I don't think anybody is accusing YC of racism or any other discrimination. The causal relationships are higher order ones than that, but no less important for it.
Race is a difficult subject to address, but it doesn't have to be. Increased openness in the discussion is always better. In the context of relationships, you'll often hear someone say that a person is "guarded". This usually means that they don't open themselves to being hurt by averting feelings of affection from others. In other words, if they never become "close" with another person, they can't feel the pain of loss.
With regard to racism, if we avoid the discussion altogether, we are simply avoid the pain of being reminded that it exists. The appropriate response is not to shy away from the conversation, but to open yourself to it. Answer the question based on the facts, but address the question of "why" separately. There may very well be good reasons why. There may not. We should strive to understand the difference.
I try to fight the urge to set up defenses to conversations I think may be going a certain direction. By putting up our defenses early, we only strengthen the divide rather than break it down.
I don't see the question or the discussion so far as meeting the standard for "An interesting new phenomena." It looks like something that would be better served over on Quora than on HN. It's a reasonable question, but just as many subjects--explicitly including politics--are of interest to HN's readerships but still not HN-worthy, it doesn't appear to meet the standards in the FAQ for the front page.
Discussions of minority participation in technology and entrepreneurship goes on ad nauseaum elsewhere. If it is to come up here out of the blue, we ought to have some interesting angle to YCombinator funding. For example, if we know that YCombinator funds double the proportion of the rest of the industry, that would be interesting and new.
If we have no evidence of anything interesting or new, the question hardly seems like Hacker News. If it's a simple question, an email to Paul Graham would probably obtain a simple answer.
Clearly (1) not all Hacker News questions are in reference to "an interesting new phenomena" and (2) this question isn't a generic discussion of "minority participation" but a YCombinator specific question, which is why it's germane to this forum.
I respect you a great deal and that's why I'm disappointed in this comment. It's not only because it's uncharacteristically obtuse, but because it smacks of a disturbing syndrome I've seen in some fellow black people who've "made it."
In situations where race comes up, people with this issue go out of their way to let their non-black peers know that they are not interested in discussing race ... unlike all those other blacks they may have heard about. It's no different from a woman trying to fit in with male colleagues by going out of her way to slam any female colleague who files a sexual harassment complaint. It's sad, unnecessary, and adds nothing substantive to the discussion. Let's not look down our noses at other people to make ourselves looks bigger.
The question of whether a black person has ever been picked for YCombinator is interesting and at the very least certainly shouldn't be verboten.
Here's an "Interesting new phenomena" for you to chew on: How dare you suggest that I'm Black? My father is Scottish-Canadian. I went to St. Andrews, a Scottish-themed boarding school. I grew up listening to Rush. I play hockey. I listen to Jazz music. I ride a mountain bike. I'm told I speak with a standard North American accent. What is this "Black" thing you speak of?
Now before you answer, let me tell you that I consider that a very interesting question. And the ramifications are extremely interesting to me. I love discussing the question of "Is raganwald actually black?" But is it Hacker News? No. So there you have an example of an issue around "blackness" or "race" that is of great interest to me, but that I do not consider Hacker News.
So I say to you that you are mistaken in conflating my suggestion that this question is not Hacker News with some allegations around being disinterested in discussing race. I am interested, I just don't want to discuss it here. I accept that you consider the original question interesting. However, I reject your personal suggestions about my motivations.
Here's an "Interesting new phenomena" for you to chew on: How dare you suggest that I'm Black? My father is Scottish-Canadian. I went to St. Andrews, a Scottish-themed boarding school. I grew up listening to Rush. I play hockey. I listen to Jazz music. I ride a mountain bike. I'm told I speak with a standard North American accent. What is this "Black" thing you speak of?
I figured you'd say that ... I think you've blogged/spoken about it before and if I'd spent a little more time on the comment, I would have said "are black (or are often considered black by others)." Still applies.
If we dismiss the personal aspect of it, what then of the "substantive" piece of the argument? Are you trying to suggest that any questions about the composition of YCombinator classes should be forbidden on Hacker News? If so, why? And why hasn't this come up for all of the myriad other questions of the same ilk?
I'm not saying anything about the topic. It's really the specific discussion, which at the time I wrote my post, was rather non-specific. Questions I would personally find interesting might include:
"I'm black and interested in applying to YCombinator. Does this matter?"
"13% of the population is black but 25% of the YCombinator founders are black. Why is that?"
"I'm black and pitching my company to VCs. I've noticed that they seem excited after they read my pitch but in person they barrage me with objections and then they don't return my emails. Is it my skin colour or do all founders face this?"
It just seems to me that if HN is going to discuss this, there should be something HN-ish about this and not simply a general, non-specific rehash of a jillion other discussions about the participation or lack of participation by blacks in tech. But you know, I'm just one guy, so who really cares what I think? I'm certainly not going to complain bitterly if the discussion leads to positive change.
I'm not saying anything about the topic. It's really the specific discussion, which at the time I wrote my post, was rather non-specific.
...
It just seems to me that if HN is going to discuss this, there should be something HN-ish about this and not simply a general, non-specific rehash of a jillion other discussions about the participation or lack of participation by blacks in tech.
"Has YC ever founded a black founder?" seems pretty specific and HN-ish to me.
I'm certainly not going to complain bitterly if the discussion leads to positive change.
"An interesting new phenomenon" is used an exception to the rule that politics (and so forth) shouldn't be posted. In the paragraph right before that quote, we find:
Anything that good hackers would find interesting. [...] anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I was at PyCon as well, and observed the exact same anecdote that the OP describes. At my company's booth, the only minorities I can think of who talked to us were more than likely visiting from Europe, Asia, or South America. Therefore, I'm curious, and I'm interested to see the response; not from accusing Y Combinator of racism, as some seem to suggest, but merely to get some data on minority penetration into our field.
There is no "standard" for the front page. We're all smart people, and we can be trusted to make judgments.
I was all set to vote this up until I got to the last paragraph.
It seems that a lot of people have the idea that HN is a democracy, run by the will of the people. Nothing could be further from the truth. pg and the editors have the last word on everything. It's not immediately obvious, because pg doesn't go around saying "I banned this guy because he was a jerk." That's polite of him, but the truth is, quite a few people get banned for being jerks, every day. And quite a few submissions get killed for being off-topic.
Having said that, I agree with you that this is a good submission, and I'm a little dismayed that raganwald is arguing against it. When I saw the subject line, and that it had over 100 comments, I figured it was going to be ugly. I was delightfully surprised to find myself honestly learning something from almost every comment I've read here. I haven't upvoted this much stuff in months. Pretty well restored my faith in humanity, it did.
Actually, there is a standard for the front page, and "We're all smart people, and we can be trusted to make judgements" isn't it.
If it were, there would be no need for moderation. We would never need to flag posts or have moderators kill them, because the voting by the smart people making judgments would drive unworthy posts off the front page without any discussion or intervention.
There are a lot of reasons why moderation needs to trump voting, but that's probably even more OT. For now, I hope you accept that we should be smart, we should exercise our judgment, AND we should sometimes kill a discussion even if it's popular.
p.s. Of course, an argument that moderation trumps voting isn't an argument that this post needs moderation. It gratifies your intellectual curiosity, I get that. So far it doesn't gratify mine, but it could be that I have read an awful lot about this topic over the years and I would like to see an HN discussion have more to say than what I've already read on Reddit over the years, on UseNet, in editorials, and so forth.
For example, if we know that YCombinator funds double the proportion of the rest of the industry, that would be interesting and new.
Based on the other comments here, it seems as though the sample size would surely be too small to give us any meaningful amount of confidence in such statistics.
I see your point. But apologies if this sounds insensitive as I am not American and I am not privy to the social complexities that exists. What I think is that as budding entrepreneurs all trying to figure out some method from this madness, I think we ought to celebrate the success of everyone and anyone who has made it. Black, white, blue, green whatever. Singling out someone because of skin colour I feel almost contravenes the spirit of YC and hacker news. We are all here because of ideals and passion, beliefs and doggedness. I think I speak for most people when I say the community at HN is by and large colour blind.
What makes Michael Seibel special is not because he is Black but because he has succeeded at least on some level where many have tried and failed. So your last sentence "...was just wondering if anyone that looks like ME has EVER made it." is really coming from a wrong angle IMO.
