[roguecoder]

I have seen a few on Hacker's News but, like gender posts, they get flagged off the front page uber-quick.

The problem, and why I ignored your comment here to start with, is that you phrase is as "yes, but..." "Yes, that's bad, but why aren't you focusing on this totally different thing!?!" That's a form of derailing, especially when you suggest that those things are important because of how they affect men, rather than that both African-American men and women may face additional challenges entering our industry.

A positive way to engage in this specific effort, and thus not derail, might be to ask the organizer, "was there any difference in the demographics of this relative to other hackathons in terms of race? I am curious if the inclusiveness had any spillover effect."

That way, instead of changing the subject you are deepening your engagement with the topic at hand. If you would like people to instead stop talking about this post and talk about something different, you will probably have much better luck posting a different article where such conversations wouldn't be off-topic and derailing.