I can see that naming those who didn't even respond could be more appropriate. My takeaway is that you feel let down the most by those who have the most talk, hence higher expectations, which, it seems to me is the gist of the article.
I wouldn't have responded to her because I don't think her startup is particularly interesting or likely to be profitable. It's a low-effort idea. Easy to replicate, easy to cut the middle man out of, and has been done multiple times before. "Naming names" of people who declined to waste their money on your bad idea isn't social justice, it's entitlement.
A man, woman, or rhinoceros with a stellar résumé like her husband's, who I may also know personally, considering that I was on their contact list? Maybe.
Let us please stop pretending that the glaring difference between these two people is their race or gender and not a vast gulf of experience and credibility.
It seems that what happened is they didn't so much as glance at the pitch deck when "Nerissa Zhang" sent it to them. But then did when "James Zhang" sent them the same deck.
Because if they had looked at the deck when Nerissa sent it to them, they would have recognized James and also saw his impressive resume.
So if they are publicly proclaiming that they want to invest more in underrepresented groups, I don't think only reading emails from people with names like "James" in their contact list is going to make much progress towards that.
You're right, that's exactly what they did, because many of them knew him. They were from his contact list. I respond to basically every email from people I know, even if I think it's stupid. Emails from random people have to pass a much higher bar to get a response, and low-effort ideas with fraudulent reviews aren't going to clear that bar.
I used to be a freelancer. People would constantly ask me to build "the next Google" or "Facebook for X" that would assuredly make us both billionaires. I learned not to give them the time of day. If a friend or successful colleague did the same, I would respond out of courtesy if nothing else. If I really respected them I'd even entertain the possibility that I was wrong about their idea and hear them out.
There are some very obvious innocent explanations for this situation, but you seem to want it to be an instance of bigotry. In my experience this is a mindset that cannot be argued with, so I think I'm done here. Have a good night.
I totally get your point that it's crappy for VCs to talk the talk and act like they want to help under-represented people, but then go back to business as usual. That sucks. And I completely believe that it is harder out there for woman and people of color. But I don't think that naming names based on anecdotes like this actually helps. I wish I had better ideas, but I really don't think this is it.