Why? He has been victimized: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95161
Although he states that race has not permeated his thought process, a casual glance over the books he wants to buy share a decided slant towards race issues:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/SA583Y3SWBA8/ref=...
Bear in mind that I am black, and I am empathetic to him. Put yourself in his shoes, a young guy with a new gig just trying to make it in the Big Apple, and you aren't getting paid much so you have to settle in a seedier part of the city. People attack you and rob you just because of your color. You are trying to do something generative with your life. You were not part of this: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.liu.edu/cw...
Or this: http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/african/2000/lynch_1.jpg
The folks that committed those crimes are long dead. But that is part of the ugliness of racism/tribalism: It's propagated like a tumor to non actors and good people. I've been called an epithet or ten in my day, but I've never been under physical attack like him. I would hope that I would have came to his aid in some way if I saw it happening. I would also hope that I would come away from it without negative racial views of the perpetrators, but am I that noble? I'm not so sure. I was good friends with a Jewish guy in college who got chased after school every day calling him "white boy". He overcame that and saved my ass on many an occassion, but I digress... The human mind evolved friend or foe circuitry tuned to statistics, so the conclusion his mind has come to is somewhat rational.
So what does a man do? If you're of low intelligence and have a proclivity for violence, you become a skinhead. If you're Byrne, you have an above average intelligence, as he seems to, you get your ass out of dodge and read a few books to better inform yourself as to why what happened to you happened.
Again, as a black person I can't agree with his conclusions, but I empathize with him and he would have been within his rights as a human being to fire a pistol at his attackers.
If I mischaracterized him my apologies in advance.
I was actually surprised to see how few race-y books I'd added to the wishlist. There's a sort of illicit thrill to buying something that you can't read in public.
By the way, if you're interested in the lynching issue you might give Thomas Sowell a read. He claims that there were more whites than blacks lynched prior to the Civil War. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell/...
Again, I really appreciate that you can keep an open mind about this. When I first got interested in this issue, I didn't know the ethnic background of the guy who was arguing against me -- if I encountered these views from someone who considered his ethnic group smarter than mine, I would not have been nearly so open.
If you're open to considering the idea further, I would recommend adding http://isteve.blogspot.com and http://gnxp.com to your reading list for a little while. You'll find, as I did, that they present a view of the world that's just more consistent than the one most Americans are raised with.
Good luck. I was going to come up with an elaborate analysis, but it would be wasted. A quick analogy: If you write a post explaining why dell is cheaper than apple, given the same components, you will be severely downmodded. Even if apple is better in every other way, pointing out even a single disadvantage is an affront to people who've bought the whole package, even if they've bought that package because of a single detail.
In Obama's case, that single detail might be: 1) Iraq, 2) Net neutrality, 3) Telecom immunity, 4) Anything else.
ADDENDUM: I'm not going to look it up, but the only time I remember pg being dowmmodded severely was when he criticized (rather lamely, in fact) Ron Paul. So, it's not unusual.
It's because you're a bigot.
Please clarify your question.