My rational has been not based on the color of their skin, english skills, etc. but more the quality of the work force. India has seen a huge boom because of the technical training and expertise of the people, but I think this has caused them to rush students through “training”, and thus diluted the quality of the programmers available.

While the programmers think that they have had training and that they are very good programmers because of the training, many times the training is so sub-par that the programmers have no idea where their skills rank on a broader scale.

I do continue to use and be very happy with the Eastern European programmers. I can understand that my preference for hiring lighter skinned programmers over the darker skinned programmers could be construed as rascist. I think this just happens to be a coincidence, and not the reasoning behind preferring one group of programmers over another.

As far as outsourced call center workers are concerned, I think it is easier to point the finger of rascism at this group, but I’m not sure that is well placed either. The fact is that people in a call center are generally hated. They usually don’t have the knowledge to provide the proper answers to customers, and when one does, we are kind of shocked, amazed, and incredibly grateful.

Most of the time though, customers are disatisfied with call center workers, which I think leads people to make rascist assumptions. I have to deal with several call centers, some are staffed by Indians, some by Russians, some by Americans. All I can say is that they are all awful.

The rascist card may not really be applicable here, and it’s hard to say that it is not just a knee jerk reaction to the treatment and dissatisfaction that we are experiencing.

Almost every project where I’ve contracted has a separate work area, but I’ve never seen one segregated by race.

I don’t think the reasons Mr O’Neill list has anything to do with race as it has to do with the prevalence of cheap labor. As the other submitter points out, cheap labor from other countries (or even from rural areas of the US) is treated with disrespect.

I’ve frequently heard that complaints of body odor equals racism. This is not so. Body odor detracts from the productivity of others. I once sat next to a programmer who constantly had terrible flatulence. I didn’t dislike him because of his race, I disliked him because of his terrible odor.

Also, if someone is difficult to understand, it is difficult to do business with them. This is not a racist attitude.

I guess with time and enough people involved, some people started abusing other people instead of treating them as people. Sometimes I wish none of us had ever recognized (3).

As per children doing this and that – I agree with you. Anytime I hear someone say, “My kids would never do that!” I quickly tell them, “Yes they would.” “Well, maybe that, but never …” “Yes that would do that other thing, too.”

Us people are funny sometimes. We can surf porno sites at age 11 and then turn around and shovel snow for elderly people for no pay (also at age 11). We can raise the standard of living for a generation of people in a poor country or abuse them as if they were goats.

My last manager used to say: “You don’t understand the business. You are not capable to do that. Only we, who live in the U.S., are.” And he wasn’t even an American. He was a Russian who just got a green card.

I think racist attitude not only exists in the U.S. but it has also been cultivated among the new immigrants who think that obtaining a green card means fulfilling The American Dream and is a way to distinguish the superior classes from the inferior ones.