First of all, this is a great idea and I truly hope you have success at acheiving it.
But also … yeah … those Pinside responses don’t surprise me at all. Many people in that community are really, really bad at seeing things from anything other than a knee-jerk Fox News viewpoint (I’ve reworked that sentence multiple times now, and that’s the NICEST way i can put it). There was nothing wrong with the wording of your post. You were always going to get negative feedback from those people with this (excellent) idea, no matter how you phrased it.
Having said that, even though the jerks can be the loudest voices sometimes, I genuinely think the majority of people in the pinball community have no problem seeing where you’re coming from and why this is a cool idea.
Unfortunately, this forum doesn’t have the largest or most active community these days. Don’t take the lack of responses here personally.
I’m a white guy myself, but my local area (VA/DC/MD) has a number of Black players that regularly play in leagues and tournaments. I’m friendly with almost everyone around here – if you do get something started, I could at the very least let them know it exists when I run into them next. Good luck!
EDIT: I’m an idiot. I missed that you’re Matt Green! Hey, I’m Dan R, we’ve played together at Lymans and Carpool a bunch of times. Long time no see!