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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.
They changed a black guy into a white guy, but they used cropping.
A black man took a gun to an anti-Obamacare rally. MSNBC showed his picture, or at least a picture of his shirt and gun (no hands or head), claimed it was a white guy and that he was motivated by racism.
Link here: Instapundit and Afterburner video
Prior to the Soviets? During the Soviets, my dearly departed grandmother was "exported" from Poland to a Siberian labor camp (as was the rest of her family), mostly since her father was a war hero in the earlier Polish-Bolshevik war. (He got some of the townsfolk from the nearby village of to help pull a few big machine-gun caissons out of a ditch, and subsequently helped save the rear ends of the retreating Polish cavalry. I don't think the Soviets liked the family. Too much initiative.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Poland like many parts of Eastern Europe did 'clean' up after ww2 by driving out anyone not Polish.
The last months of 1945-46 did let many parts of the Eastern Europe become very "homogeneous".
Decades later you can blame the Germans up to 45, the Soviets post 45.
In reality the locals did sort things out in a very permanent way.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
As a "current" Pole (born 82) I have to say that I mainly agree with you. None the less I don't think that we are xenophobic. Some fringe cases, as for instance the ultra right wing minded and older people brought up in a different time are, as they always (or most of the time) are in other countries as well. But I wouldn't say that Poles in general are xenophobic or racism. The fact is that we didn't really have any diversity in society for a very long time and just now we begin to learn about new cultures, new people and so one. As you've said we are mostly curious.
As to the matter at hand, Microsoft Poland did the "right" thing. A black (sorry I don't know what the PC way is of saying that :-)) man is a very rare thing in Poland, doubly so in a business context. So the ad wouldn't be as believable with him in it. The quality of the work is something completely diffrent
Seems like the old stereotypes at work. Hire Asians, they're smart! Don't hire those negores, though; they're lazy and they steal!
Having been born in a part of Europe that isn't much different from Poland, I can safely say that these stereotypes were quite common in much of Europe, at least while I was a child. When we moved to Canada, seeing asians didn't strike me as all that odd, but I really didn't know what to make of blacks. I got in trouble more than once at school for making racist comments about (or to) black classmates, but thanks to having spent my formative years in a nation which placidly accepts racial bigotry, it wasn't until years later that I really understood that there was anything wrong about the things I had said. I think it's hard for people who were born into multicultural societies to really understand what it's like being raised in that kind of culture.
Do you hate gypsies?
Yes, actually (see, I'm from Eastern Europe, too). Though I don't consider it racism, because the hatred isn't towards race or ethnicity - it is towards a specific culture (I wonder if there's a term for that), which, IMO, is really deserving it. A gypsy who doesn't live like one isn't one anymore, as far as I'm concerned.
Here's something nobody ever considers: what makes different skin colors "diverse"? They don't; they make people different colors. Associating race/color with diversity is a slight to all people, as it in and of itself is truly racist: "Oh, look; he has different color skin. He must be different/exciting/exotic/angry/mean/fun!" No, he's just a man - like you and like me, and every other goddamn man on this planet. (We then go on to associate their skin color or features with their behavior, as is biologically imperative, just as a soldier learns what an enemy combatant's uniform looks like or a dog learns that a specific bag that comes into the house every once in a while has treats.)
Also, xenophobic and racist have two very distinctly different meanings. Racism is a hatred of an "essence" of a person's race, and those people; xenophobia is a fear (and maybe hatred) of outside cultures and forces, which is much more understandable (and natural, as such things tend to be disruptive.) What I suspect has happened in Poland (and has/is happening in many other places as well) is that it's an internal struggle trying to deal with what is seen as an invading culture and way of life - fear and anger at their structured world being disrupted, and someone 'forcing' change around them in their environment. Look at the Balkans for a perfect example: many distinctly different cultures, but all (mostly) very genetically similar people, yet... chaos. Their cultures are night and day from each other, resulting in an ethnic clusterf*ck.
I think people in today's 'diverse' and 'connected' world need to take a step back and look at what used to make sense, in so many ways: good fences make good neighbors. All this cultural "blending" (which doesn't happen, ethnic ghettos form with a few stragglers leave to join the 'parent' culture to give the appearance of diversity) is not going to end well for anyone.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
He grew up in an all-white (segregated_ neighborhood where racist comments like "come on, act like a white man" were quite the norm.
He didn't even think to question those kinds of comments until he ended up sharing a table with me for a couple of months. I'll tell you -- those racist comments were a hard habit to break. Even into the second month, he would still occasionally go "Oh come on, act like a whi.... blah, oh shit I did it again", and then spend the next couple of minutes apologizing to me.
It would have been funny if it wasn't for the fact that he was so hurt by what was coming out of his mouth.
My point though, is that -- until he met me, and the one other black student at the school, he hadn't even thought to reconsider the racist comments and jokes that he had grown up with -- or the racist attitudes that went with them.
Now, I realize that anti-racism really has to go a long way past simply banning racist jokes, but that does, at least, cause people to consider that the other racist attitudes that may be floating around their space aren't the norm and/or don't represent the real (and generally rather minor) differences between the races.
and, if you want to get a handle on just how close we all are, consider that geneticists were able to find more genetic diversity in a single band of chimps, than across the various human races.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
...and they failed! Apparently they were in such a hurry that they now forgot to enlarge the orange box behind the text (as they did with the modified picture).
I wonder if nobody noticed that it looks totally awful.