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Is Y Combinator Violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act?

blog.mattlanger.com

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Re: Is Y Combinator Violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act?

#2

Post by mrt0mat0 »

I'm against discrimination and all, but isn't the decision to invest freely based on anything they want? I like the cut of his jib, or those shoes are cool, you're in? This isn't a job, it's an investment of money in a company. I could be way off base though. Opinions?

Re: Is Y Combinator Violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act?

#6

Post by jacquesm »

There was a thread about this yesterday. While the quote does not deserve the beauty prize the conclusions that are drawn from it are as bad as the quote. Paul has already qualified his position and obviously did not mean to come off either racist or xenophobic, he's the guy behind the start-up visa proposal.

See here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-graham-on-startup-founde...

http://www.paulgraham.com/foundervisa.html

Re: Is Y Combinator Violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act?

#7

Post by rlpb »

1. The article quotes "linguistic characteristics common to a specific ethnic group", but the author then seems to conveniently miss off that qualification in his complaint later. The NYT article quotes PG: “You can sound like you’re from Russia,” he said, in the voice of an evil Soviet henchman. “It’s just fine, as long as everyone can understand you.”

2. The NYT article then goes on to say "Graham told the Strikingly founders that Chen’s accent was too strong". It doesn't say what "too strong" means, but given that he previously said "as long as everyone can understand you", it seems reasonable to assume that this was the problem. The NYT article continues by describing how another founder was quiet and uncomfortable at public speaking. I see no discrimination against "linguistic characteristics common to a specific ethnic group" here; just discrimination against not being able to understand the speaker, which seems perfectly fine when considering about investment into people who will need to do considerable public speaking to achieve success.

3. Betteridge's law of headlines wins again.

Re: Is Y Combinator Violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act?

#10

Post by rpm4321 »

What a phony little post. The author appears to be willfully conflating the act of hiring with the act of investing, which are held to completely different legal standards.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies here - but also to pretty much every sentence in the last two paragraphs ending in a question mark.

Edit: Completely forgot to mention the fact that PG has made it abundantly clear that his statements revolve around "the ability to communicate", not some sweeping bias against immigrants - which is absurd in itself, considering how diverse YC funded founders are. I think it's really unfortunate that people seem to want to exploit his candor, when he's essentially giving helpful advice to immigrant founders that it would be well worth their time and effort to improve their communication skills.

Had the author spent even a few minutes researching this, he could have easily discovered the full context of PG's quotes, PG's clarifications, and the fallacy of his investor == employer logic, which really makes it look like he's trying to deliberately mislead readers.

Maybe it's time for PG to update his "What you can't say" essay:

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

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