Microsoft's Photoshop Blunder: Racist or Shortsighted?

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsofts_photoshop_blunder_racist_or_shortsighte.php

by steiger • 17 years ago

7 26 17 years ago

brk• 17 years ago

And much outrage would there be if they had started with the Polish version, and changed it for the US to make it more culturally diverse, instead of the other way around?

CWuestefeld3• 17 years ago

Really. Does anyone think that the original was an actual picture from a corporate meeting room? I mean, it may be sad, but how many meetings are composed of a caucasian woman, a black man, and an asian (?) man? Clearly the original was a setup designed to pander to diversity.

I think the real evidence of racism here is that we're so sensitive to color that we feel compelled to engineer any communications imagery to portray something aside from the real outlook. Pick any marketing slick, and you'll see something very much resembling this.

If you want to point a finger somewhere, point it at the dogma of false diversity.

carbon8• 17 years ago

"how many meetings are composed of a caucasian woman, a black man, and an asian (?) man"

I've never worked anywhere that this would be unusual at all. It's true that manufactured diversity is used in communications a lot, but workplaces tend to be pretty ethnically heterogeneous as long as they aren't in monocultural regions.

Goladus3• 17 years ago

Diversity like that is common in many places. Not Poland, however. The original is tailored to an American audience.

"Pander to diversity" is one way to put it, but I'm sure it probably matters even if just subconsciously, given that there are a substantial number of black customers in the US.

kasunh• 17 years ago

People are just overreacting to a simple case of localization effort.

A multinational corporation would never be racist because when the main motivation is profit and you are serving across all demographics the last thing you can afford to be is been racist.

ugh• 17 years ago

It rings true to me that big corporations tend to be not racist. That doesn’t mean, however, that no one or no group of people working for Microsoft (or any other corporation for that matter) will ever be racist. And if they are doing PR or the ads it is very much possible that their racism becomes visible as something that “Microsoft” is or does.

I don’t, however, think that this is the case here. But it was stupid to doctor with the picture. It’s a generic enough photo, so why not just buy a new one for the Polish ad?

jwr3• 17 years ago

This is a good example of what is wrong with the US these days.

In Poland people read the story, laughed, and moved on. Fact is, it is extremely improbable to meet a man in Poland that looks like the middle guy in the photo. There are black people, but they are African and look different.

But in the States people went ballistic over the story. Racism! No cultural diversity! Ethnic cleansing!

I think Americans need to decide whether they want to pay attention to race or not. You can't have it both ways. If race isn't important, laugh at this story and move on. Stop discussing it and making accusations. Also, stop asking for race in polls, stop doing selective university admissions, stop running special programs for ethnic minorities. Just forget about the whole race thing.

If race is important, by all means discuss, but then why pretend everyone is equal?

fishercs• 17 years ago

What the press publishes and how American's really feel are two completely different ideas.

don't generalize.

jwr3• 17 years ago

I realize that -- but when writing a short comment I have to generalize. I know this isn't fair to everyone.

Goladus3• 17 years ago

Oh please. Yes, some people in the US are hypersensitive to kinds of racism in a manner that tends to be less common in Europe. But Europe has its own issues and claiming it's some example of "what's wrong with the US these days" is just silly.

How sensitive are Poles to anti-semitism? There are almost no Jews in Poland because those that survived the Holocaust were driven out (sometimes violently) in the decades following WW2. This was the same time when Blacks in the US fought for and won their civil rights, incidentally. So the US has some thorny problems that aren't fully resolved that Poland doesn't have.

jwr3• 17 years ago

I didn't say Europe doesn't have its own issues -- my point was that the US seems to be trying to ignore race while being obsessed about it. That doesn't work.

JMostert• 17 years ago

Interestingly, neither the original image nor the manipulated one can be called racist. The trouble only comes from realizing we're looking at a before and after.

Microsoft generally goes to great lengths to ensure people are not offended. It has to, because of the sheer size and diversity of its markets. Raymond Chen has blogged about one apparently innocuous issue [http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.a...], and there must have been many, many more across Microsoft products.

Marketing works better if you reflect your audience's tastes. Doubtlessly someone calculated that the other image better suited Polish tastes, for which a racially diverse cast only serves as a vivid reminder that the image was marketed for an American audience. This doesn't make either the Poles or the marketing racist. The only thing "racist" was the mistake to clumsily manipulate an existing image instead of using a brand new one. Penny wise, pound foolish.

cstross• 17 years ago

Supplementary point of information: Poland's ethnic make-up diverges massively from that of the USA -- according to wikipedia the last census suggested there were a grand total of 4500-odd black people living in Poland (pop. 38 million). They have some Vietnamese, but they're still pretty rare; Poland's ethnic minorities are almost all eastern European. So the original ad would push "exotic foreign company" buttons, which is not what you want to do if you're trying to present yourself as a regular local business.

(On the other hand? "Mindlessly stupid" just about begins to sum up what they did with photoshop ...)

michaelcampbell• 17 years ago

> Microsoft generally goes to great lengths to ensure people are not offended.

Except with Clippy. Ok, ok, I know... I couldn't help myself.

byoung22• 17 years ago

As a black man, I don't find it racist that the picture was cropped. But I do think it was naive of Microsoft to think that people wouldn't notice and cry foul. They should have just used a different picture altogether.

nailer• 17 years ago

Out of curioisity, how do you feel when white people are photoshopped over for the appearance of diversity?

byoung22• 17 years ago

I feel the same as when the black person was edited out...it wouldn't bother me either way. But I think that companies should realize that not everyone feels the way I do.

prospectofdeath2• 17 years ago

It's racist because it's so f'ing lazy. If they wanted to make the 'Polish' version of the ad they should have taken a new picture.

prospectofdeath2• 17 years ago

Not to mention they didn't even bother editing the hand! Lazy Microsoft strikes again.

Microsoft's Photoshop Blunder: Racist or Shortsighted?

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