Microsoft's Photoshop Blunder: Racist or Shortsighted?

This is a good example of what is wrong with the US these days.<p>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.<p>But in the States people went ballistic over the story. Racism! No cultural diversity! Ethnic cleansing!<p>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.<p>If race is important, by all means discuss, but then why pretend everyone is equal?

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

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.<p>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 [<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.a...</a>], and there must have been many, many more across Microsoft products.<p>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.

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?

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.

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.