Most responses were zingers or did not show a basic understanding for what he said. They are noise, and noise is not worth defending.

I take his argument as supporting individual merit, and condemning praise for the seemingly meritless based on being a minority (what is often called affermative action). A proper disagreement with this position might be based around a purposeful cultivation of the minority to overcome the historical imbalance or avoid a flawed evaluation of merit. Debate then between cultivation and pure meritocracy is a valuable exchange, both sides of which are worth defending.

There appear to be many responses to sound bites taken out of context. Many of them are additionally vitriolic reiterations of much less insight and nuance than what antirez said. They do not contribute to progressing the core discussion, and are only valuable to the extent that we attempt to answer a subtle social issue by taking a vote of twitter users. Which is to say, they are not valuable at all.