Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has urged company to replace him with a black candidate
Saturday 6 June 2020 17:30, UK
Serena Williams' husband Alexis Ohanian has announced his resignation from the board of social media site Reddit, and urged the company to replace him with a black candidate.
The company co-founder Ohanian implicitly linked his move to protests around the globe over the killing of George Floyd, who died in Minneapolis after a police officer pressed his knee against his neck for several minutes, even after he stopped pleading for air and became unresponsive.
The entrepreneur, who married tennis star Serena Williams in 2017, said he made the decision for the sake of his daughter.
"I'm writing this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: "What did you do?," Ohanian said in a blog post.
He pledged to use future gains on his Reddit stock to "serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate".
He also said he would give one million US dollars (£780,000) to Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp.
Former NFL player Kaepernick is known for kneeling to protest against police brutality and racism in 2016.
Reddit, based in San Francisco, calls itself "the front page of the internet" and has millions of users.
Like all social media sites, it has had issues over the years balancing freedom of speech against posts with racist, inflammatory and abusive intent.
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