The sentence "Systems have memory and biases. If the people that make up the system don't work to fight against these, they are perpetuated" in particular came off as more than merely "missed opportunity", although "racism" is probably too strong of a word too, but I don't know of anything else that fits better.

Either way, I don't really see why it would be vindictive either? Maybe I missed some information somewhere, but I've seen nothing that would indicate anything other than the most likely explanation: they rescheduled because they assumed JeanHeyd just didn't care as he indicated he didn't want to do a keynote at first, some petty infighting, and all of this communicated this in a bad and chaotic way.