2020. Four years later it is clear that DEI is used as a wedge to displace those you do not like and replace them with unskilled believers.
Please don't take this personally, or as an attack on you. But having seen DEI first-hand, and the "equally qualified" people it has actively displaced and disenfranchised, I'd have to say that this view avoids the ugly reality on the ground wrt DEI. There is an entire country currently affected by it's poor implementation, and it's failure is just seen as more reason for efforts to be doubled and for more-extreme quotas to be put in place.
There's nothing personal to take. So you shouldn't take it personally.
Perhaps, instead we can think about how could it be taken it professionally..
There's equal or better qualified candidates for every position that don't make it to the table because of existing gatekeeping.
That would likely have the effect of helping borderline candidates who can fail upwards, maybe do that a little less... or level up.
What's curious is the presumption that one persons experience or interpretation (yours) doesn't mean a better perspective, experience can't exist.
Is it possible you might not be the only one experiencing DEI?
Gatekeeping has been a thing that's existed for a very, very, very long time. Often to the benefit of many of the people complaining about new kinds of space-making that affect gatekeeping that they didn't realize benefitted them.
This current wave of DEI is definitely early. It's not perfect. Neither was the gatekeeping that preceded it.
Other things that were early got a lot more leeway and understanding. But it can shows what some folks want to see happen (or not happen) one way or the other.
Have you been on the receiving end of DEI? The same way a minority has been on the receiving end of racism?
We can all wax lyrical and paint pretty pictures about the noble goals of DEI. But till we get an equal and fair world, the ugly picture is that DEI starts by dividing the pie into smaller parts, and taking from one to give to another, instead of making the pie bigger for everyone.
And if history is anything to go by, most "DEI"-like efforts never ever reach that end-goal. They perpetuate indefinitely until they create yet another oppressed or previously-disadvantaged class, and the cycle will just repeat.
If holding space for equally qualified candidates is preferential treatment, is it having to exist because of the gatekeeping that existed before it?
Still, it remains important for any practice to do a good job of helping everyone understand how it's working better.
Too often companies jump to signal trends and keep doing whatever they were all along. Like organizations who's leadership looks nothing like the pool of qualified candidates in the respective country.
Oh that may be the "on-paper" goal of DEI, and I'd be all for it if it stayed that way; it sounds very very fair. But it never stays that way, and quotas enter the picture before long.
Tricky and slippery rationalizations are something I try to be mindful of.
I put forward a single simple point. Since it's resonating in a response, it might be worth considering why, and see how our viewpoints form and how much of it might be rooted in isolating emotions like fear.
In discussing, an open mind to me is one that can openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't their own, and seeing if they're open to growing or changing their viewpoint.
Maybe.. the way your country does DEI is trying to do the opposite of the race based separation it did prior and doesn't know if any other levers exist?
One nice thing is you're inheriting the world and can help make it the way you think it should be instead of wanting to be a passive beneficiary of past gatekeeping baselines.
Hypothetically speaking... could openly entertain a viewpoint that isn't our own.. be similar to believing software could be better, if it was only improved, by trying to improve ourselves and building software better?
> DEI is more about getting equally qualified candidates to the table that are ignored or missed.
This is the first time I've heard that. The normal party line is that, yes, they're worse at the job but it's because they never got the opportunity to learn. You can observe in colleges that DEI-appointed students do massively worse overall despite probably being given even more leeway than normal students.
Wow, ok. So that kind of idea is really completely new, so it can't be valid?
I think it's pretty easy to go learn the spectrum of DEI.
The world is generally run with gatekeeping, which means withholding access to opportunity to improve one's life to a selected group for a long time.
It's possible that your country may codify gatekeeping and privilege, and the only way they may know how is to do the same thing in the opposite way.
It might not be a good way of holding space for qualified candidates to get to the same table, or even, not allowing an average person to "get a chance" to fail upwards except if you're from one background.
The relevance of DEI shouldn't be held exclusively with its implementation at any given time, as long as it's improving. Kind of like software, maybe.
I'm not sure where your observation is based on - happy to learn and read from any studies though beyond anecdotal differences.
It would be like generalizing that lots of rich kids end up doing nothing as well after their parents pay for their way into and school. Doesn't make it true as a generalization of everyone though.
> Wow, ok. So that kind of idea is really completely new, so it can't be valid?
Theoretically it could be, but you should be aware if your argument directly contradicts years of other people advocating for DEI. The idea being sold isn't "we need jobs to be more merit based" but "we don't have enough merit and have to discriminate".
> It's possible that your country may codify gatekeeping and privilege, and the only way they may know how is to do the same thing in the opposite way.
My country, the US, codifies that you're not allowed to racially discriminate. Somehow this doesn't stop people from declaring that we must explicitly perform racially discrimination in order to offset some perceived discrimination.
> The relevance of DEI shouldn't be held exclusively with its implementation at any given time, as long as it's improving. Kind of like software, maybe.
The relevance is that I'm a race it explicitly disadvantages, and so it my family. It's illegal, racial discrimination is apparently immoral when it's done to anyone else, and it needs to go.
> I'm not sure where your observation is based on - happy to learn and read from any studies though beyond anecdotal differences.
Go look at medical schools. High scoring Whites and Asians are about as likely to get in as extremely poorly performing Black students.
Your country, explicitly codifies race based tracking in universities, long before this DEI wave. It's so incredibly wack. Other countries have better language to identify anything unique and under-represented, and maybe are less awkward but still awkward at it.
Historically, the creation of places of higher learning in the US were not created for women to be accepted, let alone people of color.
It's helpful to take a more historical look at how those pesky college application forms got the checkboxes they did, and how they were added at the moments of change in the particular decade. Imagine all the people who don't get counted.
What kind of system names an entire group of people a whole continent like Asia? :)
There is historical merit to people not being counted... not counting... or existing.. or qualifying as human enough to vote.
When it comes to data.. what gets measured, gets managed.. and maybe some of the wording of what got measured had some unconscious bias.
It's also not about whataboutism seeking a perfect solution to undermine change that is trying to be better for more people.
I have some international experience in the academic industry and student data collection, management, etc. Race based data in the US always stands out compared to other countries.
While it's true that disadvantaged children regardless of background can have similar challenges, its no contest that people of color experience it so very much more.
Discrimination starts with the contract that there is a privileged contract place prior to it being adjusted for said offence.
There are awful references to suggesting people of color "work harder" .. maybe that is advice for everyone?
I'm not going to participate in taking shots at any one group of students, especially black students who are way more disadvantaged per capita than any other.
About the med-school link - isn't it a little dated (and risking a stereotype) to believe that the best grades are the only thing important about getting into med school? Great doctors are well rounded people who connect with and help all walks of life - understanding people is a key skill beyond maniacal memorization and regurgitation for years of study to only stop and impossibly be behind research after graduation.
It is if you look at it in a divisive, "us" vs "them" fashion. However, it's to try and make up for hundreds or more years of active suppression and exclusion from society and opportunities.
Ask yourselves, who paid for your education? Was it pulled up by the bootstraps rags-to-riches, or did you get help from e.g. family? Where did you grow up, and how did that contribute to your current career / life?
Now imagine you didn't have those opportunities, because your family (going back generations) never was able to build up generational wealth and comfort.
DEI is an attempt to make up for that. Is it ideal? No. Does it come across as discrimination to the priviledged people / classes? Sure. Does it personally affect you? Probably not, but I don't know you (generalised you, the reader).
That said, if you don't like DEI, vote and act accordingly. Work to make sure everyone earns a liveable wage, owns a house, gets a good education and consequent steady job opportunities regardless of familial wealth. Be and act anti-racist and anti-classist, because it's not enough to simply "not be racist".
It is hard only about the first 10 years. Then you'll learn to stop worrying and love that. And the whole country will get closer to that with the first Indian President. And there will also be the first Chinese, and the first Hispanic Presidents. World is changing. And the "fighting back" is like pissing against the wind.
Now imagine being a minority. You're white colleagues making white jokes. Hiring only white people. Going to white restaurants. Etc... I like when a privileged class gets a contact high of the real world for so many and can't handle it. Employment discrimination is one thing. Having friends and going to lunch is another. For the record, as a white man I've never met, in my entire life, a single Indian person who refused to be friends with me and was only friends with other Indian people. I'm sure they exist. There are ass holes everywhere. This is not an epidemic. However, your response reeks of privilege. "How is it possible I'm not on top?!?!?"
I think thats an unfair reading of the comment you replied to - racist and exclusionary behaviour is rightly no longer tolerated in policy intent (if not always in actuality) at professional corporations.
The issue highlighted here is that it seems at times that there are exceptions that people are afraid to call out and criticise, especially at lower levels.
I don’t have an opinion if someone is wondering whether one of those cultures is more worthwhile to seek acceptance. But I learned a lot about exclusion from an Indian coworker who was not heterosexual.
Indian product owner taking mostly to Indian peer developers, bypassing normal communication channels. Indians being friendly with each other and stone cold with the rest.
Indians bringing Indian jokes to the table, with no outsider hoping to understand these. Indians bonding to go to Indian restaurants during lunch break, so now most of the colleagues follow suit, how to stop it all?
All these culture things (except for the first regarding PO which is spit-in-the-face level of unprofessionalism) add up, and then you find yourself in a corporation described in other messages of this thread.
I had to offboard from multiple projects throughout my career because development was hijacked by Indian cronyism.