[ATTW-L] tech comm & caste ? ? ?

[Joseph Jeyaraj]

Should we as technical communicators and instructors of technical communicators be aware of caste, since 800,000 people of Indian background now work in big tech in the USA and employers are faced with possible lawsuits over caste discrimination.

The State of California recently allowed a discrimination suit against Cisco on the basis of caste because a man belonging to the Untouchable caste at the bottom of the caste structure complained that his superiors at Cisco belonging to the Brahmin caste at the top of the caste hierarchy had treated him badly.

Following that there have been around 250 or so reports of discrimination in big tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, places where technical and professional writing occurs.

(Caste is a complex structure but a crude summary would be as follows:  As per what I know informally the upper castes would comprise of the Brahmin community , the priestly class, at the top followed by the warrior community (kshatriyas) and then the trading community (banias).  The community of untouchables (Dalits) would be located at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Gandhi, for example,  belonged to the bania caste & the mother of the current VP pick to the Brahmin caste. Segregation reportedly is practiced unofficially based on caste in various places in the old country as well including the city with which the current VP pick and the current VP pick's grandfather are associated.)

It is as well reported that this is a problem in universities stateside among students from this part of the world, and since mention was made of faculty mentoring international students it raises the question as to whether those faculty mentored any dalits.

I brought up the topic of caste with my teachers while I was a student as well.

While researching international technical writing and working on “postcolonial technical writing” as a student, I had to teach myself and my teachers.