> Why don't we need to be careful about "delegitimizing" the beliefs of people who think black people are inherently inferior or gay people are inherently immoral?
This is imposing the cultural dynamics of American racial politics onto an issue with a completely different historical and cultural context. I wasn't talking about people who are expressing a belief of castes being inferior, I was talking about activists who depict a religious group and other castes in a specific light based on a factually inaccurate and outdated reading of history. Hence why I used the world "perspectives" and not "beliefs."
I've been to about 3 of these Equality Labs workshops and just gave up on them because in each one they were throwing around "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" level disinformation about Hinduism, and specific Brahmin groups particularly, while basically shouting down anyone saying things that disagree with their framings of historical events or philosophical references.
I've been to about 3 of these Equality Labs workshops and just gave up on them because in each one they were throwing around "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" level disinformation
Ah, I see how it could cause problems with that type of "equality lab". The equality, discrimination, etc training I've had was very different, and boiled down to "here is a list of behaviors; if you do any of them or anything like any of them your ass is fired."
> I've had was very different, and boiled down to "here is a list of behaviors; if you do any of them or anything like any of them your ass is fired."
Yeah this is good in general but needs tempering through a bit of conflict resolution/appeal process built in. Discrimination issues can often just be the result of misinterpretations and blind spots people have, especially when bridging cultural divides. There's some stuff that crosses a clear red line, but most behaviors are subtle and often unintentional and the approach to dealing with them productively should more closely resemble relationship/marriage counseling or the sorts of reconciliation processes they do in post-conflict zones.
The ones I went to involved being told I needed to make "anti-casteism" part of my identity and pick arguments with my aunts and uncles when they make 'problematic' statements. And it then came with a side of misquotes of The Bhagavad Gita and selective quotations out of the Manusmriti to argue that simply identifying yourself as a Hindu is inherently discriminatory and violent towards lower castes. As a history major and religious studies minor in college I took issue with just about every historical and theological "fact" they brought up but didn't think it was worth arguing. But there was nothing particular to the organization we were in and no specific instances of issues reported internally by anyone so I had a hard time understanding why this was happening.
There's a particular historical narrative among certain political movements in India that depict Brahmins as basically collaborating to institute a conspiracy to to impose a caste hierarchy across all of Indian society for millennia. It's a very simplistic and one-sided reading of Indian history and Hindu philosophy, but it has gained a lot of traction within social justice/DEI spaces and particularly with groups that are more focused on pushing an ideological project.
It would be analogous to having a Louis Farrakhan disciple on to talk about being Muslim in the workplace. There are many better people to raise those issues who will bring them without the side of eliminationist rhetoric. It's one thing to meme about people with privilege or be dismissive in a casual context, but at the workplace (or really any public venue) that sort of talk is just mean. It's especially frustrating because this discrimination actually is a blight on Indian society (though most of the issues in the US are in the realm of microaggressions rather than structural or overt discrimination). But that doesn't excuse just peddling nonsense in response.
The ones I went to involved being told I needed to make "anti-casteism" part of my identity and pick arguments with my aunts and uncles when they make 'problematic' statements
I admire that you kept your composure in the face of such ludicrous demands. An employer has to be insane to think they can even suggest how I should interact with my own family.
This wasn’t an employer, it was a volunteer effort by a Hindu group to organize legal representation for Syrian refugees caught up in Trump’s Muslim ban. There were a few people on the committee who were really intent on spending time doing stuff like this instead of connecting people to legal resources they needed.
The group has, since, dissolved for obvious reasons.
This is imposing the cultural dynamics of American racial politics onto an issue with a completely different historical and cultural context. I wasn't talking about people who are expressing a belief of castes being inferior, I was talking about activists who depict a religious group and other castes in a specific light based on a factually inaccurate and outdated reading of history. Hence why I used the world "perspectives" and not "beliefs."
I've been to about 3 of these Equality Labs workshops and just gave up on them because in each one they were throwing around "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" level disinformation about Hinduism, and specific Brahmin groups particularly, while basically shouting down anyone saying things that disagree with their framings of historical events or philosophical references.