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Comment by earl | Hacker News Reader

The quote from Adria Richards is breathtaking [1]: "The guy he had on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, he’s known for several years…and he basically called him a clown. Clarence Wooten sold his company, ImageCafe, for $23 million to Network Solutions in 1999, that’s over 10 years before Arrington sold TechCrunch to AOL for the same amount.

I’ve now likened it to Southern White male slave owner saying he has no idea why there are mixed babies cropping up on this plantation even though he damn well knows he’s been creeping down to the sheds at night.".

So Arrington being clueless about the structural causes of racial differences in the valley is just like rape? No one has accused him of being personally discriminatory. There must be some other way to interpret her statement because Violet included it as well without comment...

[1] http://butyoureagirl.com/12611/arrington-and-cnn-problem-or-...

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Here's what she's referring to: "His startup’s really cool. But he could’ve launched a clown show on stage, and I would’ve put him up there, absolutely."

Arrington said he put Clarence Wooten up on the stage just because he's black. "He could've launched a clown show," and he still would've had him up there. Because he's black. That torpedoes whatever merit Wooten had in the eyes of the audience. Looking at Wooten's track record, it's clear that he's competent, so Arrington probably didn't mean what he said, but people really need to understand the implications of the words they use.

Her analogy is weird, though.

Why would the phrase "clown show" make you think "black"?

If he said "I would put KNuth on stage even if he wanted to launch a clown show", it doesn't sound like a mocking statement, but one of unconditional approval.

It wasn't because of "clown show," nor was it an assumption. The original article provides the context, and Arrington hasn't disputed the reporter's characterization of his statement.

"In the documentary, which airs November 13, Arrington talked about his difficulties finding African-American entrepreneurs to launch their ventures at his TechCrunch Disrupt conference -- and suggested he would accept almost any black entrepreneur, regardless of merit."

Read the article for the full context. It's pretty clear what he's saying. http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/27/technology/silicon_valley_di...

I think you've answered your own question here.

I'd put Knuth on stage, because, he's Knuth. You know he'd have something interesting to say that would be relevant to your audience, assuming your audience was the typical reader of this site, of course.

My wife is an avid cook. If she attended a conference on cooking and the organizer put Knuth on stage because he wanted greater representation on cooking from the programming community, even if Knuth was secretly a brilliant cook, the audience would dismiss him.

This is, obviously, further complicated by the fact that putting a person on stage because of an attribute that no person has control over is an unacceptable bias. I'm not saying that's what happened (clearly it's not because the guy had been successful in the past), I'm just putting into context how a statement like that is perceived.

The two are not mutually exclusive (having merit, and being promoted out of a desire to be more diverse and inclusive). For something like Techcrunch Disrupt, being diverse - whether about race, gender, type of ideas, geography, social background - is reasonable and valuable, because it gives a greater chance of serving a range of purposes from providing role models to giving valuable insight of issues unique to whatever background the person in question brings to the table.

It's a bizarre thing to criticize.

Promoting diverse individuals who merit promotion is great. Promoting diverse individuals who do not merit promotion is harmful to the diverse individuals who do merit promotion because people will assume that they're being promoted for diversity instead of merit. That is a very bad thing and worth criticizing. Again, Arrington didn't actually do this since the person in question is objectively impressive, but saying that he would promote someone for diversity's sake is unquestionably bad.

The purpose of putting people on stage is not always to showcase just the best, but often to showcase different viewpoints and different ideas.

Promoting just the "best" from the viewpoint of a single background - now that is arrogant and harmful because it assumes you actually know best. If Mike always knew who was best to promote, he'd be a billionaire and every company he invested on would have people everywhere throwing money at them.

As such, especially for something like Techcrunch Disrupt, it is valuable to promote a diverse group - whether based on race, socioeconomics, geography, gender - especially if a group is severely underrepresented - to get a wider view and perhaps learn something from it.

If anything, a great deal of hidden racism is a direct result of people insisting on picking what they think is "best" without taking into account the hidden biases brought by their upbringing, school background etc. and never being exposed to a more diverse set of views.

I buy that argument for a conference of ideas, but not for a business competition. The former is about exposing people to new ideas; the latter is about exposing promising companies and investors to each other. Getting people with diverse backgrounds to speak at a conference of ideas is doing the audience a favor, but this whole conversation has been about doing underrepresented minorities a favor.

Promoting underrepresented minorities based on their status does not help underrepresented minorities. It hurts. It might help the people who are blessed to be in their presence, but the assumption of pro-minority bias makes people think less of minorities when that becomes a common practice. It should be discouraged.

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