[nanijoe]

What part of what he said was taken out of context? Up until a few years ago, there were no examples of successful black Quarterbacks in the NFL.. IF everyone just looked at that "fact", there would still be none. Data can be used to justify anything you like, as long as you are already sufficiently biased.

[defen]

Warren Moon, Randall Cunningham...anyway, there were "no successful black quarterbacks" because the pipeline of such players simply did not exist, for reasons outside the NFL's control. It's not like you had guys who were ready and able to play the position who just couldn't get jobs. The claim being made here is that you have talented people who would be able to succeed, if only Paul Graham would stop being a racist and give them money.

As far as I know this all started with a valleywag article a couple days ago, that somehow turned (paraphrased) "Something we've noticed after funding 500+ startups is that people with difficult-to-understand accents have trouble raising money and recruiting cofounders/employees" into "Paul Graham is a racist xenophobe who hates immigrants, pregnant women, and probably non-white people too."

[dylangs1030]

Bad example. There is nothing intrinsically different between a black QB and a white one, all other things being equal.

All other things being equal, there is a lot of difference between what an eloquent speaker can achieve and what a heavily accented speaker can achieve in the role of CEO.

This has nothing to do with preconceived bias. This has to do with Paul Graham's examination, over the course of funding over 500 different startups and his experience in that entire domain as a whole, that foreign accents are not desirable. The data is there; your bias prevents you from seeing it because you're misinterpreting it as discriminatory.

[auctiontheory]

You present "eloquent" and "heavily accented" as if they were diametrically opposite. In fact, they are on different axes.

[dylangs1030]

I suppose I could have said "coherent and articulate" instead of "heavily accented" so you're right. But I think my point stands.