This post and also the Mod leak seems to make it fairly clear that this AMA was organized to teach the community a lesson and push an agenda held by some of the Mods.

In case he edits his post it says this:

"I'm a research chemist as well, albeit a white dude, I came from an inner city school. I know lots of blacks men and women who were good chemists in high school (although inner city, it was a magnet school for technology), they didn't follow up and go to college in the subject, while I completed my PhD.

I've been in the field for nearly 20 years, and in that time I've met 3 times more African-Americans who were actually born in Africa with PhDs than I have Blacks born in the USA. This has always bothered me. No matter what the racists try to argue, I know from personal experience that the skill and interest is there. Something in our culture is snuffing it out, and it's despicable.

So, I set up AMAs on reddit to address the issue, like this one. I know you can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink, but doing nothing to avoid upsetting people."

Note also: "No matter what the racists try to argue, I know from personal experience that the skill and interest is there. Something in our culture is snuffing it out, and it's despicable."