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Microsoft Poland Photoshops Black Guy To White One
wanted writes "If you look at Microsoft's Poland business solutions Web site, you will probably not notice anything odd about the main picture. However, when you compare it with the original English version, you can see that someone decided that showing black people in Poland is probably not going to be convincing to business. They just Photoshopped the head of a white guy in for the black one, in an amateurish way, leaving his hand unchanged. (Here's a mirror in case something should happen to the original.)" We noted a few months back that the city of Toronto had done something similar.
http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/
I grew up in Poland (81-93). And yes there was very little diversity in our population especially coming out of the communist era, where Russian mandate purged Poland of almost all non-Natives. Which considering what they did to countries like Estonia, Latvia, and Georgia I consider generous! I would say given my experience it's not that Polish people are racist, it's more that racism is a very new concept. Having had grown up in a totally homogeneous society, I could not even conceptualize any other kind of a society. I did not consider attacking anyone just because they were different. The few people I did see that were Asian or African only invoked extreme curiosity in me.
Then as communism fell the wave after wave of immigrants started to hit Poland. They could be seen begging for money on streets of all of our major cities. Not even sure where all of them were coming from, only thing that was apparent was there somewhat darker hue. These immigrants stoked all kinds of nationalistic feelings amongst my people, and often were met with violence. To understand such a strong response you must consider that prior to the fall of communism for many years (since the end of WW2) the word Pole was synonymous with Slavic and Catholic. There was no variation. So in essence it was as if the collective being of our society was under attack. Xenophobia was a very natural response (in a Human sense), and I believe it prevails to this day.
Mod parent up. People that regard this as racist have probably never been to Poland or any other Eastern European country. For historical reasons, you will very rarely see black or Asian people in any of those countries. Having an ad with a black person is just not believable. Personally if I saw a local add like that in my home country it would immediately say "ah, this is obviously a US add, so the product is probably very US centric", simply because the ad shows a black person. This is not racist, it is just a fact. Americans probably don't notice it, but for "political correctness" reasons many American publications always made sure that every group of people they showed always had a mix of races/types of people. If you ever watched a cheap teen movie that has a story about some group of kids, the group would always have some white kids, one of them being fat, at least one Asian guy and at least one black guy. Not having this combination of races/types of people in the movie would be considered politically incorrect in the US. Seeing a group of people of mixed races is an everyday and normal thing. Seeing a group of people of mixed races in Eastern Europe is a rare occurrence, so a picture with a black person will immediately tell you that the picture was most probably made outside of the country. Imagine an ad showing a couple driving to work in a car - a Volga Coupe. Would this ad be believable to you if it was shown in the US? No, because you would never see that car driving down an American freeway. What the ad does show is that Microsoft is cheap. Instead of taking a new photo, adopted to the local market, they just photoshoped an existing one - badly.
Poland has an unfortunate history both during and directly after the war, extending into the 60s. The embarassing reaction to the relatively recent release of Jan T Gross's book (hereby incorporated by reference) in which the former Kaczynski, the former Primitive Polish Prime minister even tried to prosecute the author.
It's important to remember that during the war the Poles had much harder situations for rescuing Jews than in most other countries (you risked your entire family going to a concentration camp; elsewhere you risk only yourself and only prison) and many still did. It's also worth remembering that the reason Jews were in Poland was because they were historically treated better there than elsewhere. Poland is much further along coming to terms with and apologizing (though with reservations) for it's former anti-semitism (even Kaczynski has made efforts to return passports to the victims of the 60s) than a number of surrounding countries.
Essentially anyone who tells you that Poles are all good is a Holocaust revisionist. As is anyone who tells you that they are all bad.
In all cases where I referenced Wikipedia, all references in the page references are incorporated by reference as material to read. There; is that enough citations for you?
I'll retract Che, as I couldn't find an example, but for the rest:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/
I don't want to google more, but I remember seeing many more examples over the years.
You don't need to be a head of state to have photos edited, btw. It just need some devoted followers in the press or something like that.
just to clarify that they aren't kidding
they fixed it... http://www.microsoft.com/poland/businessproductivity/default.mspx lol
http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/WATCHBLOG/60115
Is a story about the white guy with the gun in question.
Though I don't consider it racism, because the hatred isn't towards race or ethnicity - it is towards a specific culture
The Romani Gypsies prevalent in eastern Europe are an ethnic group, not a cultural one, so yes it is racism. Irish and "New age" travelers are a separate group and not properly referred to as Gypsies.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me