“I hope Project Include does something useful” is a pretty underhanded insult. You’re a good guy so far that I can tell, and that seems pretty beneath you to say to a group that’s working very hard in an unpaid/volunteer capacity, to make necessary change happen in SV.
The concerns that Project Include, myself, and many others see w/ Peter Thiel’s ethics, aren’t about Thie’s politics. Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, and many other conservative leaders, also have views many would argue to be very anti-women—views that I (and many others) find abhorrent. Thiel gave a substantial donation to a leader who’s embodied the most un-American value there is: xenophobia. Should Trump get elected, Muslims and Hispanic Americans will have a lot to live in fear about. Cruz, Pence, and others? Those candidates are simply disagreeable — not fear-inducing.
Trump has openly endorsed and encouraged vigilante justice at his rallies — which is against the law. He eggs-on and encourages crowd vitriol and violence. He stands-by his advocacy for the Central Park Five to have received the death penalty, even though DNA evidence exonerated them. Trump still thinks they’re guilty, and even though scientific evidence refutes that, Trump’s gut-opinion matters more to him (in this and so many other situations) than anything else. Finally, he role-models non-consensual and denigrating behavior towards women as “normal,” via his many, many documented instances. Unlike Cruz, Pence, and other conservatives, Trump doesn’t simply advocate policies and values about womens roles in society that I (and many others) find to be objectionable, sexist, or gross — Trump models behavior through his lived words and actions that is dehumanizing & traumatic to those on its receiving end. Worse — he’s becoming a hero to so many for those reasons, he knows it, and he’s milking it.
At 42 years old, I can safely assert that no individual in my lifetime, other than maybe David Duke or Strom Thurmond, has ever presented such a danger to the personal safety and dignity of other Americans, as a political candidate, than Donald Trump has. I realize that is an opinion — but I hear it reflected in the Project Include partners’ statement. It’s an opinion my male partner shares with me (tho his fears also extend to Trump’s volatile personality getting us all nuked via WWIII), that my family shares with me, and that many friends share with me. That’s not hyperbole — we are truly afraid for our physical safety and the safety of millions of other American citizens and residents, should Donald Trump attain his sought goal of being voted into the White House. Our physical safety.
Finally, getting back to Thiel — his comments about the 19th Amendment, and about date rape, are the icing on the cake. I have lived with PTSD since I was 15, thanks to “date rape” via my boyfriend at the time. Thiel’s “values” negate my humanity, my intellect, and my value as an American citizen; and, that opinion in particular invalidates the 15 years of pure hell that I lived, trying to understand why I was unable to have sex with the men I dated and why I’d instead fly into involuntary rages of self-defense against those men — sometimes bloodying them badly, always ending-up in tears, confusion & terror — and within a few weeks, a broken relationship. That was my life, and that came to be because of less than one minute of forced sexual penetration I fought and protested against, when I was 15. That incident in my life, was a rape — NOT regret after-the-fact.
That bit in particular, is especially personal. As a founder, we go through enough—I really should have to face that in a person an accelerator investing in my schtick may put before me as a mentor?!
By continuing to engage Thiel as a mentor involved with YC classes, YC leadership is in effect saying that it’s ok to believe (and to seek to advance through writing, through speeches, and through political donations) what Thiel does. As Pao asserted in her piece, here — where do you draw the line? Do you instead believe that no line should be drawn — that if Thiel were a card-carrying member of the KKK, an avowed anti-Semite, or in favor of Eugenics and forced abortion/sterilization of the poor, that those things would be ok, too?
Ambitious people accept values modeled through behavioral acceptance, not values they’re “taught” in here’s-how-to-behave seminars. Maintaining Thiel’s standing as a YC Partner says clearly to YC founders that if in fact you’re that good, it doesn’t matter how you treat other people… or, how you advocate your company treat its staff. That ethics just don’t matter, if you can build companies that measure so highly in market value.
I haven’t even mentioned the Palantir issue, with the USDLS lawsuit alleging bias against Asian American applicants in their hiring practices. Granted, as a person unusually familiar with HR practices with regards to Diversity + Inclusion, I can assert that Palantir has greater visibility with the USDLS than most other tech companies because it’s a Federal Government contractor, and is thus subject to OFCCP filing regulations that expose these things. As a YC Partner, Thiel should have engaged Project Include to work with Palantir in parallel with their legal response to the USDLS filing—and the fact that he did not, models to YC founders that Project Include’s offerings are optional, politically-correct nice-to-haves. Not fundamental. That’s a huge problem, and works against the hard work Project Include is doing.
Practice what you preach, or don’t bother. By remaining a YC partner-biz, Project Include would have accepted a subordinate role of influence with founders; an organization that advocates for “nice to have” versus fundamental practices. That’s not ok, and traditional diversity efforts accepting that backseat treatment subordinate to how the big boys play, is precisely why most programs fail at their ultimate goal. Zero tolerance of intolerance, is not easy — but it is the only path towards success. I applaud Project Include, for being in their game to win.
