Want to regulate big tech? Start by ending caste discrimination.
The best bet to shake up big tech is to start with tech workers. I worked for Google for eleven years, on products like Docs, Search and News. As I grew from an individual contributor to a senior people manager, I also advocated for workers’ rights in the form of leading a global walkout against sexual harassment and successfully lobbying for Google to end its policy of forced arbitration — a policy change now codified in federal law. Now I’m fighting for caste equity, starting with SB 403: A Bill to End Discrimination on the Basis of Caste, introduced into the California State Senate today by Senator Wahab (District 10).
Watch the livestream of the bill’s introduction here. Read more: Associated Press, CNN, The Washington Post, NBC Bay Area News, NPR, BBC
I am a second generation South Asian American. Like many children of immigrants, the thought of speaking out against my trillion dollar employer seemed unfathomable. My approach was always to just be really good at my job so that I could use my internal capital to make important changes from within the company. However, as I went from pet to threat, I ran out of options to simultaneously advocate for my coworkers’ civil rights and keep Google executives comfortable.
In September 2021, two Google employees approached me confidentially about the caste discrimination they had witnessed at the company. They shared the struggles they faced simply having a talk at Google about caste discrimination. I agreed to host this talk with guest speaker Thenmozhi Soundararajan in the following Spring as part of a Diversity & Inclusion Discussion Series within my own team. This talk would have educated my former colleagues about how caste-based discrimination is a form of workplace discrimination, how this hierarchical system excludes people from public and private spaces based on a combination of endogamy, ancestry and class … and how it permeates multiple sectors of labor in America. The talk would have helped us determine whether the products we were building may have inadvertently been amplifying caste-based biases — simply due to a lack of understanding of how caste discrimination works.
However, Google canceled the talk. When I challenged the decision, citing the disproportionate reaction to fear of a heckler’s veto, Google retaliated against me for “disrupting the workplace.” The company automatically lowered my performance rating for the next cycle, affecting my compensation, and deemed me ineligible for promotion for an unknown period of time. When I left Google, email threads that denied caste discrimination, continued to spread throughout the company unchecked. Caste-privileged workers labeled caste-oppressed workers as less educated and unable to grasp the historical roots of the caste system. Conflating this civil rights issue with one of religious freedom, some employees deemed any mention of caste discrimination as Hindu-phobic and a form of reverse discrimination.
In my personal life, people created what appeared to be legitimate online dating profiles for me on Zoosk and Match, much to the surprise of my husband. While I was somewhat prepared for the fundamentalists on Twitter to brand me as a “hate monger”, “black swine” and a “disgrace to my parents’ name”, I was not prepared to be accosted on the street by someone who gestured the threat of a weapon to the head.
I filed a counter complaint and asked parent company Alphabet for an investigation into Google leadership, citing several instances where Google VPs and executive officers violated conduct policies and Google’s own workplace commitments. Google accused me of publicly naming employees who opposed the talk, but could not point to a shred of evidence where I had done such a thing — because I would never do that. Alphabet enlisted counsel from Jones Day to conduct an investigation that, four months later, concluded Google did nothing wrong. Alphabet issued no written report or response to the thirteen page complaint I filed, which contained screenshots and emails of several VPs and directors breaking HR protocols.
Now, as my complaint sits with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, California Civil Rights Department, and the corresponding New York departments for six months and counting, Google continues to resist making the changes that would give members of all castes protection in the workplace.
I’m not surprised. When caste is not a protected category, a company like Google will continue to claim its discrimination is not illegal.
But not for long.
While Google drags its heels, California charges forward. Today, Senator Wahab introduces the first state legislation in this country’s history to name and protect against caste-based discrimination with SB 403, a bill to end Discrimination on the Basis of Caste. This bill gives California’s nineteen million workers, 10% of whom work in tech alone, true legal recourse when experiencing workplace discrimination based on caste. To my former 82,000 Google co-workers here in California, this bill ensures that when a company claims it has a zero-tolerance policy for caste-based discrimination — there will be consequences when that claim turns out to NOT be true.
To all the workers at Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook who have come forward to share their experiences of caste-based discrimination, this bill demonstrates a level of cultural competency sorely lacking by your employers. While Asians hold over 40% of technical roles at Silicon Valley’s top twenty companies, this bill recognizes that Asians are not a monolith. It recognizes that the 5.4 million South Asians in this country are just as diverse as any other group. And that minority groups can perpetuate discrimination within their own, weaponizing the common fear of losing employer sponsorship for immigration visas and greencards to ensure the caste-oppressed stay silent and don’t ‘rock the boat’ by reporting discrimination. And they bank on the willful ignorance of the outside majority to continue. SB 403 requires an end to that ignorance for compliance with the law.
California workers, tell your state senator that you stand firmly against caste-based discrimination. Tell your state senator that to effectively represent you, they should co-sponsor SB 403. Seattle already made history by becoming the first city to ban caste discrimination in the United States. May California make history again this year by being the first state to do the same with SB 403, the bill to end Discrimination on the Basis of Caste.
