Does Silicon Valley Have a Race Problem?

Soledad O’Brien’s latest installment of “Black in America,” still two weeks away from its release date, has caused a Twitter war over the issue of race in Silicon Valley.

The documentary followed NewMe, a startup accelerator for minorities, over two months in the summer as eight participants in the program move in to a small California house together. It also features interviews with Silicon Valley giants, including TechCrunch and CrunchFund founder Michael Arrington. And that’s where things get controversial.

In a clip from the documentary posted on the CNN website last week, when asked to name a top African-American entrepreneur Arrington drew a blank. “This is a white and Asian world up here—it just is,” he went on to say.

Arrington wrote later on his blog that he felt as though he had been put on the spot. “Nothing in their first email [inviting him to be interviewed], or any subsequent email, told me that this was going to be about the lack of minorities in Silicon Valley,” he wrote. “I came prepared to talk about Y Combinator stats and how awesome these programs are.”

But his comments have started a heated conversation in blogs and on social media about whether Silicon Valley has an issue with racism and, if so, what can be done to fix it. Clickradio founder Hank Williams wrote in his blog that it’s an issue of “pattern matching,” that investors want to work with people similar to them. “…It is much harder for even the most talented African Americans in the tech world to gain access to influential, insightful, connected mentors, let alone investors.”

“I think what this shows,” Zennie Abraham wrote on his SFGate blog, “is that black entrepreneurs in tech are still invisible: not seen by the overall tech community unless our existence becomes a news issue.”

Others have sprung to Arrington’s defense, including Techorati’s Micah Singleton, who said he “works—in my opinion—the most culturally diverse industry outside of professional sports, doesn't sort people by skin color, and neither should anyone.”

But, as ZDNet’s Violet Blue points out, Arrington’s statements are not the issue. She quotes Black Founders Monique Woodard: “If there were no Michael Arrington, we would still have this problem. We would just be talking about some other guy in a position of power who earnestly believes that there are no barriers to women and minorities even though when he looks around, he sees no women or minorities.”

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

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Nicola Kean is an assistant editor for Portfolio.com.