>>13165120As far as I know, he wasn't chosen so much because he was black as because he was incapable of working as a professional astronomer, he got bounced out of a post-doc program and ended up in the PR wing of the academic astronomy industry. Its not an uncommon story, I know a jewish guy named Adam who couldn't get into astronomy grad school so they got him a job doing tours on Kitt Peak. The astronomy industry is fairly good about making sure everyone with a degree gets a job because they have pretty much infinite money to work with, they can afford to employ their academic failures in PR because the PR results in bigger grants from the government.
