There may be very good reasons for the racial and gender bias in this program. Political, economic, marketing, correction for past bias by YC, or bias in other VCs, or who knows.
But asking for justification should be the stock response to such unabashed racism and sexism.
It's interesting how intolerant some people are about even the most reasonable criticisms of racial preference policies. Instead of offering a reasonable response to these criticisms, they often resort to attempts to silence critics.
It's not reasonable. It's the same tedious concern trolling that appears in every single similar thread.
This discussion has gone on for a while, and included dozens of downvotes and a few rational distractions, but not one response to the original questions.
I imagine these downvotes were because your comment gave what has become the #1 stock response to any such story without showing any awareness thereof or adding anything new; because the edge in it made it sound polemical rather than a sincere request for information; and because polemical stock responses turn into flamewars, which most of us aren't interested in and which break the HN guidelines. To downvote such comments is to be a good citizen, the way putting out small fires would be.
Note that one can make all of the above observations without disagreeing with the position you're implicitly advocating (that resources should target disadvantaged individuals rather than categories like race and gender). It's generally better to assume that downvotes are procedural rather than ideological. It yields better feedback about how your comments could be improved.