Black Or White?

[aptpupil]

Here's my nice little harmless thread starter for this week...

Microsoft are facing allegations of racism for "doctoring" a photograph on their website, changing the skin colour of one of the people in the picture from black to white, as seen here...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8221896.stm

The original picture, which featured a black man, appeared on their website in the USA. However, the same picture on their website in Poland had magically super-imposed a white head onto the man's body. It has been suggested that the altered image was more relevant to the predominantly white Polish population.

So my question is: Can it ever be acceptable in 2009 to deliberately change an image in this manner to better cater to a particular market, or does this example show an underlying racism that still exists within certain areas of the corporate world?

[Srbo]

Heard about that on the news and I must say that the marketing/research team or whatever you call them, made a really bad judgement call there.

People in Europe care a great deal less about who is black or who is white than on this continent...

I mean, they polished the picture for Poland ? For Poland ?

Thoe people don`t give a rats ass who is on that picture...if they wanted to have some real attention to that website, they should have put Pam Anderson`s pic there...problem solved.

[Roseasharn]

Srbo, are you insulting my not so distant relatives?

Would I be completely out of line if I suggested that Microsoft has plenty of money to just take another marketing picture if they want to?
Bunch a lazy multimillion dollar marketing bastages.
But here's where it does get kinda sticky.
Ya'll, poland is not just predominantly white.
It is around 97% "white" (see below)
um.
so.
When you market, shouldn't you market to your customer base?
I think the cut and paste superimposing of this weird looking neck twisted white guy head is lazy and rude. I find it offensive for exactly that reason and that reason alone.

And by the way, I think it bears mentioning that ethnically speaking, Poles are Slavic. Western Slavic, if you want to get technical.
And there is a difference. Hitler certainly thought so.

[~Ally~]

Yeah I read this in the Newspaper and in my eyes, NO this type of behaviour is not acceptable.
They are a large company who obviously have many researchers on their staff and I wonder how nobody spoke out and queried how ridiculous a move it was. Behaviour like this continues to breed ignorance IMO.

Claiming it is because Poland is predominantly white does have an undertone of racism to it.
Where I live used to be predominantly white (no longer), especially when I was a child. Yet when I was at school (only a few years ago ) there were only two girls in the school who were not caucasian. They were Black and Asian and went on to become my very close friends. Why? Because their skin colour didn't matter, and my parents have always taught me to look at the person inside, not their shell.

I fear we still have a long way to go in the world before racism will be stamped out, especially with such ignorant behaviour being displayed by powerful companies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWdG8...eature=related

Remember ~~ONE LOVE!!

[Srbo]

Srbo, are you insulting my not so distant relatives?

Yes. Hehehe.

Of course not, Pollacks are fabuolos people, easy going, smart...man, it`s not like they waste time to exactly check out if there is a black or white guy in the pic.
Who in the whole wide World does, except for Americans anway ?

And what a lame excuse from MS - " `cos the majority there is white people " ?
So ? I suppose all of them are walking backwards also, huh ? Whatchya`say now ?

They all drink beer too. And ?
I mean WTF ?

This is so dumb that I can`t waste any more of my time on this.
Like the Pollacks - I`ll smile and head out to do something more important.

[rjt65]

my 2 cents:

do i agree with doing it --- no

should anyone be offended by it - no

Marketing people for years are trying to reach what they believe is the target market. If they want to change an image so be it. It is within their rights.

there are no racist overtones to this just the usual money money money IMO


Nothing to get the underwear in a bunch about imo

[Todash]

my 2 cents:

do i agree with doing it --- no

should anyone be offended by it - no

Marketing people for years are trying to reach what they believe is the target market. If they want to change an image so be it. It is within their rights.

there are no racist overtones to this just the usual money money money IMO


Nothing to get the underwear in a bunch about imo

I'm in agreement in this case (which may surprise some of you who have seen any of my previous comments regarding racism). If we are going to call this type of targeted marketing—because that's what it is—racism, then we should do the same for, say, Essence and Ebony magazines, because most of their ads portray only black people. It's going after the target market, and for advertisers, it makes sense. Where are you going to find ads for Viagra? On TV shows targeted at Baby Boomers. Who is the target audience for parenting magazines? Usually, moms.

Advertisers want you to see yourself using their products. That's the whole point of advertising.

[Roseasharn]

And by the way, I think it bears mentioning that ethnically speaking, Poles are Slavic. Western Slavic, if you want to get technical.
And there is a difference. Hitler certainly thought so.

Read that and decided that it could certainly be mistaken as some kind of weird neo-nazi thing. As I mentioned above, my heritage is mostly polish and I have living relatives there. What I **think** I was trying to point out is that the way we go separating people into "black" and "white" strips us of our full heritage. I also feel like lumping people into two categories based on skin pigment is entirely ridiculous and helps to motivate racial tension. If someone asked me if I was proud to be white, my first reaction would literally to be "which flavor"?
I'm proud of my heritage and proud of my great-grandparents for being so brave and coming here to the U.S.
I'm proud of my adopted heritage which included early pioneers. I honor the memories of my ancestors and their accomplishments. But my skin color is an accident. My brother is no less "white" than I am and he has very brown skin year round. In fact, he looks like he's from somewhere in the southwestern hemisphere.
It. Is. Arbitrary. Full stop.
Getting back to Hitler, he did not see the majority of Slavic peoples as Aryan. They were considered Untermenschen. Poland lost 3 million non-jewish citizens in WWII. And 3 Million Jewish citizens. And so, that is what was up with the Hitler reference.